JASON ZIMMERMAN – EMORY UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 776

Website – https://www.emoryathletics.com/sports/mbkb/index

Email – jzimme4@emory.edu

Twitter – @EmoryBasketball

Jason Zimmerman was named the fourth head coach in the history of Emory men’s basketball in April of 2007.  In his 15 years of calling the shots for the Eagles, Zimmerman has compiled won-lost record of 273-123.  He has led Emory to 10 straight NCAA Tournament berths, the longest active streak in D-III.  Under Zimmerman, Emory has won University Athletic Association Championships in 2022, 2020, 2019, 2016, 2015, and 2013.

A native of Warsaw, Indiana, Zimmerman came to the Emory program having spent 11 seasons as an assistant coach at the Division I level.  He spent four seasons as an assistant at the University of Evansville and seven seasons on the Davidson staff, where he worked for his college coach, Bob McKillop, from 1996-2003. 

As a player Zimmerman was a four-year letterwinner at Davidson where he concluded his career as the school’s No. 18 all-time leading scorer with 1,260 points.  One of the top players in the Southern Conference, he  finished fourth in career free throw percentage and seventh in career assists, and was a member of Davidson’s 1994 NIT team. 

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Be prepared to take some notes and learn from Jason Zimmerman, Men’s Basketball Head Coach at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

What We Discuss with Jason Zimmerman

• Emory’s 10 straight NCAA Tournament appearances
• Losing at the buzzer in the last three NCAA Tournaments
• The new 8 days of contact rule in D3
• “I think at our level, you really have to have some self-motivated guys, some guys who take pride in what you do.”
• “What you say is important, but what they hear is the most important.”
• “You don’t get your leadership license by reading a book.”
• Developing leaders on your team
• Reevaluating everything you do at the end of a season
• “If you change offenses every year, your seniors are never seniors.”
• Giving your assistants off-season projects to improve the program
• Tweaking your base to adjust for your personnel
• Having to call more sets vs. a free flowing offense
• Teaching whole – part – whole
• “If pickup is creating bad habits, then you don’t have the right guys.”
• Having a shared language that makes communication faster and more efficient
• “If you can’t see, you can’t play.”
• “You have to have a purpose of what you’re doing when you’re playing pickup.”
• “You don’t have to play right now, but on October 15th, you don’t have to be on the team.”
• How skill development happens during practice
• Working on your game at the right pace
• Head shots – 3 makes in a row / Deserts – 3 misses in a row
• The balance between offense and defense in practice
• Playing a four minute game to start practice, or having a five minute “halftime” to simulate game situations
• “I’m a big believer in just being good at what we do.”
• “We can’t remember our set plays. We’re not going to remember theirs.”
• Have words for personnel that convey a message of how you guard a player (Rondo, Kobe)
• “We say, we are how we practice. We practice 115 times during the year. We only play 26 or 27.”
• “I spend more time thinking about groups and matchups in practice than I do actually thinking about the practice.”
• “It doesn’t matter who we put in, this is how we’re doing it. This is how we’re playing.”
• Spending time investing in every player, not just those that play a lot of minutes
• Keeping players’ tools sharp
• “Your culture of work and your intentional work doesn’t change If you play one minute or 40 minutes.”
• “How do you get a bigger role? You play the role that you have better.”
• Being ready to play off the bench
• “We don’t shoot a first touch.”
• “I don’t just put you in a game and let’s see what he does in a game. You have 115 practices. You got opportunity every day to show us what you can do.”
• Using player questionnairres after the season
• “I think as a coach you have to constantly be aware of what’s important to your guys.”
• Trying to be at a championship level as a person
• Passing down vocabulary verbally rather than in written form
• The three part process of recruiting at Emory
• “Finding those inches and finding guys that are willing to fight for those inches that’s a challenge.”
• “My joy is not necessarily the trophies or the nets or the pictures of the champions. It’s the pictures of all the guys that I have coached and the relationships that I have with those guys.”

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THANKS, JASON ZIMMERMAN

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JASON ZIMMERMAN – EMORY UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 776

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight, and we are pleased to be joined for his second appearance on the Hoop Heads Pod, the head men’s basketball coach at Emory University. Jason Zimmerman. Jason, welcome back.

[00:00:15] Jason Zimmerman: Mike. Jason, thanks for having me back.

I appreciate it. I think it was 2019. We did this and I guess a lot’s happened since then, right? We went through this crazy Covid-19 stuff.

[00:00:26] Mike Klinzing: It’s a whole new world, man. It’s a whole new world out there. You might be setting the record for longest gap between podcast appearances.

I think you probably have to be pretty close to the record. I’m trying to think because we haven’t actually, we haven’t had any double guests in a couple months. I think you probably set the record. We’re going to have to go back and check.

[00:00:49] Jason Zimmerman: Anyway, I’m excited.

[00:00:50] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, we’re excited to have you back on and we’re going to dive deep into what you’ve been able to do, what you’ve been able to build with your program there at Emory. But thought we’d start by just letting you give a quick synopsis of kind of how this season went, and then we’ll start diving into the program.

[00:01:04] Jason Zimmerman: Yeah. It’s kind of crazy. We finished 17 and 9, I think we, we made the NCAA tournament for the 10th year in a row.

I think it’s the longest active streak in division three right now. We lost a bunch of guys in 2022. We lost an All-American and our starting point guard for three years, and another kid who was our leading score for three years. And so we had a lot of young guys. Lot of the guys playing new roles and finished third in our league, the UAA, which was as good as it’s ever been this year.

And we’re able to get an at large pool bid to the NCAA tournament. Played a great game on the road in the NCAA tournament and missed a shot, lost at the buzzer. That’s the last three NCAA tournaments. We’ve lost at the buzzer. So I don’t know, I have to start living right something, man.

[00:01:52] Mike Klinzing: You have to do something different defensively on those last possessions, I guess.

[00:01:56] Jason Zimmerman: Yeah, that’s exactly right. All I was going to say, I was going to say, my team tells me that if we lose by five points or less, it’s the coaches’ fault. And if we lose by more than five, it’s their fault. And this year we had more games five points and under than I’ve ever had in my career in the season.

And a lot of reasons for it. We just had a really low margin for error. But we continue to battle and stay in the game. And so it was very exciting. If I had hair, I’d pulled it all out this year, but we grew and we’re excited. We lose four guys one starter and four guys that but we got a bunch of guys coming back.

We’re excited about the future and we’re excited. Just we were excited this year. It’s really interesting where our program is. You know, we go 17-9 make the NCAA Tournament and I think there was a sense, we didn’t do all that we could have done. Right. And that’s an interesting feeling for our team.

I would’ve loved to have been 17-9, 15 years ago when we started so it’s a great feeling with the pressure with expectations come, pressure, right? Pressure’s a privilege, and all those sayings with it. But it’s true and it’s fun. People, people want to win.

People want to continue, there’s the expectation for our guys and there’s pressure there for our guys to continue to figure out how to be great.

[00:03:21] Mike Klinzing: Let’s start here. Season ends. And what’s your process? What do you do first? What do you do to prepare for the next season? What are you thinking about here in the weeks after the season ends?

[00:03:34] Jason Zimmerman: That’s a great question. I actually talked to our staff about this. I think we should do a clinic, we should do the five stages of grief, right? After season for basketball coaches. And it’s different in different levels, I think, because now division one you can jump right back into the gym workout, et cetera.

Division two, same thing. Division three, we can’t touch our guys. Actually, there’s going to be a new rule this year where we’re going to have eight days outside of before or after the season where we can work our guys out, which will start in August. So start the next season. We’ll have eight days that we can use before practice.

So that’s different. But usually you can’t touch your guys on the court. So October 15th after that season. There’s those five stages of grief I think you go through. Right. And I don’t know them right off the top of my head, but I know you go through anger and sadness and depression and you go through that as a basketball coach.

I think I went through them pretty quick this year because we’re so young and we have a good group coming back, but we’ve had some great seniors. So the first thing I do is try to try to get through those stages as quick as possible and get on to the next year I try to spend a little bit of time with my wife and kids, which I hadn’t done since October.

Really? And they laugh about that. They always laugh because they always say, I go into my cleanup stage, like, Hey, why is this laying around the house? And they say, well, dad has been there since October. You just hadn’t seen it. Right? And I was like, that’s a good point, right? So I go through that stage and then we get to our team and we can have an end of the year meeting and we can give them a workout for individual workouts.

So we’ll meet with our guys and go through kind of a recap and then what we want them to do to get better for next year. We’re in the middle of that, and that takes a while to get through everybody. And then really, it’s up to our leaders, our captains, our veterans, our leaders on our team to take over the strength and conditioning part.

And we are big believers in playing pickup. So they’ll take over, they’ll play pickup and they’ll get their individual work started and go in and we can’t be out there. I think at our level, you really have to have some self-motivated guys, some guys who take pride in what you do. I think sometimes at the higher levels right now in division one specifically, like the kids are only in the gym because you tell them to get in the gym and you’re with them. Right. And I think sometimes they’ve gone almost too far like, Hey, I know what one of my guys want be in. They’re going to in there themselves and go.

And you can figure that out at that level too. But it’s a little bit, they always have to have a rebounder, right? You always have to have a coach in there. You always have to have a manager in there. Hey, I just when we played you just went outside, rebounded yourself, right? Shooting machine, got the ball.

And I think there’s still a lot to be said about that for sure.

[00:06:28] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s interesting. I think the division one piece of it is super interesting. And I always go back, obviously to my own experience and you can go back to your experience and when we finished, I wanted to go and. Play pickup basketball. I wanted to go and just work on my game and be in the gym by myself.

And to be honest, like I didn’t want to have the same five guys that were chirping in my ear all season. I didn’t want to have them chirping in my ear the entire off season. And I’ve talked to a number of people that are involved at the division one level, whether it’s from a coaching standpoint or guys who were playing or former players.

And I think there’s obviously a lot of positive, like you mentioned about guys getting in the gym and having the opportunity to have access to guys. But in a lot of ways I feel like it’s too much. It’s almost like there’s a happy medium where you have to have a little bit more access, which I’m glad to hear that division three is going that direction.

But at the same time, I feel like, man, being on campus for 50 weeks a year with the. People kind of going at each other for that long. To me, just thinking back to my own experience, I think I would’ve, I think I would’ve burned out. Like I just needed to go out and play and you know, just to be able to have that opportunity.

And so it’s a balance. Do you think that the division three rule, do you think it’s going to. Obviously that’s a step. Do you think they’re going to go more? What’s the sense of what are you hearing out, out there?

[00:07:47] Jason Zimmerman: I don’t think so. I think we’ve been fighting for a long time to get more, a little bit more I always tell this story like if you’re a great trumpet player, right?

You can see your teacher at any time. You don’t have to wait. This is like a great mathematician. Like, well wait, you can only talk to your teacher from October to March after that. You can’t talk to your math teacher. Right? And I’ve just never understood that, but we we’re getting a little bit more access.

I think that’s an art to coaching at the division one level for sure is like being able to know your guys and being able to push them when you need to push them and being able to pull back when you need to pull back at least, or give it a different voice.

Let your assistants work them. But I think that’s, the art of coaching, right? Recruiting the right guys, understanding when to push them. Understanding what to do at certain times. Understand when they’re tired. Fatigue of hearing your voice. And there’s a real art to that, like being aware of all of those things.

Right. I tell a lot of my assistants, like coaching basketball, you get into coaching, you’re thinking, oh, I’m going to draw up a play or I’m going to make it have a new defense. I want to run this defense. And that’s like about 10% of what we do and the other part is the 90% is all that.

Being aware of your guys and understanding the relationships and how you push them and how, how you keep them confident and how you keep them. And that’s a part that we really enjoy. And that’s why you go through that kind of withdrawal after our season because you can’t see them. You go from drawing up your practice plans every day and being in practice with your guys and being with them for two, three hours a day every to not seeing them. And I mean it’s, it’s kind of like an addict, like, I’m addicted to this and stuff, right? And I’m addicted to this coaching stuff. And then you just cut off cold Turkey and that’s hard. And so it’s you ask how we go about it. We’ve been in the office a lot as coaches talking about, Hey, what we could do better?

And we have post-season questionnaires and I think it’s great for the guys to be able to give feedback. And we’re getting through those right now. And, and it’s been those have been a great tool for us. And just my coaching it’s just always interesting what people actually hear and what you’re trying to say, right?

Like Right. Find that interesting with our players. Right. You know, a lot of times people, oh, he doesn’t want me to shoot. No, I didn’t say that. I said we can get a better shot. Like I never said, I don’t want you to shoot it, I want you to shoot it. Right. But it’s what they hear and what you say is not important.

It’s how what they hear is important. Right. So obviously what you say is important, but what they hear is the most important. What are they actually hearing? Right. You have to be aware of them.

[00:10:43] Mike Klinzing: How do you develop over the course of the season, how do you develop those leaders that you can count on to be able to get your off season stuff done?

And just, I know that what’s one of the things that when we talk to coaches, they always talk about You know, we want more leadership, or you hear sometimes coaches complaining, we need better leaders. And yet at the same time, I think sometimes there’s this idea that leadership kind of forms organically.

And I know that the best coaches out there are guys that are developing leaders and giving players opportunities to develop that leadership within their day, day-to-day. So just how do you go about developing the kind of guys that you know, when the season ends that you can count on them to get guys in the weight room and organize your pickup and all the things that you need them to do on the division three level?

How do you develop those guys?

[00:11:29] Jason Zimmerman: Yeah, I think first of all, down what you’re right. And a commitment to making yourself better as a person, as a basketball player. And those growth mindset, if you want to say that, like having those growth mindset guys is important. I think it’s also you have to model that, like what you want in leadership, right?

You have to model that, and then you have to let them, we’ve had great leaders here, right? And sometimes when you model it and the guys that come next try to do exactly what the guys before them did, and you have to talk to those guys about, look, you don’t have to be that guy. I need you to be yourself, but I need you to lead right.

And I need you to lead. And I read a great quote the other day. It’s like, you don’t get your pilot’s license just by taking a paper test. Let’s hope that. Yeah. And we don’t want them, right? We don’t want them. So it’s the same thing with leadership. Like I think you can read there’s all these leadership classes, leadership books, leadership.

Well that’s great, but you don’t get your leadership license by reading a book. Right? Now you have knowledge and you have that may give you more tools, but you have to be in the mix, right? Like, you have to be in the arena and you have to be. And so we talk with our seniors, our leaders, as we’re getting closer to the end of the year, it’s like, Hey, you’ve seen leaders before.

There’s been, if they’re seniors, you’ve seen three classes of leaders of seniors before you. And you know what they’ve done well and you know what made you angry? And you know, what did work and didn’t work? Well, I didn’t like that, but I didn’t like that. So now is your turn to take all of that. Like, well, I hated it when that leader did that.

Like that just didn’t make sense, well then why would you do that? Why don’t you do something that that helps our team And that helps you. And then, so you can have your, it’s your last go. If this is a senior class, for example, obviously the point guard is a kind of natural leader. Just cause he has the ball in his hands, right?

And for us, that’s important or point guard’s important for us how we play. But, but like those, those older guys, I tell them, even if you’re not playing you, you’ve developed And experience that you’ve been through the UAA three times, right? You’ve been through, like, so you’ve gone through all of this over and over again, and there’s a, there’s a sense of experience that there’s a respect there.

Now, the other thing we say to our leaders is don’t expect the guys to just blindly follow. Right? And sometimes the older guys expect that, well, I would, when I was a freshman, I followed this guy, or when I was, no, no, you really didn’t. First of all, it’s like catching fish, right?

You really didn’t do that. But, but also like you have to show that you care about them. You have to show that you care about the pro. You can’t just assume that they’re going to follow you. And, and we tell our guys all the time, like, I look, I’ve been here 15, 16 years, like 15 seasons, 16 years. And every year I have to prove to you guys that I care about you, that I’m committed to your team.

That we should trust each other. Like every year I have to do that. And you think you, you’re here four years, you think you can just, oh, they should just follow me. Well, that’s not true. I don’t think that you should just follow me because I’m that coach. I think I should show you trust and show you that I care for you and for this team.

And so every year it’s a new canvas for us to lead, right? And that is fun. It’s exciting. It’s what I love to do, but it’s also really challenging, especially when you’re getting old.

[00:15:06] Mike Klinzing: Alright, so that’s the player side of it. Talk a little bit more about the coaching side of it and what you guys are talking about.

Here in these days when the season’s over, you can’t meet with the guys. You’re not being able to get them out on the floor. You’re having these individual post-season meetings with them. They’re filling out the questionnaires, they’re getting you back feedback. What are you guys talking about in the office in terms of, are you looking more back forward?

A combination of both? Just what’s the process like as you’re sitting down and talking?

[00:15:32] Jason Zimmerman: Yeah, it’s a combination of both. And you know, it’s not like the end of the season comes and then all of a sudden, alright, let’s look back, let’s look forward. We do it every day. Right? Right. So every day we’ve been looking back like, oh, how should we get better?

What should we do? Should we change something? Should we not change something? Right? And so every day you’re constantly trying to improve. So at the end of the season a season like this year where, hey, we were really successful, but we feel like we left some stuff on the table. You reevaluate everything.

Like, hey, how did we walk into the locker room? Like, what time did we meet? Why did we meet at that time? Like, why was our pregame meal here? Why in practice do we do that? Why do we and, and we do it every year, but in you stuff on the table, everything, everything. And you should do that when you win.

It’s just a little bit more difficult when you win, too, right? Like, it, it’s I think Nick Saban’s the best at it. He doesn’t care if he wins or lose. It doesn’t matter. he’s the same breakdown, evaluate, but it’s really difficult when you win at a really high level to do it with the passion that he does it right?

So we break down everything, I’m a little adhd. I’m a little all over the place. Like one day I’ll just come in and say, Hey, let’s watch this film and like, let’s watch our, our game against, it could be anybody. Let’s watch our game we played in December. Let’s break it down, like, and then we’ll give projects to our staff.

Each guy will have a project, maybe out bounds, maybe our zone, maybe Hey, let’s do something different with our zones. Let’s do some are we offensively, do we like what we’re doing? Now? I’m a big believer in. And building is, you have to have a base, right? Like you can’t change if you change offenses every year, your seniors are never seniors.

I’m a big believer, and this is coach, I guess when I worked for coach, like we had a base and I don’t know we just, we didn’t change it a whole lot, but we tweaked it. But there’s a base, right? I think if you don’t have your base, if we play okay this year we’re going to run the swing.

Next year we’re going to run dribble drive, and the next year we’re going to run secondary, and then the next year, well then your seniors, they can’t lead because they don’t know what the heck you’re doing, right? They don’t know. So I think you have to have a base to your program, whether it’s your philosophy, whether it’s your offensive base, defensive base.

You have to have a base that you can then adjust, right? You can tweak it, but you can’t change everything all the time. Right. And I think that’s important. And I think it’s really hard for young coaches, right? We’ve all been there like, man, I wanted to do everything. I heard something at clinic.

I’m like, oh, that’s great. I want to do that? Oh, I want to do that. Oh, I want to do that. You can’t do that. You can’t. That’s not, so once you have your base, then you can branch off of that. Like, oh, I like how that fits. Oh, I like how this fits. But think you have to have your base, whether that’s your coda, your program, whether it’s championship level that we talk about, or our objectives, those never change for us.

They never change. And that can be our base, but like our offensive system, we have a base. We’re not going to change a whole lot if we have big guys that. That can score. Well, we’re going to throw it into the post more, right? If we have guys that can shoot, we’re going to take more threes, but we’re not going to change everything we do every year.

Right? We’ll change the defense, we’ll tweak it, we’ll add to it, whatever. But, but I think having that base allows your leaders to be better leaders. Right? For sure. They, they feel like they’ve learned something we can add to that, right? So that’s what we’ll do as a staff is like, Hey, do we like our base?

The stuff that we added? Did that help our base? Did it hurt our base? Do we need to change a little bit? Like, can we add something to our base and then our our peripheral stuff, does it fit our personnel? Right. Does it fit our personnel? And then the old age old question is, do you recruit to your system?

Right. Or do you just get really good players and find things that work for them? Right. And I think there can be a combination of both, right? I think there can be a little bit of a combination of both, right?

[00:19:45] Mike Klinzing: It’s easier once you’ve established a program, right? That hey, this is what we’re doing, and now we can go out and we can find the talent that fits it.

How long into your head coaching career would you say you were until you felt like you had a pretty good handle on what those bases were going to be offensively and defensively?

[00:19:59] Jason Zimmerman: Whew. Well, I’d say this. So when I first got to Emory, I was like I was trying to be coach, I was trying to be Davidson Coach McKillip, right?

Like that’s just what you know. Imitation is the biggest form of flattery, right? Imitation, right. You try to imitate somebody. So I tried to be like, Hey, we’re going to do this. Like, because I know it works. I know I can coach it. I know I can teach it and I know it works. So we’re going to do that.

And then in my, I’d say third, fourth year, fifth year, I got really comfortable with like, I like it, but we’re going to tweak it, but we’re going to keep our base, but we’re going to tweak it a little bit. We’re going to, so I’d say like you the offensive system that we started when I first got here.

We haven’t changed it a whole lot. I had a rival coach I coached against in our league, who’s not there anymore, but he said, I don’t know what the heck you were doing your first year. You didn’t have guys that could do that and you just, you’re do it anyway. Yeah, I know. Cause I thought that was going to be our base.

Right? And it’s worked out. And so you sometimes take for granted like teaching all the little things because. Guys know it, right? Like guys and guys teach that. And when you take over a program, there’s just so much you want to, like we talked about, there’s so much you want to teach.

Like, I want to teach, how do we come to practice? How do we wear our, our practice gear? How do we like all the stuff that you want to teach? Like, okay, is that really important for us to win? Right? Like winning is important, right? And that’s important. So is that vital for us to win?

Sometimes some guys say, yeah, absolutely. Like John Wooden, like how do we put on our socks? Right, right, right. You know, that’s what we do. And some guys, it’s other guys are like, Hey, if it doesn’t affect us winning, like actually in the game, I could care less what you do. Right? I’m kind in the middle, I think.

But, but I think that base is really important. I think it takes, it takes some time, right? And your assistants are always coming to you with new stuff. Hey, let’s try this. Hey, let’s try this. And a lot of it’s really good stuff. But most of the time I’m like, Hey, let’s do what we do and let’s do it really well.  Let’s not try to get too crazy.

[00:22:05] Mike Klinzing: What’s an example of something that maybe this season, this past season, that you tweaked or something that you’ve looked at and you’re thinking, Hey, maybe this is something that we tweak for next season. Nuts that you’re going to give away all your secrets, but…

[00:22:19] Jason Zimmerman: No, it’s fine.  So, we usually do something different defensively. So we studied our defensive repertoire, some of our weapons, that was a pretty big one this year. Cause we actually played more zone this year than we ever have. So that was a pretty big tweak.

Little tweaks are like in our offense we like to run secondary break, primary, secondary into like a second action into motion. And I thought this year, I thought we called more set like actions than I really want to. Right? I like to play freer, but with offensive movements, but not necessarily a set call or a set.

And we called a lot of like actions out of our secondary and we just had more call sets like from the bench and I just didn’t, I didn’t like, like we didn’t get to our motion of free or flowing as much as I wanted to. But I thought it was necessary just because we had young guys that hadn’t played together.

We two freshmen, two sophomores and a senior. Right. And so they, they could, sometimes it’s, it’s quicker to, Hey, we’re going to run the stagger away curl crack ball screen. Right. And we can call that. Hopefully next year and the year after, I don’t have to call it, it’s an action that happens organically, right?

So this year we tweaked it with, we had more calls and we called more of this stuff. That usually happens organically for us. And I honestly, personally don’t really like that, but it had to be done this year

[00:23:59] Mike Klinzing: What does the teaching progression look like as you’re teaching those actions within your offense so that you eventually get to the point where your guys are reading that on the floor and you don’t have to make those calls because clearly there’s things that they’re seeing or that they’re able to read as they get more experience with what they’re doing that enable them to just flow out of your break and into those secondary actions versus you having to call from the bench.

So just what does that teaching process look like during practice?

[00:24:30] Jason Zimmerman: Yeah, it’s like the whole part whole, right? I mean, everybody knows how we do it. You may start five on 0, and then get to, Hey, we’re going to break down. We’re going to play three on three with a stagger away, and what can we do out of it?

Right? And then it’s back to the whole. Okay, we’re going to put this together. Right. And it’s funny, we have really smart guys here at Emory. It’s funny, sometimes it takes them longer to get to, like, oh, that’s why we did that. Yeah, man, that’s why we did that. Right? For sure. But I also think that I think having a, having a language is very important, right?

So they may run a stagger away, which we would call, let’s say we call bongo, right? They had run a bongo and in practice, or we’re watching a game in the locker room, and maybe we’re watching Davidson play, I don’t know Dayton. And they went crack, Utah. Now, that’s not what Davidson calls it, but that’s what we call so an action.

And so now you see the actions, and now when the actions happen organically, they have a name for it. So now when we, we call it, oh, they know what that is. And now when it happens organically, that’s like the experience of leadership, right? You have to be out there and go through it.

That’s why I think pickup is so vital for our guys. Like some coaches don’t like pickup. Oh, it creates bad habits. Well, hey man, if it’s creating bad habits, then you don’t have the right guys. Like you have to play pickup, you have to create good habits from pickup, right? You have to play shorter games.

Play to seven, right? Play to five. I don’t care. But you better play shorter games. You better play hard, and then you better have actions in our motion and our flow that, that you have, right? And I’m not out there watching, but you guys know that, like you guys know. So being able to see that language, And call those out and then let it happen organically is very important.

You know, I think you can do it more for us at division three, we start October 15th, we play a game November one. Right. Like, not a lot time happen organically, but with we have really good talented players and I think in the next two, three years, it is going to happen back organically again.

Which will be really fun to watch. But I think you have to have that language so you can talk to them quickly. Right. We can call out something and they know what it is. Or if they run, if we’re in our motion and something happens, Hey, that’s a great Hey, that’s a ball lift. Look back. Right? There’s a ball lift. Look back inner. That’s great. That’s great action. Right? So that language is really important to teaching. It’s really important to understanding how that happens. And then I think. The most important skill in basketball is seeing like you.

You have to be able to see. Defensively, offensively, like you have to be able to see, you have to be able to read, right? You have to be able to see offensive. You have to see, hey, how are they guarding this? Like, where’s my defender? Where’s his defender? Right? Same thing defensively. If you can’t see, you can’t play.

Like there’s a lot of guys out there that can do, they’re great at how many individual our guys, we have our individual meeting, okay, I got my trainer, I’m going to work out with my trainer, man, I could give a rip about some trainer. Right? Like, that’s great. But, and trainers, don’t get me wrong, I think trainers can be great.

Like there’s really good trainers out there, right? But you have to be able to see and play the game and see actions happening and when do I use this move and when do I use that that pass? And the only way you know that is by seeing.

[00:28:12] Mike Klinzing: That goes to the development piece.  I think when you start talking about. The value of pickup basketball and you start talking about walking into a gym as a coach or somebody who’s scouting or just as a fan. And I’m sure you know it just the same way. I can sit down in a gym and I can watch a game and be like, okay, that kid gets it. That kid sees what’s happening.

Maybe that kid didn’t even score, but you could tell like that kid’s the best player on the floor because they just have a feel for the game. And I’m assuming that when you’re out recruiting, that those are the types of players that you’re looking for that have that intuitive feel. And I think it’s interesting too that when you start talking about trainers, you start talking about AAU basketball, you start talking about the system that we have compared to, again, the system that you grew up in and the system that I grew up in and.

There’s positives to both. And I know that I sometimes come off as like the old man get off my lawn in defending kind of the way that you and I grew up, which is just going out and playing and finding places to play and working on your game by yourself. And I think that there was an IQ piece that I developed by playing pickup basketball against guys who were a lot older than me, a lot bigger than me, a lot stronger than me when I was a 14, 15, 16, 17 year old kid that I just wouldn’t have gotten going up through the system that we have today.

And I think that kids today are probably more skilled, but I’m not sure that that ability to see the game like you’re talking about, I’m not sure that that’s always developed in the same way, I think. So I think you have to develop it a lot of times as a coach, give your kids opportunities to be able to make those reads and kind of get a feel for it.

But I’m sure when you’re out on the recruiting trail, what you’re looking at is, do you find guys that can see the game like you’re talking about?

[00:29:58] Jason Zimmerman: Sure. I think if you’re a good passer, you could be a good defender. Could you see, but I also think we’re talking about pickup, we talk about AAU basketball, and I think it’s the purpose.

You have to have a purpose of what you’re doing when you’re playing pickup. Like, you can become a better, you can become better aware and seeing, but, but you have to go into the game with that as a purpose. Like, Hey, in this game I’m going to work on seeing better. And people don’t do that.

They just go out and play, Hey, how many shots did I get? How many I didn’t the ball? You have to work on seeing, and, and you know, we’ve talked about this to, there’s a couple guys on our team. Like I told them, look, you’re in the gym. Great, you have great culture.

I love it. But you have to play at one-on-one, two on two, three on three, four on four, five on five. I don’t care. But you just have to continually get into actions and heck, two on two, three on three. You know, my pet peeve is when guys think, oh, we couldn’t get a game because I couldn’t get 10 guys.

Get two, get four, get six, get six guys and play three on three and just get as many actions as you can and then that happens organically again. Right?

[00:31:17] Mike Klinzing: One of the best things I’ve seen, we did this couple years ago, we had a kid that was on our high school team.

His dad had access to this gym that was converted from old racquetball court. So it was maybe like two or three racquetball courts put together and we played full court, really short court played three on three full. Games to three, and you’d have like 3, 4, 5 teams there. So the games would last a minute, two minutes, somebody hits a three.

The game’s almost it’s twos are threes and twos are ones. And you talk about fast pace and being able to read the game and be able to see the game. That was just a tremendous development opportunity for the players that were there. And I’m assuming that when your guys play, like you’re giving them an idea of, hey, structurally your kids, your leaders know what you’re trying to get out of pickup.

Is there anything specific that you give them of like, Hey, we’re playing pickup, this is what it should look like, or this is how we want to organize it?

[00:32:14] Jason Zimmerman: Yeah, I don’t hold lot just because it’s kind of evolved with our guys, our leaders. People always ask like, oh, you ever walk by the gym and, and see, no, I don’t.

And people are like, come on. I said, no, I really don’t. Because two reasons. Number one, it just make me angry, right? And number two, I can’t talk to them anyway. Right. Can’t talk anyway.

Hey, when you guys play pickup, what do you play to now? Like, I don’t even know. I just know that they play and they play hard and it’s short games. And I know that because in October, when October 15th comes and I get on the corner, I’m like, man, these guys have been playing, right?

These guys have been going. I tell them that all the time. You don’t have to do it, it’s all voluntary right now. You don’t have to do it. But October 15th, you don’t have to play, right. You don’t have to play right now, but on October 15th, you don’t have to be on the team.

There’s a great quote. I can’t even, it’s an old farming quote though. There’s going to come a time when Winter will ask what you were doing all summer. Right, right. Absolutely. And it’s from old, but I grew up on farm, but that’s, there’s a, when winter is going to ask what we were doing all summer.

Right. And it’s not because of me, it’s because of what you guys are doing. I really like validating the wins with a free throw. Love it. You know? Yeah. That’s a good one. I found out our guys were doing it. I had no idea they were doing, I found they were doing it years ago.

Actually started validating some things in practice with a free throw because of it. And then that’s like a player led team, and we all know that’s the best. Right?

[00:34:13] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Yeah. No question about that. How do you break down or do you break down? How much do you break down the individual skill development that goes along with some of the actions that you’re trying to create within your offense. So you got a specific cut, or you’re doing a specific screen of roll, read, whatever it might be. How much are you breaking that down with the individual players as opposed to sort of in a team setting five on five, if that makes sense.

[00:34:39] Jason Zimmerman: Some of the feedback we get from our players, we should do more skill development. And I laugh. I’m like, oh, you mean like when we break down our secondary shots? Right. And coaches over there with you with the wings and you’re working on kick threes, kick threes, kicks, or, or you’re working on Euro, pass the corner Euro, pass the corner.

We’re working on our secondary when we’re actually working. That’s skill development guys. That’s skill development cause Oh yeah. It’s skill development. So everything we do skill development wise is like, guys ask me, what do you want me to do this summer? Well, I want you to do the stuff we’ve been doing.

Practice. Like I want you, Hey, we’re going to have an away, right? And coming off away, you can fade it. You can curl it, right? You can go direct, right? You can back cut it. I want you to shoot those, right? And we’ll do shooting drills. We’ll do part method shooting drills, right?

So we’ll break those down in our shooting in and then our skill development, right? We’ll break them down points and streets. We call our big streets cause they’re running front rim. So streets. And we’ll do skill development that way. We’ll break it down, then we’ll come back and put it all together. We may put the point guards and the street guys together.

We may put the point guards in the wings together. Work shots in and secondary. So we do a lot of breakdown in our shooting for sure. In our cuts in our shooting, cutting into two things we do in our summer workouts that we give them, that we give them are just getting shots up. And I think when you shoot, you should always count them, right?

Like, you should always, Hey, I’m, I’m trying to make eight out of 10 every time, eight out of 10. And guys are like, what do you mean coach? That’s 80%. Yeah. You, you watch the NBA dudes, right? They don’t miss Right, exactly. You go,

[00:36:29] Mike Klinzing: I would tell any college player, I mean, it’s crazy. You go, if you show up early to an NBA game, and I know you know this, you watch guys shoot.

I mean, it is ridiculous. It’s like, I mean, they’re like machines. I mean, it is incredible to watch.

[00:36:44] Jason Zimmerman: We just took the staff to the Hawks, Timberwolves game. I think Kyle Anderson, I think is on the Timberwolves, right? Yep. And he’s not knowing, he’s not known as a shooter. Right. And before the game, he’s out there and he makes like 10 threes in a row from the, from the top 10 straightaway, threes, right?

And I’m looking at myself, like, everybody says this guy can’t shoot, or he can’t do this, and this guy doesn’t miss shot. Like they couldn’t throw it in there from four feet, let alone from three, but they think they’re shooters, right? But back point of shooting, like, I think everything you do should be a contest.

So, hey, I’m going to make 10 shots from this. I’m either going to make 10 or miss five, right? So I get two if I missed, and one, if I make, and we’re going 10 and I’m going to do it, or I’m going to go eight for 10 from this button. If I don’t do it, I’m, I’m running, or I’m going to, I’m going to write, I’m going to shoot 50 threes to end every workout and my goal is over 40.

Or like, you have to have competitive tension when you work out. You have to, we do it every day in practice. Like you can’t just go in the gym. The other thing is, you can’t just go in the gym for, for two hours and just if you’re in the gym for more than 40 minutes at an hour, 40 minutes to an hour, and you’re working out for more than 40, then you’re not going at the pace we need you to go.

Because if you’re in the gym by yourself with a ball for more than an hour, you should pass out, right? Like, that’s it. You should be done, right? And that’s what we want. And it’s game speed cuts. And when our breakdowns, so I don’t know if that answers your question. It kind of jumped all around there, but.

[00:38:22] Mike Klinzing: No, it does. It’s funny, like hearing you say, talking about charting and talking about the amount of time you spend in a gym. I remember when I was a kid, I’d go up and when I would do my shooting, I’d go up and I’d work out at this, it’s kind of like a health club. It had a gym inside of it and there was always a guy that was up there that was.  I’m in high school, another high school kid and he’d always come to me, Hey man I was here, I’ve been here since whatever 11:00 AM and it’s it’s 2:00 PM now. And I’m like, yeah dude. But you’ve been walking around talking to people on the exercise bike and you’re getting a drink and you’re doing, I’m like, yeah, you may have been in the gym for like four hours, but it’s the least productive four hours I’ve ever seen in my life.

And so it’s again, it’s just speaks to the kind of what it is that you’re doing. Are you doing what you’re doing with a purpose? And you’re talking about when players are shooting to be able to track how much tracking of that do you do in practice? Cause obviously you’ve, at the division one level, you got 10 managers that you can throw out and they can be charting stuff and going through and everything.

So how much do you chart in practice with your guys, or what kind of things do you try to keep track of within a practice?

[00:39:25] Jason Zimmerman: We’ll do shooting drills where we keep track of every once in a while we have some great managers at our level, but they don’t do a lot of tracking. Every once in a while, I’ll say, I want to know how many shots this guy shoots in practice.

So, we’ll just count his shot. We have hudl camera, so we’ve been able to record a lot so we can off that. But, we’ll chart some shooting drills. We do a shooting series to start every practice. And our goal is like we call them head shots when you get three scores in a row, a headshot.

So we, we try to get head shots when we’re shooting. Try to make three in a row. If you miss three in a row, it’s called a desert, right? So you never have never any deserts, right? We try to get head shots. We never have any deserts in our shooting drills. So to write down, we’ll chart our free throws, we’ll chart three minutes to threes.

Those are the two main ones that we chart for sure. But Yeah, I didn’t chart anything my first couple years here and I would get on the guys about not charting during the summer. I’m like, well, that’s not a very good model if I’m not charting anything. And I’m telling you guys too, right. Essentially we as a staff this year we talked about when we come back in in September, we can actually have eight days now.

So one of those days we talked about one day just throughout the day have everybody come in and as a staff we’ll just sit in the chair and we’ll hand the kid a ball and say, all here, here you go, do your 40 minute workout, like, what have you been doing all summer? So here, here’s a ball. Just show me your 40 minute workout.

Go. That’s awesome. I can, Hey one of our assistants or whoever, he’ll rebound for you, but here you go. You got, I’m going to put 40 minutes on the clock. Do your workout and. I haven’t decided I’m going to do that or not this year. But you’re going to find out real quick, like who actually did their workouts over the summer.

Right, right. Absolutely. Like if, if you can’t do a 40 minute workout, you’re supposed to be doing these like 4, 5, 6 times a week and if you can’t do one then you haven’t been doing them. Right”

[00:41:24] Mike Klinzing: If you’re scratching your head trying to think of drills to do right, then you’re in trouble.

[00:41:27] Jason Zimmerman: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly. And I have a former player who’s my assistant, he’s like, yeah, coach, we better warn him about that first.

[00:41:38] Mike Klinzing: That could be kind of fun. That could be kind a comedy routine. You’re sitting in the chair and with some guys…

[00:41:41] Jason Zimmerman: You never know. Well, yeah, of course. If my boss comes down and says, what are you doing?

Like you can’t coach the team, are you sitting?

[00:41:51] Mike Klinzing: That’s good stuff. That’s funny. Alright, let’s talk a little bit of practice organization. How do you balance out. Offense and defense, how much you’re working on each one. Does it vary within prep for a particular opponent? Does it vary in terms of whether you put which one you feel more comfortable putting in, putting in first?

When you’re talking about the preseason, just how do you balance out sort of how you structure your practice between offense and defense?

[00:42:16] Jason Zimmerman: Yeah, I think it goes back to what we were talking about before. That base right there, there’s a routine of our practices. Like if you come to our practices, our guys know kind of how that practice is going to go.

I think it can get monotonous, but the great teams  that routine, it’s like a pre-game routine. It’s like a free throw routine. There’s a rhythm to it. Right. And our practice routine, there’s a rhythm too. So we start every practice with. We’ll go, then we’ll get into maybe like a teaching segment where we’re going Speedo half speed, but we’re going through like position check defensive stuff, or we’re going through position check offensive stuff.

Maybe it’s a ball screen lift. Get some shots up like that after our shooting series. And so we’ll do that before we stretch then we’ll get into a stretch. Then we usually get into some full court secondary work offensively just to get running. And then we’ll go through our defensive segments.  Usually it’s a breakdown kind of shell drill’s kind of gone away, but usually it’s a breakdown of a rotation, a breakdown of an action that we have. And then it’s a competitive, and then we add to that and then we’ll, we’ll make sure that we get to a five on five defensive segment.

Right. And obviously when you work in defense, my coaches laugh because we’re working defensive segment, but I’ll be screaming at the offense.

[00:43:45] Mike Klinzing: I know. I do that all the time. I’m coaching with my kids, it’s like they come into the idea with alright, I’m going to focus on the defense here. And then inevitably I end up coaching the offense just as much as I am coaching the defense.

[00:43:56] Jason Zimmerman: I get it. Hundred percent. So then it’s usually a defensive segment early. Then we’ll go to some more shooting, like part method, shooting stuff in the middle. Then we’ll come back from our offensive segments and that’ll be like the preseason kind of, and then at the end, and all of those will be competitive, right?

So like, people like, oh, you scrimmage, well, we’ll play offense in the middle of the defensive segment. Right. We’ll play in the middle of the offensive segment and I think it’s really hard just to do alright, we’re just going to do defense for this 30 minutes, 40 minutes because we’re not a football team.

You can sit down in the shell drill and you can guard for half court shell and you can guard for like 16 possessions in a row and begin. Well that’s great, but now you’re going to go on offense and miss a shot and your mind’s going to be on missing the shot when we come down here, so we have to practice that.

Now, just like we have the base of the practice now when we get into scouting, it changes a little bit when we get into the season. Just like we have the base of the practice. We also flip that around every once in a while we’ll start with a four minute game because like this year we didn’t start the games very well.

So we would maybe after stretch go right to a four minute game just to kind of shock like, oh, we thought it was be a regular routine. Or we may throw a halftime in the middle of a practice. Maybe we’re not practicing. Great. Playing great out at halftime. So we’ll, we’ll have a five minute break. Maybe it’s probably not five minutes cause I’m not that patient.

But two minute break where we’ll go into the film room, like a halftime. We’ll talk about some we just did. Alright, let’s go and we’ll play a four minute segment in the middle of practice. Right? There, there’s all kind of things like that as coaches that you just to try to find your inches right and try to find your inches to get better for your team, depending on that year. Right. In our scout stuff, we’ll do some scouts we’ll shoot, then we’ll do some scout stuff before. I’m a big believer in just being good at what we do. I think my assistants get upset because they do a great job of scouting and they’re ready.

And after three sets of walking through the other team stuff, I’m like, alright, we’re going to guard it like this. This is what we’re going to do. Like, let’s go on, we can’t remember our set plays. We’re not going to remember theirs.

[00:46:18] Mike Klinzing: I’m a big believer. I always laugh.

I always felt that way when I was an assistant coach at the high school level. It always felt like, Hey, we have a hard enough time remembering what we’re going to do. If we start trying to worry that much about what the other team’s going to do, it’s good to be familiar with it. But yeah, in a lot of cases it’s like, man, we, if we could just be good at what we do, we’re going to be all right.

[00:46:41] Jason Zimmerman: Yeah. I think the way we want to play is instinctive and fast and, you have to have a routine look at that. Like, you have to know personnel, you have to have words for the personnel. Hey, this is this guy, we’re going to run him off the line. So what’s your word for that? Right.

This guy, we’re going to close out short for him. Well, what’s your word for that? So now you can get quicker through personnel, right? Like, Hey, this is some guy’s called by NBA names, right? Like, whatever, Rondo. Yep. Or Rondo, whatever. Right? Kobe. So you have to have your words for that defensive.

It just helps you. I think. We say we are how we practice. We practice 115 times during the year. We only play 26, 27. Right? So really like those hundred 15 times are like, that’s who we are. Right? And now we show it 26 times, but we’re going to practice like it’s the championship practice every day.

I think that’s something that our guys have been really, really good at.

[00:47:42] Mike Klinzing: How do you split your five man teams during practice when you’re going five on five because I think this is one of the things that’s always, it’s interesting as you kind of go through and you experience coaching from a bunch of different levels.

And I experienced it a little bit this year with my son and just trying to figure out who, so you have your five men unit, you want them to go your starters, and then do you want them to go against the next five guys? But then those next five guys, they’re obviously going to play with the starters at some point.

So how do you balance those five man units through the course of a practice?

[00:48:14] Jason Zimmerman: I spend more time thinking about groups and matchups in practice than I do actually the practice. I spend more time trying to get the right matchups or the right, like, Hey, I want this guy to go against this guy.

I want this team to play together. I want this group, I want to see this guy with this group. So I spend more time on that. And also the flow of practice, like how does this drill get to this drill? Where are we in the practice where, cause we play with great pace. So like we’re never walking in practice, we’re never, and so as a coach you can help that.

Like, hey, if we’re going to be in this drill that is four groups, then the next drill, if it’s everybody together and then we go back to four groups, is that the, right now that may be the right thing, but how can we flow to drill, to drill, to drill, to drill quicker? And, and it comes back to that, that terminology, right?

So I spend more time with how we flow in practice and how groups, as much time with that as I do like the actual drill that we’re going to do. Which is really funny because the guys don’t understand when I get so angry in practice, but somebody just runs on the court and they’re on the wrong team, right?

Like, team, team, they screw up and they the, I’m like, oh, I this group for this five segment. And then we have one kid that didn’t listen and goes in the wrong group, right. Whatever. Right. Or just subs and we let them sub throughout practice we let them sub and sometimes we’ll have an assistant sub, but we spend a lot of time on that, like trying to find the right groups, the right matchups.

Right. And I think different teams are different different takes longer. Like this year we had really no staple. Like, Hey, who’s going to be the guy who’s been there, right? Has done, has been through the war. We had zero guys this year play the same role as they played last year?

Zero. Not one guy. And that’s rare, right? Usually you have two or three guys that play very similar roles, right? So this year we, I mean, the first month of practice, I don’t think we had the same group playing together ever. Right? And finally I told our staff like, look, we have to settle on two groups, the three groups, and try to stay with those groups for a little bit just so we can get a little bit of a rhythm.

I think that can be a strength too, right? It doesn’t matter who we put in, this is how we’re doing it, right? This is how we’re playing. So and then you also have to worry about like, Hey, do you always read this kid’s name last? Right? Like, do I always read this kid’s name last? Do I always put them on the gray team?

Do I always put them on the blue team? That’s that psychology piece that we’re talking about before we got online is. Hey, if you are always putting a group together, and they’re always, well, we’re just coach thinks I’m just good or coach thinks I’m bad and the players always think that, right?

They’re always thinking, oh, why am I here? Why am I here? And they have no idea what all thought process went into that, right? They have zero idea, but they think that they know. And so sometimes, especially with smart guys, you have to tell them like, look, you’re overthinking it. Don’t worry about it.

Just play harder. Right? Right. Just do your job. Hey, you do your job, I’ll do my job and, and I’ll explain it to you maybe after practice or, but I’m not explaining to you right now. And you shouldn’t also be like a four-year-old and throw a temper tantrum because you’re on the gray team.

It doesn’t matter. Right? It doesn’t matter. You don’t even know why you’re doing that. Right. And I think that’s important to know your guys like that and you can really see their personalities and the competitiveness in them. But it’s important, like who you put on what groups, what teams.

And if you’re very intentional with that, it can really help you in practice planning. Now, that takes time. That takes time. I’ve been around one of the best ever, or maybe the best, like Coach McKillip was his practice plans. I mean, I coached with him for seven years and I played for him for four.

And we would still go through every drill to the detail. I’m like, coach, I’ve done this drill literally seven times, right? Like, I know it right? And we still go through who’s playing, who’s matched up with who, where is that coach standing? Where’s that line going to be? How do you come on?  How do you rotate? He was the best.

[00:52:41] Mike Klinzing: I think when you put all that time into it, to your point, when you want to run a fast paced practice, It’s so much easier when you put that level of prep into it, both as the head coach and then with your assistants and your staff, because now those expectations can easily be passed along to the players.

You’re not trying to spend time going, all right, let’s put this person with it. You just know, hey, this is how it’s organized, and it makes it flow a lot better as the season goes on and guys are starting to be sort of separated into, these are the guys who are getting minutes and there’s some other guys that maybe aren’t playing as much as they would like, how do you make sure that you keep those guys who are at the tail end of your bench, how do you keep them engaged and how do you make sure that, that they’re getting coach two and that they’re, they’re not just serving as the scout team fodder for the first eight guys who are getting most of the minutes, how do you do that?

[00:53:39] Jason Zimmerman: Well, we have our UAA schedule’s very routine. It’s very rigid, right? So we play Friday, Sunday and then we come back. We practice on Monday. On Mondays. The guys that didn’t get probably, I’d say over 15, 20 minutes we’ll play like a 12 minute game.

And we talk about everybody keeping their tools sharp. Cause you just never know. Right? You just never know. And so you have to keep your tools sharp. And you talk about scout team things. We had a situation this year where we had a kid who was really out of rhythm. He’s like our sixth or seventh probably our seventh, eighth, ninth guy.

And he’s a shooter and he’s out of rhythm. I couldn’t get him back in rhythm. I needed to get him more reps. And he was like our eighth guy and he would play we’d have a scout, we’d have a scout team with a, which was like 10 through 15 guys. So he’d sub in for the guys who are starters sometimes.

He wasn’t getting a lot of reps because he’s the eighth guy in practice. And  I don’t know, halfway through the season, Hey look, we’re, I’m going to put you on scout team. Cause you know, he’s very disciplined. He knows why we’re doing defensively. And I was like, look, I need to get you your flow and your rhythm back offensively, and I’m going to put you on scout team.

You’re going to get reps, you’re going to get ton of offensive reps. And it may not be our stuff, but you’re going to get in rhythm. You’re going to get a down screen, you’re going to get a ball screen, you’re going to get back in rhythm. And it really helped them get back in rhythm because, and, people take that scout team, it’s like, oh, I’m on the scout team.

Well, a lot of times our scout team guys are young guys and they’re getting more reps than the guy who’s coming six, seventh, eight. He’s not in the rhythm of the, of the practice he’s subbing in, but he’s not in Every time, if you’re on scout, you get a rhythm. You can get a rhythm. And we talked to our guys about, Like, look, we evaluate you at your hand.

Not, not in necessarily what we do, but we’re going to show you something and can you pick it up? Can you see, can you learn from that? I think it’s how you treat those guys too, I think are your players. See how much time you put into practice planning, right? I think your players see how much time, how important I think that team is to help us get ready to play a game, right?

And if you just never speak to them, like, oh, okay, you just go over there and get ready, like, Hey man, that’s an issue. But we spend as much time with those guys, get them ready in practice. We spend probably more time with those guys. And then at the beginning of practice, everybody’s getting reps in.

Everybody’s going through it, right? We’ve done our, and when I say we and my staff and, and our, and our players, our leaders have done a really good job of understanding the, the importance of that, right? We, we talked about, it’s hard. People always want to play 30 minutes a game, 40 minutes. We have a guy play 32, he wants to play 34.

We have a guy play 28, he wants to play 30. Have a guy played 14, played 20, right? Geez. But and that being said, it’s hard. It’s hard to play 30 minutes a game at the pace that we play like it’s, and to go through the UAA and travel, it’s immensely taxing, physically taxing. It’s hard. And it’s also hard when you think you should play.

You want to play and you’re not playing, and you still have to go through the keeping your tools sharp and stay in the game and stay mentally ready and Hey that’s as hard if you’re only going to get four minutes of. That’s as hard as playing 34 minutes a game. Now the guy that played four minutes a game, he wants to play 34, but he doesn’t want to go through the scrutiny and the pressure of that I put on those guys.

Right? So both of those guys’ jobs are very difficult, right? That doesn’t make one better than the other. Both of them are very difficult and seeing the importance of that, I’ve been blessed. Like I was blessed to guy be a guy who started and played and scored, and I was also blessed to be a guy who his last year came off the bench and was sixth, seventh man, who I thought, like I worked hard enough to be a starter still.

Right? But I went through that process and I understand like, so I can relate to those guys right? Personally, and I don’t tell them that a lot, but, but I can relate to that. And I know you don’t have to be a bad guy, right? You don’t have to be an asshole.

You don’t have to be a jerk. You can still be a great teammate and go through all that. Right? You can still do it. And whether we talk to our guys on our individual meetings like your work, your culture of work and, and your intentional work doesn’t change If you play one minute or 40 minutes.

It doesn’t change. It should not change. And that’s just, Hey, when you get a job, you’re not going to be the CEO when you start. Well, some people are, but most people aren’t. Right? When you start, you’re not going to be ceo. You’re going to have to get the mail right.

You’re going to have to get the mail. And sometimes you may never graduate out of the mail room, but then if that’s the case, then by golly, you be the best mail room guy you could be right. If that’s going to help the team win, right? If that’s going to help it, then that’s what you do. And there’s just not many guys like that that can do that.

And we’re trying to find those guys.

[00:58:45] Mike Klinzing: How much time do you spend during the season communicating with players about their role and kind of where they’re at. Obviously you talked about in the midst of a practice, in the midst of a game. That’s not the time to have that discussion. But when there is time to have that discussion, what do those conversations look like and how often are you talking to players about their role and kind of where you see them fitting into the team?

[00:59:09] Jason Zimmerman: Yeah, I think sometimes you can overtalk it, right? They want to keep talking about it because they don’t like what they’re hearing.  You want to come up and have another meeting, I told is like, where we see you. Right? And I tell our guys all the time, you can come in, my door’s always open.

You come and talk and we’ll talk about anything. I don’t care that you come and we’ll talk about it. I said, I’m just going to tell you the truth. You may like it, you may not like it, but I’m just going to tell you what I see. And you can tell me what you see. And  I may agree with you at times, right? I may say, yeah, but, but that didn’t change the fact that, hey, this is what I see.

It’s like a kid says, well, he has a longer leash than me. You give some guys longer leashes and you take me out after every mistake I make. And, but you leave him. And then mistakes. And that goes back to like coaching, right? Like, heck, I don’t even remember why I took you out the game, but I guarantee it wasn’t that mistake.

There’s so many different reasons why you can come in and out of a game. It’s not just like, well, I missed a shot and you take me out. Well, that may be part of it, but I guarantee that’s not the only reason. And it’s not because you missed a shot. Maybe it’s cause it was an awful shot that you took, right?

It was your decision, but it’s not because you missed it. It’s not because half the time it’s not because what they think it is, right? Same thing with their role, right? Their role is we’re going to talk about role and you can increase your role, but how do you get a bigger role? Well, you play the role that you have better, right?

You know, it’s like the guy who thinks he can score. Like, man, I’m alright. He thinks he’s a three point shooter. And so in practice he takes threes, but he’s a great driver, but he wants to be a three point shooter, so he just fires threes. And all that does is, all that does is just tell us like, Hey, you’re just not a three point shooter.

Right? It’s like the recruiting guy, right? So sometimes I’ll say, Hey, can you shoot? I’ll ask my assistants, Hey, can this kid shoot? I haven’t seen him shoot. And sometimes the guys that you haven’t seen shoot are pretty good because they know they can’t shoot. So they don’t.

Yeah. He’s the ones that are out there firing away, man, this kid can’t shoot at all. He’s still firing away, right? And so sometimes there’s the guys that can’t shoot or that don’t shoot, and you’re like, Hey, I don’t know if he can shoot or not. But I know he does everything else. So he doesn’t try to do something he can’t do.

Right. And that’s the same thing with role, right? Play your role, do your job, and then we’ll evaluate you every day. Right? Every day we’ll evaluate we’ll continue to talk about that. But sometimes you overtalk it, like, come in and talk about my role. Well, hey, your role isn’t going to change from Tuesday to Thursday.

That’s not going to change. I think you constantly have to talk to guys and especially nowadays, you constantly have to be communicating with guys. But I also think everybody has an opinion, right? Like, okay, that’s great, you have an opinion. But like, we’ve been coaching for a long time, right?

We know what we’re doing and you can have an opinion and we can come talk about it. But you have to be willing to listen, right? You have to be, and just like, I have to be willing to listen. You have to be willing to listen too, right? And I don’t want to take away your, your confidence. That’s not what I’m trying to do.

But I want to give you, what do you do well and then do that often, period. That’s what we do.

[01:02:32] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, let me ask you this because I think this is something that I find to be interesting and at first was brought up to me by Mike Procopio, who used to work for the Mavs, and he, he talked to me about just thinking about it from an NBA perspective, but I think it travels down to lower levels as well.

And what he said was if you look around the NBA, there’s what, 15 guys, 20 guys in the league that get to do kind of whatever they want. They’ve got that long leash, right? They can take whatever shot they want, they can do whatever they want defensively, they, they just have, they have free reign because they’ve earned it and they’re superstars in the league.

And he said, and then you. Pretty much everybody else who, they have a very specific role that they have to play in order to be able to help their team win. So when he’s working in player development, his point was, I’ve have to develop those players within their role and make them better at, to your point, what they do.

And yet, when you think about it from a development standpoint, so you go back to a really young kid who’s a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grader, even a high school kid, those players are, most of the time they’re trying to develop everything, right? You’re trying to become a better ball handler. You’re trying to become a better shooter.

You’re trying to become a better defender. You’re trying to be able to have moves off the dribble and shots off the catch and shoot threes and all. You’re just doing all these things. And yet, just like in the nba, right, when a, when a player gets to Emory, like not every kid just gets to do whatever they want and everything.

And so you have to have a role that. You play. And so from a coaching perspective, I always think it’s interesting that, hey, do we double down on like we know this kid is going to be a kid who’s going to screen for us and rebound and we want him to take open 15 footers and he is going to be rugged defenders. So do we just double down on that?

Or are we trying to develop other aspects of that kid’s game? It’s just a thing that I never really thought about it in that way before I talked to him. And then the more you really analyze and look at what goes on, it makes a ton of sense. Like once you get to the college level, yeah, you want to keep developing your all around game.

But really if you can excel at the 2, 3, 4 main things that your coach needs you to do, that’s the path. That’s the pathway to more playing time.

[01:04:53] Jason Zimmerman: That’s right. And also you have to, this is the other one that’s a pet peeves like. Well,  I didn’t get in rhythm. I can’t get in rhythm. Well, look how many people play over a three minute segment.

A two minute segment at a time. Like you’re going to come in, you’re going to get a 2, 3, 4 minute segment. Not many guys get to play like an eight minute segment like where I’m playing for eight straight minutes, right? Hey, you’re going to get a four minute segment. That’s a long time in a game. That’s a long time, a four minute segment.

So you have to be able to come in off the bench and you can’t wait for possessions to do it. And we say we never, never shoot. We don’t shoot a first touch. So like the first time you touch a ball, we shouldn’t shoot it, right? Like so we have guys checking into the game and their first touch, they touch and they fire a three, like, no man.

So we say that. Now I have some guys that when they come, when they sub in, they run up to the referee and ask to touch the ball, and then they give it back to the referee. So then when they, Hey, you got smart guys at Emory, they’re not fooling around. Hundred percent, hundred percent. So being able to play a two minute segment is a skill being able to come in off the bench and go, you’re jumping on a treadmill that’s moving, right?

Like you’re, you’re jumping into a game that’s been going on for four minutes. The treadmill’s moving at 10 miles an hour, and you have to jump on it and go, you can’t like ramp your way. You can’t like slowly excel into the game. Like you have to jump on the treadmill and it’s going 10 miles an hour.

You have to be going at 10 miles an hour when you get on the court, and that’s a skill, right? That is something they practice. That’s why in practice you do that, right? You switch groups, you switch drills, you switch it. So, hey, it can’t take us three minutes to get going in this drill. Like that’s why in practice you set that up to make it game-Like the other thing is the, well, I didn’t get an opportunity, like when you go through these individual meetings, I didn’t get an opportunity to play and Well, no, you don’t get opportunities.

I don’t just put you in a game and let’s see what he does in a game. You have 115 practices. You got opportunity every day to show us what you can do. Right. And people like, well, in a game, well that’s fine, but you have practices to show me how in a game, that’s how I feed my family, his buddy, or because oh, let’s just give him a chance.

Right? Like, we don’t just give you a chance. Right. That’s how we make a living. Right. And so the game, the practice is where you get your opportunity.

[01:07:33] Mike Klinzing: What’s the funniest feedback you’ve ever gotten from one of those questionnaires?

[01:07:37] Jason Zimmerman: Oh, man. Well, I have one that said, what why did you choose Emory?

We have, we have questions about everything like our pre-game meals, our buses, our, our gear, our whatever and we have one like why did you choose Emory? What made you choose Emory? One kid said, I didn’t have any other better offers.

I said, that’s a great answer. This is a great, I mean, he’s at the right spot. He’s, and this is a great place to be, right? It’s great place to be. But those questionnaires are great because they just start dialogue, right? And you get to hear what people think and what they’re thinking about.

And then you get to see like, alright, do they break down the game? Do they not break down the game? It’s really good. We’ve had some funny ones though, I guess, nobody likes certain parts of practices. You know, like, I hate stretching,  I hate going live before stretching, you know?

Which we never do, but they always think we do. Right? Yeah. Like that. That was a big one this year, like going live before stretch. And we laugh because when I come in the gym, half of them are playing one-on-one already. And we haven’t stretched and half of them are playing like competing live one on one.

Yeah, exactly. And they’re, and then we shoot for a while and then they want to stretch. And I think stretching is like my trainer gets mad at me because I say, you ever see a lion chase a zebra? You don’t, he goes and chases that thing down, right? So why are we doing all this stretching for half the time, they’re not stretching anyway, they’re just talking to each other.

[01:09:10] Mike Klinzing: Like, come on. It’s like those are the kids that have been showing up at AAU tournaments, right? With their shoes off after eating a hotdog, warming up for a minute and a half and then boom, they’re right, they’re right into the game. So they’ve been doing it their whole life.  

[01:09:22] Jason Zimmerman: I just told the story I think it was Coach Altman who’s now at Oregon.  He was a junior college coach, and he when he was at Creighton, I was at Evansville and we were asking the Creighton assistant like, what’s your pregame meals Like? When he said, man, coach Altman just does it like he did at junior college. We have McDonald’s chicken sandwiches and like, Hey, come and get your chicken sandwich, let’s go.

And he says, look, when I recruited you, you were eating at McDonald’s in AAU. So I mean, I don’t know how true that is, but it’s a great story. I still use it to this day.

[01:09:57] Mike Klinzing: That’s hilarious. It’s funny because obviously there’s a lot more knowledge out there about nutrition and everything else, and there’s clearly benefits to doing right by your body.

But I think back to when I was playing at Kent, like we had, we used to. Eat pre-game meal. We would eat at home at least almost every time we would eat steak. And a lot of times we would do that for our pre-game meal on the road too. And you know, even back then it was already people knew that you probably shouldn’t be eating steak before the game as your pre-game meal.

But that was just the way that Coach McDonald, that’s just the way he did it. And we continued to do it. And I was, I guess, fortunate that it didn’t matter to me. I didn’t care. I mean, maybe I would’ve played better on pasta, who knows? But it didn’t make any difference to me what we ate.

But it’s just funny when you go back and you think about these different things and just from a player perspective, what’s important and whether it’s the stretching or the pre-game meal or gear, all that stuff, it’s funny to just, I’m sure, hear players input on what they like and what they don’t like on all those different factors.

[01:10:59] Jason Zimmerman: Yeah and sometimes you realize how young they are, right? How much we break it down, right. How much we think about it. I think it is good, it helps buy in right when they can give you their feedback and see that for sure.

[01:11:17] Mike Klinzing: The things that are important to an 18, 19, 20 year old kid that sometimes I think we take for granted as an adult.

Like you think about when you were a kid, how important your uniform number was. That’s right. That thing was critically important. And I know there’s been times where, like, I’ve been coaching my kids’ teams and maybe when they were in third or fourth grade, and you get the t-shirts in a bag and you’re just throwing them out.

They’re like, all right, here you go. And here you go. Here you go. And then they’re all like, trading, like I want this. Now. You just forget, like, you forget how important that those little things are to the kids about that, how they feel about your program and how they feel about you, a as a coach, like that stuff is, it sounds silly sometimes.

It sounds trivial, but that stuff is critically important. That’s really what makes your culture.

[01:11:58] Jason Zimmerman: I think we talk about championship level with our program, and one of the first things that a championship level is being aware. And I think as a coach you have to constantly be aware of what’s important to your guys, we have to be aware of a lot of things, right?

You have to be very self-aware. You have to be aware of what your players are doing. You have to be aware of your opponents. You have to be aware of your boss, right? You have to be aware of how your campus, how things going on your, but being aware is part of being a champion, right?

And on the court you have to be right. Playing at a championship level, you have to be aware the two with our championship level are eliminating dead time and staying power. If you do those three things, you can play at a championship level. That’s one of our bases that we talk about like the base of our program is trying to be at a championship level as a person, right?

So as a person, you can be a championship level too. One of my pet peeves when we go into the airport, we’re traveling, do you just throw your stuff down and say at the gate and then walk to get something to eat, and then you expect somebody to watch your bag That’s on the team. Like your awareness level, right?

Your awareness of others, right? Awareness of yourself, like how you’re treating people. And that’s being a champion, a championship person is you need to be aware, right? Be aware of those things. And you need to eliminate all the dead time in your life or on your team, right?

You can talk about on the basketball court or however that may be, like the dead time we talk about in your workout. Just eliminate it, right? And then you have to have great staying power. You have to, it is not going to happen in a week, right? We’ve gone to 10 straight NCAA tournaments. It didn’t happen overnight, right?

This is like that, that’s great staying power, right? And I think that championship level is something that that we talk about with our team a lot.

[01:13:55] Mike Klinzing: All right. The vocabulary piece of it. I’m assuming that the vocabulary is always constantly being built and evolving as you add new things and subtract other things.

Is that dictionary, for lack of a better word, is that a mental dictionary or is there an actual file with all the different terminologies that you have that you can share with players and coaches. How do you think about that vocabulary?

[01:14:18] Jason Zimmerman: So we pass everything down in our program. Like it, like it was passed in ancient times, right?

Everything is verbal, right? Everything is storytelling, right? Everything is like, we don’t have a…everybody nowadays writes everything down, right? People call me, Hey coach, can you send me this? Can you, no, I don’t have it. It’s going right. But, we pass it down player to player.

Now, we’ll write some of the stuff down, but most of it is all is verbal, right? Like on my game notes, I have all the vocabulary for sure, but we don’t ever give it to the players. I think if you give it to the players all at once, it’s just overload, right? So just bite by bite, right?

This is how you eat an elephant, right? But you start bite by bite and just start eating. And it’s the same thing with our vocabulary, right? You just start and, and you just keep adding to it. Adding to it. And by the end of this year, our freshman are, they’re speaking our language, right? It’s automatic, right?

Like they’re calling out the sets, they’re calling out, they’re saying the defensive verbal cues, right? And it’s not something that we have written down or we take quizzes on, nothing like that. It’s like, if you think it’s important, if you’re committed to what we’re doing, you’re going to learn it and you’re going to know it, and these guys are going to pass it down.

It’s something I probably need to do better because I don’t write a lot of stuff down. I really like that. I like that. If you’re going to be part of our program, when you jump into our program, you’ll get all the dictionary right, and it’ll be all passed down verbally.

[01:15:49] Mike Klinzing:  I mean, I think clearly anybody who’s been around a practice, it’s a lot easier to be able to communicate with your team and communicate quickly and clearly when you can say it with vocabulary and you’d say it succinctly because you can get into long explanations of this drill or that, or this particular action.

And when you could just break it down to one or two words or phrases. It just makes a huge difference in being able to be efficient, which is what you know, what you’re talking about. And then obviously as you bring kids in and they become a part of it and slowly over time they just build that vocabulary and then it becomes a shared language, like you said, which is another way to differentiate and make it feel like it’s special to be a part of Emory basketball is, Hey, we have this special language that only we know, that only we.

And it’s a way that we can communicate that people on the outside of it can’t communicate. Let’s talk before we wrap up, let’s talk a little recruiting real quick. Just when you think about the life blood of your program, you think about the recruiting process. Obviously at Emory, an institution that’s as high quality of academics as Emory is, you have the opportunity to be able to recruit from all over the country and your rosters peppered with guys from all over the United States.

So just tell me a little bit about the process of how you start to identify players and then kind of what you’re looking for in a guy that you bring in.

[01:17:07] Jason Zimmerman: Sure. I think recruiting, having a place to recruit to like Emory helps, right? if you put a North Carolina shirt on I could probably be a pretty good recruiter, right?

And I think having a place like Emory helps you recruit, right? But then you have also the success that you have. You know we’ve been able to be really successful in the last number of years. That helps, right? And then it’s your players, right? Your guys, the guys in your program, when they get to campus, our guys are really good, right?

And then they just tell them who they are and what we’re about. And so I think recruiting that part of it from our side, from that side, it doesn’t become easier because now you have, there’s probably five guys in the country that we want, right? That we think are good enough that can get in, that can pay, that can come here, right?

And so it gets harder because yeah, you can put a North Carolina shirt on if, but if you’re recruiting North Carolina, you can probably, there’s only 10 guys in the country that are good enough for you that you think move the needle for you, So everybody wants to wear that shirt, but then you have to get two of these 10 or or you’re not good, right?

So that’s all. Everybody’s got their issues, right? But recruiting for us, First off, for us, we obviously you have to get into school, right? And so academically you have to be you know, top of the top right? And that’s where we first start really. We talk about the three ring circus in our recruiting process.

You have to get in admissions, right? You have to be able to financial aid or you have to be able to pay for Emory which is the second ring. And then the third ring is the basketball ring, right? Like, are you good enough to move the needle for us? And as you get better as a program, that funnel gets smaller and smaller, right?

The group of people that can move the needle for you, gets smaller and smaller. Emory University, they funnel out a lot of people just academically, right? Like, who can get in here? So you’re funneling a lot of people out there, and then you, you get to the funnel of financial aid and can you pay or can you get need based aid to get here?

So those three funnels, when you get down to it now, you have a pretty small group of guys that you can recruit and get to go to school and play for us at Emory. And that’s the fun part is for my staff and for me, is finding those guys to help raise the bar of our program. We take great pride in that.

And so that’s kind of how our ours works, right? Like, this is what we start with. How do you get those guys? Well, I’ve been coaching for 27 years, I think in college now. I got a lot of people, I know a lot of people that call me, Hey, we got a kid that’s really, really good academically and great player.

I think Emory would be the spot for him or a spot for him, right? I think when you think about high academic institutions with really good basketball programs, like we’re in that mix, right? Right. Basketball programs in that. So we have a lot of people reaching out, Hey, I want a high academic situation, education.

I want a great basketball program. I want to live close to a big city or in a big city. And I said, well, then you should just pick us and it’d be done. Easy enough. There’s the pitch done. Yeah, that’s it.

[01:20:36] Mike Klinzing: Let’s make it happen. Alright, we’re coming up on an hour and a half. Jason, final question.

Great. Two-parter. First part, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then second part is when you think about what you get to do every day, what brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and your biggest joy.

[01:20:56] Jason Zimmerman: Yeah. I think the biggest challenge is when you get to a level now you’re searching for inches, right? It’s like my golf game, right? If I shoot 120, well, heck, I can get to a hundred pretty easy, right? Like, but when you’re shooting the 80, it’s hard to get to 78.

Like that’s hard, right? It is hard to get from 78 to 74. And I haven’t seen those numbers. I haven’t played, seen this before season this year. But it’s like when you, when you win, when you win seven games to get to 15, oh, it’s hard. But you have margins there, right? And when you’re at 17, 18, 19, 20, like, it’s hard to get to 22, 24, 25, right?

And, so just finding those inches and finding guys that are willing to fight for those inches that’s a challenge. That’s fun. That’s fun. Part of our job is finding those inches. Like how can you get from good to great, great to the best. Right? And that’s the challenge. And we’re in that latter evolution.

We’re getting closer to the top, but we haven’t got the top yet. And that’s the challenge for sure. My biggest joy is just coaching my team, being around our team, my staff, that’s my biggest joy, being able to be around and coach guys and be together with a team that’s working for a goal is something bigger than ourselves, right?

I go in my office, I have every picture of every team that I’ve coached at Emory, and then our teams have won championships. They have another picture. But when I walk into the office, my joy is not necessarily the trophies or the nets or the pictures of the champions. It’s the pictures of all the guys that I have coached and the relationships that I have with those guys.

That’s my joy…going to their weddings. Going to their match night when they become a doctor. Their having kids, their pictures of the kids sent to me and then being around my current team and finding how we are going to raise the bar for, and the pride that we have and what the guys that went before us.

That’s the biggest joy I have. And it’s something that’s been really special the last 15 years for sure.

[01:23:20] Mike Klinzing: That’s great stuff, man. I mean, it’s awesome that when you get to that point where you’ve had so much success and you have all those teams that you can put the photo up on the wall and you have connections to all those guys and anybody who coaches knows that opportunity to have your players reach back out to you after they’ve been long gone from campus and share things with you, like those relationships are really ultimately what it’s all about.

So, that’s very well said. Before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how can people can connect with you, find out more about you and your program, whether you want to share email, social media, website, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:23:59] Jason Zimmerman: My emails, jzimmerman@Emory.edu and I’m not the best at returning emails by the day, but I’ll get back to you, I promise. And then the social media piece is the social media piece. My assistants run that stuff, man. I follow, I read a lot of it, but my assistants run all that social media, Emory basketball social media.

So emails the best way to get me for sure. And then I love practice.

[01:24:37] Mike Klinzing: I can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule to join us for a second time? This was a lot of fun. Kind of a different episode, got to dive in a little bit deeper. Really appreciate you taking the time and to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.