MATT GOLDSMITH – THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY MENS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 836

Website – https://tcnjathletics.com/sports/mens-basketball

Email – goldsmim@tcnj.edu

Twitter – @CoachMGoldsmith

Matt Goldsmith is the Head Men’s Basketball Coach at the College of New Jersey.  During his eight seasons, he has piloted the Lions to over 100 victories and a New Jersey Athletic Conference championship in 2020, when TCNJ advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. 

Goldsmith arrived from Amherst College, where he was an assistant coach for three seasons.  In his first season at Amherst in 2012-13, he helped guide the Jeffs to a 30-2 record and the second national title in program history.

Goldsmith has spent time as a volunteer assistant coach for USA Basketball and has been a coach and instructor at the Jay Bilas Skills Camp since 2016.   He also serves as head coach and general manager of ‘The Nerd Team’ in The Basketball Tournament.

As a player at Amherst College, Goldsmith was a member of the Jeffs’ 2007 National Championship team. He continued his playing career after graduation, playing professionally in Germany during the 2008-09 season.

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Take some notes as you listen to this episode with Matt Goldsmith, Head Men’s Basketball Coach at The College of New Jersey.

What We Discuss with Matt Goldsmith

• Competing with his brothers growing up
• “I think trying to play up a level or up a speed of the game level is the best way to develop.”
• “We’re division three. We want our guys to go play against division one players in the summer. We want our older guys to try to go play against overseas pros.”
• Playing basketball and baseball his first two years at Amherst College
• The election of his college coach, Dave Hixon, to the Basketball Hall of Fame
• How a broken leg during his junior season when Amherst won the D3 National Championship led him to start thinking about coaching
• “I think when you’re playing, you’re just completely oblivious to what the thought process that a coach goes through or what a game day feels like for a coach.”
• Simplifying a scout by understanding what a team’s actions are designed to do
• Ask yourself, why would they do that?
• His one year of professional basketball in Europe
• Getting his first coaching job back at his high school
• How his relationship with Coach Hixson changed after joining his staff
• The ability to gve someone your full attention
• “There’s a bigger thing at play here. And when you’re really good at those relationships your program’s going to flourish.”
• “Honestly, you need talent, but when guys will go out there and do anything for you, you’re going to give yourself a chance to win a lot of games.”
• The interview process that led to him getting the head coaching job at The College of New Jersey
• The importance of building connections with alumni
• “We’ve got to be uncommon if we want to be great.”
• “It’s easy to be average. There are so many average people for a reason. It’s hard to be great.”
• “That’s kind of the beautiful part about being a coach is that you always have to be in it and keeping your eye out for what’s next.”
• “I think it’s getting a little harder to find players who are willing to confront their teammates at the level necessary to be a championship team.”
• “Some of my favorite players I’ve ever coached played for high school coaches who were really tough.”
• What he looks for in recruiting…AAU vs High School
• “I just think it’s a make or miss game and you have to be able to make shots.”
• “The majority of our practice is advantage or disadvantage drills and live play drills.”
• Possession and Go – practice design
• Using practice film to see how long you as a coach are talking during practice
• Using 4 minute “games” in practice to create live play situations
• Developing leaders in each class by having a designated “class captain”
• How to use the new 8 additional practice days in D3

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THANKS, MATT GOLDSMITH

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TRANSCRIPT FOR MATT GOLDSMITH – THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY MENS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 836

[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 welcome the head men’s basketball coach at The College of New Jersey, Matt Goldsmith. Matt, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:15] Matt Goldsmith: Mike, Jason thanks for having me. Excited to be here and talk some hoops.

[00:00:19] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, we are thrilled to have you on. Looking forward to being able to dive into all the things that you’ve done in your career. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about some of your first experiences with the game of basketball.

[00:00:30] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, so I was the youngest of four.

So my first experiences were just going to my older brother’s games, to be honest. You know, I was that little kid at halftime running around trying to reach the basket. And not able to, and the crowd cheering that was me. So I just loved competing when I was little. I used to try to play my older brothers in anything possible, football, baseball, basketball, soccer, you name it, we were competing.

And basketball ended up being the one that really kind of touched me and hit me right where it counts. So I’ve loved the game since I was little. My mom said when I was like four or five years old, if I had too much energy, she would tell me to go outside and see how many times I can dribble the basketball in a row.

And I was like, right when I was four or five, she’d send me to the driveway. And I’d come running back in, I got a hundred penny today or whatever. And she was just trying to kill clock. Now as a father, I see what she was doing. But back then I thought it was a fun little challenge.

[00:01:33] Mike Klinzing: She was a coach, man. Here I thought she was really inspiring me to get better.

And there you go. That’s right. Nowadays, we just hand a kid an iPad instead of telling them to go outside and dribble. So it’s completely different. What was the age spread?

[00:01:46] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah. So my oldest brother, so I was the youngest of four. My old my oldest sibling, my sister, she’s nine years older. And then my oldest brother is seven.

And then my other brother is four years older. So I was significantly younger. But I was just always chasing around trying to play in their games or be with their buddies.

[00:02:04] Mike Klinzing: How did that influence you in terms of your development as an athlete? How much of your eventual success do you contribute to trying to chase them and being competitive with them?

[00:02:11] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, I think it was massive, to be honest. I tell our guys all the time, high school guy like, We’re division three. We want our guys to go play against division one players in the summer. You know, we want our older guys to try to go play against overseas pros. I think trying to play up a level or up a speed of the game level is the best way to develop.

So I think it was paramount to my development as a basketball player from an early age, for sure.

[00:02:43] Mike Klinzing: When did hoops become number one? When did you drop away everything else?

[00:02:47] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, so I was a multi sport guy for a long time. I actually played two years of baseball in college at Amherst college.

So I was a multi sport guy till my, I played three sports till I was a junior in high school, and then I played baseball and basketball. Until I was a junior in college. And then I just played basketball those final two years before playing a year overseas in Germany.

[00:03:13] Mike Klinzing: So off season wise, when it’s not basketball season, but you’re playing your other sports, was basketball the one that you were pouring the most into outside of the season?

[00:03:24] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, usually. I mean, that’s the one I cared about most. That’s probably the one I played most, I was one of those kids on a Sunday I would get in the car with my cleats and my basketball shoes, and maybe we go to soccer and then we go to baseball and then we end at a practice or something like that.

So but basketball was always kind of my love, for sure. I think the natural teamwork in it the ability to like demonstrate your skill level as an individual, but needing the group around you to really exceed. I think it just, all of it just kind of hit home for me.

[00:04:04] Mike Klinzing: What’s your favorite memory of being a high school basketball player?

[00:04:08] Matt Goldsmith: Oh man it’s a great question. I think my junior year of high school, I played at a private school in New Jersey Delbarton School, and we had a really good team my junior year. We had 3 guys who ended up playing Division 3 basketball. Our starting center was a Division 1 football player. And our starting point guard is a division 1 wide receiver.

So we were super athletic, talented, and we were in the county semifinals, semifinals, quarterfinals. And I got fouled with no time left went to the line down one with two shots. There was like maybe 7 left on the clock. I made the first one. They call time out. I step out to the floor for the second one and I absolutely choke.

I go short on it and the division one quarterback tips it in at the buzzer and we end up winning and going to the semis. We won the championship that year. So it could have been one of my worst memories ever and turns out to be my best.

[00:05:14] Mike Klinzing: Hero to goat to Under the radar, right?

[00:05:18] Matt Goldsmith: Exactly. Just cruising along.

Nothing to see here.

[00:05:23] Mike Klinzing: All right. Tell me a little bit about your decision to attend Amherst. Play division three college basketball. What do you remember about the college decision making process for you?

[00:05:34] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, it was you know, being the third one of the boys in my family, I think helped my, both my older brothers played sports in college, one played football and one played soccer, so I kind of was aware of the recruiting process and how it all worked, so that was definitely a big benefit for me.

I wanted to play, I wanted to try to play two sports when I was in college. But for the most part, I was going on recruiting visits for basketball and I was asking, Hey, are you cool if I try to play baseball in the spring or whatever and coming out of high school for me. I wanted to use the athletic piece to get me to the highest academic place I could go.

And Amherst is consistently rated one of the best liberal arts country schools in the country. And Coach Hixon my coach at Amherst was cool with me playing two sports. He had had a few, two sports guys in the past. And so it’s a great college town. I actually knew a few of the older players on the team back from playing against them and with them in New Jersey.

So it was a great fit. And it ended up kind of working out to an extreme level. It was a fantastic four years.

[00:06:43] Mike Klinzing: Coach Hixon had a big weekend this past weekend.

[00:06:49] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah. So yeah, last weekend we were out in Springfield. He was the first division three basketball coach to ever be inducted into the Nate Smith basketball hall of fame.

So it was really cool. A couple of your former guests Luke Flockerzi was out there. It was just an awesome basketball scene and for him to go in as a division three guy. You know, the NBA crew that went in this past weekend was pretty incredible. It was Dwayne Wade, Pau, Dirk Nowitzki, and Tony Parker, Popovich was inducted.

So it was a pretty special weekend and really cool to see all the work he’s done and put in for over 40 years being rewarded in that way.

[00:07:31] Mike Klinzing: He’s going to come on with us on Monday. So we’re going to get, we’re going to get the whole thing. We’re going to get the whole story, the inside, the insider scoop on the Hall of Fame.

We did our NBA episode the other night, Matt, and I made Jason take a quiz. I said, all right, one of these inductees is going to come on the show. And you got to guess which one. So we started reading off the list. Unlike, unlike when Mike tries to do my quizzes, I nailed it. Yeah, Jason got it right away. So we’re going through a reading it and he gets, and I, and you know, I was just reading the short bio of every of everybody that went in and I said, division three head coach, 800 and he goes.

I’m like, yeah, you’re 100% right. So, so the coach Hixon’s going to come on with us on Monday. So this episode probably will go up before that. So if you’re listening now, you’ll have coach Hixon’s episode to look forward to shortly. So clearly as you’re making that decision to go to Amherst, what I hear you saying is that the academic side of it was really important to you.

So what going into school. What did you think you wanted to do academically? And then what were you thinking about in terms of a career? Were you already thinking about coaching or was that something that was kind of not on your radar at the point when you’re entering college?

[00:08:44] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, that’s a great question.

You know, I always enjoyed it, but it was definitely not on my radar entering college. So when I was going in to school, my first thought was actually that I wanted to be a physics major kind of a different route for a basketball coach. Very quickly upon arriving at Amherst and taking my first couple physics classes, I realized, I was by far the dumbest person in the room and this was not going to work out for me.

So I ended up being a political science major. My dad was a lawyer, so I thought I might go down that route. Honestly, it was a choice because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. You know, a lot of the people I grew up around I grew up in North Jersey, outside New York City. A lot of people work in finance.

So I was looking at that route. I had an internship at a hedge fund in college. And again similar to physics in about three days, I realized this was not going to work out for me. So I ended up going my junior year, actually, I broke my leg like what Paul George did when he was playing for USA Basketball.

Yeah. So, I did that preseason my junior year and I was on the bench the whole season. And that’s kind of when the coaching idea or the bug kind of hit me because I just was on the bench. I was with the coaches more often than not. And the only way I could really affect the team was with my voice.

And so I think that was a big year in terms of leading to where my career went today.

[00:10:18] Mike Klinzing: Now, is that the year you guys won the national championship?

[00:10:20] Matt Goldsmith: It was. Yeah. So we won the national championship that year. We were coming back. I was the sixth man as a sophomore and was poised to have a big year and again, had that fracture basically four days before our season started playing pickup.

So I came back and actually played, I think three minutes in the sweet 16. But other than that, I was on the sidelines for that whole year. So obviously in. As a senior losing in the national championship game that, that sat with me for a good while after being on the bench for my whole junior year.

So but it all ended up working out fine.

[00:11:00] Mike Klinzing: So from a coaching standpoint, as you’re sitting there on the bench, and obviously that’s tough because you want to be out there and clearly your team was very, very good, which I’m sure made it even harder to just. I have to sit and watch, but you did, as you said, get an opportunity to sort of see behind the scenes a little bit and spend more time with your coaching staff and kind of figure out what that was all about.

What was it as you started to watch them, what made it interesting or intriguing to you? The thought of maybe, Hey, at some point, maybe I want to be coaching. Was there anything that stood out that you remember from that time when you were sitting on the bench? You’re like, Hey, that’s pretty interesting.

Or Hey, that might be something I might like, or Hey, that’s something that I didn’t realize coaches did so much of.

[00:11:39] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, I think when you’re playing, you’re just completely oblivious to what the thought process that a coach goes through or what a game day feels like for a coach. And when I was injured being able to be in the locker room pregame when everyone else is warming up.

You’re hearing some of these conversations of, Hey, if they do this we should be ready to counter with this, or, Hey, if they pull out that different ball screen coverage, like, I think this might be a set that that works out, I think that chess game of basketball was the first thing that was like, wow, this is really cool.

I’d never really sat down and thought about the game in that way until I was kind of privy to those conversations in the locker room that season.

[00:12:29] Mike Klinzing: It is interesting that I think as a player, you don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about what your coaching staff is doing other than in the moments when they’re on the practice floor, maybe yelling at you or telling you you’re doing this or that or whatever.

And you know, they show up and there you are at the game and all of a sudden there’s the coaching staff’s there and you don’t think about all these other things. And I think. Because as a player, you just are so dialed into yourself and not necessarily even in a selfish way, like, Hey, it’s all about me and that kind of thing.

But it’s just, you’re so focused on what you need to do, what your job is about your performance, about playing well and contributing to your team and trying to win, you don’t often see, again, that other picture just because you’re so dialed in on this is my role. This is my assignment. This is what I have to do.

So you don’t necessarily look at that whole picture. So I think like you’re describing. When somebody finally gets a chance to sort of step back and see that big picture, I can totally relate to what you’re saying in terms of, it kind of opens up this whole new world of. Hey man, there’s some actual strategy back here behind this.

It’s not just me going out on the floor and trying to get things done. There’s actual thought behind what these coaches are doing. So when you think about the X’s and O’s piece and kind of learning it, when you think about Coach Hickson, what about the sort of the talk behind the scenes? Do you remember or what are things that maybe you take from him in terms of his coaching style that you watch that you first.

Really became attuned to during that junior season.

[00:14:06] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, no, I think the first thing that really you know, just piqued my interest and got my brain buzzing a little bit, I would say it’s just, again the thought process behind our opponent. And the counters that we might want to be prepared for.

I think the thing that coach Hixon was, there’s a lot of things he’s fantastic at, obviously he’s a whole you know, all of his accolades, over 800 wins, the whole thing. But I think the way he thought about the game of basketball and the way he thought about. Scouts and what you want to run as a program.

A lot of it was kind of drilling down that you ask, if you ask why five times in a row or whatever, you might get to the actual answer, you know? So, okay. So, they run these five you know, actions, primary actions. All right. Well, why did they do that? And you say, oh, okay. So typically these actions end with one of these two players getting the ball in a space to score.

All right. Well, why do they do that? And when you can drill it down, you see, oh, well, actually everything they’re trying to do is to get number 5 on the right wing in space. And it’s just. Is it off a down screen? Is it off a pin down? Is it off you know, is it a dribble drive where they’re trying to just flip it back and let them get downhill?

So you eventually get to this point where the scout becomes super simple because you understand that. The opponents are actually just trying to get one of these two players in this particular position of score. So when you can get it down to that simplification, now, when you’re talking about how to stop it, it gets really simple too.

So instead of sitting there and saying I think a lot of. Younger coaches, myself included, when you’re first starting out you see all these different actions of your opponents or how do we stop all of these things when in reality, if you ask why they’re running it a few times, you probably only have to stop three actions or three particular things on the basketball court.

They’re just trying to get to them and 10 different ways, right? So if you can drill in on those three things and get really good at it. You’re going to give yourself a great chance to get a W that night.

[00:16:24] Mike Klinzing: It’s almost like all those things are decoys, right?

[00:16:27] Matt Goldsmith: Exactly. I think that that thought process of, well, why would they do that?

Well, why would they do that? You know, I always used to tell him when I worked for him, like, he should have been a detective. Like he just loves, he just loves figuring stuff out, whether it’s with his players, his opponents, whatever. to. Get behind the scenes and kind of like ask the questions and try to solve these mysteries of but the, the mysteries are on the basketball court rather than wherever else.

[00:16:55] Mike Klinzing: When was the first conversation that you had with him about maybe going into coaching? Was it while you were still playing or was it after? You got done playing your one season professionally, which we’ll talk about here in a second.

[00:17:08] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah. Yeah. So I finished playing and because of that big fracture I had as a junior I had some other leg issues coming out of that professional season.

And so I, whenever I was trying to train to get ready to go back my. Something would happen to my foot or my knee, just different things that were just complications from the surgery. And I was actually training at my old high school and my old high school coach said, well, listen Goldie, if you’re going to be sticking around all year, like, why don’t you help out with us while you’re here and then.

I did that for a year, started really enjoying it. I ended up teaching back at the high school I was coaching at and after probably three months of teaching, I realized that all I was really looking forward to was the practice in the afternoon, right? So like I would get up, I’d teach my class, but I was just thinking about practice planning and game planning.

So. I ended up calling coach and said, Hey, coach, I think I want to get into coaching. And he has this awesome graduate program graduate assistant program up at UMass where you can go to UMass for sports management and then coach at Amherst across town. And so I just asked if like when the next cycle is coming through, if I could be the guy and, and I was super fortunate because he right on the spot was kind of like, no problem if this is what you want to do you know, getting to grad school and you can be our next GA, that’s not a problem.

So that’s kind of how it worked out. Relationships, right?

[00:18:32] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, that’s really what it comes down to is you had already built obviously a relationship through four years as a player with them. And then again, as a coach, one of the things that I think the good coaches do is they love taking care of the guys who have been there for them, whether it’s players or working for them on the staff or whatever.

We hear so many stories just about, again, how important those relationships are and how they open doors. And obviously that’s the case for you here. Before we jump to that, let’s jump. Into your one season of professional basketball. Tell me a little bit about how you got that opportunity and then what the experience was like for you.

[00:19:09] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, no, I again, we were really lucky over our 4 years. My classmates and I at Amherst College, we won 111 games in 4 years. We made it to 3 Final Fours. And won the national championship when we were juniors. So we were really fortunate and I was fortunate cause I got to kind of ride those coattails and my roommate Andrew Olson was the national player of the year in division three twice.

So he had a bunch of you know, agents watching our film. And so funny enough an agency in Germany ended up signing all five of our class, all five seniors of our class, he signed one of one agent had two of us in the, and another agent. And the firm had three of us and so we ended up all getting jobs in Germany.

And we’re in similar leagues, lived maybe a half hour, 45 minutes. Me the kid I just spoke about, Andrew Olson and another guy, Fletcher Walters, we lived within a half hour of each other. While playing professionally overseas. It was the greatest year you can imagine. We weren’t always so focused on hoops as you can imagine.

[00:20:16] Mike Klinzing: All right. So what’s the best PG 13 story you can tell me from your time over there? What’s the craziest thing that happened?

[00:20:25] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, PG 13s. It was a pretty fantastic year. It was it’s just being overseas and experiencing another culture with two of your best friends.

You just can’t really ask for anything better. So we were always getting in trouble. We were having fun. Actually this is probably the best one. So when I was over there we were in a very small town and the paper had this section in it that was about the people living in the town.

Well, I don’t speak German. And so I’m not reading the paper. I would flip to the sports section and see if they covered what they said about our game or whatever. And every time my roommates and I would go out my coach was this Serbian guy, Ivan, and Ivan would make these funny comments on Monday at practice.

I’d be like, guys, how does Yvonne know? Like, I can tell he knows what we’re doing. Like, how is this possible? And so like six months into the season, I accidentally flipped to this like social page in the paper, and there was a picture of us out. From Saturday night. So we were getting, there was like coverage of us going out.

It’s just tiny town. We’re like, we had no idea what was going on. And Yvonne was just reading about it in a paper and then having us run on Mondays. I had no clue what was it out eventually.

[00:21:52] Mike Klinzing: Oh, that’s funny. That’s good stuff. So when you got done with that season, was it a choice of you’re like, Hey, I’m not sure there’s a future in this, or just how did that end after one season, I guess is the question.

[00:22:05] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, I think, I think going over there, I kind of knew that my career as a player wouldn’t be long I always wanted to try it. I always, especially after I got hurt, I think it was almost like a. I wanted to almost in a way prove it to myself that I could make it work and so I was happy to start the next phase of life.

I thought I got what I wanted out of my playing career and I thought I probably could have found another place to play, but I think it would have been difficult. So I was happy to come home and kind of start that next phase.

[00:22:46] Mike Klinzing: All right. So let’s jump ahead after you go back and you’re working in the high school where you went and you realize, yeah, I don’t think I want to teach.

I think I want to get into coaching where I don’t have to be in the classroom all day. And you’re back with coach Hickson at Amherst. What’s that like to go from, again, I always ask this question, the, the player coach relationship. To the coach, coach, your more colleagues, and obviously you’re still looking up to him.

And I don’t think that relationship ever becomes completely even or balanced, but just what was it like to transition from the previous relationship that you had with them to being a colleague?

[00:23:21] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, I think when you’re a player you, I think a lot of times when you have a good relationship with your coach, which I think that’s probably Coach’s best asset is his ability to build relationships with his players and his alumni and his supporters.

There’s always this slight feeling of a barrier. You know, I think there’s varying levels of it, but depending upon how close you are with them or her or whatever, but there’s always this feeling like, Oh, that’s my coach. You can’t exactly be completely forthright or whatever it is in a lot of those moments and then.

You go up there and you start working for him and you, you learn a little bit more about him and his family. He learned a little bit more about you and you know, your day to day a little bit. And you know, now, obviously as a player, he was always a mentor, but now it’s like much more of almost like a second father relationship.

I call him all the time now, especially obviously being in the business. So it is all, it was very interesting because. When you first get back there and you become a coach with your former coach, you’re almost kind of like tiptoeing around. And I’ve had those, I’ve had to have those conversations with my assistants too, because we’ve hired a few of our former players.

Like, Hey, the relationship changes now. Like we have to be completely straight up with each other. You can disagree with me anytime you want. But it’s hard to do that when you used to used to do anything this guy says and now you’re supposed to you know, stand up for whatever you think your ball screen coverage should change or something like that.

[00:25:04] Mike Klinzing: So once you get, again, I don’t know if past that is the right word, but as you get into the job and you’ve been at it for a couple months, do you know immediately that it was the right choice? I mean, when you get in there, are you like, yeah, this is for sure where I want to go.

[00:25:18] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think again, we were really talented the first year back.

We had a really great season. But as soon as I was spending all my days like watching tape or, or trying to figure out the recruiting piece or you know, building those relationships or doing extra skill work or whatever it was, I was like, Oh yeah, this is what I’m, this is what I’m made for.

This is what I want to do with the rest of my life. I think. It was kind of a no brainer for me. Just because of, again, how enjoyable it is. You know, every day is different, but you know, the year is so cyclical. So you kind of know what you’re going to get into even though each, each day is different.

So I really enjoy that day to day, like seeing growth or seeing improvement day to day. I think really is what gets me up in the morning.

[00:26:09] Mike Klinzing: What did you learn as an assistant coach that made you a better head coach when you eventually got the job at the College of New Jersey?

[00:26:18] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, again, I think I told this story recently just because of everything going on with Coach Hixon and being a Hall of Famer now, but.

I remember very, very in detail a few days where we had a big Williams Middlebury weekend coming up. We were two of the better teams in our conference, a big rivalry between Emerson Williams and we would play back to backs up there. So as soon as Monday morning hit, you’re watching tape because you got to get two full scouts done.

Ideally, you got to have them done early in the week so that you can You know, do some preparation and practice, obviously. And so then you’re playing Friday, Saturday. And as soon as Thursday hits you’re cruising. So you got to get it done. And I remember we’re sitting there, we’re watching tape.

Everybody’s focused. And an alumni would show up. And this could be anybody. This could be a guy who never played for coach. This could be a guy who’s one of the best players ever in the history of the program. And the moment that guy would come in the office, cause coach never closed his door. It that was like against, that was like sacrilegious.

Like you just don’t close the office door. And when the guy would show up, coach would pause the video. He’d turn his chair around and he’d sit there and he would give him. Every second he wanted, he would be, he would have a conversation for an hour, 10 minutes, an hour and a half, whatever that person was willing to do.

He would sit there and give him his time. And I would always think to myself, like, Hicks, what are you doing? Like we have a huge weekend. Like you are out of your mind. This is such a waste of time. And then after doing it for as long as I did, and then finally getting in the chair myself, I realized.

You know, that was what made his program so special is that all those guys still felt  a part of it. All those guys gave back to it. All those guys would get his former players jobs or this and that, or they were just so invested in it because coach would invest in that. And I never thought about the investment in the alums in that way you would think about the investment in your players that way, but not the peripheral people around the program. And I think that’s like his superpower is just coaches, superpowers, his ability to stop anything he’s doing and give you his full attention for as long as you need it.

And that was by far the biggest thing I think that I tried to take with me to my program.

[00:28:51] Mike Klinzing: I love that. I mean, It goes to, you hear stories about people who can kind of make you feel like you’re the only person in the room, and as you’re talking, that’s kind of what I’m picturing because there are very few people, as you said, that have that ability to block everything out, to be able to put everything, like you said, aside things that are clearly very important, put those aside and make that person who’s in front of them feel like they’re the most important thing.

That’s going on in that person’s life right now. And that is, as you said, a superpower. So for you to be able to take that, I’m sure, because one of the things we hear, Matt, and I think just based on our conversation, I’m guessing that for you, it’s probably the same way that initially when you get into coaching, like you said, you were attracted first to the X’s and O’s piece, right?

The matchups and how do we figure out how to. Counter this and what are we going to do here in this situation, all that stuff. And I think a lot of us, when we’re young coaches, like that’s the part of it that really gets us excited because it’s, it’s the game, right? It’s figuring out the game and using our mind to be able to have a chess match against the other coach.

And then The longer you’re in it, and this is again a theme that we could go back over, I don’t know how many episodes that it just transitions from guys start to realize that, yeah, that X’s and O’s piece, don’t get me wrong, is still really important. I still really love that, but it’s really the relationships are what allows all that stuff to flourish.

It’s what allows the X’s and O’s, and it’s what allows the coaching on the floor. It’s what allows all the player development because You have those relationships. It makes everything else that you do more meaningful. And to me, the fact that that’s what you took away from a guy who is now in the hall of fame is that you took away that the relationships and the people are what’s important.

I mean, it’s hard to imagine you could have ever have learned a better lesson again, because we know what coach Hickson could do as a basketball coach with the X’s and O’s and the basketball part of it. But what you’re talking about isn’t basketball. It’s more. Life and what it’s really all about. We’re just using basketball as the vehicle to be able to do those things.

[00:30:52] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think it’s so funny because when I first got to TCNJ we were really on like a fantastic trajectory for my first six years and over the last couple of weeks, struggled a little bit. And when you’re, especially, I think when your program struggling a little bit, you really start to go down this wormhole of X’s and O’s and the chess game and, oh, is it the offense? Oh, is it the defense? Is it this? Is it that? But I just, I feel so fortunate being able to even go to like the hall of fame last weekend and see coach and see all the alums there. And not one of those guys spoke about an active timeout or a play that we ran or this or that.

It was nothing. It was about the experience on a road trip, it was about that one time in film when coach said this funny joke, or he ripped this guy or whatever. And it was all about those relationships that were built. And he’s a Hall of Famer like not a single one of those stories. And we’re talking about alums from the 70s till the 2020s, right?

Like not one of those guys said a thing about his X’s and O’s acumen. You know, it was nothing about that. So it’s such a great reminder in a moment like that, especially for me and where I’m in my, my career that there’s a bigger thing at play here. And when you’re really good at those relationships your program’s going to flourish.

No matter what you’re doing on the court, defensively, offensively, it doesn’t really matter. Honestly, you need talent, but when guys will go out there and do anything for you, you’re going to give yourself a chance to win a lot of games.

[00:32:35] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s well said. And I think when you have people first, then all that other stuff eventually is going to fall into place.

Is it weird that you guys are the Mammoths now?

[00:32:46] Matt Goldsmith: Yes, a hundred percent. I think,

[00:32:48] Mike Klinzing: Can you even refer to the program as the Mammoths? Or is that, is that like, that’s got to be so hard. I couldn’t even imagine a program that you went through and spent time there as a player and a coach and all of a sudden now the nickname is different.

[00:32:59] Matt Goldsmith: It’s strange. Yeah, it’s a little funny like in all our gear from college has our old nickname on it. So yeah, it’s a little different. It’s, we don’t, I think in our group chat with all my former teammates, I don’t think we ever say Mammoths to be honest, it just doesn’t come up.

[00:33:16] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I can imagine.

[00:33:18] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah. We just call it Amherst or Amherst U or whatever, the purple team, whatever it might be. But yeah, Mammoth doesn’t come up too much.

[00:33:27] Mike Klinzing: Alright. Tell me about the. Interview process there at the College of New Jersey. How do you get the opportunity to interview?

And then what do you remember about just going through it and getting your first head coaching job and what that was like?

[00:33:40] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah. So actually another funny coach Hixon story a little bit. So you know, I’m in my third year as the assistant at TCNJ and the College of New Jersey job opens up.

And it’s a good academic school, so it’s a good fit in terms of my career. I’m from New Jersey, so I have some ties back home. I recruited New Jersey for Amherst a lot, so it was a recruiting area I was comfortable with. So I ended up just throwing my name in the mix and reaching out to some people to see if I could get an interview or whatever.

So I get the call for the initial first round, the phone interview it’s, there was no zooms yet. So you got a 45 minute phone interview. And coach kind of gives me the inside info, how to handle it, you know. He had a little system for all this. And since you lay out some notes, you have your talking points.

It’s like, it’s laid out in front of you on a desk and you want to wear headphones. So you can kind of flow from thing to thing, all this, whatever, all this stuff. Right. And he, and he says, no, he said, Goldie, this will be good. Good, good test for you. Cause you’re not going to get it. So just go for it.

I said, all right, great. So I was loose I go into the phone interview. I’m not going to get this job anyway, so I can say whatever I want. So. Finish up the phone interview two days later. So I get a call from Dr. Beverly, the AD at the time. And she says, Hey, we want to bring you to campus.

We’re bringing four people to campus. And we want to have you on campus for a final interview. I’ll send you the itinerary. So go back to coach. And I said, coach, I’m going on campus. They invited me on campus. He said, he said, Goldie, you got no chance at this job. So just go down there and say whatever you want.

And next time, maybe you’ll get it because you’ll learn from your mistakes. I said, all right, cool. So. Again, I’m super loose. I write up my little packet. I make the whole thing. I go down there and the interview process itself was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I mean, you’re coming in the night before.

I had dinner with the AD. Stay overnight. I had breakfast with the search committee and then I was on campus meeting with people till about four in the afternoon. So it’s a full 24 hour experience. And again, I’m just kind of letting it fly out there because Hix told me I had no chance. So I was just cruising and I ended up I ended up getting called.

Maybe two days later you know, I get called and get the offer. I’m doing a private training lesson because obviously as a division three assistant, you make no money. So I’m trying to make some extra cash. And, and I say, Oh, I have to, I tell the kid I’m training. I have to walk out of the gym.

One sec. I have to take this. And I walk out and she offers me the job and I’m so excited. I can’t even control myself. So I just tell her, can I call you back? I need to, I need to talk to some people. And I call coach Hickson and tell him, and he just, you know. He just, you have to be kidding me. Like you actually got this job.

I said, yeah, they offered me the job. I don’t know what to tell you. He’s like, this is, I’ve never seen it like first time on campus. You got the job. I said, yeah, I don’t know. I got lucky. And so I planned, cause I said, I’m going to call back. So I planned on, I was like, just, Oh, let’s just wait 24 hours to make it seem like I’ve had a reason not to say yes on the call.

Well, the next morning I get an email and she gave me more, she upped the offer.

[00:37:07] Mike Klinzing: Nice. Look at this, unknown negotiating. I like it, man.

[00:37:11] Matt Goldsmith: Unknown negotiating is right. I couldn’t believe it. I called, I got the email. I called her about three seconds later. I said, I’m in, let’s go. I’m coming. I’m down to go.

[00:37:22] Mike Klinzing: That is good stuff, man. You didn’t even have to ask for a raise and you got one. That’s right. Plus you went from an assistant’s, well, I don’t know if you want to even call it a salary, but you went from your assistant’s money, whatever that was, to a real salary.

That’s huge. So what do you remember about the first month on the job? Your head spinning, you’re trying to figure everything out. What do you remember about the early time when you first get the job?

[00:37:50] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah man, I just remember having endless to do lists, just being dead tired constantly, trying to set the tone for what I wanted the program to look like and trying to present.

You know, a certain level of professionalism because I was 29 at the time as a first year head coach. So I just remember you know, thinking to myself, like, this is my chance. This is my chance. I got to just no sleep, on the road constantly, like what we got to make this work because this is my chance to do it.

So. It was tough I think they always say, like, you never know what it’s like to move those 12 inches to the head coach’s chair until you do it. And I think a lot of people, when you’re still an assistant, you think that’s BS a little bit. And it couldn’t be more true because you’re making you know, one of the best thing I came from Amherst college and we had a lot of resources up there for division three program big endowment fund, a lot of, a lot of really faithful alumni and I got to TCNJ and so one of my first days on a job, I went to the fundraising development team.

And I said, Hey, so can I get eyes on like how much money we have and, and what’s our budget looking like? So I noticed that in the locker room, there is a ball rack with 16 balls and there’s four different brands of ball. It’s all over the place. Some are outdoor balls, some are indoor balls.

So I said, you know what? I got to order some balls. So I go to the equipment guy, I said, can we get 16 new NCAA balls? He said, Yeah, no problem. So we order the balls and a couple days later I’m like, oh, can we get some t-shirts for the guys? It’s nothing crazy, like five cotton t-shirts.

And he goes, let me check your budget. And he looks, he calls me back and he says coach, you’re already over your budget. I said, what? He said, your equipment budget was $750 and the balls were 800. He said, you’re done. You got nothing left. They were 50 bucks a ball, 800 bucks. I don’t know what to tell you.

So that’s when I go to the development guys. The development guys tell me that I had like $542 or something in my development fund. So I take the $542 I order as many cotton t-shirts as I can that say TCNJ basketball, and I take one out of Coach Hixon’s book. I send every alumni I can a handwritten note and a cotton t shirt.

And by the end of my first three months in the program, we had 12 grand in the, in the fundraiser account. And so now we could actually get the boys some gear. We could take care of them. We could do team dinners, but honestly, again, it was a testament to coach Hixon and kind of his book, like I just have to, I have to get people on a board.

I have to get the team around the team to start supporting us at a higher level.

[00:40:50] Mike Klinzing: That connection with alumni, I think is really important and for reasons that you just mentioned when it comes to fundraising, but just even again to have that support out there, whether it’s with recruiting, whether it’s with guys coming into town to watch games, whatever it might be, to be able to.

Connect your current players with former players, whether that’s for employment opportunities, or just to connect and talk about what the program has been and where it’s been and where it’s going to go. And all those things to me are really, really critical steps. And obviously you realize that really early on, and we’re able to take advantage of that with your.

Players that were on the roster when you get the job, what are those initial conversations like? What are you talking to the guys who are coming back? Obviously, they were recruited by a different coach. So now here you are. What did you have to do to sell them on yourself and just kind of your vision for the program?

What did you have to do to set that tone, that culture that you were talking about right at the beginning?

[00:41:46] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah. I think I think it starts the first time you meet them. Right from that 1st individual meeting, and especially the 1st time they’re back on campus. But what I did was you know, luckily I got hired when there was about 2 weeks left in school in the spring.

So I came down and got to meet with each player individually, right before the summer and I basically kind of laid it out. You know, every minute is available. We’re going to play the best players, if we got six guys who can do it at a high level or play six, if we got 10, we can do it at a high level, play 10, but you’re going to earn your minutes.

And we’re going to win, we’re going to do what we can to win more games here. And, just kind of set that tone before the summer even hit. And then again brought the same mentality. When we got back my thing was that the big thing we’ve always had here and the phrase we’ve always used, we say we’ve got to be uncommon if we want to be great.

And my message that first year was just it’s easy to be average. There are so many average people for a reason. It’s hard to be great. It’s hard to win a lot of games and you’re at an academic school. We haven’t won too many games over the past 15 years or whatever.

Like if we want to change this, we have to be different. We have to do it in a different way and we have to go to another level. And fortunately the coach before me, Kelly Williams, he did a great job of recruiting great people and those guys bought in at a really high level. And we had a good first year right off the gates going back to the conference tournament championship for the first time in 18 years.

[00:43:28] Mike Klinzing: How long into your tenure was it as a head coach before you felt like you knew who you were as a head coach? Because I think it’s hard to know for sure who you are when you first get that initial job because you kind of have this vision of, Hey, if I ever get my own program and like, obviously, as you said, when you’re an assistant, you kind of take for granted all the decisions that a head coach has to make, whether it’s on the basketball floor or off like you described.

But how long do you feel like it took you to, to really have a solid feel for? Kind of who you were as a head coach and what your philosophy was going to be.

[00:44:02] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah. I think obviously you want to have like guiding principles, but I feel like every time I think I know exactly who I am as a head coach, like something comes up and we don’t do as well or something happens and we got to make an adjustment I think obviously, as I’ve been speaking about before we wanted to be relationship driven. You know, we wanted the kids to really care about it and to love to be in it and to love to be a part of the program. And then around that I think you got to make a lot of adjustments.

I think like stuck in an offensive look or stuck in a defensive coverage of some way you know it’s time to change. And if you’re not going to change you’re going to be in trouble. So I think for me. I often reread or re look at old notes of books that really hit home or documentaries that really hit home with me in terms of leadership stuff, just to remind myself why I love those pieces, but I feel like at the same time, every time I reread one of those books I find something new inside of that resonates with me.

So I think I’m still working on it. You know, obviously I’m more comfortable today than I was as a first year coach in terms of who I am and what I believe in and the values that I think matter most to a program and to winning and to leadership. But at the same time, I think whenever I get too comfortable in those things, we have a little bit of a slide.

And so I think it’s a never ending thing. And honestly, that’s kind of the beautiful part about being a coach is that you always have to be in it and, and keeping your eye out for what’s next or the new trend or. You know, learn the, the kids these days too, like even I’ve only been a head coach for eight years, but their attitudes and the way they approach the game or each other in the locker room has changed significantly.

And it hasn’t been that long, only eight years. So I think you always have to be keeping an eye out and learn.

[00:46:05] Mike Klinzing: What do you think of those changes? What’s guys that you’re coaching? changed about the

[00:46:08] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, I think it’s getting a little harder to find players who are willing to confront their teammates at the level necessary to be a championship level. And I just think there’s more and more guys who don’t want to look their teammate in the face and tell them the exact truth in the moment in a timeout or in the locker room after practice or in the middle of the drill when it’s going sideways.

And so I think. Recruiting and leadership development is more important than ever because you’ve got to do your homework. And again, when that started happening a little bit more we noticed that starting happening a little bit more with our incoming guys. I think we made a deliberate change in our recruitment to keep an eye out for those types of behaviors and try to find more of those guys who are going to be willing to say the truth in the moment to their teammates, whether their teammate likes it or not, and I think because everything’s behind a screen a little bit, I think kids are less comfortable doing that in person.

You know, even recruiting, you’re texting like nobody even wants to pick up the phone anymore. You’re always texting, right? So think about, think about not having the phone between you, but having to actually look a guy in the eye and call them out for something, you know? So I think that’s the biggest challenge these days.

[00:47:43] Mike Klinzing: So how do you find those kids when you’re out and you’re trying to recruit? What is it that you’re looking for? Whether it’s Something on the floor, whether it’s in a conversation with the player themselves, whether it’s talking to their AAU coach or their high school coach, how do you try to discern who are the kids that can do those things that are capable of that type of leadership and that kind of ability to step up in the situations that you’re talking about?

[00:48:10] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, I think it’s super challenging. You know, obviously if you’re talking to a high school coach or an AAU coach. You kind of have to read between the lines in a way and ask those tough questions because nobody wants to bury their guy. Nobody wants to you know, if a kid’s not exactly a great leader nobody wants to actually tell that straight up about their player.

Right? So you have to ask the questions and kind of make those judgments kind of on your own. Obviously we watch them on the court. We watch them off the court. What are they doing when their teammates are playing well? And maybe they’re not, or what are they doing after you know they miss a big free throw at the end of a game?

You know, what is their reaction? What’s the next play look like? What about if their coach gets on them? Like, I love, some of my favorite players I’ve ever coached played for high school coaches who were really tough. Like, You could see it. Everybody in the gym could see it. And he held those guys accountable and he wasn’t afraid.

You know, for all intents and purposes, being a little bit of an old school coach, if he had to in a moment. And I think. We’ve, I get all, I just, I found it easier to connect and coach those guys. And I don’t think coaches can do that old school stuff quite as much anymore. I think there’s moments for it, but you know, I think when a kid can handle that, it tells you a lot about how he’s going to handle those moments as a college student athlete as well.

So. You know, I think you don’t get them all right. That’s why recruiting is so tough. You can’t ever get them all right. And things change even when you do get them right over four years. But we try our best to really value and put that that type of behavior first and foremost.

[00:49:52] Mike Klinzing: How much do you value AAU versus high school and seeing the players in each of those settings? Do you value those two settings? Equally, is there one setting that you prefer more when it comes to evaluating a player’s on court ability over the other? Just what’s your philosophy there when you’re trying to look at a player and see what you think they can do on the floor?

[00:50:10] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, I think there’s positive and negatives to both sides. For me the beauty of AAU is you can go to an event for 12 hours. And see a ton of really good basketball players you can go to a team that’s in New Jersey and has the 12 best players in this local area or in this county or in North Jersey or wherever and get a really good feel for what they’re like.

But for us, once we identify those guys, we like going to see them in their high school setting. I think those coaches usually, and this is not always the case, but usually know those players a little bit better because they’re around them longer and over four years. It’s pretty rare for a guy to be in the same program for that long.

In addition, if you’re in the U 16 and then the U 17, a lot of AAU programs, those are two different coaches. Right, so you really only have a code for four months. So once we identify somebody in AAU, we like going to the high school stuff to really see what they’re about. And I think I think you can tell a lot, especially like, if you identify someone on the AAU circuit who’s maybe a role player.

And has a great attitude in that role. And then you see him play in high school and whoa, this kid does a lot out here. Like, holy cow, he, he’s handling it more. He’s making more decisions. Like he’s the primary initiator, not just this off the ball shooter or this defender. I think that tells you a lot about a kid.

The fact that he’s in that AAU program, he’s not complaining. He’s got a great attitude. He’s not, his body language is solid. And then he goes in the winter and he’s prime time. He’s the guy with the ball in his hand And when a guy can do both those things, I think it just tells you a lot about him and his personality.

And for us, we think that they’re going to be more successful when they get to us.

[00:52:08] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that makes complete sense. I think when you look at, right, ultimately the player, when they come into college basketball, No matter who you are, there are very few, and I’ve said this numerous times in the pod, there, there are numerous, there are not very many guys who roll into a college program at any level and the coach is just like, all right, here you go, man, take the ball and do your thing.

Like, everybody ultimately has to fit in and find a role. And I think sometimes players, parents sometimes get the idea that, Hey, my kid’s got to put up. X number of points, so they got to be able to do this. But really one of the things that I know that college coaches are evaluating is, okay, this kid does X, Y, and Z in a high school game, but they may not be able to do X, Y, and Z in a college game.

So what’s their role in my program? And to me, I think that’s always one of the more difficult things to project is when you see a kid who’s got the ball in their hands all the time as a high school player. Can they adapt to, Hey, I’m only going to get six shots a game. What can I do with those six shots and how can I impact the game in other ways besides just scoring or having the ball in my hands all the time?

And that’s got to be, to me, I always look at the job of a college coach and from a recruiting standpoint and that to me seems like it would be the biggest challenge is how do you project the guy who’s the best player on their high school team and has the ball all the time? How do you project them into a role on your college team?

[00:53:31] Matt Goldsmith: A hundred percent. You know, it’s so funny. We’ve had a lot of success with recruiting at our level, like the sixth man on the best team in the state, right? Like all his teammates are division one players. He practices against them every day, but he’s kind of a role guy on that team. But the challenge with that is it’s hard to adjust your mentality.

To now, maybe as a junior or senior to be in the primary option, right? So that direction’s hard, but at the same time, when you’re the primary option at a smaller school who doesn’t play very high level opponents, that’s just as hard to adjust your mindset back down to being this off ball guy or this role playing guy, or you know, I’m out there to just shoot, or I’m out there to just set screens and rebound.

So again, I think. When you can do a little bit, you got to work at it. And if you can do enough research on it and talk to enough people, finding those guys who have had to do both of those things it’s rare, but those guys, man, they, they usually succeed at a pretty high level because they find the floor earlier because they’re okay with just being this role and that’s how they’re going to find the floor.

And by finding the floor earlier, by the time they’re juniors and seniors. The experience has now has led to them being capable of being the guy in the moment when you need a bucket.

[00:55:00] Mike Klinzing: . For sure. Builds their skill level, builds their confidence, right? Because they’ve been playing those minutes.

Builds their skill level, builds their confidence. I mean, that’s really what it’s all about. All right. So once you get these guys on campus and you’re putting together a practice, what’s your philosophy on practice design? What do you like to do to make those practices competitive, fun, get the things that you need out of them?

What’s your philosophy on practice design?

[00:55:18] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, so we try to do about 30 minutes or so of skill work a day. I just think it’s a make or miss game and you have to be able to make shots. So we shoot a lot in our practices. We do a lot of finishing drills. We do a lot of footwork stuff, being able to go full speed and get to balance and throw a ball fake and reverse pivot or ball fake and go up and under or whatever.

So we start with the ground up in most practices in terms of just doing two foot stuff you know, stride stop stuff and then finishing and we try to get shots up pretty quickly. So. That’s usually about a half hour practice and then I’m a big lot. I just love live play. So the majority of our practice is advantage or disadvantage drills and live play drills, three on three, four on four and in action.

We scrimmage almost every day, five on five for about 15, 20 minutes. You know, we’ll put structure around it, what we’re trying to work on, or if we don’t exactly want to be going up and down that whole time, but I don’t think there’s a better teacher than playing live play, I think you have to do it and drills can only get you so far, so.

We love four on three, five on four stuff. We love playing four on four or three on three inside a certain action we need to improve or that’s within our offense, or maybe that we’re seeing the next day in practice, in a game for a scout, so. We do, we start with a lot of skill work. And then after that it’s so funny, like our athletic trainers, if a guy’s coming back from an injury, they’re like, Oh he can do everything, but he can’t go live today.

And I’m like, all right, well, so he can, he can do about 10 minutes of practice.

[00:57:00] Mike Klinzing: Great. Get him a bike over there. Right.

[00:57:02] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, exactly.

[00:57:04] Mike Klinzing: That’s funny. That is funny. So one of the things that I think coaches sometimes struggle with when you’re doing a lot of live play, and obviously we have so much of the games based approach that has taken over coaching as opposed to doing more drill work like coaches used to do a lot more.

I think one of the things that’s always a challenge for coaches, and I know that it’s been a challenge for me in the past, is how do you know when to stop play? And address something versus interrupting the flow of practice. How do you balance out that coaching piece of it and being able to stop action and talk to your players and make a coaching point versus.

Interrupting the action and then you’re just not getting enough of the live play that you’re talking about. So how do you think about that in terms of how you’re coaching the players during live play?

[00:57:54] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah, no, I think so again, a couple of things. One is one of our favorite things to do, on a lighter day is something I took from Coach Hixon.

It’s called Possession and Go. And basically what it means is if you score, you stay on offense. And the only time you change sides of the floor in five on five is after a stop. Now, here’s the caveat. If you get a stop and you go down in transition and you take a shot and you miss, you get to stay in on offense for at least one possession.

So you get a free possession in transition. And what it does is it bakes in stoppages for you to talk through whatever you need to talk through. And sometimes you don’t need to, but if we have to do a lot of teaching or we think we really need to work on something, we’re going to try to play in possession and go.

I found when I first started as a head coach, I was talking way too much and I think the only way to do it is I think more people need to film practice, but not just to watch the practice. But I think sometimes, like, sometimes I’ll just throw a stopwatch on. To see how, how many minutes in an hour and a half practice that I am talking in the middle of the court.

Right. And when you actually do that it’s bad. It’s bad out there. I mean, we’re out there so long. It’s, it’s absurd. You, you, you see the stopwatch at the end of practice and you’re like, wow, we actually only practice for an hour and 10 minutes. I was just like filibustering the practice for 20 minutes at a clip.

So I think that. Filming yourself doing it. And what I’ve tried to do in the last few years, especially is you know, you can do those like three possession games, or you can write down specifically on your practice sheet, like certain teaching points you’re thinking about. And that way after a four minute segment, you can go back and hit these three things, but I don’t think it can do be too many.

You can’t go through every possession with them and you can’t play 20 minutes and then start talking about something that happened two minutes into the game, right? So we also try to do like. We do a lot of four minute games. So we do something called like a best of three, best of five or best of seven series, where we’ll play a four minute game, 30 second timeout, four minute game, 30 second timeout, maybe a two minute game, 30 second timeout where the team can talk to each other.

And so that’s giving you opportunities to discuss things with them at every time out, but it’s still fresh in their minds because you’re only playing these four minute segments rather than 20 minutes at a clip. Our guys love that too, because if you don’t play well for four minutes, you get smoked.

It’s just 1 – 0, and you just got to get the next one, right? You just got to win the next one. So we try to do that pretty often within our practices.

[01:00:43] Mike Klinzing: I love that from a next play mentality, right? It’s so you can take it a step further and whatever next quarter, next minute, let’s win the next four minutes segment.

Yeah. We lost this four minute segment, but just like in the game, right? You can go through a bad stretch and can you come back from that? Or does that spiral out of control? And part of. Being able to bounce back from that is do you practice putting yourselves in those situations and what you just described clearly, that’s exactly what that does.

So to be able to have that baked into your practice, I think is something that can translate very well to game situations. Not just again, not just during the four minutes when you’re playing, but also, Hey, we got to bounce back here and we lost that four minutes, but let’s get ready to play. And then make sure that what we’re doing going forward here for the rest of practice or.

in a game situation is going to be the things that we need to do. Talk a little bit about, you said earlier, building leadership and being able to make sure that you’re not only giving your players basketball, but you’re also giving them leadership, which clearly helps them off the floor, but also helps your team and your program on the floor.

So what do you think is some things you do from a leadership standpoint?

[01:01:46] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah. So we try to you know, obviously we have captains, you know and what we try to do is break up one, about two weeks into every season. I have each class vote on a class captain and we kind of create a leadership group with that group.

So you have the captains and we kind of try to like create a chain of command, right? So if a class captain, if something’s going wrong with the freshman. The class captain is going to try to address it or fix it. If it’s above his head, he can ask the captains to talk through it. And if it’s above their head, they can come to me.

And it doesn’t always work that way, but we try to. Start kind of developing those leaders in each class right away from when they step foot on campus. And we do a lot of the stuff I think most staffs do like every summer, we’re going to send our captains maybe a book to read or an article.

You know, during the January term we have off from school for the first three weeks of January while we’re playing. So we often watch a movie or documentaries or something that’s leadership based and just kind of have like classroom sessions around it. So we try to do a lot with that.

And again, I think just kind of bake it into the yearly schedule in a way, and each year is a little different, what you’re trying to encourage or what you need to work on or what this captain is good at versus the previous years. But we try to, again, just kind of build it into our schedule of events with our players.

What do you guys do with your eight days? Oh man, I’m so excited about that. So

our eight days. So we are going to split up our days. Essentially, I think one of the best things about the eight days is that your freshman Are going to be able to get in the gym sooner. And I think a lot of times one kid per class struggles a ton in those first six weeks of school, because there’s just less oversight or schedule or whatever it is.

So I’m so excited to get those guys in. So we’re going to do it. That first week of school we’re right in on on Wednesday and every time we meet on an, on one of those eight days, we’re going to do a 45 minute skill session in the morning. And a hour and a half practice or two hour practice in the afternoon.

And the reason why we can do it on Wednesdays at TCNJ most students have no classes on Wednesdays. So it’s easy to do that little double session on a Wednesday. And so we’re going to split those up. There’s a few Saturdays sprinkled in, but most of the days are going to look like that. And the reason why our staff wanted to meet that first Wednesday was if we can put a little structure in you know, the ball screen coverage or any tweaks we’re putting in I think that at the division three level, they’re still going to play pickup.

You know, like captain stuff without us in there. So to be able to get in there and kind of put in some of that structure and some of those concepts that first week, I think the pickup games are going to improve tremendously, which, so it’s going to I think the growth that’s going to happen is going to be even greater than those eight days.

If you get them in there early enough to start applying it when they’re playing pickup you know, a couple of times a week. So. We’re that, that’s, that’s our schedule and our, on our plan as of right now, we’ll see how it works, but that’s, that’s what we’re trying to do.

[01:05:17] Mike Klinzing: I think the big point there is, and this is something that it’s funny because talking to D3 guys leading up to this eight day rule being put in one of the common themes that.

We always heard was exactly what you talked about, especially when it comes to the freshmen, right? Like, here’s these guys that you recruit. You spend all this time. You’re talking to them. You’re having them on campus. You’re texting all these things. You’re spending so much time with them. And then boom, all of a sudden they get to campus and.

They’re there for six weeks or seven weeks or whatever it is before practice starts on October 15th. And you basically can have no contact with them other than like waving at them when you walk by the gym. It’s kind of crazy when you really think about it. And so to me, just like you said, to be able to, to have a kid who’s a freshman who comes in and now suddenly you can have some contact with them in the context of why you’ve brought them to campus.

Obviously, clearly. You’ve got the academic side of it, just like you do at any other school. But let’s face it again, the basketball is a huge part of the experience. And so to be able to put those guys in a basketball environment with the coaching staff that brought them on to me, I mean, it’s just going to be invaluable.

I’ll be real curious once. We get through this season and we do some more D3 interviews at the end of the season, how valuable guys think it’s going to be. Cause I think everybody shares your sentiment that it’s just going to be a game changer in terms of the ability for those freshmen, especially to be able to adapt to the college life.

[01:06:48] Matt Goldsmith: Yeah. I don’t know how other guys are, but for me and our staff, I just feel like when you’re in practice with somebody, you can usually figure out. What’s going right or what’s going wrong in their life. Like you might not know the exact reason, but you know that maybe some it’s probably one of three things, home, a significant other or school, right?

One of those three things is bothering them and you can tell them practice. But if you just have a kid in for a 10 minute you know, you see him at the dining hall or whatever, a 10 minute conversation, you’re never going to. It’s going to be really challenging to get down to the bottom of that stuff.

So being able to get them in the gym again, I think it’s so beneficial. Obviously it’s great basketball wise, but I think it’s going to be just tremendous for the student athlete experience and starting on the right foot for those freshmen.

[01:07:44] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, there’s no question. All right. Final two part question.  Part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then when you think about what you get to do every single day, what brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:08:00] Matt Goldsmith:  Yeah. So biggest challenge, I think like I said earlier we’ve had a couple of tough seasons in a row.

And we’re a little young this year. I think we’re super talented, but we are young, so with youth comes lots of challenges so I think just generally having that young group and trying to get back to the, to the top of the mountain it’s going to be a long slog. I think where there’s going to be hiccups along the way.

We’re going to look great on some days, we’re going to get punched in the mouth on others and we got to take those lumps and just keep moving forward. So I’m really excited for the challenge, but at the same time, I think you know, when you have a group that’s a little bit younger, you just know when you’re going in you got to be ready for some great ups and some big time downs. So just trying to stay even keeled and steady out there every day, I think is going to be the big one. And then sorry, remind me again, what was the second question? Oh yeah. Biggest joy. I think honestly with that youth comes again, just like those wonderful coaching experiences when you see somebody you know, get it right or make the big play or get over the hump or we have a kid coming back. He’s coming back as a senior. He hasn’t played really for 3 years. And we were fortunate enough last spring, we went to Greece with our program.

So we were over there for we had 10 practices and played three games. And he was awesome in those three games. And it’s been a struggle for him for three years. So those little moments, I think they keep you coming back to the gym. You know, the fact that he fought through it for three years, he didn’t give up.

He didn’t quit. He just kept pounding the rock, putting his nose down and just trying to get after it. I can’t wait to see stuff like that because we are going to have some new guys on the floor. And I really, I love seeing kids grow and be able to see that growth you know and those rewards out there on the floor.

[01:09:58] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Well said. Before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance to share how can people connect with you? Find out more about you, your program. So if you want to share social media, website, email, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I will jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:10:13] Matt Goldsmith: All right. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. So our program on all social media is @TCNJMBB and then add on all social media. I’m also @CoachMGoldsmith in you know, DM me you know, call me whatever my, my email at TCNJ is goldsmim@TCNJ.edu. The worst email ever.

That’s a whole other story. But reach out to me. I love anything people are interested or want to talk about send me an email DM me on Twitter or Instagram and I’d love to talk hoops. So anytime I’m always there for it.

[01:10:54] Mike Klinzing: Perfect. Matt, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule to join us tonight.

Really and truly appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.  Thanks.