JEFF JURON – SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 845

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

Email – jjuron@suffolk.edu

Twitter – @JeffJuron

If you listen to and love the Hoop Heads Podcast, please consider giving us a small tip that will help in our quest to become the #1 basketball coaching podcast.

Jeff Juron is entering his 9th season as the Head Men’s Basketball Coach at Suffolk University in Boston while also serving as the Assistant Director of Athletics. Over eight seasons at Suffolk, Juron has helped Suffolk to new heights highlighted by six consecutive winning seasons.

Juron and Suffolk earned one of the biggest achievements a NCAA Division III program could, as the 2019-20 Sam Schoenfeld Sportsmanship Award honorees, which is presented by the Collegiate Basketball Officials Association (CBOA) to the college or university which, in the judgement of the CBOA membership exemplifies the “highest degree of sportsmanship character and ethics among their players, coaches and spectators.”

Juron came to Suffolk after spending five seasons at the University of Rochester as an assistant coach. Jeff began his coaching career as an assistant at Skidmore College during the 2009-10 season.
As a four-year starting point guard at Rochester from 2004-2008, Juron helped the Yellow Jackets to the Division III NCAA Tournament three times, including a spot in the 2005 national championship game.

If you’re looking to improve your coaching please consider joining the Hoop Heads Mentorship Program.  We believe that having a mentor is the best way to maximize your potential and become a transformational coach. By matching you up with one of our experienced mentors you’ll develop a one on one relationship that will help your coaching, your team, your program, and your mindset.  The Hoop Heads Mentorship Program delivers mentoring services to basketball coaches at all levels through our team of experienced Head Coaches. Find out more at hoopheadspod.com or shoot me an email directly mike@hoopheadspod.com

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram @hoopheadspod for the latest updates on episodes, guests, and events from the Hoop Heads Pod.

Have your notebook handy as you listen to this episode with Jeff Juron, Men’s Basketball Head Coach at Suffolk University.

What We Discuss with Jeff Juron

• Growing up competing with his brother and tagging along to his Dad’s high school games
• Winning two consecutive sectional championships in New York state in high school
• His decision to attend the University of Rochester
• The challenge of being mentally and emotionally ready for college basketball
• The role that luck plays in in your playing career
• Trying to put yourself in the player’s shoes to understand what they’re dealing with
• Preparing players in the recruiting process for what their role might be
• Why high school players should go watch D3 games
• Giving up the idea of being a lawyer to enter the coaching profession
• Getting his first coaching job at Skidmore College under Luke Flockerzi
• The need to be a self-starter as an assistant coach
• Improving his knowledge of x’s and o’s through scouting opponents as an assistant coach
• The overwhelming nature of finding x’s and o’s on the internet
• Returning to Rochester as an assistant coach
• The interview process that led to him becoming the Head Coach at Suffolk University
• “The first thing that you have to do when you take over a program is get out there and recruit and try to find some better players.”
• His initial conversations with the returning players at Suffolk and the increased commitment they needed to make
• Handling the volume of small decisions you have to make as a head coach
• Get-ability is kind of the best ability in recruiting
• “I just think that you need to recruit with imagination when it comes to their basketball talent. You need to sort of, even if you think a kid might be too good, you have to kind of imagine ways he might fall to you.”
• What he looks for in AAU vs. High School settings when recruiting a player
• “You have to balance, can you get the kid? And is the kid talented enough to make your program better? And does he love your school?”
• Helping players develop a “next play” mentality
• Avoiding player burnout and not overloading players
• The challenge that having grad students on the team poses in terms of scheduling practices
• Being flexible with the structure of your practices
• Coaching in sound bites
• Defining all the different ways that players can lead
• “Leadership can look like a lot of different things and they’re all important.”
• “I’ve always felt like our year end meetings could be more productive. Especially when it comes to identifying basketball things you want your guys to improve on.”
• Using some of the 8 off-season days for after the season to give players
• “We’ve never been able to sort of get on the court post season. So that’s something that I’m looking forward to this year”
• “I’m okay with my guys doing anything that they’re going to do consistently.”
• Balancing family and coaching

Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!

We’re excited to partner with Dr. Dish, the world’s best shooting machine! Mention the Hoop Heads Podcast when you place your order and get $300 off a brand new state of the art Dr. Dish Shooting Machine!

Prepare like the pros with the all new FastDraw and FastScout. FastDraw has been the number one play diagramming software for coaches for years, and now with it’s integrated web platform, coaches have the ability to add video to plays and share them directly to their players Android and iPhones via their mobile app. Coaches can also create customized scouting reports,  upload and send game and practice film straight to the mobile app. Your players and staff have never been as prepared for games as they will after using FastDraw & FastScout. You’ll see quickly why FastModel Sports has the most compelling and intuitive basketball software out there! In addition to a great product, they also provide basketball coaching content and resources through their blog and playbank, which features over 8,000 free plays and drills from their online coaching community. For access to these plays and more information, visit fastmodelsports.com or follow them on Twitter @FastModel.  Use Promo code HHP15 to save 15%

Your first impression is everything when applying for a new coaching job.  A professional coaching portfolio is the tool that highlights your coaching achievements and philosophies and, most of all, helps separate you and your abilities from the other applicants.

The key to landing a new coaching job is to demonstrate to the hiring committee your attention to detail, level of preparedness, and your professionalism.  Not only does a coaching portfolio allow you to exhibit these qualities, it also allows you to present your personal philosophies on coaching, leadership, and program development in an organized manner.

The Coaching Portfolio Guide is an instructional, membership-based website that helps you develop a personalized portfolio.  Each section of the portfolio guide provides detailed instructions on how to organize your portfolio in a professional manner.  The guide also provides sample documents for each section of your portfolio that you can copy, modify, and add to your personal portfolio.

Whether you’re a beginner basketball player looking for a place to start or a seasoned vet looking to level up your skills, your new go-to secret weapon is Train.

Train is a basketball training and education platform that gives you on-demand access to premium basketball courses created by expert coaches and trainers from around the world. 

Want to get better at blowing by your defender? Learn setup drills with NBA & international pro trainer Marius Williams or how to use the punch drag with NBA trainer Kerry Darting.

Looking to level up your catch and shoot skills? Practice space shooting workouts with former lead female trainer for Kobe Bryant’s Mamba League, San Dixon.

Or if you’re just starting out, learn the basics of shooting and finishing at the basket from international champion, 3 time Romanian player of the year, and Train co-founder, Vlad Moldoveanu.

Train has 32 (and counting) actionable, expert-led, on demand basketball training courses that teach you exactly how to improve your ball handling, shooting, attacking, and more!

For a limited time, Hoop Heads listeners get 35% off monthly, annual, and lifetime plans. Click the button below to start a 7-day free trial and claim your discount.

THANKS, JEFF JURON

If you enjoyed this episode with Jeff Juron let him know by clicking on the link below and sending him a quick shoutout on Twitter:

Click here to thank Jeff Juron on Twitter

Click here to let Mike & Jason know about your number one takeaway from this episode!

And if you want us to answer your questions on one of our upcoming weekly NBA episodes, drop us a line at mike@hoopheadspod.com.

TRANSCRIPT FOR JEFF JURON – SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 845

[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 Suffolk University, Jeff Juron. Jeff, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:14] Jeff Juron: Thanks for having me, Mike.

[00:00:15] Mike Klinzing: Thrilled to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all the things that you’ve been able to do 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. What do you remember?

[00:00:28] Jeff Juron: Yeah. So I grew up in upstate New York in a small town called Glenville, just outside of Albany. And my dad was a high school basketball coach.

And I had an older brother who was four years older than me, who was really into the game when he was young. And so my earliest Memories are just on this old asphalt patch of a court in my backyard that my dad had put down. Just my dad, my brother, and I just shooting, dribbling, playing all hours of the night.

And that’s really on that court is where I developed my love for the game and just tons of memories. We’d play two on one versus my dad. We would play shooting games. We got horse, we got around the world. We had this old floodlight behind the house that would. You know, was on a motion detector, but the court was like just outside where the floodlight would pick up motion.

So every like 30 minutes or an hour, I don’t know what it was, but like the light would turn off and I was the youngest, so I would have to like run back towards the house and jump up and down in front of the floodlight  get the light back on the court so we could all keep shooting and playing.

So those were the memories. It was very much a family thing. And, yeah. Cherished memories. How

[00:01:46] Mike Klinzing: How competitive were you with your brother? Being four years behind him, were you ever able to kind of get to where you were close to being his peer or was it always kind of just, Hey, he was that far ahead of you physically?

[00:01:56] Jeff Juron: He was always just sort of barely out of reach. And so I had constant frustration when you’re competing against him cause you’re losing all the time. And I wasn’t a great loser as a kid. I was bratty, but that changed over time.

Yeah, I mean, I, I think in the end definitely helped develop competitiveness and striving for more, just. Constantly playing against someone who was bigger, faster, stronger than you.

[00:02:30] Mike Klinzing: How much were you and your brother around your dad’s teams growing up?

[00:02:33] Jeff Juron: I was around them all the time. So my brother had more interest.

I was sort of a hoops junkie from day one. And so my dad coached at Bishop McGinn High School, which was in the city of Albany. weeknights.

And I just sit around in the corner of the gym and watch those practices. I was the little kid sitting at the end of the bench as the water boy during the games. You know, I was just, I was really sort of my dad and his players number one fan. And so my, I took a love to it very, very early on.

My, my brother was a better natural athlete than me, but just didn’t have the same love for it. Had other interests. And so for whatever reason, it really stuck with me.

[00:03:27] Mike Klinzing: Who’s the player on your dad’s teams that you remember when you think about those times? Is there one kid that sticks out that maybe showed a special interest in you or that you really liked watching them play or just connected with them?

[00:03:35] Jeff Juron: There’s so many. There’s two in particular Mike Grasso Was a three sport athlete. I think he’d end up playing division one baseball, but he was a point guard, a great athlete, just incredible handle. He would do things that like, I just didn’t think of with the basketball from a, from, from a handle standpoint.

And Steve Scambolari was another guy. He ended up playing and coaching at St. Rose, which is a division two school in Albany, New York. Just like undersized two guard lefty, but just so smooth, filled it up. And obviously as a guard myself, just watching those two guys in particular definitely, definitely took away a lot from both.

[00:04:19] Mike Klinzing: When did you start to take advantage of the fact that your dad had keys to the gym?

[00:04:25] Jeff Juron: So… Yeah, I mean, very early on, I guess, is the short answer. You know, so he coached my youth travel team, so we’d get to the gym early, we’d leave late you know, now, he’s a head coach in Albany and I live in Glenville minutes between the two spots as far as his coaching job.

So I wasn’t in the McGinn gym all day, every day, but like certainly. As he was coaching my travel teams, I was in the gym early and left late.

[00:04:58] Mike Klinzing: As you started to get up into high school and you think about your development as a player. What were some of the things that you yourself did to improve your game?

Were you playing pickup? How much were you working on your game by yourself? Was your dad helping you through that process? Just what did you go about doing to become a better player during your high school years?

[00:05:22] Jeff Juron: Yeah, so leading up to my high school years it was an interesting situation. There was another kid in my town, Sam Zulo, who I grew up with.

His dad was also a high school basketball coach at Shenandoah. And his dad ended up being a New York State Hall of Famer at the high school level, won a state championship in the 80s. And so there’s these two kids in a pretty small town on the outskirts of Albany whose dads were high school basketball coaches.

So we just honestly played together all the time as kids. And so unfortunately he moved away going into high school. At that point in time… Though I’d already gotten pretty deep into AAU. And so the summers was a combination of individual work on my own in the backyard and AAU.

AAU wasn’t quite as year round back then as it is now, but you know, all spring, certainly early summer, I was doing AAU mixed with individual workouts and then the high school season.

[00:06:22] Mike Klinzing: What’s your favorite memory from being a high school basketball player?

[00:06:23] Jeff Juron: Oh, good question. My senior year, we won the sectional championship.

New York is a big state. So winning the sectional championship in section two, which is the Albany area was a big deal for us. And our high school was not, and still to this day is not a basketball powerhouse by any means. And so we had a pretty good group of guys in my class and the class below me, a couple, couple of good college players.

And we ended up winning back to back sectional championships. My senior year and then the year after I graduated. So kind of getting over the top at a school that didn’t exactly have a track record of winning was a big deal.

[00:07:05] Mike Klinzing: When did playing college basketball get on your radar? Was that something that you had been thinking about from the time you were young or did that come a little bit later on, maybe when you’re a sophomore, junior in high school

[00:07:15] Jeff Juron: I think probably my sophomore year was when I realized that I thought it was a definitely. I was a really late bloomer and so I was very skilled because I cared a lot and I worked on my game a lot and I had great coaching, but I was incredibly small my freshman year of high school like five, three, like a buck, 20, like, like really, really small.

And then my sophomore year, I grew a little bit height wise, but then it was still just really skinny. It was honestly really skinny even up to my senior year of high school. But you know, sophomore year, I played varsity as a sophomore. I struggled with the physicality of it, but was skilled enough to kind of make it work.

And then going in my, I had a really good junior high school season. It became pretty clear after my junior high school season that I was going to get recruited, it was unclear at that point, what level.

[00:08:20] Mike Klinzing: So what did that look like as you went into the process, when you look back now, and obviously you’ve been through it on the other side of it, from a coaching standpoint, what do you remember about kind of how you looked at it as a player?

Did your dad kind of walk you through and help you with the process? Just what was the mindset as you were going into that recruitment?

[00:08:38] Jeff Juron: I think I was just fortunate to have really good guidance and a really. good, supportive family through that whole process. And so like, I, I just honestly never remember any sort of pressure from my family or anyone around me to, to, to play higher than the division three level or just like the idea that if you, that, that, that if you’re not getting a scholarship, that it’s some sort of failure.

And my dad’s friends were all high school basketball coaches or college coaches. And so like, I’m just around that perspective constantly as a kid. And so I always thought of division three basketball as a high level. I would go down the street and watch games at union college. Like I probably saw more division three college games as a high schooler than the average kid.

And so I was always very interested in the division three level. I had some sort of light division two. Recruitment and, and light academic division one recruitment during my, my junior year, but that tailed off pretty quickly. It was pretty, pretty clear about the beginning of my senior year that I was going to be a division three player.

And you know, at that point it just became about finding the right fit at the division three level.

[00:09:55] Mike Klinzing: So you end up at Rochester, obviously, really good academic school. Why Rochester? I mean, not beyond the obvious of, they’ve had a great basketball tradition and obviously the academics are top notch, but what do you remember about making that decision?  What kind of pushed you over the top?

[00:10:09] Jeff Juron: I mean, that’s, that’s really it, Mike. Like, it wasn’t that complicated for me. I mean, those, those two things, I mean, elite academics, elite basketball, division three level. The UAA was attractive to me at the time. I was a small town kid and the idea of playing in Chicago, Atlanta, New York city, Boston you know, the rest of the bigger cities in that league was something that was cool, but the most important piece was I just loved my visits.

I really got on with the guys. And in particular, there was, an alum, Jeff Joss, who was from my area he had just recently graduated. I never played with him but he made it to a, to a Final Four at Rochester two years before I entered the program. Knew his family well, knew Jeff well, and he had nothing but great things to say about his experience and that, that really sealed the deal for me.

[00:11:04] Mike Klinzing: What were you thinking about when you went into school as far as academics and career? Was coaching at this point, obviously your dad’s a coach, as you said, a lot of your dad’s friends are coaches, so you’ve been around the coaching profession. Was coaching something that you were thinking about or was it something that you were still just focused on being a player at that point?

[00:11:22] Jeff Juron: Yeah, I definitely was not thinking about it. I had teammates who told me in college that I would be a coach and I kind of pushed back against it. Like I remember having those conversations, like I, I really love to play and I was focused on playing at that time. It really didn’t occur to me.

That I would coach as a career until much later on. What was the adjustment

[00:11:45] Mike Klinzing: like for you on the basketball court going from high school to college? What do you remember about that? And obviously I guess that plays into kind of maybe conversations that you have with your incoming freshmen now about, Hey, this is some things that you got to be prepared for.

So how do you think about that or how did you experience that?

[00:12:02] Jeff Juron: Yeah. So I had a, man, it’s looking back on it luck plays such a role, but I don’t want to say easy, but I had a nice transition to college. I mean, I played right off the bat and for a number of reasons, I think the most important reason is that there was four rotation players from the previous year’s team that was number one in the country for large stretches of the season that were hurt or had to take a leave of absence in the first semester.

And so just immediately you come in and you have opportunity for playing time. And I think the other aspect of it is that I was mentally and emotionally sort of ready for college basketball. When I got there, I see that as a pretty big challenge for some of my incoming guys nowadays as a head coach.

But even if I was physically getting beaten up a little bit as a freshman, I think I thought the game maybe a little bit ahead of the curve for guys my age. And I could deal with the ups and downs a little bit better than guys my age. And I think all of that is just having grown up around coaches, to be honest, and I don’t remember necessarily having specific conversations with my dad or other coaches in my life about handling the ups and downs of the game. But I just think from observing it and being around it so much. So when I got to Rochester, there was opportunity available in the backcourt, both on the ball and off the ball, and I could kind of play both spots, and I did.

First seven, eight games of the year, I started at point guard, and then I actually finished the season as the starting two guard once some of the other guys got back. So I had a good transition. But, it’s just like so, so much of these things are luck. Like if those guys ahead of me didn’t get hurt, I wouldn’t have played, you know?

[00:14:15] Mike Klinzing: You’re a hundred percent right. It’s really interesting when you start talking about the different experiences. So we have, my son’s going to be a senior in high school this year and we have a player that he was a senior last year, graduated and he went to a division three school. And obviously as you’re making that decision, you’re kind of trying to look at the roster, right?

And figure out like, okay, who’s coming back and where might I fit and this and that. And so I was talking to his dad the other day and he said, yeah, he went to the school and the guy who was the, they knew the starting point guard was going to be back, but they felt like, okay, he might have a chance to be a backup point guard based on just the way the rest of the roster looked.

And then a couple of weeks before school started, they got a guy in who transferred who’s a point guard who Now it’s going to supplant the starting point guard, it looks like. And so the starting point guard now becomes the backup point guard. And this kid from our school that went there with the idea of like, here’s the depth chart.

And now the depth chart has changed. And to your point, it’s like you can get into a situation where luck sort of breaks against you or luck breaks for you. And a part of that, right, is you got to take advantage of whichever situation it is. Either you persevere through the, through the tough luck or You take advantage of the luck that you did get and kind of seize that opportunity by the horns and really jump in there and do it sounds like that’s what you were able to do.

And I’m sure those are conversations that you’re having with your guys as they’re coming in the door now here for their first year as freshmen and they’re getting acclimated to school. And of course the nice part, which we can talk about at some point too, you guys got the eight days of, of time that you can get with them in the gym a little bit out in the off season, which you guys never had at the division three level, but tell me a little bit about, I know we’re jumping ahead, but tell me a little bit about how you kind of.

Maybe use your own experiences to help your guys. And obviously now you’ve had experience as a head coach, but just what do you talk to your freshmen about as they’re coming in, in terms of the transition, both academically, athletically, socially?

[00:16:08] Jeff Juron: Yeah. Yeah. So I in terms of using my own playing experience, like, so I started off ahead of the curve, right.

As a freshman It’s funny, when I was a senior I sprained my knee prior to the season, so I missed some of the, the preseason, but I was healthy by the time game started and sort of expected to just return to my starting role as point guard and was effectively beaten out for the spot by another guy.

And so I’ve gone now, like in my career, from a freshman who’s starting on a really good team to a senior who’s coming off the bench on a really good team. And I just think that that experience in both situations allows me to relate to players on the team now who are dealing with the whole range of issues that players go through in regards to their role.

And so I think I have some empathy maybe for both sides of the coin. And, and yeah, I mean, I think that’s something I try to do all the time as a head coach is. Remember that I was young once too. And oftentimes you’ll see a young player doing things that are actively working against his own self interest and it drives you up the wall as a coach and yet at the same time, you need to like sit back and remember that you did those things as a player, like no one’s immune to this stuff.

And so you’re in the position you’re in as a head coach to help that young person. And so yeah, all those experience, I mean, I just feel like all those experiences as a player are so useful to handling any range of conversation like that.

[00:18:12] Mike Klinzing: What are some things that you see guys doing early on that you notice, like you have seen this before?

This guy’s really trying too hard or he’s doing this or that. What are some of those things that you see?

[00:18:22] Jeff Juron: The obvious one is just being just too outcome oriented, just, just focusing entirely on for young guys, whether or not they’re playing. And it’s sometimes it’s such a shock to these incoming freshmen that they’re not going to play, or if they are going to play, they’re going to play a role that’s dramatically different than what they’re used to in high school.

I think it is our responsibility as head coaches in the recruiting process to try to prepare players for that. Transition, but it’s also hard. It’s a recruiting process and you’re trying to entice players to come to your school to help make your program better. So it’s difficult.

It’s not that you’re ever misleading kids. It’s just that you highlight the positive things in the recruiting process. But I just think if you can insert a healthy dose of realism into the recruiting process, you can help manage some of those issues after the kids are on board.

[00:19:29] Mike Klinzing: One of the things that you said earlier that I found interesting, and it’s sort of a conversation that we’ve had a couple of times with division three head coaches, is you talked about how you had been very familiar with division three basketball.

But we all know that the knowledge out there of division three basketball on the behalf of high school players and high school parents isn’t always up to that level when you’re talking to kids, how many kids that you’re actively recruiting will tell you, Hey, I’ve. Never seen a division three game or I’ve have almost no experience with it.  Like, do you run into that a lot or no?

[00:20:03] Jeff Juron: So I used to run into it a lot since I moved to Boston and now coach at Suffolk, it’s a little bit less now. There’s just so many division three schools out here. And so I just think kids have more of an opportunity to get out and see a division three game. But I would imagine that in some parts of the country, it’s still 100 percent true that most high school kids have not seen a division three game in person and yeah, that is too bad I think that it would help those players in terms of Their self-awareness to get out and see how good the game is at this level. It would help them in the recruiting process. It would help them in their own individual growth.

[00:20:50] Mike Klinzing: I could not agree more. I mean, I think when you go and you watch a division three game, you see how good the skill level is of the players that are playing Division three. And I tell people all the time, like people have no idea and understanding when you go and you sit at like a youth tournament or you sit at a Hey, you turn them in and you hear different people talk and this and that, and there’s obviously so much misinformation out there with social media and kids posting this and that and the other thing. And you just, you want to tell people, Hey, have you been to one of these games? Have you gone and seen how good the level of play is at division three?

I think there’s just a lot of people that are unfortunately unaware of it. And to your point, I think if you’re in an area like we’re here in Cleveland where we have lots of division three schools, so I think there’s probably more knowledge here. Obviously the state of Ohio has tons of division threes.

So there’s a lot more, just like you said, where kids are familiar with it, but it’s still interesting even that the number of kids just to get, because again, what do you see everybody, everybody wants to post their, their division one or division two, their scholarship offers and this and that. And I think people sometimes again, forget that man, division three basketball is really Thank you.

Really good. And obviously you’ve spent most of your entire career there. And so that’s where your experience lies. Let’s talk a little bit about your, your playing career after you graduate. So what’s the plan when you graduate as coaching and you’re on your radar at that point, or are you still, Hey, I’m going to get a chance to go play overseas.

We can talk about that in a second, but just where were your, what was your mindset when you graduated?

[00:22:20] Jeff Juron: Yeah. So my playing career overseas was super brief. It was. Effectively like an extended tryout. I was in Eindhoven, Netherlands and really was there for two and a half, three months before coming back, things just didn’t work out.

And so when I got back honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. I was not rushing to get into coaching. I took a job as a paralegal in the Albany area and started taking my LSATs and submitting law school applications. I was a political science English major. At Rochester my friends at the time had moved on to Boston, New York City, DC, working nice jobs.

And probably a part of me at that time just felt a little pressure to kind of utilize the degree. And you know, we all know First year coaching opportunities are not always the best you know, financial gambits.

[00:23:24] Mike Klinzing: They’re not super lucrative. Is that what you’re saying?

[00:23:26] Jeff Juron: Yeah, I think, yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say.

I think there was some pressure that I felt a little bit early on to just sort of, you know do something different. And yet while I was doing. All of that you know, sort of preparing myself for law school. I was living at home and Luke Flockerzi, who was an assistant of mine at Rochester was now after I graduated the head coach at Skidmore College, which is right down the road from me, and he’s on the verge of his third year, he’s, he’s begun to really sort of turn the tide of his program.

And he asked me to join the coaching staff and I can’t remember exactly. I’m not sure if it was, I think I was getting paid a little bit, but it was… It was, it was not much, but it was an opportunity to coach. And so I did it. And you know, that, that year was talking about walk earlier. I mean, that year changed my entire life.

I mean, if Luke wasn’t there and didn’t offer me that opportunity, I honest to God, don’t know if I end up. Coaching as a career, I can truly say I was, I was prepared to just go to law school, but he gave me the opportunity. Skidmore has a turnaround season. And then in another event that you just can’t predict my college coach, Mike Near, who won 600 plus games in a national championship and is sort of a legend in division three circles.

Retires. And so no one in the Rochester basketball alumni family could have predicted that or believed that, but all of a sudden the jobs open and Luke was right on the back end of, of, of a terrific turnaround at, at Skidmore and, and, and, and he gets the job at Rochester and days later he gives me a call and asks if I want to join him and take the graduate assistant spot on staff. And it’s, and now I have this opportunity to really fast track my coaching career where I’m joining one of the best division three programs with room to grow because there’s a full time position on staff. And I’ve only been in coaching one year and you can start to look ahead and see how this path might work for you in terms of ultimately becoming a head coach one day.

And so, Again, I just can’t come back to this enough. Like that was just lucky. Like, I don’t know how else to describe it. I often struggle. When, like my assistants or younger coaches ask me, how did you decide how to go about your those

[00:26:24] Mike Klinzing: thousands of emails that you sent out?

Is that what you’re saying?

[00:26:26] Jeff Juron: Yeah, no, no. I didn’t do that. And like survivor’s guilt in a way, but I was fortunate because I was a player in the program. I was fortunate because Luke did a great job at the right time and I was fortunate because my college coach retired and all of a sudden I wind up in a place where if I work hard and keep my head down and do the right things, I have a reasonable path towards becoming a head coach fairly quickly.

And not everybody gets the same breaks.

[00:26:55] Mike Klinzing: All right. I have two questions related to what we just talked about there. One, going back to the very beginning of the decision to take that job with Luke at Skidmore, what was the conversation like with your parents? Obviously, your dad is in coaching.

He knows that it may not be the most. lucrative job, especially not at the beginning. So you go through and you have this degree from Rochester, great institution. As you said, your friends are all getting jobs in other places. I’m sure they’re making a lot more money in their first year than what you were going to make at Skidmore.

So what was that conversation like with your parents? Was they, were they immediately supportive and understanding? Was it a difficult conversation? What do you remember about that?

[00:27:36] Jeff Juron: My parents have been supportive every step of the way. So there was never a difficult conversation with my parents in regards to you know, taking a job that might be or not might be financially lucrative.

They, from day one have told me to do what I want to do and follow your passions, do what you love. And so nothing was ever difficult. I can tell you the Skidmore decision wasn’t difficult because I was still sort of straddling two decisions at that point. Right. So I took the job at Skidmore, not knowing that I was going to be, I, I still firmly believe that that time that I was going to law school, the, the challenging decision for me was once Luke got the job at Rochester, whether or not to essentially at that point, go two feet into coaching.

That was the real choice for me. And that was hard. And I actually sort of took some time and, and, and now it seems crazy cause it’s my profession. It’s what I love to do. And I’m happy that like a younger, dumber version of myself made the right choice. But I did take a long time to make that choice.

And I probably frustrated Luke with the amount of time I took to make that choice. So sorry, sorry, Luke.

[00:28:53] Mike Klinzing: What did you like about coaching? Because clearly when it’s not, On your radar and you love the game of basketball, but the coaching side of it wasn’t something that you were really looking at or studying.

So when you get in there that first year and you get around it and you get involved in it, what did you like about it initially? And then maybe what were the things that you had reservations about that that caused you to maybe take that extra time before you decided, Hey, I’m gonna jump all in on this.

[00:29:20] Jeff Juron: Yeah, there was no reservations about coaching. The, the thing I realized instantly that I missed is just the locker room the intensity of the locker room, right. And, and for good and bad and what that can do for a team and what that can do for relationships. And I’m a competitive guy.

And so just you sort of instantly realize that, okay, I missed this. I know I’m not playing anymore, but just in terms of the intensity and being on a team and, and, and improving over the course of a season, all of that stuff, I just, Missed. What, what was the other part of the question?

[00:30:05] Mike Klinzing: So, the second part would be what was it that you loved?

I mean, what was it that you’re like, man, this is, this is the thing that’s gonna push me over the top. This is why, this is why I want to go in and stay with the coaching.

[00:30:21] Jeff Juron: I think it was a series of conversations with Luke. I don’t think it was any one moment, but I think, I think towards the end of the season, in various ways, Luke communicated to me that, like, he thought I could be pretty good at it.

And that was neat to hear. And so you start to grow confidence in your voice. And you know, so I can’t remember any singular moment, but just sort of. You know, the, the belief that, hey, this is, this is something that maybe I have a little bit of a natural knack for because of my upbringing, because of some fortunate experiences I’ve had as a player, because I’ve been around a bunch of great coaches growing up.

I just maybe this the thought sort of occurs to you that maybe this is sort of in my blood.

[00:31:15] Mike Klinzing: What did you learn during your time as an assistant in terms of what it takes to be the kind of assistant that eventually you might want to hire when you’re a head coach. What did you learn about being an assistant coach?

[00:31:27] Jeff Juron: I think the biggest lesson is being a self starter. And that was something that Luke talked a lot with me about, there’s so much responsibility that a coaching staff needs to divvy up on a day to day basis and just everything simply can’t be communicated from the head coach down.

It can’t be a series of directives. The assistant coaches have to be proactive. They have to. Be themselves. They need to you know, not wait for specific instructions. And so just becoming a, becoming a self starter seeing processes through to the end. Those were conversations I had a lot early on.

[00:32:13] Mike Klinzing: How did you go about developing your X’s and O’s? Obviously, you’re learning a lot from Luke and you’re observing him and you’re watching him. You guys are having conversations in the coach’s office and wherever else. But what did you do to develop yourself? And to help you to think the game better, where were you going to get that kind of information?

Are you watching other games, college games, NBA, high school? Are you going in clinics? Just what was your process for improving in that area?

[00:32:42] Jeff Juron: Well, you’re improving every day on the job if you’re doing scouting reports, right? Because every time you scout a team, you’re diving deep into what they’re doing and you’re learning new things.

And I definitely remember in that first year at Skidmore, just cause as a player at Rochester one system and I played for one coach at Rochester and, and Luke was good for me too at that time in my career, because he. He had worked and played for some different coaches who saw the game in different ways and was willing to adapt his style to the strengths of the team in any particular year.

And so just I only worked for one head coach Luke. And so in those six years that I was with him, we actually played a variety of different styles. So learning different styles through him, learning different styles through conducting scouting reports. And I think later on, then once you sort of have already gotten somewhat deep into it, then you start sort of seeking it out on your own.

And nowadays, I mean, just the internet, right? You can find anything you want on the internet for better or worse. And sometimes I actually think that’s a challenge for young coaches now because there’s so much information out there and kind of, I imagine it’s probably a challenge for young coaches nowadays to sort of distill down their style, given that there’s so much knowledge out there, and I almost feel lucky that I came up at a time where I didn’t know, I’m aware of all the different styles, and so I knew sort of the things that I knew, and maybe that’s sometimes a better thing.

[00:34:26] Mike Klinzing: That is a good point. And you can go, it’s like anything, right? I mean, you can go and find a million different things that you’re like, Hey, this is awesome. I’d love to be able to use this, whether it’s just from watching tape, whether it’s from reading a book, or I know I’ve said this before, but I tend to be one of those people that I’ll see something, whether it’s And X is an O thing, or it might be a leadership thing, or it just might be something like personal development.

And I’ll grab it. I’ll be like, Oh man, I’m going to try this. Or let’s, let’s do this with the team and I’ll be excited about it for two weeks or three weeks. And then I’ll see something else. I’ll jump to that. I’ll jump to that next thing instead of just saying, okay, what, what am I, what am I really all about?

Whether it’s again, as a basketball philosophy or whether it’s just in my own development, I’ll get kind of caught up in like this.

I think I’ve gotten better at that, but when I was younger, I was definitely, I was definitely much more like that. And to your point, it’s now just so easy to be able to find stuff no matter where you want to go on the internet. You can just. And it’s all, and I mean, there’s a ton, as you said, there’s a ton of good things out there.

It’s just a matter of how do you comb through all that and figure out what exactly I’m going to use. So, to that point, how did you go about kind of collecting and gathering things as you started to put your thoughts together? Where you might want to eventually take over your own program and become a head coach.

How did you kind of organize what you were learning? Did you have Google Drive? Did you put things in the old fashioned three ring binder? Did you have a shoe box where you just collect? How’d you go about putting together the things that you felt were going to help you if you eventually became a head coach?

[00:36:10] Jeff Juron: Yeah. I don’t know that I did a great job of that. I did not have… The old three ring binder. I did not have Google drive. When I got the job at Suffolk, I, I carried over a lot of the things. That we did at Rochester. And so that’s, that’s the stuff that I knew, like, intimately, like I knew, and, and we ran sort of a, a Princeton hybrid and a lot of Princeton actions in the half court a lot of sort of spread ball screen and drive and kick in transition and.

Like that’s the stuff that I knew and that’s really largely what we’ve continued to use here at Suffolk. And yes, we’ve tweaked every year, but that skeleton has really remained the same. And so you know, I. Yeah. I mean, maybe I’m not curious enough, but If it ain’t broke,

[00:37:07] Mike Klinzing: don’t fix it. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, Jeff.

[00:37:08] Jeff Juron: I’ve carried over a lot of that stuff. And, and listen part of it is I like this. I like the style, Princeton stuff. You know, spread ball. I actually played point guard. I played off the ball. It’s a system that I think I would have enjoyed playing in as a player space floor, room to drive so, yeah, I, I that’s, that, that’s what we do now, but you know, nowadays with Twitter and everything you can just bookmark stuff, right, so I guess nowadays you know, I do have a pretty extensive bookmark library on Twitter, but yeah, it’s hard to curate that stuff.

[00:37:49] Mike Klinzing: It’s hard to curate all that stuff. I mean, I’ll find myself going through and like you, I got a ton of bookmarks of things that I’m like, Oh yeah, I want to check that out or do that. And you know, it’ll catch your eye. And then it’s like, okay, you got to do that. But then you also got to figure out when can I actually go back through this and figure out what can I.

Incorporate into what we do, right? It’s one thing to see something and be like, Oh, that looks great. And then it’s another thing to, to dive as deep into it as you need to be able to incorporate that with your team or your program, depending upon what you’re looking at.

[00:38:16] Jeff Juron: Right. And you also need to know all the ways to fix it when it goes wrong.

[00:38:26] Mike Klinzing: There you go. You got too much stuff in there. All right. Take me back to the interview process. When you get the job at Suffolk, what do you remember about that?

[00:38:32] Jeff Juron: Yeah, I remember going into it being a little bit tentative just because the, the track record of Suffolk as a basketball program wasn’t great when I interviewed and so I went into the process maybe a little bit skeptical, but I was really blown away by the process.

It was a two day sort of very professional, very thorough. interview. And during the interview, I actually learned about plans for the expansion of the athletic department the expansion of, of resources towards athletics that were set to occur in the years ahead. And so, I felt like I was sort of maybe at that point in on something that maybe others didn’t know about and really impressed by our athletic director, Kerry McConnell, who’s spent some time at Rochester and that’s probably why I was offered an interview.

But he yeah, he just really laid out a vision for the department and he was, he was, he was upfront about where the program was at the time, but he also had a strategy for hiring young coaches in my position and our other head coaching position in the years ahead that have. That really paid off.

It has really paid off for the entire department. And so I was blown away by the interview. I knew pretty much by the time I had driven all the way back to Rochester after the interview that if offered the job, I was going to take it. There’s, there’s, there’s so many things about the university that are attractive.

I mean, it’s a terrific school in the middle of Boston. You can walk to the TD Garden, you can walk to the Boston Harbor you can walk to the Boston Common. I mean, we’re, we’re just really… In such a great part of the city. The academics are very strong. It’s a great business school, great law school.

And there’s tons of kids playing hoop in New England and in the Northeast, and I just felt immediately like this is a place that I could recruit to and also an exciting place to live and work. So I pretty much knew by the time. I got home from the interview that if offered I would accept the job.

[00:40:50] Mike Klinzing: Did you have questions for them? I often think what’s interesting is clearly they obviously have questions for you, but going into that job, what questions did you have for them? Was it about the commitment to the program based on sort of the history?

[00:41:04] Jeff Juron: I think so, yeah, so it was, Kerry was a new AD when I got hired.

He was only one year in, I think, maybe two. And so yeah, I kind of wanted to hear what the plan was for the department and what resources I would have. And you know, by the end of the interview, I was firmly convinced that I would have enough to be able to run a successful program.

[00:41:33] Mike Klinzing: When you got there and you looked around, what’s the first week or two on the job? Like, what are some of the things that you immediately said? These are my first priority. Obviously you want to get in connection with. Talk to them, guys who are returning and you got to start getting out and thinking about recruiting, but what were some of the administrative things that kind of you wanted to take care of that you had to, that you had to get a handle on right away?

You’re like, Hey, we got to do these things if we want to be successful.

[00:42:00] Jeff Juron: Yeah, I had to do a lot of research on the school and, while. You know, Rochester is in the Northeast. It’s closer to Ohio than it is to Boston. You know, it’s almost Midwestern in a lot of ways.

And so it, it did feel like a regional shift for me to come to Boston. And I did not know much about the league or the players in the program. I had not seen them play, so I just think immediately you have to familiarize yourself with certainly the student athletes on roster but then also the institution, like I’m the first thing that you have to do when you take over a program is get out there and recruit and try to find some better players. And you have to know what you’re recruiting to. So I had to, had to dive deep into the university and find out where the university drew its students from. And You know, just try to become an expert so that when I’m giving tours or I’m speaking to a family or to a kid on the phone I know what I’m talking about.

[00:43:06] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, without that knowledge of the institution and knowing what you’re selling is clearly key and obviously the longer you’re there, the more that develops. But to your point, coming in from outside of the regional area where You’re not familiar maybe with those players. You’re not familiar with the schools that you’re playing against.

You’re not familiar with the area of what you’re trying to sell. So yeah, I can see we’re getting caught up on that. It was pretty immediate. What do you remember about the conversations with the returning players? What were some of the things that you wanted to get across to them in terms of what you expected from the program and your philosophy?

What did you share with them in those first conversations?

[00:43:44] Jeff Juron: I think that just there would be an increased expectation in terms of their commitment level over the course of the year. Those were the, those were the conversations early on. I mean, you can only change so much in your first year. And you’re also going in, not quite sure how many of the returning players will want to be a part of your new program and how many of the returning players you’ll want to be a part of your program. And so you don’t quite know those things, but you do want to set some clear expectations. And so, yeah, I remember a mixed bag of conversations where I sort of would lay out what the year round commitment to basketball would look like for the future of.

Suffolk and you know, having really mixed reactions from the players in terms of yeah, that excites me, or, you know what, like, I’m all set coach, like I’m, I’m, I’m good.

[00:44:48] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. Stepping over from that assistant chair to the head coaching position. What do you think? What was the biggest adjustment for you?

Does one thing stand out as this is the biggest change from being an assistant to being a head coach? I mean, there’s probably a million things, but what’s the, what’s the main one big thing that you’d say, Hey, this is, this is the biggest difference. And you noticed it right away.

[00:45:13] Jeff Juron: Yeah, the biggest difference for me, just the volume of decisions that you’re making.

You know, everything from what the team’s having for lunch, what time the bus is leaving. Are we taking vans or a bus? Are we getting a post game meal? What time are we going into the locker room pre game? How are we going to handle our warm ups? Who’s ordering the gear? Like, it just… You know, I could go on and on, right.

But it’s the volume of those small decisions. Some of them are basketball decisions, but a lot of them are organizational and administrative. And it can make you weary by the end of the day sometimes to the point where you’re not your best by the time practice starts.

And so just trying to get a grip on that and. Trying to pace yourself, use your summers well to get ahead of some stuff. That piece of it, kind of the emotional toll and just the sheer volume of things that you need to make decisions on you can’t, you can’t replicate it. You can’t prepare for it as an assistant.

[00:46:20] Mike Klinzing: Did you fully realize it or no? I mean, did you, when you’re watching Luke and you’re there as an assistant, are you Are you aware of all those decisions that he’s making and you just kind of take them, I don’t want to say take them lightly, but you’re just not really processing how much thought goes into those decisions?

Or are you maybe just not even aware the decisions were being made? If that question makes any sense.

[00:46:39] Jeff Juron: No, it makes sense. In short, no, you’re not aware that, I mean, and I think if I was aware, I would have tried to maybe prepare myself more. I don’t know how I would have done that, but. You’re not aware of the emotional toll, so to speak, like, like this win or loss goes on your record, right?

Just that stuff early on and early on, you can get caught up in win loss and listen, like, not that you don’t anymore, but like you, you learn how to win better and lose better as you go on. But I don’t think I was fully aware of the emotional tone. I don’t think I was aware of the volume of decisions.

The other thing is that I just think that this is a tremendous strength for, for Luke. He’s very organized. I never felt that in the office as his assistant, like, Oh man, this guy’s struggling under the weight of decisions right now. Whereas my earliest systems probably were.

[00:47:37] Mike Klinzing: Clearly after you get the job, one of the next biggest priorities is, Hey, we got to start recruiting and getting the type of players that we want in our program. So even not going back, maybe necessarily to that first class, but just in general, what’s your philosophy on recruiting? How do you go about putting together? The list of players that you’re going to recruit from and just maybe walk me through the process of, of what it’s like from identifying a player to actually getting a guy to commit.

[00:48:07] Jeff Juron: Yeah. I think as a division three head coach, you’re, you’re sort of constantly trying to strike that balance between like, can you get the kid and also not selling yourself short. Right. And so you know, get ability is kind of the best ability in. Recruiting, right? Like at the division three level, can this player get into your school?

Is he a good financial fit for your school? That will rule out far more players than any other factor, like those two things. And so you need to do some digging early on as you recruit. players and you recruit their families about is, is there a likelihood here that Suffolk is going to be a good fit for this family?

And then at the same time you have to balance that with you, you, you can’t, you can’t quite do that with just the basketball side. So if, if you see a player who you’re like, Oh, that player is a scholarship player. And you think. Like, ah, I don’t know, like probably a waste of time if I went out and recruited him.

Well you’re never going to get the kids that you need to win at this level. And so I just think that you need to recruit with imagination when it comes to their basketball talent. You need to sort of, even if you think a kid might be too good, you have to kind of imagine ways he might fall to you.

And at the same time, you’re sort of doing your homework furiously behind the scenes to figure out, well, would this kid even say yes to Suffolk anyway, or are we not the right academic fit? Are we not the right financial fit? Are we not the right social, cultural fit? So it’s a constant sort of balance.

[00:50:02] Mike Klinzing: AAU versus high school basketball, do you have a preference watching a kid and evaluating them. Obviously, the one thing that we always hear on the pod is AAU, it allows you to go and see a lot of kids in a shorter period of time, which clearly you can’t do on the high school level, but when it just comes to strictly evaluating a kid and getting a feel for what they may or may not be able to do as a basketball player in your program, what are the pros and cons of watching them play with their high school team versus watching them play with their AAU team?

[00:50:31] Jeff Juron: Yeah, the, the pros of AAU are just what you said. It’s just streamlined. You see more kids in a shorter period of time. And if I had to choose one, I would choose AAU for that reason, because time is scarce. But you know, I think the pro of the AAU I’m sorry, the high school experiences. You sort of get to see a player in, in a role whatever that role is.

And so sometimes out here in New England, we recruit often from prep schools where the division three players might be the seventh or eighth guy coming off the bench. And they’re clearly good enough to play at your level, but you know, they’re not better than the scholarship players that are playing ahead of them.

And so I do think that there’s some value. In seeing them in their high school setting, seeing how they respond to coaching, seeing how they respond to maybe a reduced role. So. Yeah, you can’t really paint it with a broad brush cause there’s some great AAU coaches and then there’s some bad high school programs, right?

Yeah. So it’s hard to pin down, but I do think that with high school teams, you can kind of see the kid maybe a little bit more in his natural setting and you can maybe, maybe evaluate some of the non basketball things a little bit better, if that makes sense.

[00:51:58] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. What’s one of the number one intangibles that you look for?

[00:52:02] Jeff Juron: Just being able to respond on the court and To things that don’t go your way, to things that do go your way. You know, we just we’ve sort of stolen from Jay Wright in that regard. Just the whole concept of attitude. Jay Wright’s first job was at Rochester, by the way.

So I’m a huge fan of his. Had a chance to, to meet him a couple of times and be on Zooms with him where he’s discussing basketball. I’m not close with him by any means. He has no idea who I am, but from afar, I’ve admired. And you know, certainly his whole concept of attitude, just the idea of.

You know, we want to be thought out in terms of how we respond to stuff on the court, and we want to be we want to be able to handle things that don’t go our way well, and we want to handle situations that do go our way well, and you know, we want to gain a competitive advantage in that category, and so yeah, we do look for that in our high school recruits, and certainly if you can start further down that line You know, the better off you’re going to be, right.

But you know, it, like everything else it’s a balance. You have to balance, can you get the kid? And is the kid talented enough to make your program better? And does he love your school? So there’s, there’s all that stuff, but you know, we are watching kind of the immediate responses on the court.

[00:53:33] Mike Klinzing: All right. So once you get a kid and you get them on campus, they commit, they’re in your program, and now you’re in a practice setting with your team. What does it look like in terms of helping them to develop that skill of being able to react to things good and bad? What are you guys talking about?

How are you developing that once they’re, once they’re part of your program?

[00:53:58] Jeff Juron: It’s a lot of film work is oftentimes these things don’t, these things happen quickly. And sometimes it can just be like a look or like a palms up thing, right? Like ref makes a call. You don’t like player puts his palms up.

Rolls his eyes, his, like that’s it, right? Like you’re trying to get rid of that. You’re trying to get them onto the next play. You’re trying to help them have more of a, sort of a, a warrior mentality on the court. And it’s not easy, right? It’s not easy. You have to train these responses.

And so you have to, you have to sort of put ’em in those situations in practice. And so you know, do the thing as coaches where you don’t make calls in practice, right? Swall the whistle to force your guys to play through some stuff. You do that from time to time. You play out time and score situations as much as possible to put them in as many pressurized situations.

And you got to create some sort of consequence to them. So they’re, they’re taken seriously. It’s. It’s all of that, right? But I think oftentimes, I mean, we, when we’re in the office one on one with the guys looking at film you know, we try not to overload them with film, but we’ll, we’ll often have a few clips that are totally basketball related, like, Hey, you made the wrong read here.

Hey, your footwork is wrong here. But we almost always try in one on one settings to include. Some sort of non, non basketball, some a mistake response, or you know, an example of a guy being a great teammate, you want to point out the positive too, so you know, all those things, but it’s no one thing, but all those things accumulate.

[00:55:41] Mike Klinzing: How often are you doing those one on one film sessions with guys?

[00:55:45] Jeff Juron:  Certainly for our rotation players once a week you know, for our non rotation guys, we have less film for them. So you try as much as possible to get clips from practice. But the reality is certainly as you get later in the season, it’s probably one time a week individually with your rotation guys.

[00:56:10] Mike Klinzing: When you have them in there and you’re talking to them, how long is that process?

[00:56:14] Jeff Juron: It depends on the kid, depends on the day, right? You know, in general, the philosophy is not to keep it long. Like I, so like student athletes that suffered, like they just have a lot on their plate. They’re  living in the city.

They obviously have their academics, they have basketball. Many of them work part time jobs in addition to help make the cost of living in Boston more affordable. And so you’re not trying to wear them down. And I am constantly. mindful of just the toll of the entire season, right?

You don’t want burnout. But once a week for 10 to 15 minutes with a player, I think is enough to sort of reinforce the points that you’re making over the course of the season without risking burnout.

[00:57:05] Mike Klinzing: It makes total sense. And I think that’s another thing that.

I’m sure that when you start talking with high school players and high school parents and the amount of time commitment, I’m not sure that there’s a lot of people that really understand. The amount of time that, that guys put in both again with the basketball. But as you said, also, when you’re at a great academic school, the, the time that you’re putting in with the, with the academics, how do you handle that from a practice standpoint?

Let’s just break it down preseason and then in season, how long you guys typically practice and then what’s your practice when during the day to usually practice at what time of day, or does it vary based on gym availability and schedule and just how do you guys go about organizing the practices?

[00:57:48] Jeff Juron: Yeah.  So. Like early on preseason, most of our practices are two hours. And then as you get into first semester games, we might cut it down to about 90 minutes. And then as we get into the second semester, I stick around 90 minutes for January. And then you get into February and March and those practices become maybe something closer to an hour on the court, plus individual skill, plus film, plus lift, kind of mixed in throughout. So that, that’s the broad scope of the year. I’ve had to get much more creative at Suffolk and certainly sort of in the COVID era. Yeah. Post COVID era with practice scheduling. We have grad students in the program.

Grad school here at Suffolk is a huge strength of the university. And it’s not something that we’ve particularly sought out as part of any sort of pre planned recruiting strategy. But just the reality is because our grad programs are very strong and because a lot of kids in New England would like to ultimately move and live in Boston after graduation.

You know, we get, we get a lot of outreach and that’s been, that’s been great. Right. In some ways, but also created some, some real challenges for us. And so one of one of those challenges is. Just playing practice because most of our grad school classes are at night. Most of our undergrad classes are during the day.

So our practices tend to be early afternoon, maybe late afternoon. But they’re far more irregular maybe now than I would like. I, I, in an ideal world, we’re practicing, you know. Three to five every day. We rarely have consecutive days now where we’re at the same time and that’s, that’s a bit of a challenge.

And often we have a guy or two, maybe. Coming late or leaving early and, and, and listen, that’s part of D3. That’s just, I mean, that’s true anywhere. That’s not just Suffolk. That’s not just COVID, but, we’re trying to manage those challenges and trying to maximize the time when we have the entire team on the court in practice as much as possible.

[01:00:06] Mike Klinzing: What does your practice planning process look like in terms of what you’re actually doing on the floor at practice? Do you like to follow a set sort of itinerary, for lack of a better way of saying it, where you defense first, then offense, transition, just how do you organize your practices and what does your practice planning process look like?

[01:00:25] Jeff Juron: Yeah, the practice planning process generally early in the day, I’ll make some first draft of it and get it out to my assistant. And then by the time we’re both in the office together, maybe late morning, early afternoon, we just go over the practice and kind of finalize it. I’ve had different sort of structures of practice over the years.

I don’t know that there’s any particular structure in terms of defense first, skill work first. This past year we were definitely more of a defensive team and it became pretty clear after four or five games that we were going to earn our money on the defensive side of the ball. And so this past year, we definitely were heavier in terms of defensive skill work, defensive teamwork earlier on in practice and then flowing from there to offensive stuff. But I am flexible with that kind of depending on the team, depending on the year.

[01:01:28] Mike Klinzing: How do you balance out? I know this is one of the things that a question that I often like to ask just because I think different coaches have different thoughts about it.

But when you’re in your actual practice setting, how much do you balance out? Coaching, meaning, I guess, talking with the players versus keeping the action flowing. I think there’s, I don’t know if it’s necessarily a debate, but I think it’s one of the things that coaches are always talking about is how much do I try to get my point across?

Do I point out something we did well, something that we need to work on, a mistake that was made versus I don’t want to be blowing that whistle or stepping in and interrupting all the time because guys need to be able to play with the flow. And as you talked about earlier. They got to be able to play through mistakes and have a, have a response to that in a positive way.

So how do you balance out just how much you’re talking throughout a practice?

[01:02:15] Jeff Juron: Yeah, I do think that that’s a common mistake for young coaches and, and I still make it. You just find yourself talking too much and you know, you, you know it for sure when you look around and you like the eye contact isn’t great and it’s like, all right, like I need to shut up.

But you also realize over time that like we film practices and so. Like, I’ll have time after practice to make teaching points with the players and that’s a benefit of technology nowadays. So I’ve learned that over time and done a better job of it and tried to, tried to keep my coaching to sort of sound bites during practice as much as possible, but yeah, I’m sure, you know.

If you ask my players, some of them would say I still talk too much. But I do think it’s, I do think it’s something that you have to be mindful of and try to avoid over talking for sure.

[01:03:04] Mike Klinzing: Well, let’s talk about the leadership piece within your team. In terms of your players, how do you think about leadership and helping your players to develop the leadership qualities that we know that good teams need to have leaders in the locker room and on the floor?

So how do you give your guys the space to be able to develop as leaders? What are some of the things you do?

[01:03:26] Jeff Juron: Yeah, I, so when it comes to captains, like we’re pretty we’re pretty specific with the team that when we. When we talk about our captains you know, these are not the only guys that can exhibit leadership.

And I think one of the things that we try to do is just define all the different ways that you can lead. And I everyone has in their mind, the thought of the vocal leader that. You know, rallies effort and inspires teammates. And some guys are capable of that. And some guys think they’re capable of that and aren’t very good at that.

And others are comfortable leading quietly, leading by example. You also need followers too, right? Like you need, everybody can’t be leading. And so I don’t know that I have any one singular approach. It’s clear that you need good leaders on your team. And I try to incorporate as many of our upper classmen in that leadership as possible, try to inspire them to consider themselves as leaders. And then identify that, Hey, leading can look like a lot of different things. And so again, I’m not sure it’s any one singular approach, but you’re trying to help them understand that leadership can look like a lot of different things and they’re all important.

And that without it, we’re not going to get anywhere fast. And so I don’t know if that’s a good response. I probably an area that I could do a little bit better at, but we certainly don’t have like a leadership training program. I know some coaches do a much better job of that stuff.

[01:05:13] Mike Klinzing: I think what I hear you saying, and I think it’s true is you have to, to me, what, what’s always important is that no matter what you do with leadership, I feel like you have to make sure that there’s space for guys to lead. In other words, it can’t you’ve been around probably programs and I’ve been around places where the coach is really the only voice.

And I think that’s becoming less and less. I think coaches are much more aware of at this point including players in the decision making and that kind of thing, and just what you were talking about. But I’ve certainly been around places where just coaches might talk about leadership, but then they Don’t ever give their players room to be able to actually step up and take the lead.

And I think that, that to me is what I hear you saying is that there are opportunities within your program for guys to lead and you’re talking to them about that. And to me, that’s really, I think where that’s where the secret sauce of leadership lies, whether or not you do it in a formal way or a more informal way, I think you’re going to develop leaders.

And obviously at the division three level, the leadership is important, not just during the season, but also in the off season, just because of the limited contact that. You guys can have… So I guess that leads into what, what do you do with your players as the season ends and school is ending and they’re going off to the summer for whatever they’re doing with their, their internships that are going back home or, or whatever they may be doing.

How do you approach the summer with them in terms of giving them an idea of, Hey, here’s some things that you should be thinking about. Going into the summer and then consequently heading into the following season. How do you approach the summer with them?

[01:06:52] Jeff Juron: Yeah. So this is an area where I’m excited for the extra days outside of season.

So we’re, we’re going to save a couple of our extra days for postseason this year. I’ve always felt like our year end meetings could be more productive. Especially when it comes to identifying basketball things you want your guys to improve on. You know, you can have a great conversation with those kids, but if, if they don’t really have an understanding, let’s say you want a post player to improve his footwork, his reverse pivot series, right?

You know, like how do you work on that on your own? Because during the summer, you can’t always rely upon having a coach in the gym with you. And so. Like if you want to get better at it, you have to work at it every day. And how can you reasonably work on that on your own, given limited resources that you might have during the summer?

Some kids have tons of resources during the summer. Some kids don’t, right? And so I just think using those year end conversations to identify. a couple skills to improve and then having a conversation with the player about gym access that he has during the summer and potential friends that he might have to work out with or teammates even better.

And then, okay, once you’re on the court, what can you do to improve those things? What does a good individual workout for you look like? And so that’s, we’ve always had the conversation. We’ve never been able to sort of get on the court post season. So that’s. Something that I’m looking forward to this year in terms of like the strength and conditioning piece in the off season.

I might be setting the bar too low here, but like with the division three level, like I’m okay with my guys doing anything that they’re going to do consistently. And so we have a strength coach here and he does put together a workout for our guys for the summer months. But you know, as I said earlier, some guys have access to strength coaches that they use during the offseason. Some guys don’t. Some guys have access to a weight room. Some guys don’t. And so I think you have to be realistic at this level about the constraints that your players are facing in the offseason in terms of getting into the gym, improving their body.

And you have to work within those constraints. And so we certainly, if our guys don’t have a plan and they need something to do, we’ll give them the plan that our strength coaches put together. If they come to me and they say they’re working out with someone, some strength coach from their hometown.

And we talk a little bit about what the program looks like and how often the player is going to do it. Then I’ll sign off on that. You know, if a player really doesn’t have a gym that he can reliably go to. Then the conversation shifts towards, all right, well, what’s some body weight exercises.

What are some different things we can do without some advanced equipment. So it’s, it runs the whole gamut, but my biggest thing is just like. What can we realistically do consistently over the course of a summer? And let’s just do that. Like, let’s do that. And because the worst thing is that you give them a workout that they don’t stick with.

And then no, nobody gains. And so, I don’t know. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. Maybe I’m too lenient.

[01:10:22] Mike Klinzing: No, that makes sense. I mean, I think it’s I, as you’re talking, I’m thinking about advice that we give to people about exercise, right? Is that you got to find something that you’re going to do cause it can, maybe there’s an optimal thing that could be.

theoretically better. But if you never do that thing that’s theoretically better, then it’s not really going to help you very much. And so I think that makes a lot of sense. Do you envision using those days at, at the end of the season to kind of walk guys through some things that they could be doing on their own?

Is that kind of how you’re envisioning those days?

[01:10:53] Jeff Juron: Yeah, that’s exactly it. And so I just have always felt like those year end meetings you kind of your exit meetings, so to speak. Could be so much better conducted if you were on the court. And so we’re going to give it a go this year.  I’ll let you know.

[01:11:13] Mike Klinzing: You’re set for your second appearance next spring. We’ll come back on and we’ll come back out and talk about it. I like it. 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 second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every single day, and obviously we talked a lot at the beginning of the pod about just this being something that you didn’t really know that this was the direction that your life was going to take at one point.

So what brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge. And then your biggest joy?

[01:11:50] Jeff Juron: I might cop out here and they might be the same thing. So I have two sons now ages three and one. And so the biggest challenge day to day for me right now is just balancing responsibility to my family and responsibility to the program.

And I think anybody with young kids can understand what that looks like and the time commitment and the emotional toll. And yet at the same time, I’m sure everyone can recognize the absolute joys of being a parent. And so very much looking forward to the days.

I mean coming all the way back to the beginning of our conversation here. I mean, it’s just feel so fortunate to have had a father who was a coach and who introduced me to a game that I love and have now made a career of it and in the relationship with my dad is so great. It would be great without basketball, but it’s definitely awesome to just have this thing that we both share. So the biggest joy in the years ahead will be sharing that love of basketball with my sons and if they don’t choose it, then that’s, that’s fine too. But they’ll certainly have every opportunity.

[01:13:11] Mike Klinzing: They’re going to get more exposure. I say that to, I say that to people all the time. It’s funny because I have, I have a daughter now that she’s a sophomore in college. She stopped playing basketball. She was in ninth grade and My son’s going to be a senior and you know, hopefully he’s going to get an opportunity to play some division three college basketball somewhere.

And then I have an eighth grade daughter and I’ll have these conversations with people. And one of the things I always say is my kids, they kind of ended up in basketball, but we exposed them to tons and tons of things. But the reality is, is that because their dad was a basketball guy, they just got exposed to a lot more basketball.

Then they got exposed to other things. So I think that what I learned, my advice for you, Jeff, is that they. They like what they like and they’ll come to whatever it is that they end up liking. They’re going to come to it on their own, but again, just because of who you are and what you do, they’re definitely going to have, it’s like you’re throwing all those marbles in a paper bag and they’re going to reach in and draw one out. Well, there’s going to be a lot of things in there, but there’s probably going to be a lot more basketball marbles in there than there are other things just because of what they get exposed to. So and it’s cool when they do you know, if your kids do end up you know, do end up playing ball, man, it’s fun to be around them and watch it.

And just, it’s a totally different experience as a parent than it is as a player and a coach. I can tell you that much.

[01:14:32] Jeff Juron: Well, looking, looking forward to it. We’ll see what happens. There you go.

[01:14:38] Mike Klinzing: Great advice. All right. Before you, before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how can people connect with you, find out more about you and your program, share email, website, social media, whatever you want to.

And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:14:53] Jeff Juron: Yeah. Great. I’m, I’m on Twitter @JeffJuron My email jjuron@suffolk.edu. And if you give me a chance, last thing I’ll plug here is I helped run overnight basketball camps during the summer in upstate New York and in Western Mass follow through basketball camps, www.Followthroughcamps.com. If you’re interested in an old school camp experience. So I’ll leave it at that. Cool. How many of those sessions do you guys run? We ran eight camps this summer, including two overnight camps in August. So it’s a busy summer.

[01:15:31] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely.  I do some day camps. I tried to run a overnight camp. I here in here in Cleveland, we have a school Western reserve Academy. And they’ve been kind of bugging me to do an overnight camp and I tried to get one going. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t get it to get any traction. So maybe I will have to, we’ll have to have a conversation off air about you know, what you guys do to get to get people to get involved in that.

I’ve had a lot of luck with my day camps. I’ve been doing those for. This summer I think will be 31 years, 32 years. I’ve been doing those forever. But the overnight one, I haven’t been able to crack that one yet. So maybe you’ll have to, I’ll have to see if you can unlock the secret for me.

[01:16:05] Jeff Juron: Anytime.

[01:16:10] Mike Klinzing: Cool All right, Jeff, can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight. Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.