CHRIS MCHUGH – WASHINGTON & LEE UNIVERSITY MENS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 897

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

Email – mchughc@wlu.edu

Twitter – @wlu_mbasketball

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Chris McHugh is in his seventh season as the head coach of the Washington and Lee University men’s basketball program.  The Generals have posted a 99-49 overall record during his tenure.

McHugh was previously an assistant coach at Emory University. During his four years with the Eagles, the program registered an 80-31 overall record and made four straight NCAA Tournament appearances, including a run to the Elite Eight in 2013-2014.

Prior to coaching with the Eagles, McHugh was an assistant coach at Connecticut College during the 2012-13 season and an assistant at Mount Saint Mary College from 2009-2012. 

McHugh graduated from Washington and Lee in 2009 and was a four-year letterwinner at guard for the Generals men’s basketball program. He played in 101 games with 72 starts, leading the team in assists his junior and senior seasons.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Chris McHugh, Men’s Basketball Head Coach at Washington & Lee University.

What We Discuss with Chris McHugh

• “I played all different sports growing up, which was, I think something that I look back on very fondly and I’m very grateful for that experience.”
• “You don’t need anybody else. I think that was a key part of it.”
• “You have to really love the game to get better at it.”
• “It’s not always glamorous to do all the little things in basketball that add up to success.”
• Playing on the on the high school varsity as a 120 pound freshman
• His decision to attend Washington & Lee for college
• His original plan to potentially become a sports writer and his eventual desire to be “in the arena” led him to coaching
• “That rush and that adrenaline and that competition that you feel as a player while coaching is the next closest thing.”
• The opportunity to work for Ryan Kadlubowski at Mount St. Mary College in his first coaching position
• His next two stints as an assistant at Central Connecticut and Emory under Jason Zimmerman
• “I love the D three model of  you get to coach just tremendous kids from great families that care about academics.”
• “Sometimes you’re working and practicing in empty gyms and sometimes the crowds aren’t always the biggest, but if you love to play and you love the game, the division three level is a great one.”
• “To have that opportunity to come back to your alma mater, to represent the program that you played for and all the relationships that I built with teammates of that time. I mean, what a dream come true.”
• Preparing for head coaching interviews
• The extra pride of coaching at his alma mater
• “So cool to see the older guys coming back and connecting and supporting with the younger guys. And that’s bigger than basketball.”
• “It comes down to relationships and getting good people in the room.”
• Finding and developing great assistant coaches
• “We’ve identified guys who love to work at their craft. that are going to fight through adversity, that care about the team, that care about uplifting the program.”
• “Relationship based and values driven”
• Asking assistant coaches, “If you were in my seat, what should we do here?”
• “My assistants make me better and they teach me and in that process, I hope we all get better.”
• Recruiting players from Ivy and Patriot League Camps
• “When you go live and scout, there’s just things that you can pick up on in person that are harder to see in the film.”
• “If I talk to a recruit and he has no idea what his plan is for how he develops his game. Well, that’s a telltale sign that maybe this person is not going to develop the way someone else might be able to.”
• “We’re proud of what we have achieved, but we’re hungry to achieve even more and having that as a real feeling that you get boots on the ground, a feeling that can’t be encapsulated in numbers and facts and figures. That’s a culture.”
• “Your practices have to be a balance between competitiveness and collaboration.”
• “A true sign of friendship is that I’m not going to go easy on you just because you’re my buddy off the court. I actually care about you so much that I want to compete really hard to make you better.”
• “The vision is that you come in and that you work and you pay your dues and ultimately you get better and you contribute to the team.”
• “The only thing that we think about in terms of who’s going to play in this game today is what gives our program the best chance of success today.”
• “You can’t come into a new situation where you were the senior and you knew everybody and you were the head honcho, maybe the captain of the team and then expect it to be the exact same experience.”
• Enjoy the Journey

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THANKS, CHRIS MCHUGH

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TRANSCRIPT FOR CHRIS MCHUGH – WASHINGTON & LEE UNIVERSITY MENS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 897

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with Eventually, I think, my co-host Jason Sunkle, but we are pleased to be joined by Chris McHugh, head men’s basketball coach at Washington and Lee University. Chris, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:13] Chris McHugh: Mike, thanks so much for having me on.

[00:00:17] 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.

[00:00:30] Chris McHugh: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that goes back to as far as I can remember.

I think, Well, actually, I just saw the picture cause it was just LeBron James’s birthday, I think. And he had that famous picture where he’s near that Little Tykes hoop with the ball. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I know that one. Very, very, very, very less famous picture of a young Chris McHugh, I think, with a basketball around that time of year and a Little Tykes hoop and dating back to as far as I have memories I remember having a ball in my hand and, just always loving the game of basketball, which is kind of funny because my dad was a wrestler, football player, track athlete at Penn State. My mom didn’t play much basketball either. So I don’t know how basketball became from the beginning. My sort of passion and favorite sport, but that was always the case.

And I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, Chatham, New Jersey, a wonderful place to grow up and really got into the game right away. And I played all different sports growing up, which was, I think something that I look back on very fondly and I’m very grateful for that experience.

But basketball is always my favorite of the sports and you know, just starting from right in the driveway and spending all sorts of hours out there by myself. or have my dad or my brother’s rebound and just, just fell in love with the game from the beginning and then loved to play and had some really good youth coaches through my time.

And like I said, played a little bit of soccer, played baseball, tried all these different sports, loved doing that. Even played soccer seriously through high school and baseball up until high school. But basketball was always my number one passion. And then a game that just resonated with me the most that I love to play.

[00:02:04] Mike Klinzing: Do you know why? I mean, I think about that in terms of my own upbringing and I played, just like you, I played everything. And I don’t know if I could accurately articulate what it was about basketball that kind of drew me in. I think part of it was, I could do it by myself. And so I could go out in the driveway and work on it.

But when I was five or six, I think basketball was already my favorite. And I don’t know if I could explain why. So I’m just curious if you have any thoughts about why basketball over those other things.

[00:02:32] Chris McHugh: Such a good question. I just think the nonstop action is part of it.  and I mean, soccer again was my other big sport and you could play a soccer game and nothing against soccer, it’s a wonderful game. It’s the world’s game, but you can go a long time without really touching the ball or scoring a goal. And basketball, you’re constantly in the mix. You’re constantly touching it, exchanging with teammates scoring often. So I think just the fast paced nature and how connected you are to your teammates at all times on both ends of the floor.

I think I just, from the jump, really enjoyed that. And like you said the ability to just the, the access to basketball, all you need is a ball and a hoop. So even to this day, my sanctuary is I’ll go find myself we’ve had a couple of losses or I’m going through something personally.

I love just going and grabbing a ball and shooting hoops. I do think that translates to the love of the larger sport is that you can just go out and take some time and then work on your ball handling, work on your shooting, work on your game. You don’t need anybody else. So I think that was a key part of it.

And just, I mean, what’s not to love? I mean, I love the game and I love how like I said, how up and down it is. And you’re constantly in motion. You’re constantly making decisions. And I just think it’s so entertaining and fun and competitive to play.

And yeah, it’s just always been near and dear to my heart, obviously.

[00:03:52] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. I think hearing you talk and just kind of processing my own feelings about the game and talking about that up and down and nonstop action, which theoretically, right, you have in soccer, right? Theoretically, there’s lots of movement.

The game’s constantly going, you’re making decisions. There’s a lot of spacing similarities and yet. I know as a kid, I had no interest in participating in a game where the score could end up being 0 0 or 1 0. Like just the idea of basketball that you have the action, but not only that, but you also have the ability to score.

And then I think about like, so my kids, Chris, I have a 20 year old and 18 year old and 14 year old, and all my kids have dabbled in lots of different sports and whatever. And so I always try to look at it from the perspective of, okay, if I’m a kid. What about a sport attracts me? And you think about now I’m 53 years old.

So my era is maybe slightly different than yours. But when I was a kid, everybody played baseball. I mean, if you were a kid, you, you picked up a bat and a glove and you played. And like my son played, maybe, I don’t know, he played maybe three seasons of baseball. Neither one of my daughters ever. Put on a glove or picked up a bat or anything.

And then it’s like, I remember going to practice for baseball and just being like, why would any kid ever want to play this sport? Like, it’s just, you go to practice, you’re just sitting around the whole time. The only thing that’s really fun to do is hit. And if you’re lucky in a baseball practice, maybe you get to hit.

For five minutes, maybe out of an hour. And then you go to the games and you stand around and the balls never hit you. And it’s just basketball to me. And I think this is why lacrosse has become a more popular too, because it’s similar in that it’s a little bit more high scoring than, than soccer. But it’s just, I just think the action, I think you hit it a hundred percent, right?

That when you start looking at what is attractive to a kid, I think basketball, you have the action and then you have the scoring piece of it, which maybe you don’t get in some of those other sports. So it’s just, to me, it’s the perfect combination.

[00:05:54] Chris McHugh: Yep. And I think maybe not to pile on these other terrific sports anymore, but the weather it’s never rained out of the gym.

[00:06:05] Mike Klinzing: That is true. And you will appreciate that even more as a parent, when you have to go and sit at some soccer games and some lacrosse games, you will really appreciate how nice it is from a basketball standpoint. And then of course, outdoor basketball, which we talk about here on the podcast.

When I was a kid, I played a ton of outdoor basketball, not just on the driveway, but just going and playing. Pickup games all over the place. And unfortunately that’s something that has gone away. So as a player, I can remember we used to eat dinner when I was a kid at 5. 30, I remember looking out my window all the time to see whether it was going to be raining or not, cause I wanted to go up to the courts.

It’s like, I’m going to start playing at six o’clock. That’s when the games would start and just looking out my window and checking out, okay, what are the clouds look like? Is it going to rain? Is it not going to rain? Kids today? The don’t experience that at all because we have a lot more gym access.

Thankfully, but yeah, you’re a hundred percent right. Being in a gym is much better than being on a 40 degree rainy soccer field. I can definitely vouch for that 100%.

[00:07:01] Chris McHugh: Yeah, well, I’m glad you said that too. And that was kind of my experience growing up with  having to, and this sounds like I’m dating myself again here, but you had to growing up in a small town with friends and you had to know everybody’s home phone number, landline phone number, right?

And we had to pick a time. We had to check is how’s the weather looking and we’re meeting at four o’clock to go play it. down at the playground and organizing it by ourselves and keeping score by ourselves. There was something, there’s something special about the those opportunities that like you said, is a little bit different nowadays with AAU and adults kind of running everything all the time.

[00:07:36] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Different world without question. I say all the time that I’m super thankful for the time that I grew up in. And unfortunately for my own kids, I feel like they’ve missed out on some of the things that I feel like were some of the best moments of my life, just playing pickup sports in the neighborhood or playing playground basketball when I’m 15, 16 years old with adults and high school players and college players and all those kinds of things that kids, they miss out on those things.

So let’s shift it back to you as a player, as you start to take the game more seriously as you get up into high school, how’d you go about getting better? Because again, even in the time when you were growing up, the training business, I think exploded probably after you sort of get through your playing career.

And how did you put together a plan. Did you have a plan? What did you do to just get better? How much of a balance was it pick up games versus I’m in the gym by myself working. Just talk to me a little bit about what you did to improve yourself as a player when you were in high school.

[00:08:39] Chris McHugh: Yeah, no doubt.  Well, the hard part about high school was I was when I was about eight, nine, 10 years old my, my skillset was pretty good. And I think at that time I was pretty competitive with anybody and then everybody got bigger, faster, stronger than I. So I had to figure out a new way to be successful once superior athletes came into the picture. But from my standpoint, what I thought about in terms of my development as a player is Really working out a lot of times by myself in the backyard, in the driveway or with my dad rebounding or like I said, either of my, my two younger brothers and having an imagination about  working on my game, trying to imagine different scenarios, trying to put together a workout on my own, right?

Rather than someone prescribing  I didn’t have a trainer Growing up, I didn’t have someone saying, Hey, you got to do X, Y, Z in this order and these drills. I had to sort of come up with, okay, how am I going to work on my game? How am I going to translate this, translate these, working on these skills to game environments and what I can do well.

So I know that I spent a lot of time in the backyard using my imagination, working on my skills playing, like I said, calling up your friends in town and getting together and playing two on two, playing three on three. So I think that you have to really love the game to get better at it.

And like we talked about, why do you love basketball? I just had so much fun getting in the driveway and getting better and just seeing progress and seeing success when you go out there and you work on your free throws. And you can’t just do it once and you can’t just do it haphazardly.

It’s you go out there and you work on it every day or every other day and put in the time, but you see success and you see progress. And I think that’s so much fun. And such a a fun thing about development is that you put in the, you put in the time and you see yourself get better in the sport. So and like I saidI had really good coaches and didn’t play much AAU but played kind of YMCA ball then travel ball and  middle school team and  I think I was coached well and had a really good training towards, hey, these were the things you have to do, the little things in basketball towards winning.

Right. We want to do  it’s not always glamorous to do all the little things in basketball that add up to success. Right. And especially like I said, as I developed and I was kind of a puny young guy and  entering the varsity basketball team in ninth grade, I was maybe 120 pounds soaking wet.

You better know how to be down in the stance. You better know how to box out somebody bigger than you. You better know how to rotate defense when  the offense has an advantage and you better know how to get your shot off quick and create separation and change speeds and all those things that you have to kind of problem solve and figure out.

And I had great coaches all along the way. Great high school coach, Todd Irvin. And  I think that was all part of my development and then piecing that all together. You have those times where you’re alone working on your game and then you have to translate, okay, these are the things that happen in games and now I have to work in such a way that, hey, the skill of dribbling or the skill of shooting a pull up jump shot.

All right, now how and why and when am I going to use that in a game? Which I always just found fascinating of thinking through the sport and thinking about the kind of decision making aspects that you face all the time in basketball.

[00:12:00] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Which sometimes, again, if you’re working by yourself, right, that’s, I think sometimes a challenge is to figure out, Hey, how can I work on something that translates to what I’m actually doing in games?

And I just think, looking back again on my own experience, training and improving. And getting better is so much more sophisticated because there’s just so much more out there. I’ve said this on the podcast numerous times. Like when I was playing, I did basically one workout if I was by myself. And then I had another workout that if I was lucky enough to find somebody else to work out with or that wanted to do something, I’d have a shooting workout and maybe we’d do some one on one or whatever it might’ve been.

But I didn’t take it quite to the level that you just described where like, okay, how does this translate? So it’s like, okay, I got these. These are the basic things that I’m working on. I just kind of kept doing those things over and over again and now I look at the variety of different ways that kids have today to be able to get better.

Just to be able to have the resources of going to YouTube or going to social media to be able to find ideas and  there’s a lot of stuff out there that I’m dubious of its value, but there’s also a lot of really great stuff out there that players can take and coaches can take to be able to help themselves to get better.

And it’s just interesting again, how, how much things have changed and how different it is. And it’s interesting just to hear you talk about. Yeah, I really tried to look at what I was doing and seeing how that translated into the game. Cause obviously that’s ultimately what we want to do in any practice, right?

As a coach, as a player, you want what you’re doing when you’re practicing to translate to eventually having success in the games. And so I think that’s obviously the way that the game and coaching has evolved and changed is that there’s a lot more emphasis on, Hey, this is what we’re doing actually helping us in a game versus, Hey, I really liked this drill.

It’s a cool drill. But. It doesn’t necessarily translate. Let me ask you about your high school experience. When you look back, do you have a favorite memory of high school basketball? Something that stands out to you could be an actual game memory. It could be just something that happened off the floor, teammates.

Just what do you think about when you think about your high school basketball experience?

[00:14:08] Chris McHugh: Yeah, I’ll give you two answers. I think the first one would be how amazing it was my public high school. I mean, the guys that I grew up with since we could we’re first starting to walk to kindergarten or the guys that I played with in high school and that experience of playing with some of your best friends and maybe most notably the opportunity to play with my younger brother, Matt.

Who’s two years younger than me. So we got to play two years together on varsity. And I talked about this at his wedding. It’s amazing when you look back, how special a time that is take me back to coming every day and you get to be with some of, some of your best friends in the world, including your brother, and we’re out there competing every day and representing the town that we grew up in and where our family is, that’s really special opportunity.

So the times together with guys my high school team happened to be some of my best buddies and playing together and competing. And then of course my brother. And then if I had to pick a specific memory my junior year, we had this amazing this amazing run and a great group of upperclassmen, seniors and juniors together, and we beat, we had a packed house for this state playoff game in New Jersey, and we’re playing Newark Tech, and they were pretty heavily favored, and we had basically the whole student body was there in the stands, and it was just an unbelievable atmosphere just people hanging from the rafters and so loud and an incredible, an incredible moment and experience. And we were able to kind of knock them off. And of course the student section charges the floor and mobs everybody and we’re celebrating. And that win was an all time win and kind of encapsulated. A good run of a really good team and, and being together having a great moment. And some of the videos from the charge of the court are all time, all time memories.

[00:15:59] Mike Klinzing: All right. So let me ask you this, here’s a question for you. So you’ve got video of all that when you think about your memories, cause I’m sure you’ve watched the video plenty of times.

When you think about those memories, do you remember? the memory directly from what you saw or now has it kind of been almost replaced by the video because the video is what you have looked at or what you’ve seen. Does that question make any sense?

[00:16:24] Chris McHugh: That makes sense. And I remember that in person. I remember that being there because, and I think one of the reasons too is because, so there’s a pretty funny story.

One of my buddies that charged the court, if you, and now it’s a mass of people coming down the bleachers, right? It’s total mayhem coming down. But if you focus on one of my buddies, Ryan McMahon is running down, he’s running down the bleachers, he runs onto the court, and as the whistle blows and the buzzer hits and we’ve thrown up the ball, we’re all running and he’s running off.

The ref, the referee. sees the stampede coming right for him. And you can watch this on video. He looks around, he goes, Oh my goodness, I got to get out of Dodge. And so he turns and he just books it. And he’s just trying to run off the court. And my buddy Ryan is coming from the opposite angle and they don’t see each other.

And he’s, I’m laughing, thinking about it. He’s running down and I’m telling you what, the ref, I think they used to call it like de-cleated in football when you get, you get tackled and your feet go over your head. He got knocked so hard. The ref was running so fast. He got knocked way off balance and then you just see a CF, I don’t know what, he survived, he’s doing well.

He’s okay, but it was a miracle he didn’t get trampled over as as the ref knocked him over. And I remember seeing that on video, but to answer your question again yeah, I remember being in that moment and that was when I was in high school and it was the 2000, I guess that was 2004 like you said, thankfully it wasn’t Facebook nobody that, that hadn’t really happened yet. I don’t think that was in college. So a lot of those memories, it wasn’t all about everybody taking a picture and video every second. So I remember that distinctly, but it was nice to have that video so we could laugh at Ryan’s expense when he got nailed by the referee running off the court running for dear life.

[00:18:13] Mike Klinzing: That’s good stuff. That is really funny when you think about, again, something that if that hadn’t been captured by. On video, it would have, it would have disappeared, but because it’s on, because it’s been captured, it’s, it’s part of the lore of that whole situation, which is very cool that it got captured.

What about your high school coach? When you think about his influence on you. And I don’t know if you were thinking about coaching at that point as a high school player, kind of where your mindset was. But when you look back on it and you think about his influence on you, both as a player and as a coach, what are some things that come to mind?

[00:18:48] Chris McHugh: Absolutely. Discipline and toughness Todd Irvin, who’s a I think he might be up over 600 wins now or close. He definitely got the 500. So he’s been around Chatham, New Jersey and a great coach and obviously long time success. And I mean, the culture and the identity of the program that he built from me watching that from, I remember being a kid and playing in the rec leagues when the high school guys would come down and coach and you knew through the pipeline coming up to play for Chatham High School boys basketball, you better be ready to defend or you’re not going to play. And it’s going to be man to man defense and we’re going to, we’re going to do it the right way. We’ll be hard nosed. And there was a degree of freedom.

And even at that time, when the game wasn’t as versatile, maybe as it is now, there was still a good degree of freedom and moving the basketball and reading and reacting and playing off one another, but you’re going to do exactly what we asked for defensively, guarding the ball, get through screens  hedge and recover ball screens and all that. So just the discipline and toughness that comes from having to be on task on that end of the floor at all times. And Irv, he’s a fun guy. He’s a funny guy and he was always himself and he has a really dry wit and a really sarcastic humor and you get to know that over time and he’d probably be maybe sheepish at me for saying this, but you figure out over time that that’s his love language, right? To tease. So one of the things that he did my first year, right? So I said, maybe because it was certainly not because of my physical abilities, but maybe this was portending to why I became a head basketball coach is that.

Like I said, I was maybe five foot three, 120 pounds soaking wet my freshman year, but I got to play in the varsity probably because I was  a pretty instinctual player that had been well coached and then could make good decisions. And I wore like a cutoff sleeve shirt under my jersey, the games, and I’m telling you, he would not let me hear the end of it until I went full out t shirt  for the rest of the year because of the, let’s say the absence of the glamour bicep muscles that I had at that time. So, he was ragging on me just like it was like the older guys ragging on me, so after that, I was like, man, I guess I got a choice here. I guess I’m going to get used to shooting with a t shirt on because I can’t take this abuse. And then it was all in good fun, all good natured, but you understand that he that’s his personality and that’s how he shows that he cares about you is that he’s going to make you take a ribbing and you have to take it and grow from it and have fun with it, not take yourself too seriously and all that.

So great guy, cared about his players and learned a lot from him and really enjoyed my experience in high school basketball.

[00:21:28] Mike Klinzing: All right, so let’s move to the college experience. When did you first think about playing college basketball? Was it something that you dreamed of growing up?

When did you decide that it was going to be something that was realistic that you wanted to pursue? And then just talk a little bit about the recruitment, your decision to go to Washington Lee and how you ended up there and what the process was all about for you.

[00:21:52] Chris McHugh: Yeah, sure. I mean, definitely.I think it’s that process of getting older and kind of coming to grips with reality.

I’m sure when I was eight years old, it was going to start for Duke and be the starting point for the New York Knicks. And then you start to look around and say, well. I’m not going to give up on my dreams, but let’s let’s make sure we’re we have somewhat attainable future here. So certainly as I got into high school, I knew, and I was a good player.

I got to play varsity early. I got to play in a good public school program in New Jersey. It was competitive. I always felt like I could aspire to the college ranks and play certainly. At least maybe if not at the highest level of division one somewhere where it was competitive.

So always wanted to continue my career and play that was  I just, when you sit down and thought about the college process hard, and I did apply to a few schools that were sort of schools to just go to academically and bigger schools where the only thing I was going to be doing on the team was filling up the water bottles.

But  when I really sat down and thought about, okay, what is it that I really want to do? I’m 18 years old. Am I really ready to give up the fun of competition? The the great lessons that you learn and experiences and relationships that you have from being on a team. And when I sat down and thought about that it was a clear answer that I wanted to continue to play and I wanted to take that risk and take that challenge on to see if I could see if I could play at the next level.

So as I got going in my career, academics were really important in my family and  Chatham was a great place to grow up and had great, I went to great public schools and was taught by wonderful teachers. So I did pretty well in school. So I knew that.

Okay. I want to find the right balance here of a great academic school where I can also play basketball. And my three choices were really on that front were Denison, Hamilton, and Washington Lee University. And it was funny. So with W and L there was a player named Greg Beniman, who’s a year older than I, one of my best friends.

We grew up together. We played in high school together. He was a year older. He was a far bigger star than I was. I like to tease him that  he gets all the headlines. I’m behind the scenes here, making him look good, putting the right pass in the post, always finding him, always get all the press clippings in the local newspaper.

And then so Greg was this great player. He was a year older, Washington and Lee recruited Greg. He ended up going to W and L. And like I said, he was a year older than I am. When the coaches that recruited or the Adam Hutchinson, Ryan Kotlubowski at the time was the assistant and I just, it was head coach when they recruited Greg he was one of their top guys and they noticed me as a junior and they said, all right, well, he’s pretty good.

We’re going to keep an eye on him and kept developing and got down to my senior year and kind of went and visited all those places and got a feel for the culture and  the guys on the team and the schools themselves. And ultimately W& L stood out to me because of the fantastic academics.

I was excited by the basketball program which hadn’t had a lot of success prior to coach Hutchinson had been a kind of a tough stretch of a couple of decades and not much winning, but kind of excited by the vision of let’s try and build something and get a great education and a little bit of warmer weather down here in Virginia.

And everybody on campus was really friendly.  There’s a thing on W and L’s campus called the speaking tradition, which is a very simple tradition that basically anybody you go by on campus, you say hello. Hello. And that’s a little different than driving on the New Jersey Turnpike during rush hour with traffic.

So you come down and get a little Southern hospitality on W& L’s campus and fell in love with just how friendly and kind everybody was and guys on the team. And obviously having a guy like Greg, who was somebody I grew up with, who was a connection to the place that was  had success in his first year as a player and then really enjoyed W and L.

It was a fun place to go to school as well. So I felt like I could get that whole experience from the academics, the social life, and then and then the basketball program where I could come and compete and hopefully make an impact right away.

[00:25:55] Mike Klinzing: Going into it. What did you think in terms of what you wanted academically in career wise heading into college?

[00:26:03] Chris McHugh: Really good question. I don’t think I had a firm view of what that looked like. And that fits really well with the liberal arts because you’re going to take a bunch of different classes. And it’s ironic now, I guess, but I ended up being a politics major because I love some of the classes that I took my first year.

I had some great professors and they were really engaging and kind of. I feel like a lot of people take sort of business or econ and it was something path, a little less traveled to take, to take politics. So I didn’t know what that was going to lead to. I never really thought I was going to run for office or get into the political world, but I enjoyed the classes and everything in coaching.

There could be some politics in coaching too. So a little carry over there, but in terms of, one of the things that I loved to do growing up and even into college was out. I love to write and because I love sports, I kind of like sports writing. So I thought to myself and W and L actually has a school of journalism where they offer sports journalism classes, one of my favorite classes that I took here.

And I always thought that might be my path.  I love to write. I feel like I’m a pretty good writer. I think I know sports cause I played them. What a cool way to go to games and be a beat writer and follow a team. Ultimately, somewhere along the line there was kind of a lightbulb moment for me in the course of the four years at W& L is like, well, just kind of like that decision to go play and be a college basketball player.

Well, do you want to be in the arena competing? And that that’s the idea of that being being a coach and being involved with the team. Or do you want to be the person writing about all those folks that are taking that chance being in the arena? And ultimately to me, it was like, well.  writing about sports is the next best thing, but I think the best thing might just be staying actively involved in sports and basketball was my passion, was my dream.

So  I got right into coaching and I mentioned Ryan Kadlubowski earlier as the assistant coach who recruited me to come to W& L and play on the team. Well, my senior year, he got a head coaching job at Mount St. Mary College. And you know how I’m sure this is, you know a common refrain on the Hoop Head Pod, but it’s a really small fraternity, right?

So it’s getting to know people in the business. So my assistant coach when I played was Ryan and he recruited me. And by my senior year in college, he had got a head coaching job at Mount St. Mary College in New York. And right as I was graduating, he was looking for assistants. And the rest was history.

And that was my first coaching job. I worked there for three years and that’s how I got my foot in the door in the coaching business was working for Ryan Kadlubowski and a great coach there. And and the rest is, I haven’t looked back since.

[00:28:39] Mike Klinzing:  Right away. I mean, as soon as you stepped foot in the door and had a couple of days under your belt, did you immediately know that, You had made the right decision.

[00:28:48] Chris McHugh: I did because Ryan was so great and he was so trusting of me because our prior relationship and he let me get my hands in everything right away and that was really, I’m so grateful for that experience. It was just me and him. So there was nobody else on staff. So my hands were in recruiting, scouting.

Organizing practice when we’re breaking down two ends of the floor, doing drills and practice, I’m running my own session. I’m 22 years old. I’m hardly older the guys on the team have more facial hair than I do. So to get into it right away and be really immersed in it was definitely falling in love with, and it’s the next closest thing to being a player, right?

That rush and that adrenaline and that competition that you feel as a player while coaching is the next closest thing. And I love being a part of a team up there and building that program up and yeah, I, I think I pretty much knew right away that. Coaching was going to be something that I really enjoyed.

And really, I guess more than anything, that I hoped I could turn into a career. And it’s such a great job. I mean, I have the best job in the world. It’s a hard business. And I feel for younger people and younger coaches in the business, just because there’s so many people out there following their passion and doing this and there’s only so many colleges and there’s only so many jobs So I think I felt right away…Wow, this is great. I love this. This is fun Can I make this a more permanent thing? Will I ever be a head coach?  Will I ever get to there and I’m just so grateful for the coaches that I got to work for along my ride So, like I said Ryan was tremendous, bringing me in right away, bringing me under his wing.

He’s such a good teacher of the game. I just had such a great background.  he’s, he played at the university of Rochester and that was Mike near was the coach there forever. And a lot of what a lot of what he taught at the university of Rochester, we tried to bring to Mount St. Mary college. So I got their language and how they break down drills and how they approach the game.

I got such a great learning experience then got to, after three years there, I get to work for Tom Satrin at Connecticut College. Tom, an excellent coach such a cerebral guy, really knows the game, really knows people and situations. Like, he has just such an ability. I grew so much, I only got to spend one year with him, but I grew so much for how intentional he was to his approach every day.

He could just always understand people, understand who you needed to give some support to, who you needed to challenge, what do we need to do as a team, how do we figure this out? He just had such a thoughtful process to how he went about everything in coaching. Everything was intentional. And then from there I got to work for Jason Zimmerman, who I know has been on the Hoop Heads Podcast because when you sent me this email inviting me, you listed Jason Zimmerman as one of the famous guests that we’ve had on.

[00:31:26] Mike Klinzing: Zim’s been on twice with us. So I actually met him in person, met him in person down at the Jay Billis camp. And man, it was right after we started. So that must’ve been 2000, it was either 2018 or 2019. I can’t remember, but met him in person.

He was great to me. I just mentioned it. Hey, I got, got a podcast like, yeah, hit me up. And so yeah, we’ve had him on had him on twice and actually when they, I think it was a season or two ago and they played up here at Case Western  popped in and then said hello to Jason when he was here in, in person.

So yeah, great guy. Obviously a great coach and I’ll let you take it from there.

[00:32:01] Chris McHugh: you take it from there. Sure, no doubt. Yeah, that’s that’s it. So then after, after a year with Tom at Connecticut College, four years at Emory with Jason Zimmerman, and that was unforgettable. And that was I’m so grateful for that four years.

And as from talking to him this man was put on the planet to be a college basketball coach I could see myself and a lot of other folks, Hey good coach, but maybe could have done other things. There is no other scenario. If his life played out a thousand times, he was always going to be a college basketball coach.

That guy lives, eats, breathes it, knows everybody, everybody loves him. And it was so great to work for him, his infectious energy just the standard he set for the program, the expectations of excellence and his, how he set that standard with, with coming every, coming in every day and being enthusiastic and his approach to the game, his fearlessness of how he coached and just  how he built such a culture of relationships with the program and alums.

And that four years was unforgettable and seeing how he and all the great players that have come through at Emory over his time really built that into a national power of a program and getting to see that up close and see that in person was so impactful for me and trying to aspire to that now as a head coach myself, the program that he’s built and all the success they’ve had on and off the court there.

[00:33:19] Mike Klinzing: Before we get to the process of getting the head job back at your alma mater, let’s talk a little bit about just the different experiences that you had under each of the coaches that you were fortunate enough to coach under, because I think as a player, right, you kind of have this perspective of, right, I played for my high school coach, I played for my college coach.

And those are kind of the ways that you then, I think, start to see the game. And when you get an opportunity then to expand and see different ways that different coaches go about doing the same thing. So maybe I have an approach one way for offense and then another coach has a totally different approach for offense.

And you kind of learn that there’s multiple different ways to be able to win or to be able to have success. So maybe just talk about a little bit how those different influences kind of influenced you and sort of how you took bits and pieces from each of the stops that you had.

[00:34:21] Chris McHugh: Sure. No, great question. Yeah. So like I mentioned with Ryan at Mount St. Mary at that time, and one of his mentors was Mike Neer, who shout out to Coach Neer, who’s actually also a W and L alum and a hall of fame basketball player at W and L, but was the hall of fame, Rochester head coach. And I know that Coach Neer was influential and Ryan Kadlubowski as a player and he worked for him as an assistant.

So getting there and seeing how they do things and their approach and at that time, a really amazing emphasis on how to play through the post in basketball. I mean, just the way they taught it the way  posting up and getting the ball inside, how you move off it, different angles, how you seal, how you play for the lob all those sorts of things that but playing sort of like a post centric  offense was, was, was really cool to see and to learn and and seeing how, how in practice, how we would break that down and the different drills that we do and like I said, the carryover from, all right, we’re working at, we’re working at these different skill concepts and this is how we apply it to our offense or our defense. And just how good a teacher he was just in practice, just going through each, rep and each drill, making sure guys understood it, see it.

Hey, this is how we do it. This is how we demonstrate it. And this is how it applies to what we’re doing. And then had the year with Coach Satrin at Connecticut college. And we had a really young team. We were playing in the NESCAC, which is a super competitive division three conference.

And we ran the Princeton offense. And I had never, we actually ran the triangle in college. And then like I said, sort of the post centric we call it the break, but offense with four around one offense with with Mount St. Mary and then Princeton offense with Connecticut college with a young team.

And the one thing about the Princeton was it’s such a good teacher of how to make decisions and how to play in space and how to read off your fellow teammates, and that was just a great thing for me to see and learn and see taught up close all the different ways the Princeton offense is used to exploit space and exploit matchups and different angles on the floor and how you pass and move and keep the ball hot and just the verbiage and how the Princeton language and how you talk about things really helpful because you see, yeah.

Not everybody runs full out Princeton like we did, but almost every offense has some element of it that you’ll find. So in scouting, like even today my Princeton background, Princeton offense background from that time you see almost every team has maybe a set or two that that is related to like coming up to the elbow and playing through point or different things of that nature. So sort of the language, the sets, the actions, the spacing that you get from that offense, carrying that over. And then at Emory  Jason’s obviously a Davidson player and Davidson coach. And so running their secondary break in this transition and learning how to play fast and learning how to play more of a motion offense.

So I got a great if you’re just talking about the offensive side of the ball, we’re focusing on that right now, but he  just how different each of the spots were in terms of how we played offense and how we approached attacking basketball wise and  playing fast and playing motion offense, just how we were totally bought into that and learning that and our approach was if you want to play fast, that’s a brand.

And that’s something you got to do all the time. You got to run the floor hard. You got to win your race every time down the floor. It’s not something you do haphazardly or you’re dipping your toe in the proverbial water. You cannonball and you go for it and you move the ball fast and you attack and you try and get looks early in transition and you flow from there and you play kind of advantage basketball where you’ve you’ve created angles.

You’re going to attack fast and take that shot when it’s there or create a better look for your teammates. So each of the different spots had a different approach to how we attacked offensively. And I think trying to incorporate some of each of those things along the way. And  from a larger perspective of each of them as a mentor, like I said, Coach Ryan Kadlubowski and his ability to teach so well and how we broke down drills and how it all carried over.

Coach Satrin, just how intentional he was about how he thought through his messaging to the team and how he developed guys and how he mentored guys and how he thought about different situations and how are people going to react and how’s our team going to react and what we need to anticipate.

And then  Coach Zimmerman’s just infectious energy for the game. His relentlessness, his fearlessness, how he just instills confidence in everybody in his program, that the sense of belief in what we do and the passion with which we go about things. So, trying to incorporate a little bit of the best of all those great coaches and try and take a little bit here and kind of infuse that with my own personality and let it roll from there.

[00:39:12] Mike Klinzing:  I mean, absolutely to be able to be exposed to all those successful ways of doing different things. And obviously we could take that through probably the aspect of the program and how each of them did it a little bit differently. And then, as you said, you take the best from each one, what you like, what you feel comfortable with, and you meld it with your personality.

And then you are able to make that same imprint on your team and your program. The Washington lead job opens up. Where were you in terms of your process for becoming a head coach? Had you already gone out and been actively looking for other head coaching jobs? Had you been on other interviews? What was your level of readiness?

Was it the fact that, Hey, this is my alma mater. This is an opportunity I got to jump at just kind of where were you in the process of becoming a head coach at the time that this job becomes available and you eventually take it?

[00:40:10] Chris McHugh: No question, so that was four years into Emory. So I was then eight years removed from being a college basketball player and graduating from W and L.

By that time, I did have a bunch of head coaching interviews. So I think the timing was just serendipity and it was perfect. I was very, very fortunate and very blessed. But yeah, so at that time I had already had, boy, a bunch of phone interviews. And then I think three or four full out head coaching division three interviews.

And there’s nothing like the preparation of actually doing that. And I think it was humbling at the beginning, maybe in my earlier in my time in Emory, maybe about five or six years into my career when I did my first interview. And I remember hanging up the phone thinking, wow, I was not prepared for, for all those questions.

I need to take a look at and more than anything else, it was like, this is a head coaching interview and I’ve always only ever been an assistant. Right. And that’s different. Right. And when you’re in charge, when you’re in the head seat, it’s your decision and it’s, what are you doing?

And I think I had to then say from that humbling first experience, all right, now I really have to sit down and say, okay. Instead of speaking secondhand about what Jason Zimmerman does or what Tom Satrin does, it’s now my program and what are my philosophies and how are we going to do things? And  after that experience, I think I got better at it.

And then, like I said, applied for a bunch of different jobs. I was really my goal was to be a division three head coach. That was my experience as a player, of course. And I love the D three model of  you get to coach just tremendous kids from great families that care about academics.

It’s kids who are coming there who really love to play basketball, they’re not there to be on ESPN. There’s not it’s not always a packed house and on ESPN, it’s not always there for the glory. Sometimes you’re working and practicing in empty gyms and sometimes the crowds aren’t always the biggest, but if you love to play and you love the game, the division three level is a great one.

And it’s really competitive and gets better and better. So I really wanted to be a head coach. And  I was very fortunate that by that time I turned about 30 years old, I’d had those eight years of experience. The position came open. I’m not sure why they chose me. Thankfully I was an alum.

I know there were some other great candidates for the job and  I think and I hope, I hope it showed and one of the things that maybe helped me get the position was just how amazing my experience was at WNL and how impactful it was on me, obviously, right? I loved being a student athlete at WNL.

It’s why I got into coaching and to have that opportunity to come back to your alma mater, to represent the program that you played for and all the relationships that I built with teammates of that time. I mean, what a dream come true. So it was perfect timing for me. And I’d, I’d been through a ton of interviews and I felt like I was ready and I’d finally sharpened my message and was ready to spread my wings and had great four years under coach Zimmerman at Emory. And I felt like, okay, now it’s, you’re never going to be fully ready until you’re, until you really do it. But in terms of having, it’s like being a parent, right?

No, that’s that nails it. Perfect analogy. But in terms of as ready I could be because I had such great mentors, both as a player. And as a coach that I had such great examples of like I said, picking and choosing the best things qualities that they do and try and bring my own style and flair and personality into it.  And the rest is history.

[00:43:40] Mike Klinzing: Was there ever a strange moment when you walked in the door and you’re like I spent four years here as a player kind of on one side of the curtain and now I’m walking in and I’m going straight to the other side of the curtain from a coaching standpoint? Did you ever get like an odd feeling of just like, Hey, this is kind of cool.

This is different. This is interesting. There’s something about going, shifting from the playing side to the coaching side here at my alma mater. Did you ever have a moment where you just stopped and kind of looked around? I was like, wow, this is pretty cool that I played here and now I’m the head coach.

[00:44:16] Chris McHugh: Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, it’s you almost have to pinch yourself, right? It’s it was hard to put into words how much it meant to me to get the position. I get to represent the great history of W and L basketball. And I thought a lot about when I got the job, I thought a lot about my teammates and a lot of my teammates are guys that we stood shoulder to shoulder there and in basketball and competing together and building the program from four wins my first year to our senior years, we were playing in the ODAC championship game.

That was a long, hard haul of togetherness and building that brotherhood and sticking it out as we were taking our lickings early in our career and thinking about how those relationships translated off the court that those guys that were shoulder to shoulder with in basketball were guys that I’ve walked through life with the rest of life.

I mean, some of my best friends of the world are guys that I played W and L basketball with. Guys that were in my wedding and I theirs. And I mentioned Greg already the guy that was, I grew up with and the connection there, but Kirk Jones and Femi Kashimo and Al White and too many, Jason Cimino and too many names to mention of just guys that are some of my best friends in the world.

And then to think, wow, we played here together.  Coach Hutchinson brought us all together and we got from all different parts of the country. Right. We were guys from all over the place. W & L is a national school. So we had guys from up and down the East coast and Texas and Midwest and getting to meet all these great people and great families.

And now I’m bestowed with the honor of kind of being the the head coach and steering the program forward. It’s something that I think about every day. And try to keep as fresh as it was that first time that I realized, wow, I’m walking into this locker room and I used to sit in that chair and now I got to go stand up with this whiteboard where I’m used to seeing coach stand all the time.

This feels like an out of body experience, but you get used to it and you like I said, I take so much pride in representing my teammates and my great friends that I had there. And I think about that every day. And you think about it on the hard days too. When you take a loss or you’ve been going for a while and everybody’s tired and it’s the middle of the winter and the everybody’s getting the cold sicknesses getting around.

It’s like, you know what, we’ve got a larger responsibility because we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves. So the fact that I’ve had to, I’m just so grateful that I’ve got in my head coaching experience that I’ve had, that I’m an alum. And I can’t imagine, I’ve never been a head coach at a place.

I wasn’t an alum, so it’s just so great that I get to have those, the storytelling that I get to and connection between the alums of past generations. Like we have  and not this Saturday, but next we’re going to have our alumni back for an alumni game. And we’re going to pack the stands with guys from different generations.

And so cool to see the older guys coming back and connecting and supporting with the younger guys. And that’s bigger than basketball. That’s mentorship. And that’s getting to know the alumni network for when our graduates move on and are pursuing careers and professional work.

And it’s just, I’ve had such a blast connecting people and getting everybody rallied around our program.

[00:47:26] Mike Klinzing: I don’t know what being an alum is worth. And I don’t know if that you can quantify it, but I know that being a head coach at a place where you played, it’s worth something. I don’t know what it’s worth.

I don’t know what it does. I don’t know if you could put a percentage on it, but I know it adds something to how much it means to that coach. And that’s not to say, obviously there’s lots of guys who are coaching at schools and places that are not their alma mater, but I do think that there’s some.

Unquantifiable piece that being an alum, being coaching at your alma mater, I feel like it adds, it adds something to it. And I can hear it when you talk and anybody that I’ve talked to on a pod about coaching at their alma mater. a little extra oomph that you get, I think, from, from coaching at your, at your alma mater, because you just have, it’s almost like you have double pride.

You have pride in the program for when you’re a player, and then you’re obviously doubling down on that when you’re, when you’re a head coach. When you think back to getting that job for the first time and you’re kind of looking ahead at what you envision the program becoming and where you want to take it.

What did you think about as being one or two of the most important things that you knew you had to get done or that you knew you had to create in order to get the program where you wanted it to go.

[00:48:53] Chris McHugh: Yeah. I think great question. I think that it’s cliche, but it’s cliche for a reason is it comes down to relationships and getting good people in the room.

And that’s the number one thing that I knew from jump. And that’s not a hard thing when you have such a quality institution like W and L, but I knew right from when I first got the job, okay, relationship building on all levels. And that is coming in right away and building relationships with the current players and letting them know that you’re a part of this and you’re my guy and we’re going to do this together and let’s build and develop and it’s going to, there’s going to be changes going to be new, but I’m here to support you and you have a great experience here. So immediately with the group of players that you have relationships with the alums, like we talked about already.

So cool to be an alum myself. So there’s already guys that I know that are going to be passionate and supporting us and backing us and cultivating that and growing our alumni network and support, building relationships with, with recruits, because that’s the next generation and the lifeblood of the program moving forward is got to attract highly talented people. And  I think more so than anything else that has been whatever success we’ve had and we’re really proud of what we’ve accomplished. And I think we’ve done some great things here at W& L. It all comes back to the fact that I have been surrounded with tremendous people.

And I want to shout out my assistant coaches here for a moment. When I got the job, Steve Phillips, who I had actually coached back at Mount St. Mary. And here we go again with the, with the name game of the fraternity of coaching. Steve is Steve. I coached and recruited at the Mount. He was the assistant coach at W and L.

So I got to go right in and he was my first assistant coach and I had somebody that I trusted implicitly that I knew was smart and tough and caring and loyal to a fault. And he was going to help us mentor that first year together as my head is swimming and I’m trying to figure out what the heck to do as a head coach.

And he was there to steer us in the right direction and already had great relationships established with the players because he had been there a year. And then after he spread his wings and moved on to Williams College as an assistant and is now the head coach at Kenyon. Doing a great job there in his first year.

Hired Matt Williams and Matt played at Davidson and was just unbelievable for us for four years. Matt’s work capacity is is second to none. I think sometimes you have to tell Matt, Hey, maybe we should shut off the film here or the recruiting calls. And why don’t you go why don’t you go have some time to yourself?

And Matt was tremendous for four years, such a relationship builder. And just a a a servant leader and loyal and such a relationship guy and such a knowledgeable basketball mind. And obviously coming from Coach McKillop and the tree there at Davidson, he had such a great basketball education in his career.

So he could gift us with what he learned there. And we as a program try and take a lot from Davidson and from Emory with coach Zimmerman. And thenmmost recently Trey Livingston, who’s my current assistant. Infectious, enthusiastic, huge personality. Everybody loves him. Impossible not to have joy being around him.

Great knowledge of the game. Makes it fun for everybody.  Those three assistants that I’ve had, have been stewards of our program and been mentors for our young guys and mentors for our players and done such a great job in building what we’re trying to accomplish, we’ve had great assistant coaches and we’ve had recruiting.

We’ve identified guys that are high character. And do things the right way on and off the court, knock on wood, but I don’t spend a lot of sleepless nights worrying about guys getting to class or doing the wrong thing. They they do a great job on campus and in the community and in the classroom. And having those high character guys that are also driven.

And I think an important thing too, that we identified in terms of those tremendous guys that I’ve gotten to coach is a true love of the game of basketball. And at W& L you’re getting a great education, but there’s a difference between saying I go to W& L and oh yeah, I play on the basketball team versus I’m a basketball player at W& L.

And you can do both with excellence and you can do basketball and academics both at the very highest level and you can be a basketball player here. And I think we’ve identified guys who love to work at their craft. that are going to fight through adversity, that care about the team, that care about uplifting the program.

So really most important thing and most important thing every day, and still the truth. And I think will be the truth God willing to have me for as long as they’re willing, for decades, hopefully coaching here is that it’s all about getting really good people in the room and building a vision and a culture together and just working at it day by day. And that’s it. And making sure that it’s a relationship based program where it’s guys eating together and team meals and enjoying each other’s company company and living together and hopefully hanging out outside of basketball is really important.

So relationships based and then values driven.  We’re about doing things the right way. We’re going to be coachable. We’re going to be great teammates. We’re going to compete the right way. We’re going to focus on improvement. We’re going to have great body language. We’re going to celebrate each other’s success.

All the values that you want to instill in the program that you get really good people marching towards that, that goal together is that’s how you accomplish big things.

[00:54:13] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let me ask you about those two sets of people. Let’s start with your assistant coaches. Then we’ll jump back to a little bit about the recruiting and how you get the right guys in your program.

But let’s talk about the coaching staff first. How do you look at it for yourself? Obviously we talked a lot about the guys that mentored you. As your head coaches, when you were an assistant, how do you think about that piece of it from your perspective now as a head coach, pouring into your assistants, giving them responsibility, helping them to prepare for the eventuality if they ever wanted to become the head coach of their own program?  How do you think about developing your coaches?

[00:54:51] Chris McHugh: Great question. I think that tying it back to that initial experience that I had at Mount St. Mary, where I was really thrown into the fire and learning a ton of things and had my hands in every piece of the program. I want to bring about that same experience for my assistants.

So, and it’s just me and one other full time assistant. So, there’s really no other choice. So that works well. That fits nicely. Really no choice but to do it. Wanting to expose my assistants to every aspect of the program and the methodology and how I go about thinking about making decisions.

So like you said, ultimately wanting if my assistants want to eventually become a head coach is okay, here’s how I view things. And it’s not the only way to view things and it’s not the perfect way and certainly I make plenty of mistakes, but look at how I try and think intentionally about how we go about building practice, how we take care of scouting.

What is our philosophy in recruiting? All those things. I want them to be involved in that process. And I want to just have ongoing, continuous, daily conversations about, all right, how are we doing this? Why are we doing this? And how do we get better? And  my assistants are, it’s just me and them out there, like I said, in practice.

So they’re when we’re breaking down drills he’s coaching one on the floor, I’m coaching the other. When we’re scrimmaging or playing live in practice. He’s coaching the white team. I’m coaching the blue team. So you have to act like a head coach. So I really want to think, I really do try and develop and think about, all right, here’s all the ways you need to prepare and think about when hopefully someday you’re in charge as a head coach, here it is, act like a head coach right now.

And obviously as a head coach, I’m going to have a final say on things, but when we’re together, when we’re in the office, when we’re working together throughout the day, I want you to challenge me. I want you to, I want your opinion on what you would do. If you were in my seat, what should we do here?

How should we approach preparing for this opponent? What do you think we need to do in practice today? How are the guys feeling? Do you think we need to go hard? Do you think we go a little bit lighter? Do you think we need to do more skill work? Is it our offense or defense that needs a little bit more fine tuning?

What’s your philosophy on that? So trying to ask those questions, trying to get them to think critically, and they’ve all been very smart, engaging guys and been great advisors to me. And then hopefully that prepares them for future success as they’ve gone on and spread their wings. Like I said.

Steve Phillips is now at Kenyon and he’s doing a great job in his first year as head coach. Matt Williams, I may have mentioned, is back at Davidson College where he played and doing an amazing job for that incredible program there. And obviously working with Coach Livingston right now, they make me better and they teach me and in that process, I hope we all get better.

[00:57:32] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that’s a great way to wrap up that little segment is, yeah, you want to be able to pour into them and hopefully they can learn from you. But I think in any situation, you’re not taking advantage of it, right? If you’re not learning from the people, even when you’re the teacher, right?

It’s your students can teach you a lot. You’re there to theoretically teach them, but man, they teach you a lot. And as a coach, your players and your assistant coaches can certainly teach you a lot of things. That you can gain from, from their experiences and their feedback and what they tell you and make you better all throughout that process.

So it’s definitely something that I think, it’s a two way street, not a one way street for sure. No matter when, whenever you’re talking about that relationship piece and that again, whether you call it player, coach, student, teacher, coach, coach relationship, you get the most out of it when it’s a two way street.

There’s no question about that. All right. Let me ask you about the recruiting side of it with players. So one of the things that you said earlier is Washington and Lee national recruiting. So when you start talking about. The budget that you have for recruiting and putting together your list of guys initially and figuring out who’s going to be a fit.

How do you just get started with the process? Where does the initial list of names come from that you start to look at? How do you balance out watching a player, AAU versus high school, just go through the process of what you do from first identifying a player to taking them all the way through until they’re actually enrolling on the and they show up on your campus.

[00:59:07] Chris McHugh: Well, W and L is a really prestigious academic school. So I think that the initial funnel is very simply, we want to find out as quick as we can, as we’re building a list of players. Is this person a very high academic student? And that is going to help us narrow things down pretty expeditiously.

So and to that end, as we are trying to build that list, we’re going to be looking right away at academics and we’re going to be targeting. academic events and whether they’re showcases or we’ve got a lot of mileage out of different Ivy League or Patriot Leagues that run camps and have all these high school students who are going there and high school basketball players who are wanting to play in the Ivy League or the Patriot League.

And invariably the top few players at the camp 180 other kids that are out there and they’re getting looked at by all the high academic division three schools like us. And that’s a crop of players that we’re going to look to to recruit and see if, like you said, see if the interest is there and see if they sort of have the right characteristics that we’re looking for in terms of in terms of being a a value add to our program.

I think that in the process.  it’s hard. You want to get out as much as you can to see live because I think that there’s so much gain from live scouting. It’s  through the film is nice highlights are nice for seeing things in three minutes and kind of that binary yes, no, that you can kind of tell right away with some highlight tapes, hey, this person is above the threshold skill wise and athletically, there’s somebody we got to be interested in.

But when you go live and scout, there’s just things that you can pick up on person that are harder to see in the film. You can see body language, you can see, are they cheering on their teammates on the sidelines? Are they talking actively on the floor and engaged and focused?

When the coach comes to coach them or give them constructive criticism, is there eye contact? Are they listening? Are they applying what they’re learning?  that in person energy and presence that you can feel by seeing. So trying to get out to a lot of those events that we talked about, Ivy League events, AAU events, of course seeing them play in their high school, but  really just trying to  like you said, the two way street of coaches and players.

Well, it’s a two way street of recruiting is you got to listen to recruits as well, right? We of course you want to sell the product that you have, you want to talk about why Washington and Lee is such a great school, what the opportunities it can give you on and off the court and in the classroom, and then professional opportunities as you go on, what it could mean as a 40 year decision for your life, and you want to sell all those great things, how beautiful the campus is, all the facilities that we have that are top notch for our level.

You want to be constantly putting your best foot forward talking about how great W and L basketball is, but at the same time you got to listen, and you got to ask questions and ask for feedback. And if there’s enthusiasm in that process, well, then  well, this recruit is probably somebody that’s interested.

And if you get blown off by them, or there’s just canned answers, well, then you might know that maybe this person isn’t super serious about wanting to come to W and L and play for our program. So I think figuring out those funnels of interest, academics, of course, and then just the basketball piece of it.

And we like highly skilled players that are tough, that can dribble pass and shoot and make decisions on the fly. And like I said, guys that, and I think it’s really important at our level, we talked about this too, in terms of the upbringing of developing as a player is is this a person that just loves to play games or do they love basketball?

Meaning, do they work on their craft on their own? If I ask a recruit to, like you asked me earlier, well, take me through a workout, and just any workout that you do, or the specific workouts that you like to do, and you hear silence on the other end of the phone because they don’t have an answer, well, that person might not love basketball to the degree that’s going to be necessary to fight through and be a great player at our level, at Division III level, where a longer part of the year, we are actually not in contact coaching them every day.

You have the summertime where they’re not here at least here, they’re not here on campus in the summer and there’s so from October 15th to the end of the year, we can help players get better. But if you want to be a great player, if you want to jump a level from good to great or great to excellent at our level, that’s gotta be self motivated and you gotta be able to work on your game on your own.

So if I talk to a recruit and he has no idea what his plan is for how he develops his game. Well, that’s a telltale sign that maybe this person is not going to develop the way someone else might be able to.  That has a better answer that has a plan, that has an enthusiasm and a passion for working on his craft in the off season.

[01:03:51] Mike Klinzing: Once you get them there, how do you build the relationships and the culture that clearly from our conversation, I can tell are so important to you. How do you go about doing that day to day? What does that look like?

[01:04:04] Chris McHugh: Yeah, definitely. I think it’s W and L really sells itself when you come here. It’s a beautiful place.

So when we get guys to campus, we feel really good about, we can show you all the sites and bring you to a class and have you meet students and then spend time with our program and either play pickup with our guys if it’s in the If it’s in the before the season or after season, or if it’s during the year, you come watch a practice, come watch how we are together.

And hopefully our enthusiasm and our infectious energy during practice is something that just resonates and that you can see and feel and touch that makes recruits that come visit campus want to be a part of it. And the schools that we recruit against have all have unbelievable curb appeal as in their beautiful places and have unbelievable facts and figures that they can brag about how tremendous the academic reputation is and alumni and the endowment and all these wonderful facts that what we want to create when we’re bringing recruits to be a part of our program is you want to feel more.

Our personality and the vibe that we have and how we have fun together and how we enjoy each other’s company and how we compete really hard. But we’re also having a good time and it’s and it’s a great place to be and we’re enjoying enjoying the whole process. So I think that’s a really big part of the on campus experience of recruits and really having a mindset from our players.

Our players do a great job of really welcoming in the recruits and taking pride and showing them our best foot forward and being honest when they answer ask questions and be honest and show who we really are because we want to be honest because we like who we are. And if you don’t like our honest answers, well, maybe there’s another place that’s better for you, but we’re going to put our best foot forward and take pride in showing this is how we do things. We love who we are. We’re proud of what we have achieved, but we’re hungry to achieve even more and having that as a real feeling that you get boots on the ground, a field that can’t be encapsulated in numbers and facts and figures. That’s a culture.

That’s an atmosphere that you create. And then just kind of trying to continue that throughout the recruiting process, right to the very end where yeah, text and phone calls and maybe I’m a little bit old school, but texting is convenient. And that’s probably a lot easier way to get an answer nowadays.

And then some of the prospects, it might be the only way you can get them sometimes, but I have to talk on the phone to our top recruits, because I want to get to know you better. I want to hear your story. I want to interact with you. There’s no tone in text. So I love getting on the phone with our top guys and getting to know them better.

And that’s how you really decide if they’re really interested and if this is the right fit for them to be a part of the program.

[01:06:46] Mike Klinzing: Once they sign on and now you’ve got your team together and obviously if you’re doing a good job of recruiting, you’re bringing in a bunch of guys who believe they can play and you obviously believe in them as players, but not everybody’s going to get the minutes that they want.

So how do you think about developing competitiveness within your team and keeping your practices highly competitive and yet still making sure that your team is bonded together along with or side by side with that competitive nature. Cause obviously you need both. You need guys to push each other. You need guys to challenge one another in practice.

And then at the same time, when practice ends or when a game starts, you need everybody back together on the same page. So how do you think about that in terms of competitiveness and relationships, putting those two things together?

[01:07:44] Chris McHugh: That’s the million dollar question, right? And that’s developing players while at the same time, we’re trying to win now, but we also have younger players who you want to see keep growing and getting better.  And ultimately assuming the mantle of presumably older players that go on and graduate and cultivating that development and growth and so that it’s not just one class that you’re good and then you fall apart, you hope that the classes behind you are all getting better and better and better and you can develop a program rather than a team.

So I think that’s so key. I think that, you use the word competitive and I think that’s a huge part of it. I think your practices have to be a balance between competitiveness and collaboration. So drills where guys are getting after one another, where it’s intense and we’re fighting and we’re working hard to make each other better.

And then let’s do a drill where everybody’s on the same team and we’re doing a full court shooting drill and let’s see how many baskets we can make together. Right, so it’s that learning how to be a good teammate and work with one another and also understanding that actually competing against one another is a true sign of a relationship and true sign of friendship is that I’m not going to go easy on you just because you’re my buddy off the court.

Is I actually care about you so much that I want to compete really hard to make you better. And I think cultivating that attitude is really important. And then I think it’s important to build a culture and celebrate when teammates are really good at celebrating each other’s success. So pointing out…And maybe it’s a player on your team that plays less minutes, but he’s up and he’s high fiving everybody and he’s enthusiastic and he’s jumping  off the chair and the bench when we hit a three and yell boom. That’s got to be celebrated and highlighted in your program. That’s got to be a part of your culture because, that helps make everybody feel like they have an important role, which they do because everybody’s valuable and everybody adds to the team. So celebrating those guys that are competing every day, getting better, making our team better. Maybe there’s a handful of players that are quote unquote, being on the scout team, simulating our next opponent for the guys at the top of the rotation to get you to get ready for our next opponent.

Well, that is not only a service to the team and to the players that are going to play the most minutes getting prepared for what they’re showing, but it’s also an opportunity for, for those players that are on the scout team to get better, to expand their game, to learn a different scheme. Like we talked about all the different great coaches I got to work for.

I got to learn different schematics and different offenses and different philosophies. Well, it’s the same thing for a player that’s coming up and gets to simulate a team who runs the move or block or offense, which we don’t run, but now we’re going through it and now you’re learning about using a flare screen and you’re getting to spread your wings and play a little bit because you’re simulating the other team.

That’s going to make you a better player. So buy into that, right? We had a player. And that’s what great programs do. I think there was a player Alex Foster at Emory who didn’t play very much early in his career. Maybe he was on the scout team as a freshman a little bit and then playing there and he got better and he worked at his game.

And by the time he was a senior, he was a first team All American, Division III. So that’s the vision is that you come in and that you work and you pay your dues and ultimately you get better and you contribute to the team. And you hope that eventually that role you’re a star in your role, no matter what that is, whether it’s to not play any minutes, but compete in practice and be a great teammate.

And you’re a star in that role. And then you compete for more. And we talk about that all the time. And there’s only one objective and I think it’s important to explain to our team, even though it’s very intuitive is like the only thing that we think about in terms of who’s going to play in this game today is what gives our program the best chance of success today.

That’s it, right? So that’s not, that can feel very personal, but it’s not. It’s really, and we’re not always perfect, right? We might not have the perfect, you could argue that this player could have played a little bit more, a little bit less or more shots for one guy, less for another, but our only goal is to win and to have success.

And so everybody bought into that and everybody’s really important and valuable. And I think one of the things I tell our first years right away is comparison is the thief of joy. So. You’re a college basketball player probably because either A, you were one of the stars on your high school team or B, you played on an unbelievable high school team where you played a role and were good enough to still play in college.

Okay, those were great experiences. You might have been the star of the team. You might have been the MVP. You might have been all county, all conference, all state. Well, comparison is the thief of joy. You can’t come into a new situation where you were the senior and you knew everybody and you were the head honcho, maybe the captain of the team and then expect it to be the exact same experience.

When you’re starting out as a first year, first day of college basketball, learning college basketball, which is a different game, which is bigger, faster, stronger against older players with new schemes. It’s a process. So don’t compare to what that experience was like. It doesn’t mean set your goals low and doesn’t mean that first years can’t come in right away and play, but it’s understanding that it’s a larger picture and we have a phrase that we talk about all the time.

That’s maybe heard before, but ETJ, enjoy the journey. And the journey isn’t always linear, isn’t always a little bit better every day. There’s going to be ups and downs and peaks and valleys, but it’s about working harder and getting better and taking pride and contributing the best that you can to the team’s mission.

[01:13:02] Mike Klinzing: It’s a really good explanation of how you put a team together and what it means to be a team and more importantly, to be a teammate. And I think that. Any coach could strive towards that vision that you just described. And I think you did a really good job of of clarifying and then giving concrete examples of what it looks like to be competitive.

And at the same time, be completely bought into what it means to be a teammate. And then consequently to, to be a team from, from a coach’s perspective. So very well said before we get out, I want to give you a chance. I’m going to ask you one final question here. And two parter. So, part one, when you think about the next year or two and you look ahead, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

And then the second part, what brings you the most joy about what you get to do each and every day? So, first your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:14:00] Chris McHugh: Biggest challenge is going to be easy one. It’s going to be a shout out to the ODAC Division III Men’s Basketball Conference. That’s the challenge.

Wow. Incredible league full of Tremendous coaches who have built programs. Dave Macedo, Tom Palumbo, Josh Merkle, Clay Nutley. I’m not going to name everybody, but they’re all fantastic coaches who have developed tremendous division three programs. And our league you can always squabble about who’s the best or who’s first, second, third.

Well, we’re in that conversation. We’re in that conversation loudly this year. And the biggest challenge is how tremendous our competition is. And it’s motivating though. And it makes us better. And we wouldn’t want it any other way, right? To be the best, you got to go compete against the best. And we get to do that night in night out in the ODAC.

So I think the biggest challenge is just how good these other teams are that we play. They’re awesome and great players. And we love it. And like I said, you got to relish we, we tell recruits is, is  if you want to come play in the ODAC, you better be ready to come compete because that’s what it is every night.

And so that’s the biggest challenge. And then. I believe you asked my biggest joy. Yep. I just think that being with great people every day, feeling like I can make a difference in a positive impact in young people’s lives is always going to be the most just feeling like going through the ups and downs of a basketball season and the times together and being on the bus rides and watching film with the team and watching film individually and having individual meetings and chit chatting with guys on the side and spending time off the court.

That I’m a positive mentor and that I’m hopefully helping our, helping our players develop as young men. So when they go off and they leave W& L’s beautiful campus, that they go off and be great fathers and husbands and doctors and lawyers and CEOs and all the great things that they’re going to go on to be.

So making a difference and seeing those happy faces in the locker room when you come in after a big win. There’s nothing like that because you know that you put in the work and that you earned it and that you worked hard and seeing everybody’s joy together that we’re accomplishing great things.

But really that feeling, that joy, that especially over four years, and we’ve had such a great history and tradition of guys and in my tenure of sticking it out for four years, we’ve lost very, very, very few players over four years. And I’m extremely proud of that, that those guys will look back on it and say, I’m so glad that I got this experience.

I grew as a person. I grew as a basketball player. I developed great relationships with my teammates and coaches and I have these unbelievable memories and I’m going to carry through these relationships to the rest of my life just like hopefully they see that I do with my teammates that that are some of my best friends in the world.

So that’s really all I could ask for and that’s that’s the joy of being a coach.

[01:16:55] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Before we finish, I want to give you a chance to share how people can connect with you, whether you want to share email, social media, website, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I will jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:17:08] Chris McHugh: Absolutely. My email is probably the best way to get me. And it’s on the website at W and L generals, athletics, men’s basketball, but I can read it out quickly right now is. McHugh, which is my last name, MCHUGHC@WLU.EDU, and love to hear from anybody, and thanks so much for having me, Mike.

[01:17:34] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely, Chris, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule. Truly appreciate it, and to everyone out there, thanks for listening, and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

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