MIKE JAGACKI – SUNY NEW PALTZ MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 950

Website – https://nphawks.com/sports/mens-basketball   https://www.lockdownhoops.com/

Email – mikejagacki@gmail.com

Twitter/X – @Mike_Jagacki

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Mike Jagacki is a Men’s Basketball Assistant Coach at SUNY New Paltz where he helped lead the Hawks to the NCAA D3 Tournament in 2024. Prior to arriving at New Paltz, Jagacki spent 3 years as a Video Coordinator and Assistant Coach for the Women’s Basketball Program at Hofstra University helping the Pride to a Semi-Final appearance in the CAA Tournament and the first Top 5 conference finish in 5 years.

Before Hofstra, Mike spent time as Boys’ Basketball Associate Head Coach at Combine Academy, a Post-Grad program in North Carolina.  He started his career as a Boys’ Basketball Assistant Coach at his alma mater, Middlesex High School in New Jersey. During this time Mike also opened his own AAU Program, TrueHoops.

Jagacki is also the creator of Lockdown Defense which has amassed over 4 million views on YouTube, over 27,000 subscribers and is the author of Lockdown Defense: Developing Elite Defenders which has reached Amazon’s Top 12 Best Basketball Books and has sold over 1000 copies worldwide.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Mike Jagacki, Men’s Basketball Assistant Coach at SUNY New Paltz.

What We Discuss with Mike Jagacki

• His Dad playing at Power Memorial High School for the same coach as Lew Alcindor
• The advice his Dad gave him in a rec league game – “Relax on offense, hustle on defense.”
• “Taking responsibility for what I could control at that young age, never finding excuses.”
• Red Flag Parents – “A lot of times the red flag parents aren’t aware of the red flags and they just share it with you right away.”
• The lack of self-awareness in players regarding what level of college basketball they can play at
• How tearing his acl in college led him to start studying the x’s and o’s of the game
• Helping out with a 4th grade team and immediately knowing he wanted to coach
• “I needed to earn the respect. I knew that right away. And so how could I do that? I needed to know my stuff, right? And so I started studying and learning every fundamental I could.”
• “It was just a continual passion to learn more and help the players reach their goals and dreams and help them accomplish what they wanted to do.”
• “The camaraderie is really what really gets me. Building that team culture, that camaraderie. And so that’s really what drove me, bringing all these individuals into a group having a shared purpose.”
• Creating a culture roadmap
• Writing a long reflection of the season – I might not know exactly what we should have done right now, but one day I hope I do.
• Constantly learning and never blaming the players
• The value in taking notes during and after practice
• The difficulty of saying goodbye to your players when you take a new job
• “I’m not thinking about what’s next. I’m thinking about how this team could be do better and how I could help it do better. And so almost every opportunity I’ve gotten has been out of the blue, someone reaching out to me.”
• The lack of individual defensive drills, concepts, and teaching points that are out there
• Breaking down the best defensive players and sharing on YouTube
• Taking a job at Combine Academy after coaching at his alma mater, Middlesex (NJ) High School for four years
• The two types of defensive stances he teaches – containment and aggressive
• Levels of defenders – Liability, Capable, Disruptor
• Defense is a movement skill
• Some popular misconceptions about great defenders
• “The best defenders don’t turn the switch off when it comes to defense. They know they can make an impact and they’re excited to see how they can do that.”
• “I think the quickest way to take someone’s confidence is, they can’t score on you.”
• “Once players have developed those movement patterns, once we’ve made them more explosive, more on balance, things like that, yeah, now we need to work on the reaction time and their anticipation cues.”
• Breaking down NBA film of the greatest coaches and defenders in the world
• Taking a job as the video coordinator for Hofstra Women’s Basketball
• The differing motivations for men’s and women’s players
• Lifestyle differences between coaching Division 1 vs. Division 3
• “A lot of D3 players are setting themselves up beyond basketball too, because they have that free time.”
• “We’ve achieved the success, but now our challenge is to sustain it.”

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THANKS, MIKE JAGACKI

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TRANSCRIPT FOR MIKE JAGACKI – SUNY NEW PALTZ MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 950

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkel tonight and we are pleased to be joined by Mike Jagacki, assistant men’s basketball coach at SUNY New Paltz. Mike, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:13] MIke Jagacki: Thanks for having me guys. Happy to be here.

[00:00:16] Mike Klinzing: We are 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 about some of your first experiences with the game of basketball.

[00:00:30] MIke Jagacki: Yeah usually when I start talking about my journey, I start with the coaching journey, not all the way back to my childhood.

So it’s going to be fun to kind of dive into the past. I think my, my life was always surrounded by sport. I was very fortunate to have two supportive, involved parents throughout my life. And I was the infant kid that was taking a onesie picture with the toy basketball right beside him.

So my dad always probably had dreams of me pursuing basketball. He himself.  it was never a star athlete, but he did play basketball at a prestigious high school Power Memorial under the same coach that Lew Alcindor, Kareem Abdul Jabbar played for.

[00:01:13] Mike Klinzing: Did he have stories about that?  Was he there at the same time?

[00:01:16] MIke Jagacki: Okay. Not, not specifically Kareem, but just being coached by that same coach, I mean back in the day when. Big men had the take guards heads out when they came down the lane. So, but yeah, so both my parents they were, they weren’t the types that were going to force anything on me, but they wanted me to try a bunch of different things growing up and pick the things that stick.

I could never quit something I started, but once the season ended, I kind of, Could choose to pursue what I wanted to. And one of the, the two things I latched onto as a kid were, were basketball and soccer. And, and honestly, soccer is probably my better sport. And just to reflect on my parents for a little bit, a quick little sidebar.

My mom and neither parent were the one to let me win any games I was being driven by competitiveness. I could never, my dad all the way to high school is backing me down in the driveway. So it was never an easy battle. My mom’s even probably even super competitive. She’s the one that’s always bringing games to family gatherings.

Those games you see on social media, trying to win everything, right?  It’s not how you do everything. You got to win everything. So she wasn’t a huge sports junkie, but, but she knew the world. And my dad, on the other hand loved basketball. We grew up in New Jersey. So, local teams, Knicks and Nets.

And if they were playing, which there was a good chance they were right, it was on our TV. So every night it was watching basketball. I even remember one time my mom and sister were watching American Idol and me and my dad were in the other room playing on the TV that didn’t have cable NBA live 1996 or whatever, right.

On the original PlayStation. So, Basketball and sports was always a big part. My dad was always volunteering as a coach, whether it was soccer or basketball. He was my first coach. And I’m going to say there are two core memories that stick out. in kind of the basketball world for me growing up. One was a rec league game.

I must have been probably nine or ten at the time. And  those, those games can get pretty ugly it’s usually a race to 20 sometimes. And so we were playing a game. My dad’s the coach. I think we’re up six with four minutes to go and that’s a big lead when you’re nine or ten.

Absolutely. Yeah. And the other team scores, they cut it to four. My dad calls timeout. We come into the huddle and we only had six guys and usually the teams were nine and ten. So, You can imagine we were pretty exhausted. Dad could see it. He comes, we come into the huddle and he goes, guys, I know you’re tired.

I know you’ve given everything. You got this game. We only got so much more time. And here’s the truth. We don’t need to score another basket to win this game.  if you really need to catch your breath, you really need a break walk up on offense. We can slow the pace down, find space, catch your breath, but on defense, we need everything you got.

Relax on offense, hustle on defense. And I think that sabotaged my offensive career from there on. And the reason I think it stuck out to me, and we ended up winning the game. I don’t know if anyone scored but we ended up pulling it out and it sticks out to me because it was the first time. It hit me at how important defense was and how big of an impact it could make.

And quickly, the second story I think about a lot is when I was in sixth or seventh grade trying out for a travel team in our town and I was pretty self aware. I still like to think I am. And I knew I wasn’t the best player and I also was pretty aware that I wasn’t the worst player.

I knew who to get the ball to. My favorite player growing up was Jason Kidd. So I knew guys were better able to make the shot than I was, but the thing was I got cut from that team and I didn’t make it. And I was pretty sure though I knew I wasn’t the best, but I was pretty sure I was at least better than the coach’s son.

And my friends backed me up as good friends do when we talked about it. And so, the next day I think after learning it, I’m in the car with my dad coming home or whatever and I bring it up to him.  I bring up that hey, I think I was better than that kid the coach’s son I don’t know how he made it and I didn’t.

And credit to my dad for not even entertaining the conversation. Like, my parents were never going to be the ones to talk to a coach. My dad immediately pivoted the conversation on what I could have done in that tryout to do better. Did I make every lefty layup? No. Well, okay. Did you make every foul shot?

No. Okay. Can you make ten lefty foul shot ten lefty layups in a row? Can you make five foul shots in a row? And after that conversation, I mean, every time I was in the driveway, it was 10 righty layups in a row, 10 lefty layups in a row, five foul shots in a row. And I remember the first time I completed that circuit, I ran to my dad and I was like, Dad, I did it.

I did it. And what did he say? That’s great. That’s great. Now can you do X, Y, Z? And so it was immediately taking responsibility for what I could control at that young age, never finding excuses. And, To put the cherry on top, when I got to freshman year and we tried out for the freshman team I made that team pretty easily and people that made the travel team were, were cut.

And so it was always a good lesson. And I think fast forwarding to my coaching career and even life I take some of those lessons from my dad, no excuses, the attention, the detail, the finer points. The competitiveness from my mom and my mom also taught me the importance of rituals and traditions bringing people together.

So. I know that’s pretty long winded, but that kind of is when I reflect kind of the core things that still drive me today.

[00:07:21] Mike Klinzing: It’s funny when you think back to your childhood and you start thinking about what are the things that you’ve learned. stand out to you? What are the things that continue to influence you as an adult?

And I think that most of us, obviously we grew up in our parents household and they have a big influence over who we become and especially in activities that both our parents and ourselves that, that we like and sports tends to be something that a lot of times that overlap occurs. But I’m just like you in that I have things that my dad said to me that I still I remember that exact conversation.

I remember the exact wording and I kind of remember the situation I was in and then I remember how much that influenced me. And the one thing that my dad said to me that I still. It always stuck with me was we played this game. And again, I was probably about the same age. You were nine, 10, 11, 12, somewhere in that range elementary school.

And I remember I played a game and I think we won the game, but I was frustrated because I had passed the ball to some teammates and they had dropped the ball or the ball had whizzed past their face and gone out of bounds. And I remember being frustrated and kind of saying to my dad come on, like these guys, like, I have to, I have to stop passing.

You just Shoot. And my dad said, you have to keep passing the ball because eventually you’re going to play with guys that are going to catch the ball when you pass it to them. And so you want to be able to keep passing. And I just still think all throughout my basketball career, that was something that influenced me and it’s something that I’ve used with players to help them to understand again, just why the game is played unselfishly and how much better your team and you can be as a player. And my dad probably honestly doesn’t even remember ever saying that to me, but it’s just funny what sticks out.

And obviously then there’s the whole overarching stuff that you get from your parents, like you described the competitiveness from your mom and your dad, the resiliency and the no excuses and all that kind of stuff, where maybe it’s not a specific incident, but it’s more of just, that’s an influence that you felt from them every day.

And it’s kind of amazing again, like how much we take from that environment that our parents created for us. And I think you especially see it again in sports where it’s something that oftentimes The kid is passionate about it, but oftentimes the parents are passionate about it. And if they go about it the right way, they’re teaching those life lessons and that kind of thing.

[00:09:52] MIke Jagacki: A hundred percent.

[00:09:52] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, go ahead.

[00:09:56] MIke Jagacki: I was just reflecting on I think there’s been a surge of, of college coaches really focusing on the parent, recruiting the parents, making sure they understand who the parents are and not just who the kid is.

[00:10:08] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s so true. How do you do that? So from a college coaching perspective, what does that look like when you think about trying to sort of vet the parents?  What does that look like?

[00:10:17] MIke Jagacki:  A lot of times the red flag parents kind of bring up the flags themselves in general conversations. If you can just get, if you could just get them freelancing about watching their kid play and, and what it was like growing up where they always the sports kid, they’ll just kind of randomly insert these things, the issues with previous coaches Their demeanor on the sideline.

It’s just, a lot of times the red flag parents aren’t aware of the red flags and they just share it with you right away. And you’re like, okay, that’s a little concerning. Do we want that on our sideline now?

[00:10:53] Mike Klinzing: Right. Well, it’s funny because again, obviously at the college level, you have control over which players, but consequently, which families and which parents you bring into your program that you have to deal with. And I’m sure that after many a recruiting visit or a trip to go watch a kid play that you come back and you reflect with your fellow colleagues on staff and are just like, Yeah, I don’t know about that.

That’s a rough parental situation that I’m not sure we want to have to deal with those individuals over the course of four years. And luckily again, as a college staff, you have the opportunity to control that. Sometimes in high school, as a high school coach, you may not have that same level of control.

So then you kind of got to figure out, well, what are the workarounds? How do we deal with this parent in a way that allows us to still have a positive experience with the kid? And maybe we can somehow try to minimize the damage that the parents are doing. But yeah, it’s a, a very interesting part of recruiting that I think, look, I know that you’ve sat at many AAU tournaments just like I have, and it’s amazing to me sometimes the people that when you talk to them and they have these goals for their child.

And so many times that they. Mike Klinzing. Well, I think it’s interesting because a lot of people don’t understand, as you said, that they don’t even realize that they themselves are the red flag and their behaviors are ones that are negatively influenced, negatively influencing their kid’s recruitment.

It’s just again, you talked about your own self-awareness. I think there are a lot of people out there in the AAU basketball parenting world that a lot, oftentimes aren’t aware of. Maybe as self-aware as they need to be.

[00:12:35] MIke Jagacki: Yeah. I don’t know how that trait developed. I have to ask my parents, I guess, but the self-awareness thing, I mean, I was at a prep school for one year in North Carolina post grad for most of the kids.

I think we had about 50 plus kids in our post grad recruiting class. And one of the first exercises we did with them was write down fill out this, this very short questionnaire. And on that questionnaire was what, what schools are you interested in if you had any, and it was just amazing to see how many kids listed power five schools that were in all honesty, not near a division one scholarship and I don’t know how that trait gets developed fully.

I know we do a lot of film. We do a lot of self-scout with the programs I’ve been a part of. I hope that helps kids and those kids who are constantly fighting for playing time, which, which we kind of want, right? We want guys who want to play sitting down with them, showing them the film, showing them exactly what we want from them and how their role is going to be utilized.

But yeah, that’s a big piece of it. Self-awareness. And I think it’s gotten a little bit diminished, I guess, in the years.

[00:13:53] Mike Klinzing: It’s funny because when I think about my own journey, and I’ve told this story on the podcast before, so I won’t go into the whole detailed version of it, but basically when I was a kid, there wasn’t the same level of information that was out there that there is today. I mean, now through social media, just through being able to watch and see and understand and know what other people are doing and who’s going where and this and that and offers. And again, not that everything out there is truth. Cause you and I both know that there’s a lot of misinformation out there too.

There’s certainly way more information available to players in terms of being able to honestly get an idea of where they sit. But when I was a kid, like that didn’t exist. And so as I was growing up. My parents obviously had never, I was a firstborn and they hadn’t had anybody else that went through a recruiting process and my high school coach had never had anybody and my experience with basketball and trying to figure out where I was and who I was.

And I just didn’t have a good grasp and understanding of what level that I could play at. I saw guys that were around me that I know were getting recruited by different schools. I’m like, I’m as good as these guys. And so anyway, long story short, I, when Kent state, where I ended up. Going to school, they came and talked to me.

I’m pretty sure it was like the, maybe the spring of my junior year. And they said, Hey, you want to come down and take it, take a visit and see the school and whatever. And I, I looked around, I’m like, well, I only get five of these visits. And I don’t want to, I don’t want to waste one on Kent state when I got to save one for North Carolina and Ohio state and Duke and whatever.

And I had no I mean, I had no idea. And so I told him no, and then that kind of just killed the recruiting and then I ended up having to kind of re recruit myself sort of in the spring of my senior year. And luckily enough, that they had a couple of kids transfer and a scholarship opened up for me, but that was like my only offer, but I had no idea.

I was not self-aware in that particular area. Now, Again, I ended up going on and having a decent career and getting an opportunity to play and whatever. So I probably, probably some other schools should have been recruiting me. So yeah, I wasn’t quite as self-aware as I thought, but anyway, it’s just the amount of information that’s out there today.

I think too many kids are hearing, they just hear what they want to hear instead of really evaluating where they stand, if that makes any sense.

[00:16:22] MIke Jagacki: Yeah, we hear a lot about Echo Chambers these days in social media and outside of the world of basketball, but it’s definitely in the world of basketball too with trainers and coaches and parents and followers nowadays, so, and every kid’s after the best highlight reel.

And sometimes it’s unfortunate to have a player on your team, who’s focused on getting highlights for their social media account or whatever, while you’re trying to just win a game and it’s definitely cropped up, especially I think more so in the AAU than the high school or things like that.

[00:17:01] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it is funny when you go to an AAU tournament and you’ll see multiple camera crews walking around on the court and you’re like, and then you’re looking at the level of the game and you’re like, who are these, who are they filming in this game? And what are they doing with that?

What are they doing with that game film? It’s kind of crazy when you start thinking about all that piece of it in terms of putting together highlight reels for kids who are in fifth, sixth, seventh grade, or even for Again, high school kids that probably don’t even have the capability of playing college basketball, but yet they got plenty of funding to be able to put together these crazy highlight tapes.

So, yeah, it’s an interesting world. I’m sure that you have, have many, many stories of, of funny things that you’ve seen out on the AAU circuit. What made you decide that you wanted to be a coach and when did you make that decision? Was that something that you kind of always knew growing up with your dad coaching you and kind of the influence that he had on you?

Or was it something that came to you while you were in college? Just how did you make the decision that coaching was where you wanted to end up?

[00:18:08] MIke Jagacki: Yeah, I kind of stumbled into it, to be honest. I was never a great player.  I think at the peak seventh man backup point guard. So I knew going to college I was not going to be pursuing sports.

I was going to be pursuing a degree. So I went to Rutgers University. My roommate was one of my best friends at the time. And basketball wasn’t an organizational part of my life anymore, but it was a huge recreational part of my life and, and sports in general.  we probably spent more time playing basketball than, than definitely reading or studying it was a constant part of our life.

We even started joke podcasts about watching basketball and stuff like that. So I was always infatuated and consumed by the game. And it was a huge part of my life, even though I wasn’t pursuing it collegiately or professionally. And then sophomore year in college, my ACL pops and I tear my ACL and all of a sudden in a blink of an eye, this whole part of my life, the sports aspect of recreational free time disappeared.

It had been taken away immediately. And so now I had all this free time on my hand. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was going crazy. And so I used that time to start. I just dove into learning more about the game and learning about it from the X’s and O’s side I was now watching NBA games and doodling diagrams of the plays they were running offensively.

And then my buddy was coaching, not coaching, but he was Facilitating, I guess would be the word, an afterschool, elementary school basketball centric afterschool activity kind of thing. And through a friend of a friend from that, he got a chance to coach a fourth grade AAU team. And he asked me if I wanted to help him out and I was doing I was chilling with a torn ACL.

So I was more than happy to, to help. At that time, I was also kind of studying shooting techniques. Because I was never a prolific shooter and I wanted to get better at myself. And I just found it so fascinating. And right after our first practice with that fourth grade team, I mean, I was hooked. I mean, this, I knew this was a passion of mine immediately.

I started buying all these coaches books, devouring them. watching all the, all the information I could, all the YouTube videos, the clinics finding championship production clinic DVDs. I got these giant coaching books basically college textbooks, but in basketball the Wooten book, there’s a bunch of them probably had a thousand pages that I was reading.

And it was just immersive. I started studying every fundamental so that I could teach because I knew again, back this seems to be a running thing, but I knew right away, I wasn’t going to have instant credibility walking into a gym I wasn’t a prolific player. I wasn’t this bigger than life personality.

I needed to earn the respect. I knew that right away. And so how could I do that? I needed to know my stuff, right? And so I started studying and learning every fundamental I could. Shooting, as  there’s prolific information about that. Jab steps, rebounding, box, you know. Post play, triple threat game, finishing, you could find all that stuff and I devoured it all.

And so I just kept trying to develop as a coach. We didn’t do very well in that first season, but I kept climbing I started to volunteer with my high school, my previous high school, my freshman coach had just taken the job as the varsity coach. So I jumped on board with him there.

I continued coaching AAU. And jumping up the ladder to seventh and eighth grade high school. And I started to get promoted every year at the high school I was working at from volunteer to varsity assistant to head JV coach and varsity so I just kept working my way up and getting more and more responsibility and ownership and just kept learning.

There’s my favorite line of a song from the Red Hot Chili Peppers is the more you see, the less and. And I definitely felt like the more I was learning, the less I know. So it was just a continual passion to learn more and help the players reach their goals and dreams and help them accomplish what they wanted to do.

[00:22:38] Mike Klinzing: What was the part of coaching that you kind of felt like you were, and again, I don’t know if good at is the right way to say it, but what’s something that you felt like from a coaching standpoint came to you at least relatively naturally. Obviously, you’re talking about being able to build your knowledge base of X’s and O’s and all those things.

But clearly, if you jump into it, and after that first practice, you’re like, man, I know this is what I want to do. There’s something about it that you really love. And I’m guessing something that you were sort of intrinsically good at. So if you had to describe that one thing that you really liked, that you were, felt pretty confident about, Right out of the gate.

What would that be?

[00:23:20] MIke Jagacki: Well, I might take it in a little different direction than maybe you’re anticipating because growing up around sports, basically I would say 80 percent of my close friends had come from sports, right? They had been my teammates and we continue to develop that friendship.

And so the camaraderie is really what really gets me building that team, that team culture, that camaraderie. And so. That’s really what drove me, bringing all these individuals into a group having a shared purpose, having an ethos, and also Tendentially trying to help those individual players Improve at something that was, I would always show up 30 minutes before, stay 30 minutes after those AAU Practices and in the AAU scene, that was pretty rare back then to have a coach, extend their working hours. And so like the players would always race to be the first one in 30 minutes before practice, just so we could work on individual stuff that they wanted to get better at. And that’s really what I guess really sparked that passion at first, this being able to individually help someone succeed and then building that team culture and bringing all those individual pieces together.

[00:24:37] Mike Klinzing: What was different about your experiences at this time of your career in AAU versus coaching at the high school level? Similarities, differences, things you liked, things you didn’t like about each one of those. Does anything stand out in that area?

[00:24:52] MIke Jagacki:  That’s an interesting question.  I think the knock on AAU is there’s typically not a big culture around programs.

It’s more so picking up the random kid for a weekend tournament, and then picking up a new kid to help you win that next tournament people are fluctuating all over the place. You don’t even know the roster sometimes, but for us one of the proudest things I think I can hang my hat on in my coaching career, and we’re not even talking.

About X’s and O’s in defense, but. That AAU pro, I started, I grew into my own AAU program. I started my own AAU program two years into coaching and we had the highest retention rate of any program nearby. And so I think the difference was I specifically wanted to target coaching culture as well as coaching all the skills.

So like we would have offense and defense calendars of installs and what we wanted to get to practice by practice, week by week, big picture things. And obviously that changes dramatically day to day. But we also had a culture. I also always wanted to create a culture roadmap.  What’s the culture we want to get to?

What’s the ethos we want this team to have? And how do we, just like you would install a defense or an offense, install that culture And I think that’s what led to the connections with, between players. That’s what led the connection between coaching staffs. And that’s what allowed that team to not just fluctuate every year, like a typical eight, but have the same 10, 11 kids year after year after year. And even when I got to the college level I’ve been coaching at the college level for five years now. And I think if my math is right, I’ve only experienced two kids transferring out. And one was a walk on who wanted a scholarship that we couldn’t have, and they were able to get a scholarship.

So no fault there, like completely respect that decision. And I think that retention rate’s been one of the proudest things I have in my coaching journey. And I think, does that answer your original question?

[00:27:01] Mike Klinzing: No, it absolutely does. Cause I think when I talk to a lot of coaches and a lot of the conversation, I think around that question that I asked ultimately circles back kind of to what you described.

And that is, it’s sort of the ability to have relationships with people, whether that be the relationships with the players, relationships with other coaches, and just kind of build the people side. A lot of coaches come into the profession and feel like they are pretty good at making connections with the people.

That’s oftentimes where coaches who are new to the profession feel like that’s an area where they really have to grow. So I think your story is one that resonates with me because I’ve heard it in numerous different forms in terms of, yeah, I got in there. I knew I loved coaching. I knew I loved the players.

I knew I loved helping them get better. I’m not sure how good I was at any of that, but I knew that I really loved being around the players, my fellow coaches, a team, putting all that together. Trying to get everybody on the same page to be able to go after and pursue the same goal. And I think that’s what I hear you saying.

I think it’s a story that is going to resonate with a lot of coaches that they feel sort of that same idea in terms of it’s the people that initially kind of get you into coaching. And then you, you develop more on the technical side as As you go along.

[00:28:39] MIke Jagacki: A hundred percent. And one of the things I do after every season, or I try to do, I wouldn’t say I’ve been perfect at it, but I used to be perfect at it, at least.

I always write a pretty long reflection of the season. Some years I’ve even done it week by week, day by day. But I like to have that kind of, I don’t know, snapshot memoir of the year. And I still remember, I still have the first high school season I was a part of coaching. very talented group, and we underperformed tremendously.

And in that memoir, I have written something to the effect of, I might not know exactly what we should have done right now, but one day I hope I do. And I think that speaks to like, I knew I didn’t have all the answers and now reflecting back, yeah, I wish I could go back and coach so many of my previous teams, because of what I’ve been able to learn and how I’ve developed as a coach myself what I would give to coach some of those teams again and I think that speaks to constantly learning and, and never blaming the players.  I never blamed the players for a loss it was always my fault to maybe to a fault.

And I think a lot of coaches take it hard and I’m definitely one of them, but it’s always  what could I have done differently? How could I have prepared us differently? How could we get better?

[00:30:11] Mike Klinzing: It’s a really an awesome question when you just think about The reflection that you do at the end of a season, if you could just use that question for coaches out there to kind of think about like, Hey, maybe this didn’t go right during our season.

And maybe I couldn’t come up with the solution right there in the moment. But as I continue to grow as a coach, if I reflect and look back a season, two seasons, three seasons, four seasons, maybe there’s a lesson that I’ve learned in that intervening time that I could say, Hey, maybe if I had known this, that would have helped me with that particular team and then obviously then you can spin that forward with, Hey, if I ever see a situation that’s similar to the one that I experienced three or four seasons ago, man, I’m going to know how to handle that. I’m going to be better equipped to make the right decisions to be able to help my team to move forward.

I think that’s a really, really good reflective question that I haven’t heard phrased quite in that way. And it speaks to the value of journaling and writing your thoughts down. And I know so many coaches and everybody has different ways of going about it. You’re talking about a reflection after the season, but obviously there’s coaches that take notes right after a practice and write that down or they keep their practice plan and jot notes down.

And just, there’s so many different ways that you can sort of reflect. And I think that when you don’t do that, look, it’s, we can all think about just, Hey, what did you do two weeks ago on Monday? I mean, I have no idea what I eat for lunch or what did I do this or that we have no idea. And so really, if you can get all those thoughts down on paper when it comes to coaching, and then you have the ability to go back and reflect on those, oftentimes you talk about being self-aware.

I mean, the journaling habit and doing what you described of sitting down and writing your thoughts down after a season really can help you to be more self aware of, Hey, here’s what went right. Here’s what went wrong. And now the next time I’m in those situations, I can figure out, Hey, I handled it. this way last time and it worked or, Hey, I handled it this way last time and it didn’t, what can I do differently?

And I think there’s, to me, that self-reflection as a coach, whether you do it again, daily, weekly, monthly, after the season, any kind of self reflection to me is extremely valuable. And I’m sure that you’ve seen that throughout your career.

[00:32:33] MIke Jagacki: Yeah. I mean, I have every, almost every coaching practice plan except for probably the first AAU season still with me today, maybe somewhere lost in the shuffle along the way.

Maybe thrown out after a bad practice, but usually they’re kept and I have all the ones from this year and I write notes even during practice usually, and definitely after practice and it was fun.  this year we had a very successful year and it was fun looking back through those practice plans and coming to the banquet with a couple of them to show the guys what they made me write, a couple practices and it’s like, what was going on with you this day?

[00:33:15] Mike Klinzing: That’s funny. That’s good. That’s funny to be able to share that with players. And again, it’s probably something that even if you share it immediately after the season, or if you have players that you have relationships with down the road, be something funny to share with them 10 years down the line of, Hey after this practice, here’s what I was thinking about you on that particular day.

And it could be good or bad, right? Just something to reflect in that, man, it’s just, those kinds of memories are things that. They get lost in the shuffle. I always retroactively think that, man, I wish I would have taken better notes, like as a college basketball player or during a particular season, or even now in my current job as a teacher of man, I I’d have some really good books in me if I had written down all the details of everything that went on during my four seasons as a college basketball player, or during my first three years of teaching, or during that one crazy year that we had coaching and it just feels like, if I had really written those down on a daily basis, that man, I’d have some really, I’d have some really good books in me somewhere.

[00:34:24] MIke Jagacki: Yeah, I think it’s the journalism inside me. I was a dual major. One of them was, was journalism. So I’ve always been keen on recording history and recording the moment. So I think that’s definitely carried through. I’m always thinking about how I’m going to retell it to myself or someone else and constantly trying to think of that.

[00:34:44] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. All right. So you’re working as a coach at your high school. What’s the thought process in terms of. your career during this period of time? Are you thinking that you want to continue to be a high school coach? Are you working a full time job while you’re coaching? Are you teaching?

What’s the, are you thinking about, hey, I want to eventually get into college basketball? Just where’s your mindset at during this period of time?

[00:35:12] MIke Jagacki: Yeah, I think it always startles people to ask these types of questions, even if they ask me today where I see myself in a five year plan and stuff like that.

I’ve always been a believer in day by day kind of approach. I’ve never been one to plan out the next five years Or even the next two months. And so scheduling with me can be a little annoying, but I always take it day by day, try and maximize. So even back then, I remember being so torn because I loved the guys and it’s hard to the hardest decisions I’ve made throughout my coaching decisions is the decision to say goodbye because.

You’re always saying goodbye to these classes of kids who you see so much potential in usually the only easy decision I had was that post grad year where everyone graduates at the same time that was an easy one to take the next opportunity. But other than that, it’s been like, wow, I have to, I can no longer, like saying goodbye means I’m not going to coach these kids anymore.

And those have always been tough decisions. And so I’ve never been a chaser. I’ve never been and it doesn’t suit my strengths either. I’m not a super good networker I’m not constantly thinking about where my next step is. What’s my next landing spot? How do I improve on this situation.

And so it was always just about how could I be better? How could I help the team more? And I know that sounds cliche, but it’s true to me. Like, I’m not thinking about what’s next. I’m thinking about how this team could be do better and how I could help it do better. And so almost every opportunity I’ve gotten has been out of the blue, someone reaching out to me.

And so.  I’m going through high school coaching there, coaching the JV team, varsity assistant, heavily involved in everything defense. And I start sharing more and more content on my YouTube channel, just about defensive technique. I start experimenting with it myself because going back a little bit, The only fundamental when I was originally trying to learn every fundamental in the game and how to coach it, how to break it up, break it down, build it up in pliers this fourth grade kid Dylan comes up to me after practice and is like Hey coach, can you help me improve on my defense?

And it kind of struck me. I didn’t really like what I was thinking was like zigzag drills and like team shell drill. Like I didn’t have too much, like all the other fundamentals, I had all these drills and how could I help him on defense, you know? So yeah. It kind of startled me. I went back, I looked at all the things, all my notes, all my books, all the, any, anything I had consumed coaching wise.

Yeah, I mean, there was nothing really there. I mean, the thousands of pages I read, only 11 of them even talked about individual defense.  that’s 1% and I think it’s a much bigger part of our game than 1%. And the things that they were saying were like, defense is all about heart and hustle.

And it’s a decision to play good defense. You have to, it’s all about effort, you know? And to me, although it might be partially true to say that to a kid who wants to desperately improve at it like if a kid was shooting it and when it came up to me, Hey coach, can you help me improve my shot?

And I was like, you just got to try harder.  you got to have more heart in your jumper. I we would think I’m crazy, but yet if that same kid said I need to how, how do you help me get better at defense? And I said, And you got to have a dog and you got to try harder, like that’s acceptable.

And it was not something I felt comfortable resorting to. And so I had to dive into it myself because I couldn’t find it anywhere else. And I started just breaking down the best defenders, watching all the film, breaking it down. And I started finding these weird things that these great defenders were doing, at least weird compared to the fundamentals I had been taught or read about the classic stance, the classic zigzag slides.

And I was like, this is, this is a little, little crazy. So, I started sharing breakdowns on my YouTube channel, really just for confirmation I wasn’t insane.  like, is what I’m seeing correct? And what would be the response to people who, who also saw this breakdown? And pretty overwhelmingly, Besides some of the editing and audio, people were very fascinated and on board with those breakdowns.

And so it kind of fueled me to do more and more and learn more and more. And then I started implementing some of those defensive things. with our team in terms of individual development from a defensive standpoint. And I saw players improve dramatically. Some players in particular went from the biggest liability, the reason they were a junior on JV.

This kid, Ryan, he decided to, to work with me all off season between seasons, high school seasons. We tried a bunch of new things I was been thinking about breaking down, learning. And he came back the next year as our best defender and that’s a pretty remarkable transformation. And it gave me a lot of confidence in what I was doing was valuable.

And I could see kids getting better defensively. And then all of a sudden, probably from more social media than what I, what we’re doing at the high school level in terms of improving every year, I just got a random reach out from a coach called Lee DeForest who was taking a head coaching job at a prep school in North Carolina.

And he wanted to know if I was interested in joining him as an assistant coach. And it was kind of mind blowing to me as someone who, yes, was working the pay the bills was a job as a behavior specialist. in an outpatient counseling center. And so I was working with, with pretty extreme cases of mental health and then going to basketball practice.

So pretty draining. But so anything that guys did at practice was nothing compared to what I had seen during the day. But anyway, yeah, so Lee reaches out to me and I immediately know his name because I have his freaking Princeton teaching tape from Championship Productions. And now I’m like starstruck a little bit.

Like the guy I learned the Princeton offense from is reaching out to me to come join him. And it’s like a no brainer. Like that would extremely help my growth as a coach, I believed. And so I made the hard decision to step to step away from the program and join Lee DeForest, take that job.

And it was kind of great timing because it was four years into coaching high school. So I got to see that freshman class I came in with graduate. And so that was a nice little full circle moment and going to North Carolina. I mean, I took that job without even visiting and I was, I was on board right from the go, went down there Lee was an amazing recruiter.

He brought in a really talented class and a big class, and I helped around the fringes and landing some of those recruits, but a lot of credit, if not all of it should go to him. And we had a tremendous year there.  We beat some ranked team nationally. We beat some junior colleges.

We ended up sending seven guys to division one level. And none of those guys coming into our program had any offers. And so it was a tremendous year. And that kind of led to the next thing. I don’t know if you want to, I don’t want to just keep going on and on, but yeah, that’s kind of how it went.

[00:43:06] Mike Klinzing: Let me ask you about the, about the defensive side of it here before we go to the next stop. When you started diving into it and you talked about there, as you started, the story about the player who comes to you and says, Hey, I want to get better as a defender. And your only answer is, Hey man, work a little harder and play defense.

Right. Exactly. So as you dive into it and you start to pick things up and you’re obviously learning from other coaches and then you’re sort of incorporating that into your own system, your own thoughts, what are some of the things that if you were sharing with What are one or two things that you felt like you could teach a kid that were fundamental skills or things that a kid could actually work on to help them improve your defense?

And again, I don’t know if that question makes sense. Exact sense, but kind of take it in whatever direction you want. In other words, what did you learn that you could pass on to players more than just, Hey man, you got to work a little harder.

[00:44:11] MIke Jagacki: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of things and I freaking wrote a whole book about it, so, but breaking it down very simply, I think there’s two transitions of a defender.

One is to. to make sure you go from poor or liable to capable, making sure that we can rely on you to not get blown by every time to have great closeouts to be in the right position. And then there’s this, the second transition, which is going from capable and average or above average to elite and being able to really disrupt other players and offenses and really hawk the ball and create turnovers and disrupt flow. So I think at the basic level from the things I first learned, there are difference in stances. There are difference in a stance that you would use to pressure the ball versus contain the ball. The containment stance is, is much more upright, kind of like a soccer.

Retreating stance and an aggressive defensive stance is much more like football, a cornerback or a linebacker at the line of scrimmage with that forward lean. And then from there, it’s a lot of different footwork patterns that are really looked down upon with classic cliches. Never cross your feet, never bring your feet together, when in actuality, Both those things are constantly broken by great defenders.

So it might be freeing up and training those movement patterns that some players have never experienced. So they can’t even incorporate it because they’ve never done a crossover step. They’ve never done a turn and run. They’ve never done different sliding techniques. So it’s a little bit of exposure, but most importantly, from going to just a liable to a capable.

It’s your ability to stay in front. And so taking retreat angles, learning how to, what I call a cushion slide, which is you’re not trying, I know there’s the very popular phrase called when the first dribble, and yes, we use it with, especially with our better defenders. But for a player just developing, it’s not necessarily that they need to catch it with their chest on the first dribble.

They just need to keep that cushion to keep everything in front of them. Because if they can do that, if they can move laterally and backwards, which is a tough skill, a lot of people, a lot of defenders open up their hips, which is really day one training not to open up your hips, the slide square and backwards.

And if you’re able to do that, then it opens up a lot of possibilities and it eliminates a lot of things. It eliminates blow bys because now you’re always in front and you might be giving ground, but you’re not giving up uncontested shots. You’re always here to contest the pull up. You’re always to the wall up at the rim if they’re trying to make a layup.

And if they go full speed ahead, you can even get some on both charges. And so I think that’s the first step.  being able to take better angles. And a lot of that comes with how the players are generating force and probably movement patterns. And so a lot of the things I train and do probably look a lot more like agility drills than they look basketball drills, because at the first step, I believe defense is a movement skill.

[00:47:20] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. I mean, I don’t think there’s any doubt that when you start talking about how do you move in space in reaction to an offensive player that there’s techniques. It’s interesting that you talked about players not crossing their feet and we often hear like on the closeout how you want to use the pitter patter of little feet as you close out on players and yet oftentimes if you study the best defenders, they don’t frequently break both of those, as you said, they break both of those two sort of unwritten rules of playing good defense.

And to your point, most players, if you as a coach start to introduce those techniques, A, the player, first of all, has never heard any other coach probably say that to them. And then two, you’re also trying to break a pattern in their movements. And so you have the synapses in their brain that have just kind of trained them, Hey, this is how you do it.

And so you kind of got to rewire that and get them to be able to see those techniques. So I can certainly see where, again, if you’re working on your defense with a, with a player that, yeah, it looks a lot more like their ability to do agility drills and move in space. But again, it makes sense because obviously defensively you’re doing all your movements without the ball.

And typically if you go into a gym and you see a trainer working with a player, it’s not very often that you see a player working on skills that don’t have a basketball, even Not only just the defensive end of the floor, but also you think about just moving without the ball. And then it’s crazy when you consider how little amount of time that any one player actually has the ball during a game and how little attention we put on what is the player doing during the game when they don’t have the ball.

And in today’s sort of trainer led world, we don’t really have Very much emphasis placed on what are you doing without the ball and look in a college game, right? The best player on your team probably possesses the ball for five minutes, six minutes, maybe. That’s probably, that’s probably even high in a lot of cases, depending on how your team is structured.

And so that leaves a lot of minutes where either the players on defense or they’re on offense without the ball. So it is When you start thinking about what does that training look like? I can completely see where anybody might say, Hey, that looks like you’re just working on agility. But again, to your point, you have to sort of rewire and teach movement skills in order for the player to be able to then translate that into defending an offensive player and reacting to what that player is doing.

[00:49:56] MIke Jagacki: Yeah. I start every one of my camps. I do lockdown defense camps. If you can imagine a camp fully focused on defense. But I start every one of those camps or many camps or day practices coming in to other teams with that exact breakdown.  okay, you took 10 shots in a game. How many, how long does it take you to catch and shoot?

One second. Okay. So you spent 10 seconds shooting the ball and the 30 minutes you played how long did you dribble? Like you just said five minutes max for your best player.  How long are you on defense? You know half those minutes. Okay. So you spend all this time working on your dribbling, your shooting.

And yes, as coaches, we want players who can make shots and handle pressure, handle the ball. So don’t I don’t want to diminish those, but half your minutes are going to be on defense. Are you preparing yourself to make the most of those minutes? And that’s how I frame all, all of our defensive work to our guys, because yeah.

A lot of players think going back on defense, all right, what’s going to happen next? But the best defenders know what am I going to do next? They don’t turn the switch off when it comes to defense. They know they can make an impact and they’re excited to see how they can do that.

They’re excited.  I’m watching the Timberwolves falling in love with the Timberwolves. They’re smiling on defense, locking down Denver like doubt. So it’s fun to watch and I think, the quickest way to take someone’s confidence. They can’t score on you.  That’s the most deflating thing.

And you can see players who are struggling on the offensive end completely give in to everything.  they just give up. And so, and just getting back to the agility thing and developing defenders. Yes, that is a big portion to laying the foundation and then we got to level it up because it is a reaction and anticipation skill as well.

So once they’ve developed those movement patterns, once we’ve made them more explosive, more on balance, things like that, yeah, now we need to work on the reaction time and their anticipation cues.

[00:52:10] Mike Klinzing: Being able to put those agility and movement skills into context, right? I mean, I think that when you start talking about any kind of basketball training, I think that’s one of the areas that trainers, I think, struggle with is how do you take what you’re learning and put that into the context of a game is not played one versus zero or one versus cones or even one versus one.

There’s five players on each team out on the floor. And so how do you get the skills, whether it’s offense, defense with the ball, without the ball, how do you get those skills to be able to translate? And as you said, part of it is the ability to anticipate and read patterns and recognize situations from experience and the ability then as a coach to figure out ways to put players into situations that can not only train.

The skill itself, but also the context of when and why and how that skill is actually applied to me. That’s kind of the secret sauce, right? And being a good coach.

[00:53:10] MIke Jagacki: Yeah. And there’s a lot of movement in the coaching world right now in terms of pedagogy there’s a big push to a more ecological approach, more incorporating small sided games, constraints, things of that nature.  I was on that train 10 years ago when I started coaching. That was kind of my whole framework. It was a really new school approach, but it was so different than what I had been coached under. And  I wouldn’t say I particularly enjoyed my experience as a high school player.

So it was a brush of fresh air. And then, so I’ve always been a big incorporator of constraints, small sided games. How can we amplify what we’re trying to get better at and create more and more situations where it organically appears? inside training moments. And then we can either break those apart to really improve on specific techniques and capabilities, or we can continually challenge and push beyond those, those techniques and incorporate different things.

[00:54:14] Mike Klinzing: It is amazing how just the coaching methodology has continued to shift and evolve, which obviously that’s what any quality profession does is you look and you see what’s working and you do more of it and you see what’s not working and you do less of it. And clearly the coaching profession continues to get better and better and better and better.

And you think back to when you were a kid and you were working on your game and how much less there was in terms of resources to be able to go out as a player or as a coach to be able to, to learn. And then you think about what you were able to do with your YouTube channel, and eventually you start getting more and more people coming to that thing and checking it out and giving you feedback.

And was there a point where you kind of, As you were doing that, that you reached a number where you’re kind of like, man, I can’t really believe that this is kind of where it’s gotten to.

[00:55:09] MIke Jagacki: Yeah. I mean, when I hit 10,000 subscribers, I was pretty, pretty awestruck and I’m also not the, I’m not trying to be a YouTube influencer or social media, like my content publication schedule is all over the place because I’m not just trying to put out content to get clicks and get views. I’m actually creating content to learn myself and then share what I find. And a lot of the times the season takes up most of my time because I’d rather be pouring it into watching opponent films or our films than watching and breaking down other players. So it’s, it’s usually an off season expedition for me. Like, like it is currently on Twitter. If you see the long threads I do breaking down NBA games I just want to a lot of people knock the NBA. But let me tell you, I mean, truly dissecting the amount of adjustments, the amount of changes that they make on the defensive end.  I mean, it’s a teaching tape every game. You get the best coaches in the world and the best defenders in the world.

[00:56:20] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I laugh when you’ll hear a casual basketball fan. I don’t even necessarily know if you call a fan, but the number of people that will tell me, ah these teams, the perception is that these guys, they don’t they don’t play, they don’t, they don’t play defense.

And I just always, like, if you’re honestly making that statement, like it’s, it’s almost not worth even having a conversation to try to convince you. Otherwise, when you think about the level of sophistication What those guys do in terms of how they rotate and the match ups and just the adjustments that you have to make on every single possession.

Again, as a result of the way the offense has gone in terms of the amount of ball screens and off ball action and everything that goes into it and just how the defense has to react. It’s just, as you said, you could go down and like, like you mentioned that you have your various threads that you have put out there, breaking down things that you see in games in the NBA. I mean, it’s really incredible the amount of adjustments and just the amount of thinking on the fly that an NBA player has to do. And obviously that’s backed by hours and hours of study, both by the coaches and the players themselves.

[00:57:37] MIke Jagacki:  Just to comment quickly on the I don’t really get involved in those people who don’t think there’s defense in the NBA.

Although I, I’m not one that’s going to fall in love with the regular season either, but when you’re floor level at a practice, at a summer, even at like a summer league, right? Like when you’re floor level watching the guy catch it in the corner and rip baseline. You really get an appreciation for the speed these athletes are moving at, these players.

And when you see it in person firsthand, you’re like, how could anyone stay in front of it? Like, how is it even possible to defend that with the athleticism they have, the ability to explode without the defenders always playing catch up because they never, it’s a race that they never know when it’s going to start and they never know where it’s going either. They know that they need to protect the basket, but they’re always getting a delayed start on where the race is headed. And so the offensive ability and athleticism at that level is so awe inspiring that just to limit them to what shooting below 50%, the Wolves are having some teams shoot 39%.

I think the Mavs just shot 39 percent against the Thunder. I mean, that’s incredible. You’re thinking about two of the best scorers in Luka and Kyrie. That’s incredible defense that they can’t score 50 percent of the time with the offensive skills they have, but the athleticism their teammates have the spacing they have.

And so there’s a tremendous amount of defense in the NBA, there’s just also a tremendous amount of offense. And that’s why I think learning from the NBA and yes, not all of it’s applicable.  There’s definitely different things at different levels that are more effective and there’s things that you shouldn’t take from the NBA and things that you should.

But when you’re looking at and trying to learn from the best players in the world, when it, especially when it comes to defense. There’s no better place to look for me.

[00:59:43] Mike Klinzing: Makes sense. I mean, I think again, just as you said, the best coaches in the world and the amount of time that they and their staffs are putting in to be able to figure out how do you defend some of the greatest offensive players in the world and their skill level.

And to your point, sometimes you wonder how does anybody stand for any of these guys with the, with the level of skill that they have? And it’s a really good point. All right, let’s get back to your journey. So, how do you get to Hofstra? Tell me about the jump there and go into the women’s side.

[01:00:17] MIke Jagacki: Yeah, so like you alluded to, I was on the, the boys men’s side throughout this whole journey and just trying to do the best that I could at Combine Lee Deforest immediately put me in charge of running all the skill development sessions. So I was in the morning there working out the guards, then the wings, then the posts.

And really just working on the fundamentals, which is, which was different from, from the approach I had taken the previous four years of, of more incorporating  small sided games constraints. Now I was working on the actual capabilities that would later be put into the team practices that coach would mainly run and I would assist with tremendously, but I was in charge of all the individual workouts and then the players that wanted to work out even more shooting workouts at night or just one on one training sessions would run all those as well. So I got a lot of, it was a crash course on player development for me. And, and the players were tremendous, the work ethic, the relationships I still have with a lot of those guys, just because of the hours we put in it’s still I was just literally on the phone with one of them today driving home from work.

So. That all being said, I wasn’t again, I wasn’t like looking for what my next step would be, but the women’s head coach there, Steve Lamford, who had come from a college journey, he was the NJIT head women’s coach a couple years before, he was at Combine there leading that program.

We just he would watch a lot of my sessions my training sessions, individual or group, or my practices that I would run with some of the teams and we got to talking and we were all good friends, the three of us, coach DeForest, coach Lamford, myself, and it just got to the point where after that year he was gauging my interest.

Would you be interested in going to the women’s side? And he knew that. Coach Santos had just taken over at Hofstra University and they were looking for a video coordinator. And he put me in touch with the associate head coach there, and one thing led to the other. I was taking an amazing opportunity to go from a high school coach in the middle of a small town, 120 graduating class in New Jersey to a division one program.

I mean, it was a pretty startling jump that I know I was very fortunate. to gain the opportunity to do so. And then at Hofstra I was a video coordinator, so I was involved in all of our preparations. I was pre scouting every opponent. I was helping put the film sessions together. I was breaking down our own film, our practice film.

It was basically a basketball specific job. And, and yeah, I helped with recruiting and creating content.  I got good at Photoshop that year, but it was mainly about preparation. I really dove into preparation in a way I hadn’t before at the prep school level.  You’re barely even scouting your opponent because you don’t even know you’re playing them until the next day and at the high school level back then it was just when I left the high school world when before even hudl was like a big thing.

So it was always about the ground game, getting out to game, filming them yourself. So. There wasn’t a tremendous amount of film. And then getting to Hofstra, I could click a link and watch every game they every possession they had. The whole year was, it was amazing. And after I just worked my way up.

Did exactly my job, tried to help as much as possible. And then assistant coach position opened up and, and I was able to, to step into it, get the nod from Coach Santos. And we spent three years there.  I wouldn’t say we had the most tremendous three years. We got better. We definitely did some good things and defensively we were one and two the last two years in defensive efficiency.

In our conference, we were one and two in steals. Offensively, we, we had some work to do.  but we always made a decent run at the end of the year and it was a good time. It was a great learning experience. And it was a great eye opening experience into what the Division 1 model and level looked like.

[01:04:35] Mike Klinzing: Adjustment. Coaching women going from the men’s side to the women’s side. What was that like? Or did it feel pretty much the same? What, what adjustments did you have to make, if any?

[01:04:46] MIke Jagacki: Yeah, I don’t want to like blanket statement because I know every situation is different. I would say from my personal experience, so I don’t want to extrapolate to all, but from my own experience, I would say the men’s side to that point was more of an emphasis on balancing and kind of guiding egos guys who wanted to play more, constantly competing at practice for more and more minutes.

And that was more of the glue piece to it on the men’s side, keeping everyone moving in the same direction from that perspective. On the women’s side, it was a little different for me. At least it was at Hofstra. Where it was more about the connection the players were forming, making sure that those connections were strong and personal on an interpersonal level and making sure the connection with the coaching staff. So it was a much more personalized, much more team person centric. If I’m not articulating it beautifully. And it was, I will say the, the coaching mechanisms that motivated players were a little different.

 I don’t want to promote the stereotype, but most of the time the, the women’s players responded much more to individual instruction, much more encouragement, a lot more specific instructions. The women players I coached were very smart, very sharp, very eager to learn.

And I think some of the knocks on the male side is that maybe players aren’t as eager to learn from their coach, but they are much more eager to compete. And I would definitely back up those statements and it’s different not to say one’s better than the other, but it’s a change.  Yeah, it was definitely an adjustment.

[01:06:48] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. I mean, I think those are two things that I’ve heard coaches say before in terms of the difference when you start talking about between the two genders. And there’s obviously good things about both of those. And I think that’s what coaches tend to lean into have been on both.

Besides the equation is you look for what are the strengths of the players, the group that you’re coaching, and then you try to play your way into that. Let’s get to SUNY New Paltz. How do you get there? And then tell me a little bit about your role and where you are right now in your career.

[01:07:21] MIke Jagacki: Yeah, I kind of after three years.  at Hofstra, it just felt like the right opportunity to take a step away, I was very much consumed in all of the division one model it’s a full calendar year and at that time, you love it you’re completely you’re going to all these different AAU events, you’re traveling, you’re seeing recruits, you’re  coaching in the off season through workouts.

And then on the flip side of that it is a little tough to miss weddings, to miss family gatherings and as I spoke about in the very beginning family was a huge part of my ethos those traditions, those rituals and being there. And so it was always conflicting to me to miss those kinds of moments, to miss specific things with my nephews growing up and things like that.

And especially I think a lot of people at the division one level were formerly managers or division one players themselves. So they’re kind of used to that culture. And for anyone outside of it, it’s a little bit of an adjustment. And so going to the division three level and now pursuing I wanted to get my master’s degree.

I wanted to be, I want to eventually be a professor and a coach, continue teaching not only on the court, but in the classroom. And I never know when the next opportunity is coming or what’s next, but that the division three model got me back to yes, coaching men on the men’s side, it also got me back to having more freedom to take opportunities with the lockdown defense brand and develop that a little bit more I just returned from a trip to Australia.

Where I was able to connect with a bunch of coaches over there and do a bunch of camps for lockdown defense that I previously wasn’t able to take with a consuming calendar. And so that’s been great. It’s been great to find a lot better balance. In life. And I think it’s made me a lot better coach as well.

And I’ve been able to dive into learning as crazy as that sound, you imagine being a division one coach, your whole day is spent on basketball, but honestly, it’s the free time that allows you to really dive into new things and explore and really develop more and more as a coach.

So I think I’ve become a much more tremendous coach in these last two years, adjusting my own coaching framework and pedagogy and approach, not only just learning more about schemes and tactics and implementation things.

[01:10:06] Mike Klinzing: It’s that old business adage, right? Of it’s kind of like you can be working in your business and kind of doing all the day to day, which is what it sounds like.

You felt like your division one experience was like versus working on your business, which allows you to sort of take that 30, 000 foot view and step back and take a breath and really think about what you’re doing and give yourself an opportunity to go, as you said, and learn and talk to other people and read and study and do things that maybe you couldn’t do because that day to day model at the division one level is just so.

And it is interesting. And we’ve obviously talked to people who have worked at both levels and some coaches that have been like you, where they’ve spent time at the division one level, the division three level. And one of the things that I always find interesting is kind of that concept that you just talked about, which is at the division one level, it’s for the players, for the coaching staff, it’s being on pretty much 12 months out of the year.

And Coaching staff and players being connected and working together and all those things. And there’s certainly, I think, a lot of positives to that. But at the same time, I wonder about, and I think about my own experience again, back a long time ago, just in terms of the intensity of a season and the need when that season was over, at least for me at that time, to feel like I needed to step away from my coaching staff and just be able to go back and play and work on my game and do things sort of not being under the watchful eye of the guys that were on, were watching me the entire season.

And now it feels like, again, players and coaches, you don’t kind of get that break at the division one level, whereas at division three, It’s almost the polar opposite. I know they added the eight days last season, which lots of coaches love to be able to get their players, at least for a little bit when they first get on campus in the fall and see them and be able to interact with them.

But it’s still a much different model where you don’t, you’re not getting that access to players during the off season. I’m just curious to your thoughts on both of those situations and whether you think, just your opinion in terms of how that works for, for players. at both levels and maybe the challenges of, especially the division one level.

I almost think it’s, it’s too much. I think a lot of coaches. If you injected them with truth serum would say it’s too much, but you almost can’t not do it, if that makes sense. So I don’t know what I’m saying resonates with you at all, but just kind of how do you think about that off season at both levels?

[01:12:41] MIke Jagacki: Yeah. It’s almost like the race to the bottom, you feel like you have this guilt or shame about time off when you’re at that level and you’re trying to prove yourself. You’re trying to obviously there’s a lot on the line. There’s salaries on the mind that your livelihood is all about production and producing.

And so, yeah, it is kind of like a race and a lot of times I think. It’s a race to the bottom sometimes. And obviously the best programs find that balance. They find the way to keep their players fresh. They find the way to keep their coaches fresh and also to bring that intensity level and enthusiasm to everything they do.

And at the division three level it is drastically the polar opposite, a week after the season, I was like, Oh my God, like you quickly miss the guys cause now you’re just running into them on campus. Now you may be a couple of team gatherings staying in contact maybe through texts and group chats.

But you’re like, wow, man, I really miss having that group together again. Whereas the division one you, you get to see that group a couple of weeks later after your season and, and workouts and small group workouts and stuff like that. So there’s pros and cons.

I think the good thing from my experience right now I’m actually talking with a former player of mine who’s been at the division one level for the last four years and a little bit more with COVID and red shirt, but that’s been his life, it’s the daily grind it’s the constant cycle.

And he was talking to me about it because I also made that change go into a different level. And now I have this balance and free time. And he asked me about well, do division three players go play overseas and do they play pro and yeah, obviously the best players at the division three players have those opportunities  division three is nothing to sneeze at that tremendously, a lot of talented players there, and they’re all there for the right reasons because they love the sport.

To be honest, a lot of players are setting themselves up beyond basketball too, cause they have that free time. They’re able to take internships and they’re able to pursue and connect in their degree, in their professors, and in their career development. So that when their basketball career is over at the college level, yeah, we have a couple guys who maybe have a chance to go try out and stuff like that.

But they also have opportunities to go take professionally because they’ve lined them up already. So yeah a lot of Division III players maybe have the opportunity to go play overseas, but they also have the opportunity to step right into a great job that Division I players might not have that same opportunity.

They have a tremendous amount of connections. Obviously, boosters and the support system around Division I programs has always been incredible. So they have that connection as well, which is tremendous, but in terms of setting up their own kind of work experience is a lot harder. And it’s a lot harder to find that balance if basketball is not going to be your next step.

So definitely pros and cons. Like I said, I think one of the refreshers was just the it’s kind of a different, Attitude’s a little bit too strong of a word, but like I said, like the guys are there to play basketball. Like, they’re not getting any additional scholarship from it or anything like that.

They’re just getting an opportunity to play the sport they love, to be a part of a team and to compete and at the division one level you have a tremendous amount of kids who are there for the same exact reasons I just mentioned, but you also have some of those egos where they’re chasing the next opportunity.

And they’re also there to maximize their scholarship to get an education from basketball and things like that, or maybe now NIL get money. But I’ve always enjoyed that’s been one of my favorite things about the men’s side is kind of guiding those egos in the same directions.

 I would hate to coach a team with no egos at all, even though that’s some coaches dreams, but it’s not my dream.

[01:16:56] Mike Klinzing: Ego sometimes is what it takes, right? To push yourself beyond. A hundred percent. Yeah. I think there’s, I think there’s something to be said for that. And I know that, look, if you’re going to get to a high level in anything, forget about It’s just basketball.

There has to be some ego involved. It’s just a matter of you have to be able to manage that ego and understand what it means and what it, what it, what it doesn’t mean. All right, before we finish here, I want to ask you a final two part question. Part one is when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

And then when you think about what you get to do every single day, what brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:17:37] MIke Jagacki: Let’s see, biggest challenge.

 I think, I don’t know, it’s on the spot. It’s tough. You know me, I’m not one to, to forecast ahead too much as I’ve alluded to, but,

[01:17:52] Mike Klinzing: Biggest challenge, biggest challenge in the next two weeks. How about that? Next two weeks,

[01:17:56] MIke Jagacki: Finals. But making sure guys we just had our highest GPA in like 20 years.

So, you know. Congrats. There you go. Trying to replicate that in this semester would be nice.  Probably the success we had this year.  We set records in wins. We set we won our first conference championship in program history made it to the NCAA Division III tournament, played in one of the most attended D3 games of the whole season. It was a really impactful year for the program. And we graduate five guys.  we bring a lot of guys back we probably lose three of our, our top seven or eight. So we do have a lot returning and  we’re fleshing out a freshman class and I think that’s going to be the challenge.

Not so much I’m looking forward to the quest for back to back, like we just watched UConn and, and Bob Hurley conquer. With his intensity and enthusiasm and all the stuff they bring. And I mean, it was just an incredible thing to watch from afar. But the quest for back to back I’m excited for.

After that, we graduate another five. So in the next two years, in these, in these two years, we’ll see 10 kids graduate, and I, I think there’s a lot of pressure obviously on building from the ground up. We want to have a great freshman class this year and next year, and maybe land some transfers to ease that transition.

But I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge is not only we’ve achieved the success, but now our challenge is to sustain it. And that’s, that’s really the blueprint. That’s really the challenge of any program.  You don’t just want to have one year. You want to have a sustained success.

That’s the goal. Absolutely. All right. Biggest joy. Biggest joy. Biggest joy is just freaking these kids here coach has done a tremendous job recruiting the character of these guys. I look forward, honest to God. I look forward to every one of these practices. These guys bring a tremendous amount of energy.

They are locked in. They love to play. They love to compete. They are bought in on the defensive side. They are bought in on the offensive side. It is a joy. It was a joy to coach them this year. I’m looking forward to next year. These guys just bring so much energy to practice and when they don’t we can get on them and they’ll pick it up.

I think and to be honest, I think we had one or two bad practices the whole season. And you can find those angry notes I’ve written after those practices in my practice notes. But I love the culture we have here at New Paltz and I’m looking forward to continuing coaching these guys because I love every single one of them.

[01:20:44] Mike Klinzing: Mike, before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how people can get in touch with you, find out more about what you’re doing with lockdown defense. Share website, social media, email, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I will jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:21:01] MIke Jagacki: Yeah. It’s kind of nice.  We spent an hour, 20 minutes, and usually I spend an hour, 20 minutes talking only about defense. So it was nice to dive into all  these different facets to dive into the journey and talk hoops. So yeah, I focus a lot on defense. If you need your defensive fix, which you don’t get a lot of on social media and stuff like that.

I’m constantly tweeting out only defensive stuff on Twitter @Mike_Jagaki. Obviously my YouTube channel has a bunch of free videos and content breaking down. different defenders and different things. So you can check out Coach Mike Lockdown Defense on YouTube. If you want to dive even further into defense, I have two books one focused on all the techniques and fundamentals and the other one all about the training and implementation and fundamentals and how to incorporate those into your player.

So those you can find on Amazon, just type in Lockdown Defense, they’ll both come up. One’s called Lockdown Defense, the other is Lockdown Program. And finally, long winded here. You can check out lockdownhoops.com where you can find the blog, which has a bunch of free content as well. And you can also dive into some clinics I have for purchase where you can watch hours of content breaking down either pressure defense, switching defense, containment, all the closeouts, different clinics on different things.

And of course, if you have any questions along the way, or just want to talk or connect, my email is mikejagacki@gmail.com.

[01:22:30] Mike Klinzing: Mike, well said. For anybody out there who is interested in especially improving yourself as a defensive coach, highly recommend what Mike is doing with Lockdown Defense. So, please go and check that stuff out.

Mike, to you, I say thanks for taking the time out of your schedule to jump on with us and share your journey, talk at least a little bit of defense. But to everyone out there, thank you for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.