ANTHONY MEDINA – ST. THOMAS UNIVERSITY MENS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 908

Website – https://ustcelts.com/sports/mbkb/index  https://medinabasketball.org/

Email – rmedina@stthom.edu

Twitter – @UST_Medina

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Anthony Medina is the Men’s Basketball Head Coach at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas.  He was hired in the summer of 2015 and is the second head coach in the history of the current program, having succeeded his former coach, Todd Smith.

Medina previously served as a graduate assistant for Missouri Western State University’s men’s basketball team.  Following his graduation from MWSU, Medina served as a varsity assistant coach at Oak Ridge High School.  He is the owner and director of Medina Basketball, a youth basketball program in Houston.

A standout basketball player during his career St. Thomas, Medina twice earned All-Red River Athletic Conference accolades and shot 40 percent from 3-point range for his collegiate career. At the conclusion of his career, Medina was UST’s all-time leader in points, rebounds, minutes played, games played, and 3-pointers made.

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Be prepared with a notebook and pen as you listen to this episode with Anthony Medina, Men’s Basketball Head Coach at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas.

What We Discuss with Anthony Medina

• Competing against his older brother and how that helped him build resilience
• “I was just obsessed with playing. All I ever wanted to do was play.”
• “It’s almost like if there’s not a ref there, people just don’t play as much.”
• Finding places to play as a college player
• “I think if you’re going to be a better player, you have to have those instincts that are wired in when you play in an unpredictable pickup game.”
• “Kids are going to have a better experience if they’re a better player.”
• The financial motivations in youth sports and the negative impact they create
• “I do genuinely believe that being a good player makes it more fun, but I think at the same time, it makes you more confident in who you are because you learn, I can get good at something.”
• Working with his dad, a plasterer, and realizing, “If I go back to school I can still work a hard day’s work, but I can do it with my mind instead of having to do with my body every day.”
• Ending up at St. Thomas University…”The game kind of just kept leading me down a different path.”
• Getting a GA job at Western Missouri State after graduating from St. Thoams
• “I can’t approach players with the expectation that they love it the way that I do.”
• “It’s not the end of the world if you don’t love basketball because there’s more to it.”
• “Your job is not to make decisions. Your job is to make coaching decisions as effective as possible.”
• Building player relationships as an assistant coach
• Why his college coach thought Anthony would one day be the head coach at his alma mater, St. Thomas
• “The fight for that job was during practice every day. The fight for that job was when he was getting to know me every day in his office, those were my interviews.”
• “I just went based on what I was told, instead of really trying to understand not just what works, but why it works.”
• “Putting my ego down made a huge difference in that whole part of my development.”
• “I was constantly trying to seek the answers to why things work, how they were developed, why would somebody do it otherwise?”
• “Having a friend or somebody in the game or a mentor who will tell me the truth about what they’re doing and why it works and what the vulnerabilities are.”
• Developing an understanding of how fouls impact a game
• “I think having that flexibility as a coach is important, but the foundation doesn’t really change.”
• When it comes to recruiting…”I lean on high school coaches opinions very, very heavily.”
• “We want to see high school players against bigger, stronger, faster teams if it’s possible. And that’s just a really good barometer for how they’ll translate their skill set to the college level.”
• “I give a player 48 hours. If the application is not done in 48 hours, I move them down the list.”
• “I want to make sure you’re serious about me before I make any type of investment in you.”
• “It’s not just a player’s basketball experience that is going to impact his ability to lead others when he’s gone, right? How is he able to connect with other people on the campus and how did he engage with other students?”
• “The goal is to build the Medina Basketball Youth Organization and be as recognizable as possible in the Houston basketball community.”
• “I’m going to be here, man. I may as well do everything I can to positively impact the culture.”
• The rapid growth a youth basketball player can make
• “Getting good is a challenge, but staying good is a bigger challenge.”
• On relationships – “The pain that’s associated with losing a player is really just tied to the joy of having that opportunity to coach him.”
  

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THANKS, ANTHONY MEDINA

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TRANSCRIPT FOR ANTHONY MEDINA – ST. THOMAS UNIVERSITY MENS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 908

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight. And we are pleased to be joined by Anthony Medina, head men’s basketball coach at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. Anthony, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:15] Anthony Medina: Hey, what’s going on, Mike? What’s going on, Jason?  Thank you so much for having me tonight, guys. I appreciate it.

[00:00:20] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all the things that you’ve been able to do in the game as a player, as a college coach. the high school level doing some individual stuff and working and training in the private sector as well.

So, let’s start by going back in time, Anthony, to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about how you got into the game when you were younger. What made you fall in love with it?

[00:00:42] Anthony Medina: I just started playing when I was five. I think like most kids, my parents put me in YMCA. I did a little bit of t ball and didn’t like that and they put me in basketball and I just always enjoyed it.

I think I liked it because I was actually pretty good because I could dribble like the first kids that could really dribble and run and dribble the ball at the same time kind of have success. And so I had some success early and I think I enjoyed that. It made it fun for me. On top of that, my brother played, my cousins played, and so I grew up in a house full of guys that liked to play.  And it just made it easy to gravitate towards it.

[00:01:17] Mike Klinzing: It’s funny. I cracked up when you talk about being a youth player and just being able to dribble. When I had kids, when my kids were all that younger age and I used to talk to parents and they’d be worried about this kid, can my kid shoot? And they do this.

I’m like, if your kid can dribble, like just teach your kid how to dribble. And then they could kind of get where they want to go on the floor. And it’s going to make the game a lot more fun for them. And eventually the shooting will catch up with the ball handling. But if you could start out as a kid who, as you said, can handle a ball that really gets you off to get you off to a solid start.

What was the competition like with your brother? What’s the age difference between you and him?

[00:01:52] Anthony Medina: Oh man, he’s two years older. So it was when we were younger, it was really close. It was really, really close when we were younger. And then he started to mature physically. By the time he hit high school, I was still in junior high.

And he took off and would just beat up on me. Learned a lot of really good lessons in that way. It’s funny. Cause like my resilience, I think comes from those signs. Like we play pickup in the backyard. We play one on one in the backyard. You’d always tell me we’re going to play til you quit today.

We’re going to play til you quit today. So we would play and play and play and play. I’d be down 500 to one. And he eventually said, can we just stop now? And I’m like, no, we’re just going to keep going. Let’s just keep going. Eventually, he’d give in and say, man, I’m done. I’m not beating you by 600 tonight.

Let’s just give it up. And so he would back up first, which was great for me.  I counted that as a win, even though I was getting my brains beat in out there playing one on one. By the time I got to high school, started to mature a little bit more, and then things got really competitive between the two of us.

He played all the way through high school, didn’t play in college, but he was good. He could really score. He’s a really good athlete, strong. So he was a great challenge for me, especially because I was so underdeveloped physically. I was tall and long and lanky and he’s a lot stronger.

Playing one on one with my brother took me a long way. And honestly, that was probably the biggest parts of my development as a player.

[00:03:13] Mike Klinzing: What else were you doing as a high school player to get better? What was the pickup basketball scene like around your house? How much pickup did you play? How much were you spending time in the gym by yourself?

Obviously, you’re playing against your brother and he’s beating up on you and you’re trying to claw your way to the top over him. But just what was it like? What did you do as a player in high school to really try to improve your game?

[00:03:33] Anthony Medina: I was just obsessed with playing. All I ever wanted to do was play.

Truthfully, I didn’t learn my first shooting drill until I was on varsity high school. And so it was super common for like, I had no idea. I wouldn’t go to the park and just shoot around. I just didn’t know anything about that. But one thing I did know is I knew that the park had games on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays.

On Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, I could go to 24 hour fitness and play pick up there, and there’s a 5:30 crowd, a 7:30 crowd. There was an A& W across the parking lot from the 24 hour fitness. And so I’d get out of school when I was in high school, go straight to 24 hour fitness. Play with the 530 crowd, get a bite to eat, and then go right back and keep playing.

And it was really fun for me because I just enjoyed the play. I just love to play. I would play as long as anybody would go. I love being there right when we got started because I wanted to get on the court early and just keep playing until everybody was done at the end of the night.

I was the one trying to pull people out, I’m like, Hey, come back. Let’s play one more. Like, can we get one more game in? That’s probably the hardest part about getting older is not being able to do that anymore. It’s like sad. Because I just enjoyed it so much and  I try to go do it now and I hurt for a month and it’s just not worth it.

But that was my favorite part of being in high school. That was my favorite part about being a high school player. Favorite part about my high school experience in general was just living in the gym, playing pickup every day.

[00:05:03] Mike Klinzing: Anthony, I could not agree more with what you just said. I know when I look back and I think about my playing career, I always say that some of my most favorite basketball moments didn’t come as a high school player or as a college player.

They came just driving around the courts or to this gym or that gym or playing with guys that I played with all the time and then playing with guys that I didn’t know at all. And you just show up and basketball kind of just brings people together. So I can completely and totally relate to what you’re saying in terms of just how important pickup basketball was to me, just from an enjoyment standpoint of the game.

And then also for my development as a player, what’s the pickup basketball scene like? For the guys that you’re coaching now at the college level, because I’m always curious to know in the off season, where do guys that are good quality college players, where do they find games to be able to play?

Because I think it’s, it feels like it’s way more difficult today. And again, I’m. So my pickup basketball glory days are, are way, way, way in the rear view mirror, but I just feel like when I was a kid, you could find games. If you knew where to go, as you said, like this park or this gym or this, whatever you knew which night and what times guys that were.

Good players were going to be there. I’m just curious how, what are your players, where do they go to play pickup basketball? Can they find good games?

[00:06:35] Anthony Medina: It’s really interesting that the way that the game has transitioned and moved for high school players is almost kind of moving for basketball in general, in that I don’t like our guys don’t go just play pickup as often anymore.

There’s men’s leagues and there’s  rec leagues and pro ams and there’s things that they can play in all over the city. And it’s almost like if there’s not a ref there, people just don’t play as much. Right. And that’s just kind of been the experience that I’m seeing. Like they get, they’re so that’s so ingrained in the way that they’re used to playing the game.

For me I’m very lucky we’re right in the heart of Houston. And so I get to know all the players that are coming up out of Houston the ones that are scholarship guys, professional guys. And so we have open gyms, and so we try to do open gym twice a week in the summer so that there’s a place for really good players to play.

And it gets our guys a good opportunity to get it running. Like they try to open it up and like, we just got a ton of people in there. The runs are great. The runs are great, but if there’s not a space like that like I know the other universities in town, they also have open gyms.  if it’s not that, I just don’t know that they’ll organize on their own and do it unless they’re playing in a league or something like that.

[00:07:51] Mike Klinzing: I don’t know how you feel about that, but it’s just, it’s so strange to me. And look, I know that that’s true and I think it’s true all over the country. It sounds like you had a similar experience to me where just That opportunity of, Hey, I’m showing up at this gym or this court at this time. And yeah, maybe I know some of the people who are going to be there, but a lot of times you show up and you’re like, I wonder who’s going to be here today and what the level of play is going to be.

And it’s just, I don’t know, it’s something that I feel like today’s basketball players. from a development standpoint, because I think when you look at it, the way the game has changed and the way that youth basketball has changed, it’s just, it’s not better or worse. It’s just different. I think kids are still developing and getting better and having those opportunities.

But just like you said, the fact that it’s one of the best memories that you have is just. Playing in a gym, pickup basketball. And I always feel sad that kids today don’t get to have that same experience. But to your point, when you said, Hey, there’s gotta be a ref there. I mean, kids have grown up now with playing in a gym with officials, with the scoreboard, with mom and dad in the stands, with a coach, that’s just the way they’ve come up in the game.

They haven’t. Done it the same. They didn’t spend hours and hours and hours and hours and hours like you did beating up your brother and be getting beat on by your brother. Playing one-on-one at that. I just don’t think that that happens anymore.

[00:09:16] Anthony Medina: I totally agree with you. I totally agree. I get a lot of parents of younger players as like, I get the question a lot what would you do?  What would you do if it was your son who’s a sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, and even ninth grade?  Where would you put him and what would you do with him? I tell him the same thing, especially for younger kids. Get a group of his friends together. Pool the money with the parents, rent the gym, have a couple of parents go in there.

Don’t let any other parents say, you’re just making sure they don’t kill each other. You help keep them a little organized and you just let them play. You keep score if you want, or you could do it by time just to make sure the games keep moving. Give them some adult supervision, but just let them play.

Because everything is being taught now, right? Every skill that they have is taught. And there’s a lot of kids that are missing the instinctual components of the game because they didn’t have to just make choices on the fly and do things they’ve never done. And I think that it does hurt. I think it does hurt.

I think if you’re going to be a better player, you have to have those instincts that are wired in when you play in an unpredictable pickup game against the guy you’ve never seen in your life. And so to me, I think that that’s one of the biggest things that we can be doing as parents. I have young sons and youth basketball people, anybody in youth basketball, let’s put together more opportunities for kids to play because they need those experiences both as a player and then also as we’re saying as a memory.

[00:10:42] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let me ask you this. How old are your kids, first of all?

[00:10:45] Anthony Medina: Eight and four. Memphis is eight and Julian is four.

[00:10:48] Mike Klinzing: Okay. Gotcha. So, here’s what I’ll say. Your idea is awesome. What I will say that in practice, that is really hard to do because just like the conversation that you and I are having, so many parents now are wired into, well, if we’re just going to play and pick up basketball.

My kid’s not getting better. They’re not getting coached. They’re not getting that instruction. They’re playing. People don’t see the value in it the way that you see the value in it or the way that I would see the value in it. Somebody who grew up in that environment. And it’s really difficult to change people’s minds in youth basketball. I know people used to ask me before I had kids, and I have now a daughter who’s 20. My son is a senior in high school this year, and then I have another daughter who’s in eighth grade. And I remember before my kids got to youth basketball, looking at all the like travel and AAU and saying, man, I just don’t know, like, maybe that’s good for the kids who were wired like I was where, and I want to give me more and more and more, but I just didn’t feel like there was that many kids that were wired the way I was in terms of wanting that much basketball or that much soccer or that much whatever. And I remember saying, I don’t know if I’m going to get my kids involved in travel community travel, basketball, or AAU basketball. Is it the, is that the right thing to do? And what you find is at least what I found here in the Cleveland area was if you don’t do that, there’s really no alternative.

Even if you try to organize, like, I’ll give you an example, Anthony, my son, this was last fall. So before his junior year. So we have a gym here that we have like 24 hour access to. And there’s a friend of mine, it’s his business. And we told my son and we had a list of probably like 25 or 30 guys that we had played with against whatever AAU during the season.

And we told all those guys, Hey, come in like three bucks and we’re going to put together, play, pick up and. Whatever. And we had it for like two weeks and we never got enough to play five on five. We had enough the first week to maybe have, I think we had eight or nine and played some three on three.

Then by the second week, we’re down to like six guys. And the next week we didn’t get enough to play. And then we just abandoned it. It was sad, man. It was sad.

[00:13:09] Anthony Medina: It’s tough. When I was coming out of college, so I graduated from the University of St. Thomas in 2012, I just wanted to create an environment for kids to practice and play.

And so I tried to do this whole open gym concept. I reached out to every high school coach in the area, handed out flyers, invited everybody, covered the cost because I was running camps and clinics at the time, covered the cost and said, does anybody that wants to come play? It was free and couldn’t get kids in the gym, could not ever get kids in the gym.

The only people that showed up were my friends that just wanted to get up and down and play pick up. And I was like, man, it’s not for you guys. It’s not for you the idea, right? Yeah, I think you’re 100 percent right, but I think the issue with it is that it’s become so structured that as you’re saying, to your point, it’s like, there’s actually really no space for unstructured basketball anymore.

There’s very little space for it, especially for younger kids.

[00:14:09] Mike Klinzing: I think it’s just, again, what people see and what their perception is. I make the same argument. If you were to say to me, Hey, I think kids should only play three on three basketball until pick a grade level through sixth grade. We don’t play any full court basketball.

We play only three on three. But to me, from a development standpoint and Being an, having an opportunity to touch the ball and be involved in every action that’s going on the floor. I would make the argument to you that if kids only played three on three up through sixth grade, that we would produce better basketball players here in the United States.

If you just outlawed five on five basketball until they were in seventh grade, you’d have much more skilled players. You’d have some of that creativity and the things that you’re talking about. I’ve tried a couple of times to get a three on three league going here and They’re just, it just doesn’t take off in the same way because I just don’t think people perceive that, Hey, my third grader has to be playing five on five on a 10 foot rim, or they’re not really playing basketball.

And there’s such a misconception and it’s so hard to be able to try to educate people about the value of pickup basketball or the value of three on three. And I don’t know what the answer is to that question, but I do think that if we could somehow solve that we’d end up producing better basketball players, more basketball players because the game would be more fun. Both playing more pickup and not having a coach trying to coach you every single second. And also just when you think about three on three, how much more you get to touch the ball. So I don’t know. It’s interesting because obviously you’re in both spaces too, touching on the youth side of it and  at the college level.

So you’re seeing it all, all up and down the whole spectrum.

[00:16:00] Anthony Medina: Exactly. What I’m trying to do is blend teaching with what’s going on in youth basketball, kind of the point that you’re hitting on, there’s just not a lot of people that are saying, okay, this is what’s best for them. And we’re trying to create an environment that’s what’s best for children to have a long term goal, right?

Like they want to have a good time. The parents, there’s a lot of parents that want one of two things. They want their kids to be either as good as they can be, or they want them to have a positive experience. And I’d sell both sets of parents the same thing. What I’m trying to provide for you does both because they’re going to have a better experience if they’re a better player.

This will be more fun for them as they develop and they grow and they improve their skill set because they become more competitive, right? It’s not fun for the kids that don’t get to play a lot. It’s not fun for the kids that can’t be productive in a game. And so for me, it’s just, I’m trying to utilize the experience that I have as a college coach, my experience in youth basketball, and trying to take that and tell parents.

I see what’s on the other side. I’ve worked with guys that play professionally and play in college, play high school. Like I see all these things. I want to help young players get to that. Now, if you want your kid to be as good as he can be, this is the path, right? This is the path that we need to be on to develop the best player.

And truthfully, even if you’re just looking for a rec league, it’s what’s best for your kid in terms of having a good experience as well. And the hope is that I can use the platform that I have, use college basketball, my experience, the success we’ve had at St. Thomas to get people to buy into that and then start to see, Oh, there’s more to this.

Best case scenario, all the things I’m doing on the private side and the private sector of basketball will hopefully change and move Houston basketball in a really positive direction.

[00:17:46] Mike Klinzing: I just think it’s that education piece of getting people to understand it and it’s a really a tough sell not because it’s not the right thing, but because people just don’t see that out there.

They see so many people just playing, again, five on five, seven year old shooting on a 10 foot basket, running up and down a full length high school court where there’s only one kid really who, again, going back to your comment off the top, right? The kid who handles the ball, that’s the kid who’s doing everything and everybody else is just, they might as well be out jogging around the track for as much as they touch the ball.

And no matter how much you try to explain that to parents, it’s just, it’s really a challenge to get them to understand. And I think it’s, at the same time, it’s a mission that’s well worth continuing to fight for, because I do think that in the long run for A, the development of better players, but as you said, B, for the experience and having more fun.

It’s just kids today, we put so much pressure on them from a parent standpoint, from a coach standpoint, from a program standpoint, all these things to get kids involved younger and younger and younger and push them and make it more serious at a younger age. And for so many kids, basketball is just, it’s fun.

It’s not something that they want to, there’s not many nine or 10 year olds that want to grind and get better and do all these things. They just want to play with their friends and they want to have fun. And then by the time you get to be eighth, ninth, 10th grade, now you can start to take the game a little bit more seriously.

And then you can start to take it in other directions. But man, I do think that there’s so many things out there that we could do. And it’s refreshing to hear that you’re trying to bring those things to Houston. And I think there are people all over the country that know it and are trying to do those same things.

It’s just this giant youth basketball machine that we built is, it’s tough to fight that.

[00:19:41] Anthony Medina: And I think the other part of that problem is it’s become so beneficial financially. There’s a lot of people that are in youth basketball or youth sports in general for the wrong reason. So when you have, and I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way, I think people that have less of an education in basketball.

I was lucky enough, I worked for a coach who won 600 games. I worked for a coach whose father won 800 games.  I’ve been around really good coaches and people that really think about the game and have done that for a very long time. And so I think my experience with them has helped me understand what it’s like to approach somebody else’s children and say, okay, this is what can help you to develop to be the best player that you can be, because you can’t, not everybody’s going to depend on their actual ability.

But unfortunately, I think there’s a lot of people who are not quite as experienced who have a reputation in youth sports, youth basketball specifically, and they’re motivated by the financial component, right? And so they’re not looking after the overall integrity or development of the kids. And I think you can see that in the way that they’re coached.

I can also see the way, see that in the way that they’re approached. It drives me insane when I I coach my son in a youth league which during the winter season is really hard because obviously I’m in basketball season at St. Thomas. And there are other coaches in the league who are so hard on the kids it’s like, I don’t care if we win by 30 or lose by 30, did everybody touch the ball?

Did you guys have a good time? Do you understand what it means to have a man you’re seven.

[00:21:20] Mike Klinzing:  If you’re on offense or defense, yeah, let’s start with the very basics.

[00:21:27] Anthony Medina: You’re running the right direction. We’re moving man. We’ll take it.  and so I just think it requires a little bit more control and more educated control, but as a community of coaches, I think it’s our responsibility.

I couldn’t continue to complain about the youth league that my son was in.  I decided, Hey, you know what? I’m going to just try to hire people that I trust at St. Thomas. And I’m going to have those guys be the ones that work with these kids. Players are going to be involved as well.

Our players will be involved as well.  We’re very serious about how we recruit their personalities, their character. And I think all those things together will hopefully build something that’s really strong in Houston basketball.

[00:22:07] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I mean, it makes a huge difference. I think it’s interesting here in the community where Jason and I live, I got approached this year by our recreation director in the city and they had previously done the kindergarten and first grade rec league.

The teams would start out, they’d be like an eight week season and they’d start out the first two weeks. They would have a team practice run by. a dad or volunteer coach. And then starting with like week three, they’d have like half practice and then you’d play a full court game with kindergarten and first grade.

Now, the good thing was they had the baskets lower. If you, and I’m sure you have been to a kindergarten and first grade basketball game. I mean, it’s just a disaster. And so the rec director approached me and said, Hey, I want to try to make this into more of an Academy style. Would you be willing to come in and so we took over that program and made it where each of the teams still have coaches and they’re there. So we have four teams in the gym at one time. And then I kind of put the kids through drills or demonstrate, Hey, this is the skill we’re working on. Here’s the drills, or here’s the small sided game, or here’s whatever.

And then the coaches of those teams, they don’t have to come in and plan anything. They just kind of facilitate what I’m doing. And so it’s, it’s gone really, really well, but the rec director he comes to me, he’s like, yeah, I’m getting calls all the time from people now that they’re mad because their kids aren’t playing any games.

And it’s funny, you’ll be there and there’s a week left in the thing. And last week he’s like, Hey, can we play like a 15 the guys like, Hey, can we just play like a 15 minute game at the end? I’m like, sure we can. We can do that. And it’s funny, as soon as you start playing a game, Anthony, man, those phones come out.

Like people are paying no attention to what’s going on at all when you’re actually teaching their kids something or they’re working on something. And then man, that game starts and people are whipping out their phone and they’re filming everything and they’re yelling this and that. And it’s just really funny to see.

And it also shows you how much work it is to try to get people to understand the value in, hey, you’re going to get way more out of this skill work and this development work and this small sided games and little bits and pieces than you are just not having your six year old run up and down the floor where there’s one kid who’s more physically developed or can dribble.

And that’s the only kid who ever touches the ball, which is basically what happens. So it’s small steps. And I think that’s what I hear you saying too. We’re going to try.

[00:24:41] Anthony Medina: We’re definitely going to try, my goal is just to try to develop a program where kids can grow into themselves and have some confidence in themselves.

Like my son, Memphis is he’s played four seasons, five seasons of basketball and he loves to play defense, right? So he’s been in a college basketball practice a hundred times in his life. We had a really good defensive player for a long time in Cameron. And he, he’ll always ask me during the game.

So I look like Cameron, do I look like Cameron? And as a parent, I truthfully, I don’t care if he’s any good at basketball. I don’t care if he loves basketball. I don’t care if he sticks with it. But if he can find things that help him build confidence and excitement, I want to pursue those things.

And if parents think that basketball might be that avenue for their kids, I just want to build an environment where kids can have a good time and build confidence in themselves because long term, I think that’s way more beneficial.  I do genuinely believe that being a good player makes it more fun, but I think at the same time, it makes you more confident in who you are because you learn, I can get good at something.

Right. Like I understand what the skills are. I understand what the pieces are. I can put the pieces together and get better at something, you know? And so they drift off from basketball later and they decide they want to go into a martial arts or play soccer or do music, right? That same plan, right? That develops over time, break down the skill sets, put the pieces together.

I think that’s a blueprint for all kids. Success long term and that confidence, I can do something. And I really hope that I can put that out there for kids and kids will walk away from that experience and say, Hey, I’m capable of this.

[00:26:36] Mike Klinzing: Well said. I mean, I think that if we could do that, if we could start to move that to being the model, then I think we would end up in a much better place, much better outcomes for everybody.

I think you’d ultimately develop better players. So even the kids with the most talent, with the most ability, the ones who have a love of the game. Those kids would benefit tremendously from that system that we’ve been talking about. And then you talk about the masses of kids who end up giving up the game because either they have a coach that makes it not fun or they’re playing in an environment that’s not conducive to them enjoying the game.

And you would just have way more kids stick with it. And enjoy it. And ultimately, I think that’s how you grow the game. That’s how you make it better. And I know that just from talking to you for whatever we’ve been talking now, 30 minutes, I can already tell this conversation that it’s about, the game has been so good to you, to me, to Jason, just in terms of what it’s given to us that we want people to be able to have that same experience. We want them to feel that love for the game of basketball. And I think by doing it this way, we’d end up getting there. It’s a long road to educate people on what the right way to do it. And so we’ll keep working on that.

We’ll keep working on that mission, Anthony. Let me go back to your time as a player. Tell me about your recruitment, how you end up at St. Thomas, what’s the process? Are you thinking about college basketball as you’re going through your high school years? What may ended up making you making the decision to go there and talk a little bit about the recruitment process?

[00:28:17] Anthony Medina: Yeah, I just loved basketball. Absolutely loved it. I knew I wanted to coach when I was a sophomore and I went to my high school coach and told him this is what I want to do. I want to be a coach. And his advice was, Hey, just work some camps.  there’s high schools that run camps all over the place.

Just get a feel for what it’s all about. And so I always had a natural love for the game and truthfully, my focus wasn’t to play in college. I just wanted to be around it as much as I could. And I honestly, I didn’t have much of a long term vision of the game. So I grew up in a family of construction workers.

My father was a plasterer, my grandfather was a plasterer. I grew up believing that I was going to be a plasterer. I just felt like I didn’t know that I could choose my own path. I didn’t know I could do other things. I didn’t take school very seriously when I was in high school. I love basketball, but I always kind of assumed, Hey, this is going to be over.

And when it’s done I’m going to move back to El Paso where I’m from, go live with my dad and get back to work. And that’s what I did. I graduated high school in May of 2005 and came home, had a conversation with my mom and told her, Hey, I’m not going to go to college. I’m going to move back to El Paso.

I’m going to go work with dad. And she cried and she was so upset, but she has a great parent, which she’s an amazing parent. Let me do it. She sent me out there and said, okay, that’s, you’re going to have to show up and do it every day. You’re going to be the one that has to do it. And so I was with my dad for about a year and working on the job site early in the morning, late in the afternoons, in the evenings, didn’t touch the ball for almost a year and missed basketball like crazy, but obviously not school.

Cause I still wasn’t quite mature enough for that. And so there were a few times where I was working, I was like, man, there’s gotta be something more for me. There has to be something more for me.  I learned a really valuable lesson. Working with my father and just seeing, like, he put in a hard day’s work every day, every single day, and he had to do it with his hands every single day.

And there was a day that I finally occurred to me, man, if I go back to school I can still work a hard day’s work, but I can do it with my mind instead of having to do with my body every day. And there might be more to this, right? So, I came back to Houston. Honestly, just in pursuit of an education.

And so I thought, man, while I’m here, I may as well play some basketball. And so I went to a local community college and they didn’t have a team and I there was nothing sanctioned or anything like that. And what I decided to do, just put some people together that I knew went to the school and we started a club team.

And so, in that club team, we started calling junior colleges in the area and they play club teams all the time.  small division 3 JUCOs will play club teams. Right. And so, we played Cedar Valley, which is in Dallas, in a division 3 JUCO, and the Dallas County Community College League. I went to their place and played really, really well.

And then they came down here and we played in a freshman high school gym and played a college, quote unquote, college game there, played really, really well there. And when that game was over the head coach and assistant coach said, no, we would really love for you to come play for us. And at the time I was waiting tables, playing pickup all night and just doing anything I could to stay around the game.

And I picked up and sight unseen the next year I moved to Dallas and played at Deer Valley. Didn’t have a great experience, wasn’t a great player, but figured out how to be a good student, which is a really big part of my development as a player. Because  I told you when I was in high school, I didn’t know a single shooting drill.

I had no idea what I was doing. I just wanted to talk. Well, I got to Cedar Valley and I started to realize, okay, if I’m going to be able to do this, I have to be a better shooter. And if I’m going to be able to do this, I’m going to have to be better. You have to be stronger. It’s just some things that are going to matter.

And so I started working out at the rec center down the street. Basically never played. Got no minutes, but I worked at it like crazy. And I was leaving there. And when I was leaving Cedar Valley, I knew I wasn’t going to go back for my second year. One of the guys that I coached, coached a player here in the Houston area.

Well, his father was a scout for the Bobcats at the time, and he knew the soon to be athletic director and head basketball coach at St. Thomas, and he said, man, this guy trains players. He’s in the Houston area. I’ve seen him play pickup. He can really play. I have no idea what his situation is, but you should check him out.

And that’s how I got connected to Todd Smith, who’s my athletic director now, who was the basketball coach at St. Thomas at the time. And he invited me down to play in one pickup game and I walked in and had no idea what I was doing, who these people were. But I mean, as we talked about, like, that’s my arena, man, you throw me in the middle of nowhere to play pickup and it’s like, shoot, you can get rid of the refs.

I could do this. It doesn’t matter who’s in here. Like I’m comfortable with this and I played really well. And he said, man, I’d love for you to come to St. Thomas. So that led to one thing led to another. And then I found myself on St. Thomas’s campus for three years from 2009 to 2012. And that was my recruitment process.

It wasn’t really one, it just kind of, the game kind of just kept leading me down a different path. And before I knew it, I ended up at St. Thomas playing for coach Smith.

[00:33:53] Mike Klinzing: Did you think that knowing that you wanted to eventually coach and thinking about that part of it. Did you have in mind a level that you wanted to coach?

Did you see yourself? Hey, someday I’d like to be a high school coach. Did you see yourself wanting to stay at the college level? And I know you got your first job as a high school coach. So just what was your thought process as you were going through school or where you thought you’d end up?

[00:34:21] Anthony Medina: When I was in high school and even when I first came back to Houston I still didn’t think that coaching college basketball was even in the cards for me. I didn’t think it was possible. To me, it was, I don’t know anybody in the business, I don’t know a single person that coaches college basketball.

I don’t know how to get there. And so, for me, it was, okay, you’re going to coach in high school. And that was my plan when I went to St. Thomas. And so, my undergrad degree is in English. And my plan was to get a degree in English so I could make myself a more marketable basketball coach. And it was actually a really smart decision.

That’s how I ended up at that high school, was I had already kind of laid the groundwork to be a high school coach. And so the plan was always high school, but it was only because college felt like a dream to me. And actually before I was that high school coach, I was a GA at Missouri Western state.

And so I got to go do that. But even that felt like, now I don’t know where I go from here but as you can see, this whole thing is just, I kind of just chase wherever basketball takes me. And ever since I left the job site, it’s literally like, okay. Yeah, I can always go back. I know I can always go back.

I can do that. But if basketball opens up a door, I’m just going to walk. I’m going to run right through it and just see what happens.

[00:35:46] Mike Klinzing: What did you like about coaching high school basketball? Now, obviously you’ve been at the college level for a number of years. So what did you like when, during that year, when you were coaching in high school?

[00:35:56] Anthony Medina: Being in high school is very different. Because you got a lot of players that do it because their friends do it. A lot of players that do it just because they’re good at it. And finding ways to motivate players was a lot of fun for me, and that was part of it. I’d say the bigger part of it was when I finally let go of this idea that, like, these guys have to care as much as I do.

I finally developed my own philosophy on this. I’ve heard so many coaches say, I hate it. I care more than they do. I care more than they do.  I can’t care more than you do. The truth is like, I chose to do this for the foreseeable future. This is my life. This is not their life.

This is not what they want to be doing 10, 20 years from now. And so, I can’t approach them with the expectation that they love it the way that I do. And after I learned that lesson, I was like, okay, well, now that I know this, how do I approach the kid who wants to do something completely different with his life, and he’s just trying to hang out with his friends, right?

How do you frame this in a way, and how do you motivate them in a way that can yield the best results. And so I think that was probably my favorite part about it is just trying to, trying to find creative ways because developing the relationships is natural, right? You spend this much time with these guys, you’re going to get to know them.

You’ll get to be close to them. You’ll learn about what they enjoy, what they really enjoy. At the high school level, and then you try to take that and say, okay, well, this is something that you do like, and here’s the symmetry to basketball, right? These are the things that are going to carry over if you can learn how to do these things in basketball.

Like I said earlier, develop a process like, hey, to be a good basketball player, you need A, B, and C. When you graduate and you move on, you want to go to law school, you’re going to have to learn what A, B, and C are, and then you got to work at it. And so I think it was probably one of the most valuable lessons I learned as a coach and getting that opportunity to work with guys where it’s less pressure, right?

It’s not the end of the world if you don’t love basketball because there’s more to it.

[00:38:07] Mike Klinzing: I think you being able to come to that realization so early definitely gives you, gave you an advantage as a coach. I know that one of the things that I struggled with initially was exactly what you’re talking about is when I got my first coaching job and I felt like, well I’m a good player, so I’m going to be a good coach.

And obviously the more you grow up in the game and. The more you are around it, the more you realize that just because you’re a good player, that doesn’t translate into you being a good coach. And I know that there were times, one of the things that used to frustrate me to no end as a coach is you would lose and then you get on the bus and kids would be laughing and joking.

Talking and I can remember myself as a player, like if we lost, like, I mean, I was my head’s down. I’m sitting there on a bus, I’m stewing, I’m trying to figure things out or whatever. And to your point, not every kid is A, wired that way, but B, they played the game, they did the best they could and the game’s over and they’re moving on to these other parts of their life that are equally, if not more important to them.

And that was something that I really struggled with because it wasn’t the way that I was wired as a player. And it took me a lot longer than it took you to sort of understand the way that, especially at the high school level, the way kids are wired. There are very few kids at that level who take it as important in the moment as it is to whoever is coaching them.

And that’s something that if you’re a young coach out there, if you can learn that lesson and really internalize that early, you’re going to end up, I think, a lot better off. And obviously you were able to do that at the high school level and to be able to find those ways to motivate kids and to get to know them and build those relationships like you talked about.

When you think about that experience as an assistant coach, and then obviously eventually here. Become a college head coach. What were some things that you thought were important or that you still think are important for a good assistant coach?

[00:40:25] Anthony Medina: The word is relationships. The word is relationships. I think for assistant coaches on the basketball side, if you’re an assistant coach the best piece of advice I got when I was at Missouri Western, I worked for Tom Smith. The assistant coach was Mike Nicholson. Coach Nick was one of the sharpest minds I’ve been around, and he was so creative in how he could deliver a message. He was so sharp.

One of the things that he told me was, Your job is not to make decisions. Your job is to make coaching decisions as effective as possible, right? And so as an assistant coach on the basketball side, that’s your responsibility. Right. So your job is to say, all right, we’re going to come to these conclusions together the best we can.

At the end of the day, it’s going to be coach’s choice. And when coach makes his decision, how as an assistant, do I make his decisions as effective as possible? But the flip side of that, which is the relationships with the players, assistant coaches will always have one notch down from that decision on who goes in the game and who doesn’t.

Right. At the end of the day, it stops at the head coach where the head coach has to make that choice. And there will always be some type of strain because every player wants to play more. So it’s really important that the assistant coaches develop relationships with the players and they are constants for them so that they can always bring them back when they get emotional.

They can always bring them back, positive or negative. Right? Like there’s a lot of players out there that play really well and they don’t go to the gym the next day because they did a good job. There’s a lot of players out there that have a really bad game and don’t go back to the gym the next day because they did a really bad job or didn’t play as much as they wanted.

And having assistant coaches who can also look the kids in the eye and tell them the truth when minutes are not tied to that conversation. I think that it creates a ton of value for an assistant coach. And for me as a head coach, it’s the most valuable piece that an assistant can bring to the table because there will be points where players are going to be frustrated with me.

They’re going to be tired of hearing my voice and they need somebody who, going back to the first point, can help guide players down the path and the decisions that I make and that we make as a staff to make them as effective as possible. And, I think it’s a hard thing to learn, especially for assistant coaches who want to be respected and they want to be hard on them and they want to be tough on them.

There is a component of love and approach to players that a great assistant coach has to have.

[00:43:05] Mike Klinzing: I think that one of the things that is always most interesting when you talk to a coach who has had the opportunity to be an assistant, and then also to be a head coach is sort of the difference, right?

In that relationship between a player and their head coach and a player. And the assistant coach. And clearly, when you move over that one chair and you’re the person that’s making those decisions about playing time, it, it changes that relationship to some degree, because as you said, every player wants to play more.

Every player wants to be on the floor as much as humanly possible. And I love the way you framed that, that the assistant coach has to sell the message of the head coach, right? And it may not be the message that that player necessarily wants to hear. And I think what good assistant coaches do is they, they do provide that connection between player and head coach.

They’re that sort of middle ground between the two. And yet at the same time, the best assistant coaches are the ones that in the coach’s office behind closed doors, you can have an honest discussion with your head coach, share your opinion, share your thoughts, and then ultimately whatever is decided inside that coach’s office, when everybody walks out that door, the best assistant coaches are the ones that Know how to deliver that head coach’s message in such a way that even if they might privately have disagreed with it, once everybody’s back out in public with their team or with parents or with whoever, that that assistant coach does a tremendous job of being able to express the message that the head coach wants to have expressed.

And I think you did a really good job of explaining why that’s so important, why it’s so critical and what that does for a head coach when they have an assistant who has that capability, right? I mean, it just makes such a difference when the coaching staff is. United in terms of the messaging that’s being sent to me.  I just think that that’s critically important.

[00:45:21] Anthony Medina: Now, the roles of assistant coaches can be different levels, right? Different levels in terms of recruiting and other things like that. I think what we’re talking basketball players in the locker room on the floor, I think what we’re hitting on right here is, to me, is the most valuable component of helping the team get together and stay together.

[00:45:38] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I could not agree more with that. I think it’s a hundred percent true. All right. Tell me a little bit about how the opportunity to return back to your alma mater comes to you. What does that look like? How does that happen?

[00:45:54] Anthony Medina: So I played, I knew I wanted to coach.  My head coach at the time, Todd Smith, he worked at Rice for 20 years, I believe, maybe a little more than 20 years. He was in Division I, obviously, for a long time. Played at Valpo. His dad was the head coach of Valpo for a short time. So the big time division two head coach. And he was the one that got me to believe that I could actually coach in college.

 I finally had someone in my life who’s actually done it and been in it and understands it and comes from a family of it. And he would tell me like, yeah, no, we’re going to do this. We’re going to do this. And by my junior and senior year, he would always joke. Cause I’d hang out in his office every day.

I’d ask him questions and sometimes I just sit there and do my own. And just to be around. Hey, we spent a ton of time together and by my junior, senior year, he would always tell me you’re going to be the next head coach here one day you’re going to be the next head coach here one day.

And I always thought he was just being nice to me, I think as a player, like you don’t, I mean, at least for me anyway, I don’t know if other people see it this way. I just assumed he was going to be there forever. You know like this is coach’s job he’s going to do this program.

But he would always say that you’re going to be the next head coach here one day. When I went to go work for his dad I got close with his family because his family lived in Kansas city and I actually went out to eat and visit his mom and she lived in I was with his mother and it was the first time that I had ever heard that he was serious about this.

Right. And so we were just having a conversation and her husband said, well, what do you want to do?  Do you want to stay in basketball? And she said, he’s going to be the next coach at St. Thomas.  Todd wants him, like he wants him for that job. And I tried to play it off. And in my head, I was like, he was serious the whole time.

So I moved back to Houston I took a high school job out here and at the end of that season, he called me sometime during the summer and he said, Hey, are you ready? I was like, ready for what coach? And he said it’s time, man, get your stuff together. We’re going to get an interview and you’re going to meet with Dr. Ivan as the president. I want you to take this job. It honestly was that simple. He believed in me so deeply. He took it all the way to the top and told him, this is the guy, this is the guy for the job. So the fight for that job was during practice every day. The fight for that job was when he was getting to know me every day in his office, like those were my interviews.

And he was a father figure to me. And so he knew everything there was to know about me. And that gave him confidence that I could not just do the job and do it well.

[00:48:59] Mike Klinzing: So when you get the job and you’re obviously taking over for somebody who has acted as clearly your mentor and you’re going to come in and clearly as a head coach, you’re going to try to continue to build upon what Todd had built, but you also are your own person.

You’re going to coach your own way. So how did you walk through and how did you talk with him about where the program was and kind of where you want it to take it? What did those conversations look like once you got the job?

[00:49:35] Anthony Medina: He was very intentional about giving me space very intentional about letting me make what he believed were mistakes, and he was not overly involved.

If we had success, like any great coach, when we would have success, it’s because I was doing a good job. And when we struggled, it’s because he didn’t leave enough players on the roster for me when I took the job. Cause I took the job in July, right? So like I took the job late and just inherited a group.

So he was always incredibly positive, right? It was, we did something right. You’re doing a really good job with the defense keep it up.  The guys are doing a great job. They’re resilient. I mean, hell, we only won 10 games that year. We lost every game in February. And I genuinely think like, even to this day, if you ask him, he would say that was on him, you know?

And it’s like, well, hell, I had plenty of time to get that group together and be a little better, but he would take that. So I say all that because he tried to stay out of it.  We didn’t have a lot of conversations about the program. We didn’t have a lot of conversations about the players that weren’t very strictly athletic director, head basketball coach conversations and it gave me the freedom to make decisions in my own way.

He probably could have guided me to avoid some pitfalls here and there, but he also let me stub my toe and make mistakes. And I learned from a lot of those mistakes and I grew from a lot of those mistakes. So my relationship with him is why I’ve grown into the coach that I’ve become because he’s given me the space.

He guided me the entire way from a distance.

[00:51:24] Mike Klinzing: What’s the mistake that you made that when you look back on it, you’re super glad you made it because you’ve learned so much and you’ve improved so much and it’s made a difference in the type of coach that you are today?

[00:51:38] Anthony Medina: That’s probably one of the best questions I’ve ever heard.

I think the biggest mistake that I made when I came in was assuming that I knew better and that I knew what was right and I knew what worked.  I was taught to play defense a certain way and I did exactly, I coached the game pretty similarly, almost down to the tee the way that I was taught to play.

And I just went based on what I was told, instead of really trying to understand not just what works, but why it works and trying to really understand like the guts of like why, why is a team good defensively? Why is keeping the ball out of the middle of the floor beneficial? Like, what are the reasons?

And I made it a huge oversight for honestly two years. We were struggling. We lost a close game to a really good team. And I went home and I’ve been teaching this defensive system that I was taught, but I didn’t truly understand it. So what I did is I sat down at home and I watched every defensive possession.

And what I did was I just categorized every defensive possession. All right. So here’s the first possession of the game. Did we get scored on like, what was the result and how does that align with what I’m teaching them? Okay, so I taught them not to do X, Y, and Z. Did we get scored on because of what I’m teaching them?

Okay, no. If they would have done what I taught them to do, would it have prevented it? Yes or no? And I went possession by possession by possession. I did it for maybe three or four games and I finally started to understand. more about, okay, so why is it so important to keep the ball on the floor?

Why is it so important to play what we call the baseline zone? Like why is baseline zone so important and what are you preventing with it? And what are the pitfalls, right? So like what are your weaknesses? What are you vulnerable to? And I think that deep. Not just myself and what I’ve been taught, but how it was applying to the players that I was working with really helped us take off.

And from there going forward, now I wasn’t just some coach who thought like I had it all figured out. I was constantly trying to seek the answers to why things work, how they were developed, why would somebody do it otherwise? And putting my ego down made a huge difference in that whole part of my development.

[00:54:08] Mike Klinzing: So to go along with that, besides sort of doing a deep dive of self analysis, both of yourself as a coach, but also of your team, where else do you go to try to learn and develop yourself? As a coach, what are the resources that you tap into? It could be reading, film, mentors. Where do you go when you’re trying to learn?

[00:54:32] Anthony Medina: I ask a lot of questions. So if there’s things I don’t understand, right, there’s things I don’t understand, I try to watch anybody that does a good job at what I’m trying to figure out, right? So one of our big questions this year. Collectively as a team, we changed in our personnel and our ball screen coverage was really struggling early in the year.

And so I just started going through the numbers from the last few years. Who were the head coaches who had based on Synergy numbers, who were the coaches in the country who had the best numbers in terms of points per possession and turnover rates in ball screen coverage? So like who’s doing the best job?

Okay. So this year, one of the best in the country is Will Wade at McNeese. Okay. So what is he doing? So I watched their possessions and I’m lucky enough to know coach and I’m looking to know some of the guys over there. And so what I do, I watch their film and then I call someone I know and say, Hey, okay, so this is what I’m seeing.

Is this what you’re doing? How does that work? Why does it work? To me, the best resources that I have are the numbers that are available honestly on Synergy and these other websites and that are available and then film of other people. And then at the most important level is the relationship having a friend or somebody in the game or a mentor who will tell me the truth about what they’re doing and why it works and what the vulnerabilities are.

That’s truthfully been the biggest thing. And I’m also very lucky. There’s a lot of really good basketball in Texas. There’s a lot of really good high school basketball in Texas. And so there’s a lot of coaches willing to share and sit down and have a conversation and agree and disagree. And that that’s been the biggest tool for me.

[00:56:17] Mike Klinzing: The willingness to share, I think, is one of the things that I didn’t really realize when I started the podcast, how willing guys would be to come on and share about the things they do. Now, clearly on an audio format, we don’t spend a ton of time breaking down specific X’s and O’s because it’s kind of hard to do that just in audio.

At the same time, the number of conversations that I’ve had with coaches that described a situation just like you did where, Hey, I go and I sit down with this coach or I go to their practice, or I call this coach up and ask about, Hey, how do you run this? Or how do you defend this? And coaches are willing to share.

And I think part of that is if you go back and you compare it to 30 or 40 years ago, right now, the way that. The game has been digitized, right? Even if you wanted to hide something, you’re pretty much out of luck if you want to try to keep something away from people because of the way that the film has gone and everybody has access to it.

And so I think what it’s done is it’s just opened up everything in the coaching profession of people being able to do exactly what you described, which is watch other teams film, be able to break down and look at their numbers and then be able to have those direct relationships and conversations and visits and whatever else you want to do to be able to tap into some of the best minds in the country.

And that’s where you have, I think the game continues to grow and evolve and change. And part of that, and I think it accelerates even more just because of all the knowledge sharing of what’s happening. Since you first got the job, what’s been the biggest change in the game or in the way you’ve approached the game since you got started?

[00:58:09] Anthony Medina: I had one that’s kind of embarrassing. It made me feel like the dumbest coach in the country. My first year, I don’t know if you know who Larry Cordero is but he was a head coach at LSU Alexandria. He did an unbelievable job. He won a lot in NAIA. Well, we were like fifth in the country in fouls committed per game, right?

I was very big on applied pressure. We are not allowing a single catch and shoot through the entire game. And if you looked at our numbers, like we were accomplishing our goal, because I think we were second maybe in field goal percentage from three, 3 point field goal percentage defense. And so, I was really proud of that and I thought, Oh, I’m doing a great freaking job and I’m not paying any freaking attention to the fact that we’re just  hacking everybody and I had no idea and so it was a part of the game that I didn’t understand how to try and attempt to control.

Now I think obviously you have no bearing over how the officials call the game. You can’t determine that you can’t predetermine that. But there’s a lot of things you can do to keep the count down. And there’s a lot of things you can do to put yourself in position to be fouled and how you drive the ball, where you drive the ball.

Do we have a post player who’s not great at playing with their back to the basketball? Are we intentionally going to put them down there and try to put them in positions to be fouled? And put the defense, like put pressure on the defense and make them have to play with their hands off. This is probably the biggest area that I’ve developed and try to like really started to understand.

It actually, it’s hands down the biggest area, but it’s because I was totally clueless. I was totally clueless at how important it really was and the impact that it can have on the flow of the game, the impact that it can have on your defense.  to me, when I took the job, fouls were a problem to keep your best player on the floor if he gets in foul trouble.

And it was a very immature, short sighted, and I was clueless it wasn’t something I thought about. I kept the foul chart at Missouri Western, and I could tell you how many each guy had, but I didn’t care that we were, that they were the bonus, you know and so it’s kind of embarrassing to think that I was that far removed from one of the biggest components of winning.

But it’s also helped us a ton since I finally woke up.

[01:00:38] Mike Klinzing: You’re preparing for any given season and you obviously have a style of play, a philosophy of how you like to play. How do you think about taking what you like to do and making sure that that fits and tweaking what you do to fit what your personnel can do?

And obviously at the college level, unlike the high school level, you’re able, you’re able to recruit and be able to bring in players that you feel like are going to fit into what you want to do. But just. Season to season, what’s your process for looking at what you do and making tweaks in it to prepare for a given season?

[01:01:17] Anthony Medina: So for our level at division three without scholarships, we can recruit, but if you can get a really good player at any given position, there may be some gaps in their game, right? And they might be more athletic with a lower skill set or higher skill set with lower athleticism. And so for me, we’re trying to recruit the best overall player we can get.

And sometimes what that turns into is somebody that’s really far on either end of that spectrum. So each season, as we move into the year, It’s tweaking the defense and understanding how athletic we are compared to our opponent. And can we continue to play the way that we want to play? So like last year, we were so big and I’ll whatever, I’ll say it out loud.

For my first six years as a coach, we never helped out of the corner. Like we would stunt and get back, stunt and get back, stunt and get back. And last year, I realized that we’re pretty freaking athletic. And we’ve got a lot of length and we do a really good job pressuring the ball without fouling. And there were times we could just overcommit and just jump the ball handler on that corner, like on that lane line drive, and we can create problems in that.

And for years, I said, we’re not doing that. But then once I realized, like, man, we could really be a problem and turn people over, it might lead to baskets, but we’re going to turn people over more often. This year, it’s very similar, kind of in the same direction.  We’re very structured, stay inside the system, be ready to we call it a tag cover, which is basically just your help to help with rotations.

Very, very organized and this year it’s like, if somebody turns their back on you, go we’re more athletic, we’re faster, we’re not as big. Don’t be afraid to take some chances in the half court. Just understand where they’re going to come from or what plays you’re going to make. We move in the other direction and we’re less athletic and we’re not quite as long.

We would probably move back to more strict rules. And I think having that flexibility as a coach is important, but the foundation of the defense doesn’t really change.  These are details really by comparison to the overall way that we want to play in our defense.

[01:03:34] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. I think, right, you start to look at, okay, here’s what we want to do, and this is the basic components that are present, no matter what little adjustments we make based on personnel, we’re still basically running out of whatever it is, our same basic philosophies, our core tenants, however you want to put it, and then making those small, subtle adjustments year to year based on your personnel and what you have and who you have in the building and thinking about your team and the makeup of your team and how you put a team together.

Tell me a little bit about your recruiting process, how you go about identifying players and then getting that big, long list that you start with and then starting to narrow that down until you eventually get a guy to enroll and become part of your program. How do you go through that process?

[01:04:24] Anthony Medina: Changed a lot in the last few years.  Honestly, with the development of EYBL and the gauntlet and all these other things that have gone on in, in AAU and summer basketball, the smaller levels of tournaments have changed so much. And the truth is that even division three players are playing on the higher level teams and they’re all over the place so getting the kids regionally has gotten really hard.

In a lot of ways, I’ve moved away from AAU. I don’t go to as many tournaments. I don’t go to as many spring and summer events as I used to. Texas has the TABC, which is the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches. They host their event. And a ton of teams from the state go to that, but at this point I lean on high school coaches opinions very, very heavily.

So right now we’re wrapping up our current recruiting class and then once we get through that and we finalize that or we’re down to the last couple and the seasons are over, I’ll reach out to high school coaches that I know and trust. And I’ll just look at who the best players in their district were that are 25’s.

And I’ll say, Hey, what do you think about so and so? What do you think about so and so? We’ll go down the list and I’ll just try to take as many of those and cross reference them and say, okay, well, here’s a list of however many kids that are well respected by coaches in the area. And that’s where I like to begin.

And now names always end up getting added to that list. The list wears itself down based on academics.  If they’re not good enough students. If they’re too high, right, there’s guys that are like very clearly, they’re just not going to be division three players. And so it whittles the list down and the list will continue to grow as guys play well during the high school season.

But truthfully, it’s become so much about the high school kid. Excuse me, and the high school coaches are the ones that I depend on to give good information. And that’s why I’m lucky to be so deep in Houston. I could pick up the phone and call somebody from any district and get good information from somebody I trust about players in their district.

Once we identify them, we want to watch them play, try to be very specific about the games that we go to. It has to be a game where they are athletically as challenged as we can possibly get it to be on their schedule. And sometimes it can be hard if it’s a smaller school or if it’s a private school.

But because we have really big 6A’s out here, like, okay, we’re looking at somebody specific. We want to see them against bigger, stronger, faster if it’s possible. And that’s just a really good barometer for how they’ll translate their skill set to the college level.  cause you might be the best shooter in the gym when you’re wide open, but if you can’t ever get wide open, you’re not exactly the best shooter anymore.

And so for me, that’s what we’re trying to find and then trying to apply it from there. Once we’ve identified and said, all right, so we watch them play. We know they’re good enough. We really want them. We have volunteer assistants. I don’t have any paid assistants on our staff. And so what we have are volunteer assistant guys that just want to learn.

And we assign players to each assistant coach and those guys go out and watch those kids play. No, we’ve got an assistant who’s seen a kid play 11 times this year. And because we’re in Houston and because we recruit Houston almost exclusively. We have that opportunity. We can go and see you play home games.

We can see you play road games. We can go watch your practices. We can do a lot. In that way and really develop a relationship and the final piece before we ever make an offer. There’s two parts to it. Number one is we have to develop the relationship with the parents and make sure that this is something that they want for them.

Because truthfully, if the parents are fixated on playing at a higher level, the idea of playing division three is not something that’s going to sway them. And there’s not much of a conversation that’s going to make a change and then you’ll bump into, well, we’re going to play Juco, we’re going to go prep or whatever, or we’ll go do anything but play division three.

So we don’t have to say we did it.  They just don’t understand, right, if you are the level you’re being recruited at. So once we get to that point, the final component before I make an offer is I tell them, Hey, I sent in the application. I just like to have a conversation and say, Hey, do me a favor, knock out the application.

I give you 48 hours. If the application is not done in 48 hours, I move them down the list. Because if you’re not willing to take 10 to 12 minutes to file an application, that tells me one, how serious you are about us, and two, how diligent you are about doing things you’re asked to do. I won’t remove them completely, but I will move them down below guys who are willing to knock that thing out right away.

And if a kid, if I send it to them and they hit me back in the next 48 hours and they say, hey, coach is done. I call him right then and say, Hey man, you have an offer from St. Thomas. And that has been because we’re in a space where kids just want to throw out offers online and coaches are throwing out offers left and right, right?

Like that’s what it’s become. Like, it’s not just the kids, it’s the coaches too. Right. A kid gets an offer from one school and then guaranteed like it’s that social media effect. Boom. He’s going to pick up five more just because he posted one and it’s because it is that way.

I don’t want to be bought. I don’t want to be a part of that. Like kids can post it. I think that’s fine, but I want to make sure you’re serious about me before I make any type of investment in you. And that’s the final component. And then from there you just hang on and hold tight and wait for them to get their financial aid package and if they like it and it’s good enough, then you can try to close the deal.

[01:10:23] Mike Klinzing: Well, this year you got to wait a little bit for your financial package with the FAFSA the way it is.

[01:10:28] Anthony Medina: It’s killing me, man.

[01:10:31] Mike Klinzing: Trust me, I’m on the parent side of this, Anthony. So I’m right there with you. We’re waiting it out. And it’s tough.

It’s tough because we went into it with my son, last year coming out of coming out of AAU season, coming out of his junior year saying, Hey, we want to we’d really like to try to make a decision. And my son’s going to be a division three player and make a decision almost we were hoping kind of even before the season.

And it’s really difficult when you have no idea what the financial packages are going to be to, you might have a favorite, but until the money part of it is, is obviously, a big factor in making that decision. And so to not have that until what now it looks like it’s probably not going to be until, I don’t know, early March, maybe at best  I’m sure for coaches where you guys, it’s driving you crazy, but I know as a parent, just for my son as a player and having to, again, continue to just plod along and it’s put everybody in this state of limbo.

That’s difficult. And I’m sure just your reaction, I can tell the experience that you’re having with it.

[01:11:48] Anthony Medina: It’s brutal because I’ve got a lot of families that are like, Hey, we just want to see the numbers. And I’m like, Hey, you and me both, I would love to know, I would love to know if it’s good enough for you, in the meantime we continue to develop the relationship. Everybody at all levels is in the same boat.

And if somebody with a division two offer came along and offer those kids, I’m probably not going to get them anyway. And so it’s not like it’s created an unleveled playing field. We’re all kind of sitting in the same situation. I do feel bad for the families because they want to know, there are people that are planners and they want to know.

[01:12:28] Mike Klinzing: That’s the challenge is just, again, you’re kind of going through it and you have some ideas about what you might want to do and yet you’re missing that final piece. And you’ve got all the, Hey, we love the school. We love the coaching staff. We love the environment there.

All these things are in place. And now it’s just a matter of, Hey, where’s the money? Where does the money come out? And how does that all slot together and fit together? And like you said, at least it’s a level playing field. So nobody’s getting that information any sooner than anybody else.

So when it does happen  it’s just delayed from obviously where it normally is. So it’ll all get figured out at some point. Let me ask you a little bit about developing leaders on your team. So you’ve got the kids that you recruited, you brought them in.

Obviously you’ve had a chance in the recruiting process to get to know them, get to know their families. You’re bringing in guys that you feel like can be contributors to your program. Once you get them in the door, how do you think about developing them as leaders and developing leaders on your team.

[01:13:33] Anthony Medina: A couple of things that have been really helpful.  The first thing is we’ve had some really good seniors that along the way have been good mentors to younger guys and it’s become almost cyclical, right? So like the seniors have been really beneficial for the younger guys and those guys grew up and then they helped the ones behind them. I think that’s part of the benefit.

I’m coming up on, this is year nine, I’m coming up on year 10. In the same place. And that longevity has given me the opportunity to really keep that moving. And so that part is really, really big. And then the second part is just the people on campus. We’re a small campus.  We do have almost 4,000 students total.

But we have about 500 that live on campus, which is a very small number by comparison. It’s because most people, it’s a commuter school. We’re right in the heart of the city. So there are a lot of people on the campus that get to know our guys very well. And there’s a lot of really positive influences and people that want to be a part of their lives are really helping build them as a village, right?

It’s not just me. It doesn’t have to just be me. There’s a lot of professors that look after them. Our faculty athletic reps are incredible. Other coaches in the department know our guys and I know theirs. It being a family feel has made such a big difference because I think as coaches, we on the floor, obviously there’s things that you require.

I’m like, you got to communicate and you got to hold each other accountable to things. You got to take care of your business. And I think all those things are important, but when you’re looking bigger picture and you’re really thinking. About, okay, so this guy’s going to graduate in three months, four months what’s he going to do with his life and who is he going to be?

It’s not just his basketball experience that are going to impact his ability to lead others when he’s gone, right? Like how is he able to connect with other people on the campus and how did he engage with other students? And  how did he treat the  the, the RAs who are in the dorms and other areas on campus, all that stuff matters.

And we’re very lucky to have a tight knit community of people that genuinely care. And so, I think those two areas have made a big difference for us and we’re really lucky to have that.

[01:15:46] Mike Klinzing: Especially, I think, at the Division III level when you talk about the way that the off seasons go, right? You got to have guys that are going to be talking to other guys and hopefully getting them in the gym.

And obviously with your, what you do and opening up your gym and that kind of thing, but just being able to get guys to, to, to sell their teammates on the program and to, and to keep everybody involved and to keep things moving in the right direction to continue to build the program. that you want to build.

Let’s talk briefly before we wrap up. I want to give you a chance to talk a little bit about what you’re doing on the private side of it, how you got started on that and just kind of what you do on that end of it.

[01:16:22] Anthony Medina: Yeah. So I actually, when I was, like I said earlier, I came home after working in construction.  I worked for a youth basketball program called Cup and Nets. The guy that ran it, Will Burkholder was an assistant at UNC Charlotte. He moved down here with his wife, his wife worked in oil and gas and started youth programs. I worked with him. And I learned a lot about how youth organizations work.

It’s actually where I got a lot of my coaching experience working with younger players. And so that whole concept for me has been what really helped me take off as a coach. So now I’m essentially just trying to take a similar model, not exactly, and try to build a youth league down in Houston.

Which is it’s much like YMCA, I9 any of your youth leagues are that you have in your area, but the things we all grew up in and try to create a component where you have higher level coaching at the same price as you could down at I9 with parents or volunteer coaches.

It’s not a knock on those environments. That’s not a knock on those experiences. But because we just felt like we had an opportunity, we feel like we really have an opportunity to contribute to the basketball community. And so that’s what it is down in Houston. We’ve got that. And then on the same side, I live, I actually live about 45 minutes North of Houston.

And we run an AAU program for boys and girls out here. And so that’s happening. We’ve got a lot of high school kids, junior high kids. It’s actually fourth grade through 12th grade. And the concept is the same. So it’s myself and our coaching staff and a couple of guys that played in college, a couple that played at St.  Thomas. And we’re trying to take basically what you and I already talked about and create an environment where kids can get better and actually enjoy their experience and get quality coaching in the process. And it’s not about winning and I’m not out there trying to win every tournament.

I’m not going to be chasing down kids and I’m trying to get the next five star.  it’s an opportunity for the average varsity player, JV guy, girl who just want an opportunity to play, to get better, to be with their friends and do it in an environment with people that really understand how to develop them.

And so the goal is to build this and be as recognizable in the Houston community to everybody in the basketball community. That’s, that’s really the goal. It’s gone well so far. We started the end of March, so our season’s going to end.  we left it all open all the way through the national tournament.

It’d be great if we could play in the national tournament and get all the way out there. But as soon as that national tournament winds down, then I’ll jump right into our youth league down in Houston and then our AAU program on the north side.

[01:19:14] Mike Klinzing: No rest for the weary, Anthony.

[01:19:16] Anthony Medina: Oh, no, there’s really not.  They’re really not. The cool thing about it is the game is totally different, right? So, like college basketball is completely different than coaching fourth graders. And in some ways, coaching a fourth grader is a hell of a lot more fun than coaching a college guy and vice versa there’s a lot more depth at college at the college level, but the rate at which a fourth, fifth and sixth grader gets better is dramatically higher than a college player, right? Because they have more room for growth. And so seeing kids get excited about how quickly they can develop, right?

And then parents just getting a kid to understand, Hey, you just catch and face the basket. You’re going to be a better player immediately, right? Because everybody else catches and puts the damn thing down and then they struggle, right? And very simple things that can really help kids get better. And then parents see growth, right?

And they see it. The parents get excited and the kids get excited. And being a part of that process is really important. And truthfully, the final piece of that, I’m seeing kids or not kids anymore kids that I worked with when they were in the fourth and fifth grade and now they have their own they’re coaching on their own or they have their own families or they’re doing their own thing.

I’ve been deeply rooted in Houston basketball for 15, 16 years now. And it’s been a great ride to this point. And honestly I’m not a college coach who’s looking to move around. I want to be at St. Thomas. It’s what I want to do. And so I’m going to be here, man. I may as well do everything I can to positively impact the culture.

[01:20:57] Mike Klinzing: Well, and it also gives you a variety of experiences where you start talking about your coaching the college basketball, your coaching youth. And as you said, those experiences, although you’re coaching basketball, those experiences are very different. And I’m sure that each one of those settings allows you to recharge for the other one and then also pick up little things from each one of those.

Subsets of players that you’re coaching that can help you with the other subset. And it’s, as we talked about all throughout the podcast, I think it’s being a coach is a learning experience. And as you go through it, you, you, you, you pick things up and you learn and you make mistakes and you grow. And just like anything, whether you’re a player, whether you’re a coach, whether you’re a teacher, whether you’re whatever you, you go through your life and you learn and you improve and you put yourself in situations.

And obviously with the diversity of situations that. You’ve put yourself in that growth, I’m sure it is going to continue. So I want to ask you one final two part question. Part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And you can throw that on the college side, you can throw that on the youth side, you can mix and match whatever you want to do.

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

[01:22:16] Anthony Medina: Second one is good and bad. But the biggest challenge is sustained success. And we’ve had a lot of success in the last few years.

We’ve been pretty good for a while. This year has been a little bit tougher it’s not like we’re bad we’re 16 and four, but we’ve been pretty good for the last few years and maintaining a really high level of success is really hard. Partially because like everybody around you continues to get better.

They understand your style of play. It makes the game more and more difficult each year. And running around with a target on your back all the time makes it hard.  We’re not even the top team in the league. And if somebody beats us, they celebrate like they won a national title. And it’s because we’ve been good.

And so that part, that component has been really, really tough because I think that getting good is a challenge, but staying good is a bigger challenge. And so as we’ve ridden this wave for the last four or five years, we’ve been pretty good.  it’s how do we keep it going? How do we tweak it?

How do we keep these guys motivated and aggressive and fending off others and like us being the hunted, you know what I mean? That has probably been the biggest challenge and will be the biggest challenge going forward. Because what happens with teams is the guys on the team that didn’t play as much, they see the success that others have had, and they just assume that it’s coming, like it’ll happen.

And I’m trying to keep those guys hungry and motivated the other side of it. And to me, it was the part that I enjoy the most is that you said it brings me the most joy. Yes, it’s going to sound like it’s not joyful at all. So I’ve got a kid who was a grad year guy, he had a COVID year and he played this year, he blew his shoulder out in like the third game of the year and he’s been trying to like limp through it all year, just do anything he can to get through it.

He’s had a brace, he’s done and they told him when the season’s over, you’ll have surgery. But in the meantime, there’s nothing you could do to make it worse. So they let him keep going and he’s probably popped it out of socket. I don’t know, not an exaggeration, eight or nine times this season.

And it happened again in the last game and it just like blew his shoulder out, came out, couldn’t get it back in, had to take him to the ER. It was this long, dramatic process. And I met with him today and he’s decided coach, I’m just now it’s back in. He’s in some pain. He could probably throw the brace on and try to go again.

And he’s decided to just wind it down and get surgery. So he’s having surgery Tuesday. And it doesn’t sound like a joyful part, I know, but he and I sat down and had a conversation today. I just told him I dreaded the day that he would be gone. I dreaded the day that I wouldn’t get to work with him anymore because he’s somebody, truthfully, that I admire.

And Kalen is a special person and he comes from a special family and I hate to see the day that he goes and to know that he’s gonna have to go and be done before it’s over just devastates me. It hurts a lot. It was really, really hard to have that conversation with him today. The reason that that brings me joy is I’ve developed a relationship with him that I will never lose he knows that he can call me at 3 in the morning if he needs something. He knows that if something bad happens, he can call if he needs a favor, like he is my family now and there’s nothing to take him away from that. And that for somebody who grew up with brothers to feel like I have more family and more brothers that I’m gaining through the game. Like, nothing brings me more joy than that. And I told him, I said, I love you, man. And he said, I know. And I’m like, I’m just very happy that he knows that. And the pain that’s associated with losing him is really just tied to the joy of having that opportunity to coach him.

[01:26:41] Mike Klinzing: that opportunity to coach him? Makes complete sense and speaks to the impact that you’re having as a coach and that you hope that when you’re coaching your team, any coach out there hopes that that’s the kind of relationship that they can build with their players, that it goes well beyond whatever that relationship is on the court, but it extends to off the court.

And that extends on into the life that that player is going to have moving forward and the impact that. You were able to have on him. as his coach. So very well said, Anthony, before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance to share how people can reach out to you, get in contact with you, email, website. You want to share about your youth basketball program, throw it all out there.

And then when you’re done with that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:27:34] Anthony Medina: The website is medinabasketball.org. That’s where you can find all the information. You’re going to think I’m crazy. I do this anytime I go anywhere. I actually don’t get email. The best way to reach me is my cell phone number.

And I’m going to give that out. And I encourage, I truly encourage people to use it. I really do. Text, call anything that you have  whether it’s a Division three kid who’s looking for an opportunity or a sixth grader who’s looking for coaching advice parents looking for coaching advice.

Anything I can do to help. My cell phone number is 281-460-7295. Don’t hesitate. Use it. Call me, text me. Anything I can do to help for anybody out there, I’ll do anything I can.

[01:28:16] Mike Klinzing: Awesome. Anthony, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to jump on and join us.

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