DAN MILLER – SAN MARCOS (TX) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 674

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Email – basketballandbrew@gmail.com

Twitter – @RattlerMBB

Dan Miller is entering his second season as the Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at San Marcos High School in Texas.  He was previously the Head Men’s Basketball Coach at LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas for seven years. Miller guided LeTourneau to three 20-win seasons and two NCAA Division III Tournaments while compiling an overall record of 110-64.

Miller also spent time as a collegiate assistant and as a head high school boys basketball coach at Seven Lakes High School in Katy, Texas. After a stint as an assistant at the University of Southwest Minnesota from 2003-04, Miller built the program from scratch at Seven Lakes. In his nine years with the Spartans, he posted a 218-70 overall record, winning four district titles, three 30-plus win seasons, two regional appearances and seven straight playoff appearances.

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 Grab a notepad before you listen to this episode with Dan Miller, Head Boys’ Basketball Coach at San Marcos High School in the state of Texas.

What We Discuss with Dan Miller

• The influence of Dick Bennett and Bo Ryan growing up in Wisconsin
• “I always tried to pay attention to the great programs that we played and see what they were doing.”
• The importance of keeping the game fun for players and coaches
• His method for organizing his coaching resources
• “I love being a student of the game.”
• “We have to value the basketball. I think that’s how you start offense.”
• Why he uses more live play now then ever
• The quality of coaches at all levels of the game
• Advice for building a high school program in a brand new school
• The importance of hiring a great staff
• Growing the student section at Seven Lakes High School
• Tips for changing the culture in a losing program
• “There’s no surprises when we get to game day.”
• Two keys to his success – playing fast and being connected
• The challenge of the D3 off-season rules
• How he connects with players at the high school and college level
• The importance of generational leadership amongst the players on a D3 team
• Why he left college to return to high school
• His “Battle Practices” and why he believes they’re so valuable
• Setting up a quality youth program
• “Leave a place better than you found it”

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THANKS DAN MILLER

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TRANSCRIPT FOR DAN MILLER – SAN MARCOS (TX) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 674

[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 Dan Miller, the head boys basketball coach at St. Marcos High School in the state of Texas former head coach at LeTourneau University, a division three school and host of the Basketball and Brew Podcast.  Dan, welcome…

[00:00:20] Dan Miller: Thank you guys for having me on. I’m excited to talk some hoops tonight with you guys.

[00:00:25] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely thrilled to have you on looking forward to diving into your story. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell us a little bit about how you got in the game of basketball when you were younger.

[00:00:35] Dan Miller: Yeah, you bet.  I was fortunate to grow up in Wisconsin at a time that we had some great coaches coaching, small colleges. We had Dick Bennett, Wisconsin Steven’s point, and I went to his basketball camps. We had Bo Ryan winning national championships at Platteville and I attended those basketball camps at a young age, I was fortunate. My parents brought me out there and just fell in love with the game at an early age.  I was one of those guys, honestly, a lot of people go to college. They don’t know what the heck they’re going to do with their lives and change majors a few times. And that’s great and then they find themselves I’ll just be honest.

I was one who just really knew I wanted to do something with basketball, all my. From a young age. So I was fortunate to have a great high school coach. Who’s in the Wisconsin hall of fame, Pete Kittle, who coached basketball his first year there at the school I’m from is called Brillion, Wisconsin.

It’s right outside of Green Bay, about 25 minutes and just had a great high school coach fell in love with the game and just really been a hoops, junkie all my life and knew I had to do something with basketball. And then I ended up getting into it.

[00:01:42] Mike Klinzing: When did it become clear that it was going to be coaching and maybe not something else right in the game.

[00:01:48] Dan Miller: Right.  like everybody you, when you’re playing you, you, you think you’re going to be in the NBA or play at a high level college basketball and it hits you. When you it hit me probably when I went to those basketball camps and we were playing against kids from Milwaukee, Chicago, and, and you see this is why these guys are going D one and, and maybe at best I was going to be a D three player, but I just made the most of high school honestly, and had a really enjoyable high school career.

We didn’t have great teams never went to state or anything like that, but we had good teams, lifelong friends from those teams.  a, a coaching mentor. And then I played one year of, of community college ball in, in Rochester, Minnesota, and I had a, had a great year there and learned things.

 I met my wife and I met at freshman orientation and we’ve been together ever since. So I don’t say the word blame that I got out basketball because of my wife, I’m lucky to have, because it all worked out. I just switched gears and kind of went into education. Teaching was my major and, and just knew I wanted to be a teacher and coach, but I, I wanted to be a head college coach and  and, and just kind of keep moving up in the business.

But  I’m sure we’ll talk later, but  God brings us on different journeys and here I am back in high school, but got a taste of, of both already in my coaching career and just absolutely love, love the game and love what I do.

[00:03:12] Mike Klinzing: When you first started. Did you think high school was where you wanted to go or did you think college right out of the gate?

What were your, what was your thought process? Obviously, sometimes you get in a situation where one or the other. Presents itself, but what were you thinking as you were

[00:03:25] Dan Miller: graduating?  I was thinking high school at first I, and honestly, it’s, it’s a lot to do with my high school coach, because I just had a great high school coach Pete Kittle, who’s now retired, but he, he ended up as  small towns are different.

So  here we’re at six, a high school, big high school in Texas. So if you’re a head coach, you’re doing one sport. Well our coach he, he ended up being after I. The head football coach, head basketball coach he won state championships in both actually because it’s a small town. He did a great job after I left, but really he just was a great role model and, and I’m just, I’m real fortunate to play for someone like him, who really was ahead of his time.

As far as I was concerned and relationship driven, teaching you how to be a student of the game. So I, I wanted to be very similar to him and, and run a high school basketball program. But I also, to be honest with you, I also had my eyes on college just because at a young age, like I mentioned, I was inspired by Dick Bennett, who’s Tony, Bennett’s dad and then seeing Tony go on to have success in coaching. So I definitely wanted to get to that college level. And I was very fortunateto be able to do so and run our own program at LeTourneau.

[00:04:39] Mike Klinzing: What’s something that you take from your high school coach that still is a part of your coaching today, or that still influences how you approach it.

[00:04:48] Dan Miller: Yeah. The thing that still stands out to me is he cared about us as people first and basketball players second, and, and never did he diminish how hard we need to work on the court and put time in, but coach Kittle was somebody who really cared about you. And I wasn’t the best student I was a good student, you know I was very fortunate to my wife was a very good student.

So our three kids all grew up excellent. And salutorian type students but I always wasn’t and coach kiddo sometimes. Would bring me in after school and he said, Hey, I know you want to talk basketball. Cause I would stop by his math class. He’d be like before we do let’s, let’s look at some things in the math class.

So let’s look at your grades. Let’s look at these. So just, just things like that, that, that I always took. And as a coach that’s probably the one thing I pride myself on the most is, and we’ve done some great things on the court fortunate to have good players like anybody, any good coach, you got good players, good assistant coaches but honestly the, the saying, and you’ve, you’ve heard this, I know is tell me about your team coach.

I’ll tell you in 20 years how these guys become men and that’s something that coach Kittle displayed and, and role modeled for me. And so I’d say that as much as anything is something that I took away, the, the other thing I will say is, is what coach K always said, I can’t, to be honest with you, I can’t remember exactly everything about our offense, maybe that we ran.

But one thing I do remember is we were going to play hard man to man defense. And when you’re in the state of Wisconsin, you have Dick Bennett up the road and you have Bo Ryan in your state coaching teaching man to man principles. And I still think that Dick Bennett, old VHS tape with chalkboard noses man to man defense is probably the best defensive tape you can watch.

Even to this day. It still stands the test of time about how to play on the line, up the line, man, to man defense, we were going to play hard defense when I was in high school and that’s something I take away and try to install into our teams wherever I’m coaching.

[00:06:56] Mike Klinzing: Now, throughout your career, you’ve had an opportunity both to be a head coach at different levels at the high school level, at the college level.

And you’ve also been an assistant, maybe talk a little bit about what you learned during your experiences. As an assistant that helped you when you got your first head coaching job, or maybe something again that you’re, you’re carrying over from your assistant days that gave you more empathy for what a head coach has to do.

[00:07:20] Dan Miller: Yeah, and one thing about when you are an assistant and, and you kind of think that you’re always ready you like I’m ready to take over a program at, at a young age.  when I came out, I was assistant down in the Houston area at some, at a high school down there called May Creek.

In my mind, I was like, okay, I’m just ready to take over a program. When you eventually become a head coach, you, you have a little bit more appreciation I don’t think. Statistics are true, but maybe at the high division one, sometimes 80, 90% of a head coach’s times, isn’t really on the Xs and O it’s all the different things that goes into head coaching.

There’s probably some statistic that’s closer to reality with that, but the point of it is, is that you have so much to do as a head coach. So one thing I did try to do is soak in everything.  some good, some bad that, that you see from, from head coaches. And one thing I tried to pay attention to early, and I learned this again from my high school coach, he always said, be a student of the game.

So I would always look at when, back when I was an assistant, both in high school and when I was assistant in college at Southwest Minnesota, And we got a chance to play against Don Myers team. When he was the head coach at Northern State, you, you watch the other teams too. So you learn from your head coach, what to do, maybe it’s things you might do different, but I always tried to pay attention to the great programs that we played and see what they were doing, maybe have one eye down there and see what their warmup looked like, how they got off the bus, how they prepared for scouting calls when we would be running our offense and try to pick people’s brains as much as possible. So being assistant you definitely are a learning all the time.

Just like when you’re a head coach, you’re a learner. I mean, I’ve been a head coach. I don’t know how many years, maybe 18, somewhere around there. But I’m still learning. Like coach K says we’re all lifelong learners, but those were definitely some things I took away as assistant. And one thing I said too is, is whenever I was going to be a head coach and I was fortunate, I think at the age of 29, I got my first head coaching job at Seven Lakes in Katy, starting a big school, big program.

But I was fortunate enough to understand the importance of treating your staff and having that respect for each other on a staff loyalty, that’s extremely important word, but also just respect for each other and having, having fun working together. Because I think at the end of the day, our, why is, yes, it’s the kids and making sure we help grow them and care about them, but our why is also, we love the game.

So we don’t want to go to work and be miserable every day. So I try to install that once I became a head coach is have some fun. And, and the coaches that I was an assistant and my head coaches, they did make sure we had some fun. So that was something I took away from them.

[00:10:08] Mike Klinzing: As you’re going about learning from the different places and people that you’ve been, did you slash do you have a system for.

writing things down, cataloging things that you’ve learned. Do you put it in a notebook? Do you use the computer? Are you one of the new techie guys with the phone and you got the app? How do you go about keeping track of some of the things that you pick up from the various coaches and things that you see?

[00:10:31] Dan Miller: Right. So I love the game so much and I’m a little OCD about making sure that if I hear something, I write it down. So I have various ways and, and, and so something I’ve been doing a long time is I just started doing it. I don’t even know how many years ago, but my wife jokes about all our binders we have around the house.

but is I keep a binder. And when we’re watching games or we’re watching a, a pod listening to a podcast, maybe one of years that you have a guest on just taking notes and just, just constantly taking notes. So then a few years ago I had all these binders and it was kind of a fun, well, it actually was a COVID project of mine.

I transferred them to in Excel, And so I have an Excel sheet just called basketball notes that has tabs underneath it. And so it’s a catalog of notes and that stuff in those notes, isn’t my stuff necessarily. It’s stuff I picked up of a podcast. It might be something that we picked up just watching an NBA game stop and rewind it, putting in an entry just different things, you know that, that I catalog in those notes.

And then going along with the spreadsheets is then I have my own spreadsheet. So now it’s the San Marco spreadsheet. When I was at LA, it was a LA spreadsheet and that seven lakes, it was a seven lake spreadsheet. Where we have tabs on the bottom one, the first tabs going to be drills, all our drills.

Second tab is going to be offense, you know? So I definitely try to be organized as I can. I wouldn’t call myself a, a, a techie. Fortunately, I had a great one of those with me as assistant coach at LA and do here. But I, I do do enough for sure on the computer to make sure we’re staying up to date on everything and keeping things organized because it is tough when you listen to a podcast when I’m Jogging.

Yeah, I do like try, I keep phone notes also just in my notes. So I’m jogging, listening to one of your podcasts, listen to basketball, immersion, slap the glass, but whatever, and I hear something I will start putting them into my notes. And sometimes I, I think I meant have ran into a tree or two because I’m looking at my phone, but, but I do catalog cause I don’t want to try to hear something and then not remember it and get back to it.

And, and I, there are some things I miss, but I try to have as much POS as possible. And then my wife, she’s a big reader of books because she’s an English teacher and she’ll be reading before we go to bed, she’s reading this novel and I’m just reading an Excel sheet and she’s like, what are you? Are you still reading your basketball notes with a highlighter?

I’m such a basketball nerd, but I’m like, yeah, I have to, yeah. Otherwise I don’t retain it if I don’t read it, say it out loud and that, but I love it. I love being a student of the game.

[00:13:12] Mike Klinzing: You have to have a system, I think for recording things. Otherwise it’s really easy for stuff to get away from you. I know when I’m reading, if I read a book and I don’t have a notebook handy, or sometimes I’ll even go and I’ll just read the book straight through and then go back to it and take notes and try to pick up things that can help me.

If you don’t have a system that gets really, really difficult. You talk a little bit about that Excel spreadsheet. You talked about having your plays on a particular tab. How often do you go back through your plays, the things that you have, or your drills, the things that you’re putting together on that Excel sheet and sort of evaluate, Hey, what do I have?

Or the things that I can take out or the things that I need to add to it. Cause I’m assuming that you have an Excel spreadsheet. That’s at the ready. In other words, one, that’s very current that, Hey, this is what we’re doing right now. So how often do you kind of go through that and look at it and say, okay, we need to take some things out.

We need to add some things. Just what’s the process there.

[00:14:06] Dan Miller: Absolutely.  so we spent a lot of time when the season’s done. From that day to, after you take it, you always have to take a little time off away from the game, although it’s hard because we get done now that I’m back in high school, especially it’s hard because you get done and it’s March madness.

So you’re constantly watching and writing down and, and want to put things in. But once we start back up in the spring I get that thing out, honestly, almost daily and just, just look at it, especially if we pick something new up. But right now that’s, that’s actually what I’m just finishing up and it’s just fun.

I enjoy. But I spend a lot of time in the summer just, and honestly, one of the things too is, is subtraction is such an important thing, is getting rid of some things. And, and I’ve been guilty of this, especially when I was a younger head coach of trying too much you go to these clinics and you see all these great drills and you see all these different actions you can watch Chicago action.

You can watch pistol action, all these things and you get excited and you want to put ’em the, and, and you can’t wait to do it, but then all of a sudden you looking it’s too much. So honestly, our drill.  I, there there’s things I’m like, okay, what’s the why on every drill I go through, what’s the why, why are we doing alley drill when we can do ball handling a different way?

You know? And sometimes it takes five minutes to teach this drill when we can do the same thing, get it accomplished in, in a different way. We don’t need five ways to do this skill. So, so we do go through those, look at the. And we just kind of finished up and I’m excited cause we have some new drills coming in.

Simplified things. We made a shooting chart, which I’m excited about. We sent it to our guys yesterday and they’re already started. We got a couple shooting records where we said, we put eight, three point drills. This is what you need.  we have spot shooting, we have shooting on the move.

We have some shooting off the bounce, but most of it is, is on the move catching that drive and kick. But here are the eight shooting drills from threes. We’re going to do that you can do in your individual or small group workouts. And then we have two team, three point shooting drills and that’s 10 and that’s how we’re shooting threes.

Let’s get a lot of them off. So I looked through, we had like 30 shooting drills. That’s just too many. So I do going back to your question though, I look at it a lot and go through it a lot. Just like we have our depth chart. And at the high school level here, we have a varsity, a JV and two freshman teams.

So we keep that thing on a separate, that’s a separate spreadsheet, but we go on that a lot. And college coaches, of course they do because it’s especially with the transfer portal and the way things are going there, that’s a 365 day roster building thing that you do in high school.

It’s not maybe as much, but you’re still looking at it. And moving pieces on that depth chart.

[00:16:46] Mike Klinzing: When you’re putting together your drills and you’re looking at a particular season, do you have a core set of drills that you do pretty much every practice, like let’s say for your first 15 minutes, we’re going to go through this set of drills.

Do you like to mix up the entire practice plan? Day to by day. How do you, which kind of your thoughts on that?

[00:17:05] Dan Miller: Yeah.  and there’s, I truly believe there’s not a right and a wrong, you have to be you, but you have to also know your team, know your audience on how you want to do things.  there are some coaches who, who will have the same format and just plug in some different drills to accomplish that all year long.

And that’s the way they do things. And that’s great. There are other coaches who, who are going to just mix it up all the time.  today they may start with, with shell drill and then tomorrow they may start with skills. we try to be consistent with, with a core part of our practice, but we, we also do mix up some things.

One thing we have is what we call our battle practice. And I can talk on it if you want it a little bit, but, but the battle practice is in there once a week, where we go through this list and we change the list a little bit, but we compete, divide the team. If it is our college team divide, ’em into three teams high school.

We might our, our varsity and JVs together divide ’em up. And, and then they stay on that team and they go through all these drills and competitions, but a typical practice for us. We start with our be solid drills. We have five pillars of play in our very first pillar of play is always protect the ball, you know?

So we have to value the basketball. I think that’s how you start offense. I don’t care if you’re fast, slow, flex drive and kick. If you’re turning the ball over a lot, you’re not going to be a winning program. So we protect the ball. So. Every day, we do some type of what we call B solid drill. It might be baseline pivot, bounce pass.

It might be our spurs passing series. It might be a different type of passing four corner passing, but just to get it moving, to get our miles going to be too hand to two feet to star practice. And then from there, we, we, we get things moving up and down a little bit, but I am someone who the more I’ve coached is the more live play that we have.

So I really believe coach K says the best teacher of the game is live play. And so we, we do a lot of, we do a lot of competitions in our practice like everybody, but we do play five on five, a lot. Different situations. Usually we let our situations happen organically.  I used to create, I had this big situation sheet and that’s one of our tabs, right?

So 10 seconds left down two, you have to do those to make sure you get to those. But most of the time we let our situations happen organically.  just we might one minute left tie game their ball, everyone has four foul and just let it play out or three minutes, two minutes.

And those type of things start someone at the free throw line and play from there. So we, we mix it up a little bit during our practice, but, but our practices generally have a flow of skills shooting, live, play defense, our small sided games, live, play scrimmages end with something fun and, and make sure we get teaching in there.

Fun in there and competition in there,

[00:19:52] Mike Klinzing: The process for putting together a practice plan when you’re doing it at the college level, versus when you’re doing it at the high school level, the same different. Pretty similar, the amount of time you’re spending on it. Just maybe compare and contrast the two,

[00:20:06] Dan Miller:  Honestly for me and, and this isn’t obviously for everyone, so everyone’s probably different for me, it’s the same the, the one thing that college coaches don’t teach so they have a time to really probably meet and have their staff in there and get ideas.

And then the head coach eventually come up with the plan for the next day or how they do it. But they do recruit and they are very busy, like everybody else. So it, it just depends. But for me, whether I was at seven lakes as the head coach there for nine years or seven years as the head coach at LaTourneau or now starting my second year at San Marcos, it, it really has been the same.

We’ve finished practice meet in my office, get some assess from my assistant coaches.  assessment of here are a few thoughts here, a few thoughts, and then some coaches like to plan it before they leave. I like to honestly sleep on it. You like the next morning, my, one of my favorite things to do would be get up, have a cup of coffee  prayers and then boom, I’m on that computer designing that practice plan, printing out it’s on the desk.

That’s the first thing to start the day and okay, let’s do what we need to do today. And whatever time practices everything’s ready, but  one thing, it kind of staying along that college versus high school is people get caught up in levels and we always are telling our players don’t get caught up in levels at D one D two D three wherever you’re being recruited it it’s, it’s a good place.

It’s college basketball and, and that’s the same for coaching. Whether you’re coaching youth basketball, high school, basketball, college, basketball, there are great coaches. All across the board and some of the best coaches that I’ve coached against on staff have been on the high school level.

And then same with the division three level.  we are division three and, and you’re coaching against Terry Butterfield at UT Dallas, or you’re going up to Whitman and coaching against search staff. These coaches, it don’t matter if they’re D one D two or D three they’re hall of Famers. I mean, they’re great coaches.

So and, and that’s kind of how I treat it wherever you are. You want to make it big time. So we try to do that and make sure these Sam Marcus players have that experience get a great practice plan. And that’s what we’re doing when we’re designing it.

[00:22:17] Mike Klinzing: It’s a great point that you make. And it’s one that I know we’ve talked about a lot here on the podcast when it comes to thinking about the levels, not just typically, I think we think of that as for players, right?

Mm-hmm where, Hey, as a high school player, what level are you going to play at? And we all know that there’s a huge focus on, you have to be a division one player, cause that’s what everybody sees on TV. And that’s what everybody’s familiar with. But there’s such a, an opportunity for players at so many levels to find the right fit and to have a great experience at whatever school they end up going to at whatever level.

And I think the same can be said, as you mentioned for coaches where that’s one of the things that we’ve honestly enjoyed the most about this podcast is just the fact that we’ve gotten to talk to coaches at the high major level. And we’ve gotten to talk to coaches who are coaching at the youth level or coaching at the high school level and the amount of insight that any one of ’em can provide.

Right. It has nothing to do with what level that coach is coaching at because. There’s great coaches, as you said at every level, and no matter where you go, you’re going to find yourself challenged by the coach. Who’s sitting on that other bench across from you. And there’s no question after talking to coaches for whatever we’ve been doing now four and a half years, that the amount of knowledge out there of the game is just, it’s incredible at every single level, no matter, no matter where you are, let’s go back in time to when you first got that job at seven lakes, I’m assuming that that was a brand new school brand new program.

Yes. So, so not only are you getting that’s your first head coaching job, correct? Mm-hmm yes. So not only are you getting your first head coaching job? , but you’re not stepping into a situation where things are already in place, which I guess could be a good or a bad thing. Right. Because you kind of got to shape it in the way that your vision was.

There was nothing for you to break down in order to be able to start over. So just talk a little bit about that experience, what you remember from, let’s say your first week or two on that job and just kind of what you were feeling and what some of the things were that you had to do that maybe you didn’t even realize, Hey, I, I didn’t even know I was going to have to do this.

[00:24:18] Dan Miller: Right. You know it, if a coach is out there listening and you ever get a chance to, to open a program, High school and be the very first coach go for it because it is a great opportunity to really put we all talk about culture, establishing a culture, but it even goes beyond that just the brand.

And I was really fortunate our athletic director’s name was Kevin O’Keeffe. He passed away. So God rest his soul, but great, man. He took a chance at me at 29 some college assistant coaching experience, but no high school coaching experience. And there were a lot of very qualified people who wanted that job, but.

He took a chance. He must have saw something in me, but, but what was exciting about that job of just starting was, was just building that culture and, and doing things right now. You are right. There was so much, right. So you, you order basketballs, but you also need rack and figuring that out, what the hell we going to do with these things, right?

So like I remember that mistake.

[00:25:21] Mike Klinzing: Hey, I can tell you what I can tell you, what you do with them. You can do what I do with basketball camp. You put ’em in hefty contractor bags. Those are the best. Those are the best things I’ve found for hauling basketballs in and outta your car and through gym doors and everything else.

They’re cheap. They don’t rip.

[00:25:37] Jason Sunkle: Hey, no, no, no, no. Mike, what, what you get bags donated to you?

[00:25:39] Mike Klinzing: I did. I did get some bags. I did get, I did get some bags donated to me this year, but I do prefer, I prefer, I prefer the hefty contractor bags.

[00:25:49] Jason Sunkle: I have to tell you this, Dan. Yeah, there was these, these bags that Mike used, I swear there was, there was, I had to go like seven years or he was using the same bags.

it was pretty impressive. It was pretty. And then I think there was one summer. I was like, Mike, I think it’s time to get new bags. I think,

[00:26:04] Mike Klinzing: Although I will say in my own defense, I was mobile with the basketball. So I had to put ’em in and out of cars and drag and outta gyms. If I was in a gym, I would far much more prefer a ball rack.

Let’s put it that way.

[00:26:17] Dan Miller: Mike’s new plan is he tells them all to bring their own basketballs and it’s actually works really, really well. He doesn’t have

[00:26:23] Mike Klinzing: That’s been one of the best. That was one of the best. COVID learning experiences I ever had. Cause I was like, okay, I guess, I guess I can’t bring camp ball, so let’s just have everybody bring their own ball and see how that goes.

And oh my gosh. Now the cleanup of camp is so much easier than it ever was. The kids just bring their own ball and they camp is they’re gone. I bring like one bag of balls for the kid who occasionally forgets and I’m done. So, yeah, it’s that was, that was one of the positives of COVID for me.

[00:26:50] Dan Miller: So I, no, I’m just envisioning Mike looking like Santa Claus with that bag of basketballs over his, his shoulder. Well, he did, he used to look like he did used to look like that, but then he started to get, when he, his children got older, they just started bringing him in for him. So I like it.

[00:27:07] Mike Klinzing: I like it. You guys have to put the family to work without question without.

That’s it all. So, alright, so jump, jump back to seven lakes.

[00:27:14] Dan Miller: Yeah, no, no that’s good stuff there. I just think that that first year was just a blessing in that I had a great assistant coach Matthew Bright news. Now the head coach at Katie Taylor. So it was definitely a we thing building seven lakes and we are fortunate enough to next year to bring on Shannon Heston, who was the current coach at seven legs, which I’m really proud of that he took over after I left and then just established a good staff with guys like Todd Kanobi and west Cole.

And, and we built something at that school in basketball and got people excited. And, and one thing we did is, is we did it collaboratively as a staff and we put up things that would be important. And one of the things that we we saw in Houston, That wasn’t big back then was student sections. We went to basketball games and, or we the year before, because we got hired and we kind of had like a little bit of year to, to figure things out and so I got to hired right about the playoff time and, or think kind of feeling like I was going to get the job.

So when I went to the playoffs, I just wasn’t too impressed with the student sections, especially being from Wisconsin, coming off, coaching college, basketball in Minnesota. So that was one of the things I wanted to make sure to do is build that student section up. And we took pride. We built up the Spartan, crazies.

We had just excellent student sections. And, and that’s probably one of the, one of the things that a lot of people wanted to talk about seven lakes. We had some great teams, but they say right away, man, your student sections were great. We had these theme nights packed gym. It, it was just a great atmosphere but I definitely look back at, at my first time in head coach as a head coach, I did some things I’m proud of.

I did some things that you look back that I definitely would’ve did different but, but I don’t have any regrets I really don’t, I’m really thankful. And  the, the first thing it’s, it always starts with your foundation and, and, and your foundation at home. So just having such a supportive wife and then young kids growing up, always had some frustrated seasons or whatever, not, not losing seasons, but just, just early on where you wanted to just be a little bit higher than you were.

But once we clicked and got rolling, man, it was a fun time. And I, I took everything that we had there at seven lakes and, and kind of felt like it would go one of two ways after we were one of the, probably better programs in the Houston area, we never were able to get out. The regionals, we made it there a couple times and get to the state tournament in Texas.

It’s very hard. You have to win five games to get outta Houston, basically. And it is hard. I mean, you’re playing against some tough teams. We had some opportunities we got there. I, I felt like we were eventually going to get out, but I said, To my wife. I said could we stay here? I could do this forever, but I always have had this urge to go be a head college coach too.

Well, I applied for a couple years. Didn’t really get anything back.  I’m like we’re being successful at a big high school in Texas, but you know how it goes with college coaching. You, you, you have to have that in. And my connections were a little bit more on the high school level.

And anyway it, it just happened to be that I ended up getting that LaTourneau job and, and it was tough to leave seven lakes. But one of my favorite things about leaving it was that my assistant coach took over the assistants stayed there. They were able to carry on the Spartan way is what we called it.

And I’m very proud of that. Just like when I left LaTourneau, James Wallace stayed there, did a fabulous job this year. That’s probably as much as from a coach to coach standpoint is like, as much as the players have done great things, just from a coaching standpoint, I’m really proud of that. What my assistant coaches have done.

[00:30:45] Mike Klinzing: Let’s circle back before we get to sort of the process of that got that. Got you to LaTourneau tell me a little bit about how you put together that staff at seven lakes as a brand new coach, right. Brand new program. Where did you go? Were you talking to guys that you already knew? Were there people that were in the area that maybe you didn’t know, but you do their reputation.

Did people recommend coaches to you? Just how’d you go about putting together that staff, because obviously you put together some great people that were able to continue the program success, even after you left. So what was your process there?

[00:31:16] Dan Miller: Right. And, and the, you hit it right on the head. Mike is that the first thing was great people because that’s one thing that, that I wanted to establish was the right culture with our core values and, and the guys that we, we hired they fit them to us.

The first one I got was Matthew Brighton. He was an assistant at Katy high school at the time, my age. I knew him a little bit just from working some basketball camps together. And he came on as my assistant coach and it was just a great fit. And then another person I wanted to bring on who was a middle school coach at the junior high at the time, Shannon Heston, you just knew he was an up and coming a very good coach.

I loved his energy I just thought it was great to bring this energy onto the staff, kind of a kids magnet. The kind of guy that, that just the kids are going to love. And sometimes, especially in my younger days, I was a little, I was probably a little harder to play for than I am now. And I just thought he was a good, a good balance to have on our staff.

And then we were able to get west Cole, Todd Canna just both really good teachers. That’s what, that’s what impressed me about both of ’em honestly, is they can teach, they loved basketball and then being able to hire them. I, I knew that would transfer to basketball and west Cole as a he’s a future head coach down there.

Todd, canopy’s now a principal down there. So we just had a heck of a staff. We even had some football coaches like Jason Sanders on our staff Charlie arrow who were went on to go coach and Charlie in college as an assistant football coach and Jason moved up in the football rank. So that, that was it right there.

We had good players, good staff. And I’m really proud of that and how we worked. And it was much different now going to seven, going from seven lakes, you’d think going to college, I’d have this big staff, but in division three, you get one assistant. So you go from having this big six, a high school program.

Our school almost had 4,000 people to a small private NCAA division three. We had one person. So I had to hit it right on that one. And, and I did, and we worked together for seven years when I got James Wallace there, I was, I was thankful there.

[00:33:19] Mike Klinzing: What was the process for getting that job? How does it come to your attention?

That it’s open? Yeah. What do you, what do you remember about the interview process? You mentioned before that you had reached out previously to try to get some division three, some coaching looks at the college level. So why do you think this one panned out the way it did for you?

[00:33:39] Dan Miller: Right. So just kind of going back in time a little bit I had a few opportunities to join College jobs on staff as assistants, you know? But I didn’t want to go be a division one assistant, just to be honest as after having our own program at seven lakes and being a head coach, that was, that was the path I really enjoyed that. So my goal was at that time shifted, if I would get into college, I wanted to be a small college coach.

So it was looked at a few didn’t get anything didn’t really get much back. Didn’t get any interview. So I knew this would work this way. So when I told my wife staying in Katy, we love it. Suburb of Houston, I’m going to do seven lakes and we’re going to just keep this thing rolling, stay here. Our kids will graduate from here.

So we put some money down on a new house. When we put money down on a new house, we’re literally walking through the house and my phone dings. And it’s an email from Terry dykey, the athletic director at LaTourneau and she got to my application and she said she wanted to do a phone interview. So, but she also told me once I got did the phone interview, there were 150, 160 people that applied for this position and, and so on.

So I didn’t feel we would get it so we didn’t pull out of the house just yet. Next thing she called me up there, brought me, thankfully, we were able to get the money back on the house and we moved up there. But  it just was the, honestly it was the athletic director again in Terry dykey who believed in me because not many college coaches are going to hire a head high school coach with a little bit sure.

Assistant college coaching experience, but she took a chance on me because she felt the fit was right. And it was a rebuild job, you know nothing against the previous staff, because they were, they were great people, but it, the reality was they were averaging five wins over, I think maybe the, the previous four seasons.

So it was, she told me it’s going to take some time. I want someone who’s going to build up a winning basketball program. So it was a really a blessing for me. It was going to be tough. And that first year was tough. I’ll tell you what I mean. That was the toughest year of my life. And I think my wife’s life, because our kids weren’t necessarily loving the move.

They, one was in high school and, and two were in junior high. We were losing, we lost that year. We were five. We won five games and it was just a tough year, but I knew if we did things right, kept believing, keep the faith, we would turn that corner and sure enough, we did. So that was the process. And I’m just thankful to coach dykey that, that she saw what we did at seven lakes and, and thought we could do that also at LaTourneau university.

[00:36:15] Mike Klinzing: When you first got, there was the key turning around the internal culture combined with bringing in better players.

How would you balance those two in terms of what was more critical, at least in that first year or two? Obviously, eventually both of those things that are. Really important. You can’t win big without either one of ’em, but just initially, which one did you think was more important?

[00:36:41] Dan Miller: Right, man, that is a great question, because it really the answers somewhere in the middle, but right. It, it, it’s, it’s a great question because  when, when I came there, you could feel a sense. Of just, I don’t want to say the word failure in basketball, but just not winning just, it just, they didn’t know how to win in the daily things, but you also could feel that especially after going through that first year of playing in the league, we don’t have the guys.

That can beat these top teams and sure. We can always coach better. And I felt like there were some things I didn’t do a great job of that year. And, and so I’m definitely not putting it on the players. I’m putting it on myself also, but, but so it was a big learning curve for all of us, but we identified some people we wanted to get.

And it was a unique situation because I had two targets and they both played for me at seven lakes. And I was thankful that we were able to get ’em both. Jeff Martin was, he transferred in from Murray state as a point guard cause he walked on at Murray state for two years. And then he came and was our point guard for two years, culture, culture changer, having him at LaTourneau that second year and then Al Koff who played at LA at seven lakes was just a great shooter and he was just going to.

Making 10 threes at Texas state intermurals and I said, Hey, I know you’re enjoying that frat life buddy, but we need you to come play division three basketball and, and he did. And  those two guys along with a lot of other players, I could name really helped turn that thing around. And, and the culture, but man, that is a great question because it is, it’s a combination and, and of culture change players change your growth as a coach, all those things and getting through year one.

And it’s just kind of like teachers now I see a lot of turnover in teaching at least here in Texas, I think it’s kind of hit some other states too, but I think a lot of it too has to do with these, they come outta college and they go one or two years and it’s, it’s tough and they want to give up and, and, and their friends making maybe a little bit more money in the business world and they leave teaching.

But I feel like if you can get through those first couple years, you’re going to see the rewards of helping kids every single day as a teacher in those lifelong rewards. And that was the same at LA Turner. We had to stick through it. We had to get through it, James and I did along with the players that stayed and we flipped that thing and it was so fun doing it.

[00:39:05] Mike Klinzing: So when you started recruiting and you’re thinking about. Changing the culture and upgrading the talent level. What were some of the intangibles that you looked for in players? Whether it was through conversations with the players and their families, maybe with their high school coach, just what were some of the things that obviously there was a level of talent that you wanted to bring in on the basketball floor, but what were some of the characteristics that were important to you that you felt like, man, if the guys I’m bringing in have these things, that’s going to enable us to turn it.

[00:39:36] Dan Miller: Yeah.  another great question. The, the first one honestly, is toughness. We just needed some tough guys that are going to defend at a high level and rebound and take coaching and just grind it out and trust this process. So we really looked for some tough guys and  that first year, I mean, we were recruiting so hard.

We were and, and honestly, it’s a. Balance because in division three, you can recruit 365, unlike D one and D two. So you don’t have the budget for it. So that first year, I think I spent our lot of our own money because I was like, we are going to recruit. So we would practice and we would go out as much as possible.

And James and I were in Dallas, we were in Austin, we were in Houston and we were looking for guys. The other thing about it is it’s a little different in that we brought in a big recruiting class.  We had big numbers. We actually had a number that we had to get to from our ad on our team.

Which was something I negotiated down. Cause I felt like it was, we had way too many when I got there that first year we had 24 because I didn’t have the recruiting class when I got hired. It was hired early summer. So we had 24 players and then in walks a kid and I said we are checking people the first day of moving and okay, I got 24 here and then another kid comes down the hall.

I just remember looking at James, we have 25 dang people in our past. How are we going to get these guys to gel to mesh? I think we had 15 where point guards, you know? So like it was that first year was so we had to have a plan, you know? So we, we not that positions are maybe so important, but we said we, we have to bring in a point guard and, and a heck of a backup point guard.

So we targeted Jeff. We have to bring in guys who can shoot the ball and we have to bring in bigs. And at D three, when we say bigs, we’re looking at 6, 4, 6, 5 tough guys.  if you’re 6-9, 6-10, and can play. Chances are you’re playing scholarship basketball. So we look for those 6, 4, 6, 5 tough kids.

Like Christian Sidel and Caleb logins that we were able to get. And, and those guys were just tough, tough guys that fit that characteristic I was talking about. So it was fun.  I say fun. It was a tough year and, and that part was tough, the losing, but it also was fun knowing that we were building our roster and we had to have some tough talks with guys, but one thing I is, I pride myself On being honest, you know being honest with players, I always have, I said, you can talk to me at practice before practice. I don’t shy away from it.  where do I stand on the depth chart? What do I need to work on?  you may not always agree, but I’m going to tell you right now I, I see you as the backup, maybe the backup to the backup, but, but this is what you can do.

I also want to give you an action, but I want to be honest. So there’s no surprises when we get to game day. That’s just crazy. You when, when kids are surprised if they don’t play, but so going back to it, we had to identify our roster, identify our needs, like you said, and we were fortunate to get some, to get some players who were able to flip it pretty quick.

But now in that second year, it was crazy because that first year, or that second year. We, I think we got beat on about three buzzer beaters in our first six games. So now we start out like two and five that second year we’re, we’re playing three freshmen, but  we’re right there, but we’re still losing, you know?

And, and I remember my wife just saying she was on her knees in the closet, praying, you knows damn going to be okay. Helpful. But, but after that, we, we got on a road. We did some things like we won at Mary Hardinn Baylor for the first time in school history.  we, we, we got some sweeps on the road, which hadn’t happened in years at LaTourneau, you know?

And, and then we did some things and we got into that conference tournament that second year, the third year we were hosting the conference tournament with the best record in the AFC. So it was fun. It was a lot of fun.

[00:43:30] Mike Klinzing: Was there one particular moment where. it turned that you can remember.

Can you pinpoint like a specific mm-hmm oh, when this happened?

[00:43:39] Dan Miller: Yes, I knew we had things. Yes, it, I absolutely can. We were at Mary harden Baylor, and that was what I referred to as winning on the road the year before the first year. I’m not a math major, but like, I couldn’t even come up with a number that we lost by, at their place that first year, because it was high and they just spanked us so bad.

So that second year we returned to Mary Hardin Baylor with this new young team and they had our school had never won there and we went toe to toe possession for possession, great game. And we ended up pulling out the game in a close game at the end. And I just remember looking at James my assistant and just saying, we’re doing this, we have these guys and they’re young these guys get it and it was fun.

And that was that moment. So I actually can, and that’s a great question. I can look back and remember that.

[00:44:27] Mike Klinzing: When you think about the totality of your run there. If you had to pinpoint one or two things that really directed your success, that led to the type of program that you were able to build, what would those one or two things be?

[00:44:44] Dan Miller: Yeah I think if it’s from a Xs and illustrate standpoint, it was the way we played offense. We played at a fast pace. One year we averaged 94 points per game. I. It was maybe year four, but we, we consistently averaged 87 or above, and we have a team in our conference. When I was at LA, we had a team Concordia coach by stand bond, init, great coach, good friend of mine who plays trapping full court press a fast pace led the league in scoring maybe seven, eight straight years or something before, before we did take over that title.

And I think we led it three years. So it was that pace. It was nothing like, like all of us coaches there wasn’t anything that I invented. I studied  a lot of Notre Dame concepts and, and brought them to us, but maybe did them tried to get our guys to do ’em at a faster pace get the ball up the court in the scoring zone and, and look to get things in the fast break.

And then I do think we were a little bit ahead of it.  in our league, at least of flowing and not calling sets and plays of, of just giving the guys that freedom and off what we did in practice with our, our skill development, our three on zero and playing with trust and playing with trust and, and telling our guys, we believe in them you shoot the ball because we believe in them.

And, and they did, they were, I think we were a high scoring offense. We got, we had some great players when we got Nate west who became national player of the year, for example. But I, I would say from a basketball standpoint that that was it. But then the second thing, and, and this is probably something that we had at seven lakes and we had at LaTourneau and I feel it now, especially in year two here at Sam Marcus is the connectivity, the guys just being connected and really understanding the word brotherhood and basketball team.

 just however you want to say, getting that synergy being unselfish we would do things like watch film and, and pause it.  some buzzword might be a culture clip, but we would look at our bench and just see every single player standing up and cheering. And that’s what we had at LaTourneau.

That’s what we had at seven lakes. And that’s what we have here at Sam Marcus guys, not only loving their role, but starring in their role. And, and I would say that’s the, that’s the second thing that I would point to. So maybe, maybe that fast pace offense, but then that for sure that connectivity on our teams,

[00:47:17] Mike Klinzing: I’m sure that the fast pace helps you in the recruiting process.

When you’re talking to players and saying, Hey, we’re going to get up and down, we’re going to get shots up and we’re going to, we’re going to run most players, I think would probably prefer to play that way as opposed to. Grind it out, maybe old school style of basketball. So I’m sure that certainly was a factor. And then you start talking about that connectivity piece and the culture, and just building a team where guys are together and they’re rooting for each other’s success.

How do you go about doing that? And is the process different at the college level versus the high school level? Cause it’s kind of interesting at the division three, right? You’ve got right. You’ve got much more contact with them during the season. Right. But. Once the season ends. Yeah. Then you’re, you’re kind of done and you can’t do anything with em until the next season rolls around versus high school. Obviously they have more demands in their time. You’re teaching, they’re going to class and they have homework and they’re living at home and families and all the other things that go along with that. But then you do have more access to them yes. In the off season in terms of player development and building those relationships.

So just maybe talk a little bit about how you go about building that connectivity, both how you did it in college and how you do it in high school.

[00:48:29] Dan Miller: Yes. And you’re spot on one of the things about coaching division three that is frustrating is as far as on court coaching as of now, and I know they’re working on maybe making some tweaks, but it starts October 15th and it basically goes to your last game.

And then you’re done coaching them in basketball from, from that whenever your seasons ends mid February, if you’re fortunate enough to make it to March. Until October 15th. So what we would do at LaTourneau then is we would still utilize team what we call team time.  it might be something like doing community service together coming out to my house for a, a cookout in the backyard and having a little video game tournament or something so we did as many things as we could off the court during our off season, of course we could set up open gyms and get those guys going and, and.

Generational leadership in good and great division. Three programs is just the key because once you have those leaders that will teach the young guys. So when the coaches have to step away in February or March, that they can keep it going. So they can do small group workouts or have open gyms that are quality, open gyms.

And that was the key. And so as, as good as James and I maybe did as coaches, part of that, Growth into the great program that we have at LaTourneau. And they still have is that generational leadership with, with the Jeff Martins and the, a cohos and the Nate west and Justin Moores, who we’re continuing to coach those guys peer teach when we would step away.

So that connectivity. And then I go back to just being honest with the roles of, of just really in the recruiting process we, we would sometimes, and, and sometimes I think James would look at me and think I was a little crazy when I would sit in that conference room with the parents and the kids and just tell ’em like, look, I don’t know if you’re going to get in the game as a freshman.

We value you. We love you. But right now we have eight guys in that gym that are playing open gym that are really dang good. But like, if you can fight and grow and go through it, maybe as a sophomore you’ll be in our rotation, it was rarely that we promised anything. There were a few guys that we just knew we knew Justin Moore would come in and play, but, but my point is just being honest and it wasn’t for everybody, there would be people who would, who drive back to Houston and say, forget that I want to go somewhere where coaches tell me I’m going to play. Right. But, but the guys who. Come they, so it wasn’t a surprise when they were fighting for their spot. Maybe didn’t get it. And we’re the guys up cheering on the bench and, and, and going and fighting for their time. So I would say that’s part of it.

High school is a little bit different with, with, with you have multiple teams. So like you’re, you’re a gatekeeper of four teams as a head coach, right? So you have that roster builder building and that general rate generational leadership sometimes looks like we have a great senior class coming back to Sam Marcos.

 we’re really blessed, but it’s fun when I see those guys we just had a incoming freshman basketball camp last week and our whole varsity team stayed and we’re, we’re teaching these incoming freshmen and you could see the excitement when things clicked with these freshmen. So you could see that connectivity start.

So once again, if you get your leaders really loving it, buying in your leader circle on your teams or in your program or having fun as a coach, you don’t have to do much else after that. Just keep ’em organized and get ’em in the right spots.

[00:52:00] Mike Klinzing: When you finish at LaTourneau, what’s the thought process behind leaving there, where you had built a successful program at the college level to come back to San Marcus and pick up again as a high school coach, just walk us through the decision process, which I’m assuming involved your wife and, and lots of, lots of conversations and discussions.

Just tell us a little bit about that process,

[00:52:22] Dan Miller: That’s you man, these are great questions.  The thing with that is there are a lot of people this past year. That was probably the number one question people ask, because usually when we people leave a college program, they’re either retiring, getting fired or are moving up. And I did none of the three, we had a very good team. In fact, we had a great team coming back, which, which made it actually surprising a little more easy to leave knowing that my assistant would get that job, but we just knew my wife and I, that it was time for a change.

We had been there seven years. We had been through just a lot of stuff, you know in life in seven years just things that, that go on. And, and we just knew that we needed to, to, to take our, our family to a new place. And, and it wasn’t maybe like a, a fam we left cause of family.

We wanted to live somewhere that we enjoy so much. And we love Austin, Texas ever since we’ve been to Texas, we love Austin. And Sam Marcus is 30 minutes south of Austin. It’s a river city. It’s a beautiful city. So I didn’t necessarily, I wasn’t look looking, but my youngest son was going to be a, a freshman in college, which he was this past year.

So my wife and I were going to be empty nesters. We, we just got done with COVID and, and you go through a lot of thinking and stuff with COVID. And so my thought process was we could try to go up and get a division two job, which we might have been able to get there’s no doubt about that.

 I had some, some interest and some, some athletic directors talk to me about those jobs over the last couple years when I was at LaTourneau, but we didn’t want to go live in a small town somewhere in a different state. We love Texas. We love Austin. And I loved my time back at seven lakes when I was a head coach there.

So.  make a long story short, I guess I’m kind of babbling about it, but basically we just knew it was time. And when we heard Sam Marcos was open I talked to the athletic director who was a very successful football coach at Denton Geier John Walsh. His son was the quarterback at Oklahoma state for three years.

He took the, he left Denton Geier to come here the year before. So that told me he sees something in Sam, Marcus from an athletic standpoint. And then when he talked to me on the phone and, and the principal who I love Danisha Presley, she and, and coach Walsh offered me this job.  it just, it just felt right.

And Monica and I just had to come see the city in person of. With together and, and she fell in love with it. And then another great blessing is she teaches English. So for the first time ever, we’re on the same campus, which can be good, can be bad, right? Husband, wife on the same campus. But no, we actually love it.

We love work. We drive to work staff development right now, come on somebody, but we drive to work together today and drive home together.

[00:55:13] Mike Klinzing: What were some of the questions that you had for the administration there at San Marcos before you decided to take the job? What were some things that you wanted to make sure were in place that you felt were critical to being able to build the kind of high school program that you wanted to build?

[00:55:31] Dan Miller: Yeah.  that’s great question. So this is, this is kinda wild.  we, we were really just looking to go move to the Austin area when we decided this is the area we wanted to target. I said, I didn’t want have a small school job. I, to be honest, I wanted to have the six, a high school level in Texas is a great level.

It’s high level basketball. And you get your athletic period every day and can work with the guys in the summer. So I just wanted to see what was open, but once the only job that I knew, someone, a friend told me, Sam Marcos was open. I just wanted to make sure we had the right leaders in place from an athletic director standpoint, which was definitely a check with coach Walsh and then our administration with our superintendent.

Who’s awesome. And, and our principal. And you could just feel from Dr. Card and our superintendent’s message that this. This place here in San Marco, this suburb, this river city is a sleeping giant on in all things. And it can be a great place. So that was it. And, and a lot of people say cause we have two division one guys who are seniors, one’s committed to Texas State.

And then we have another high major player in Malik. And  like, I bet you kind of really went back as you have those players. And this is my honest truth is, is I didn’t even know when I talked to coach Walsh that I had, that those guys were here and they were going to be juniors. I didn’t even really know.

I just looked at max preps. I saw they didn’t win.  when those guys were sophomores, it was COVID year. But, but they, they had a losing record. Didn’t make the playoffs. So I thought, Hey, great. Let’s turn that program around. They got a good ad and coach Walsh just told me on the phone. He said, Hey, you’re going to have some good ones.

Now it doesn’t take long, a couple clicks on the internet to say, God, we’re going to have some good ones. and we sure do, because they are some great. Not only players, there’s great young men, but so that was really it. And, and it was it’s fun, but we had to take a team here. It was the opposite of seven lakes where, where they had zero record they they’d never played a game before in the past.

They hadn’t made the playoffs here in a couple years now. So now you’re going back in and kind of going back to your first question about players culture, which one’s important. Well, here we were blessed. We had the players, we had to change the culture and, and we had to get the, the culture to, to, to understand the process of basketball.

Because what we had is a lot of talented players here in San Marcos, but they didn’t necessarily, and there was no nothing against the other staffs or anything like that. It’s just, but they just needed to learn the process of winning and what that goes into and what a true brotherhood is all about. And once again, great assistant coaches.

And excellent players. So we’re excited. We think we’re going to have a really good team this year.

[00:58:12] Mike Klinzing: Did you have individual meetings with players when you first got the job?

[00:58:15] Dan Miller: Yes. Yes. I did. And, and in fact those were great because I was able to go get down here in the spring and meet the team.

And then I was able to get three weeks, which is kind of rare where coach wall. She, I mean, he’s he, like I said, great athletic director, right? He, he was able to, because I wasn’t at a previous school district, so I wasn’t teaching class. So when I resigned from LaTourneau I was basically out of a job and they took care of me, really good at let and, and my, my assistant coach got the job there, but, but.

He was able to bring me in. So I would travel down here and coach the guys for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then I would go back to LaTourneau and help out there a little bit with the transition. So it was, it was a really great, I think it was four weeks of that. A lot of driving five hour drives , but it was, it was great getting to meet with those guys to kinda learn them a little bit and then finish up moving, get here in that summer and then get the summer workouts going, because we’re fortunate to get two hours in the summer a day that we Monday through Friday that we can work out with these guys.

So we go Monday through Thursday and then kind of get things going. And that was invaluable. It was really valuable meeting with those guys and it wasn’t overnight, there was some resistance to, to maybe some things I don’t want to say like outward resistance, but it takes a little time. To really get them to understand how, how we need to do things, but boy, they’re, they’re humming along now.

And, and I’m excited that where we’re at on this date, August 11th,

[00:59:44] Mike Klinzing: You mentioned earlier about your battle practices. I know that’s something that I’m sure coaches who were listening kind of have maybe questions are kind of peaked their interest. So tell us a little bit about what those look like.

[00:59:55] Dan Miller: Yeah, absolutely. So we’ll have our battle practices and what we did at seven lakes. And then we did this past year at Sam Marcos. So just a little bit different in college. In college, we would have about 15 guys. So we would divide three teams of 15. So one year we had five seniors. So often it’d be the five seniors.

It’d be the five freshmen and mix up the sophomores and juniors. I even ordered black uniforms, practice uniforms for our battle practice. And so we’d the, the seniors would wear, they liked those black one. So they would wear the black Jordan uniforms and then the other guys would flip the blue flip, the goal that LA turn, we had three teams and away we went.

So what we do with our battle practice. Is it’s very competitive. First of all, like, I mean, I, I, I’m not exaggerated when I say sometimes I make the joke like, Hey, if there’s not blood, it wasn’t a good battle practice. Or if a Jersey didn’t get torn, right. Because we do have a rebounding component in there that where it gets pretty physical.

But so what we do is, is typically we come in like a typical practice. We, we stretch, we do just a little bit of skills. I mean, not, not long because our, our drills, the why behind them, isn’t just to have a winner loser. They’re the skills are going to be a passing, a, a, a drill, a two on one drill, a shooting drill all the components of basketball are built in there.

But then what we do is, is we award points. And so you have to have good managers to keep the score, or your assistant coach can keep the score. But what it is is we, we have the practice. Okay. And, and we’ll have our, our drills speed passing, turn to corner, layups, Phoenix drill two on one drill shooting drills cutthroat, we’ll do five minute rebounding Kentucky transition ball side helps out then we’ll do zone battles five on five man battles five on five.

And then we end with king of the court and it almost never fails that the tiebreaker between the three teams is going to be free throws. So then we finish it with these pressure free throws and we don’t tell ’em the score. We put ’em all on the line. And then we’ll say, I’ll usually have my assistant coach.

So if we are at LaTourneau, it’d be James or, or maybe it’d be DeMarcus or Jimmy. Now they read off the scores. And sometimes I don’t even know because I’m coach, I have a good idea, but like sometimes I don’t even know necessarily if it’s really close. And they’ll say today this team.  is our winner of battle, practice and boom, they’re off to the side.

And then the other two in second place is the blue team in third place is the gold team and we don’t run. Like I’m not a big one in sprints anymore.  I, I understand what if coaches do that? That’s fine. There’s rarely, we don’t do our conditioning without basketball drills. The one time we do those at the end of battle practice so that, so the, the team that got third place will run like a deep six down the back.

And then the other team runs a deep two or four. It’s just more because they didn’t win. And then we all come together. So it’s competitive, it’s fun. And we do the drills. We we’re live in it. And it’s just to kind of crank up the, the intensity on each other. We’re not putting a focus on scouting. We would do ’em on Wednesday.

So in high school, so Monday as a scouting practice and  we go through things and now we’re getting ready to play opponent on Tuesday. We don’t play again until Friday. So Wednesday let’s, let’s compete against each other in battle day. Let’s hit the weight room and then Thursday come back.

Okay. Now we’re going to, we’re going to put some stuff in and, and get ready for Friday’s opponent.

[01:03:07] Mike Klinzing: How do you prepare for. A particular opponent, how much film are you watching on the other team? And then how much of that work that you do on the film? Do you share with your team?

[01:03:18] Dan Miller: Yeah, so obviously in college you have synergy and it’s just such a great thing.

So you, you can definitely make the clips of however you want. So when we were at let  we would have team offense that we’d show ’em team defense, you know their main actions. And then we would able to go into personnel show five, six clips on their starting point guard and, and, and so on.

And so in high school you don’t have as much access, although with huddles such a great and it just keeps getting better. So I hadn’t been on huddle in a while being in college for the last seven years. I’ve been on it a little bit but mostly dealing with synergy, which  is great, but huddle has come a long way and it’s a lot better.

And  most coaches are sharing film one component we don’t have in these districts down here. And finally this. We do that, we’re going into this year, but is just having that automatic share. I just feel like it’s, it’s kind of silly going three, three different loops to, to go get a film when we’re all probably going to get it anyway.

Right. Right. So let’s just dump it all in the same thing thing, and just have it in there and have at it. But, but so to, to answer your question, how much we we’ll go over with the guys it’s a little bit trickier to clip out personnel clips in huddle, in high school than it, than it was in college, but we’ll sometimes.

 watch a quarter of their game and then have clips on their main actions and then have clips on their defense. And that’s something that I’ve improved on as a coach is, is really watching their defense more, this, this in the past year here. And we’re going to bring that out more this year, especially with the scoring ability we have on this team is, is how to attack them.

How are they playing ball screens?  how are they playing verbal drives? Are they gaping? Are they denying what’s the Tagger doing? How can we move the Tagger? So those are things that we’ll do with our guys. And we’re fortunate this year to have a very veteran team year, two of our staff being here too.

So I think that we can get a little bit more in depth this year with film.

[01:05:19] Mike Klinzing: Now that makes sense. I think, especially. More experience you have on a team, right? The, probably the more they can handle when it comes to being able to understand, first of all, they have to have a grasp on what you’re doing.

That’s always the number one piece is doesn’t. Do you a whole lot of good to spend a lot of time showing ’em the other teams offensive and defensive schemes if they don’t have yours down. So if you have a experience team that, that gives you that leg up, and then you can start to focus maybe a little bit more on what the opponent does.

So you can counter that as you start looking ahead towards the future and building the program. Just tell us a little bit about your philosophy on building the youth program in your community. Yes. What does that look like for you and how you envision getting that organized and what have you already done to this point?

[01:06:03] Dan Miller: Yeah.  and you guys, first of all, I just want to say, great job. All you do for youth basketball you and I just, I love what you do and what you’re all about because that, that’s what it is all about is getting our youth excited about basketball and, and teaching them the right lessons on and off the court at a early age and, and getting him excited about basketball, especially now there’s so much competition with sports and there’s so much  individualizing kids going straight, soccer, football, tennis, golf, basketball we can’t take it for granted that kids are just going to play basketball, you know?

So we want to want to continue to get ’em excited about it. So I’m fortunate here. One of the other things that did appeal to me about this San Marcos job, and I do really love, it’s a one horse town we’re, we’re a suburb of Austin, so to speak we’re about 30 miles south of Austin. Everybody who’s in San Marco goes to San Marco unless they go to a private school, but there’s not another public high school.

So the kids at the elementaries, the kids at the high schools are junior highs. They’re coming to our high school. And another cool thing that we have in place here is our two middle schools. They, they don’t have mascots. They’re not the rattlesnakes or the cobras, they’re the Rattlers and that’s what we are.

And so they wear purple.  they’re, one’s called goodnight and one’s Miller middle school, nothing to do with me, its already called Miller , but it’s it’s they’re they’re the Rattlers and  there’s that excitement right there. And, and so things we’re doing is, is we’re going down to their youth leagues and, and this year I’d like to even get more involved, but we brought our players our best players were down there this year, helping teach, helping coach we’re down there.

We ran a mini Rattlers program, brought the young kids in and, and they could come up and we were coaching them and we wanted to continue that brought ’em all out. For halftime of our game and they were so cute.  it was hard to go in the locker room with our guys. I just wanted to watch ’em all get out there on the court.

But then of course we’re doing our basketball camps and going down to the middle schools this year, it’ll work better with my athletic period to be able to get down there last year. It kind of coincided with our varsity athletic beard. So I couldn’t get down there maybe as much, but this year I’m excited to get down there.

And once it’s basketball season, get working with them and, and no, that’s it especially if you’re going to be at a place. And, and we plan on, we plan on being here while I really we love sand Marcus, so we want to build it up. And, and honestly, one of our championship standards is leave a place better than we found it, you know?

And that’s when you go and subway with your guys, and I know you do the same thing, you tell your kids, right. Let’s leave it better than we can. Let’s throw trash away. If you see someone else trash, throw that away. But I believe so much in that also as a coach, whenever we retire or, or we move for another job we want to leave that place better than we came.

So whenever the time to leave and someone to take over that, you have a program, not a team there, and it’s just ready to, to for the next person to drive it.

[01:09:04] Mike Klinzing: That’s good stuff. And it’s so true that you want to make sure that when you’re doing something. It can last and that you’re building, so you’re not building it.

 it’s not a house of cards. It’s something that, Hey, when I leave here, somebody else, whether it’s my assistant or somebody else that they bring in can kind of keep things going. And obviously no matter where you are. I think one of the things that sometimes we forget about is you’ve invested not just in your own high school, varsity team, right?

But you you’ll have invested in kids who are younger, who maybe by the time you leave this job, they may not get to play for you. They might only be in seventh grade or eighth grade. And so you want those kids to be left with a foundation that the next person come, come in and hopefully build upon it and have even greater success.

[01:09:45] Dan Miller: Exactly. Right. I agree. A hundred percent

[01:09:49] Mike Klinzing: As we look forward here, I want to wrap up by asking you two final questions. So first question or it’s a two parter. So the first part is when you look at what you get to do day in and day out, what brings you the biggest joy? What brings you the most joy about what you get to do?

And then the second part of it is when you look ahead, Over the next year or two. What do you see as being your biggest challenge there at San Marcos? So again, your biggest joy and your biggest challenge,

[01:10:16] Dan Miller: Right? Great questions. The joy honestly is just the day to day.  man sometimes it is it’s, it’s true.

You want to do something you love. And I absolutely love what we do.  my wife loves teaching and you know she loves being around kids and helping them with English and, and the mental health component and anything we can help kids with. That’s what we’re all about. And so getting to go to work and help those kids with that’s probably my biggest joy.

But also just watching them grow as basketball players also because it is basketball and it’s important and we love winning we don’t shy away from winning it’s we want to be nice guys. And we teach our guys to be good people and, but good people win also. And so really it’s the joy is when we see the hard work payoff, like last year we ended up winning 27 games.

I felt like we could have won more. We left too many out there, but we won 27 games. We made the playoff.  it was a nice starting season and there was some things that you, you were excited to see. These guys deserve to get in the playoffs. Now in year two, we, we obviously have some bigger goals and we, we have a team.

We believe that that can really be special, but I would say my joy is, is not so much and I hope that joy will be in March maybe when we’re, we’re one of the last teams playing in the state or if not the last team, but, but it goes beyond that. My joy is, is just today. When, when Caden gums, one of our players text me that he hit 59 in Miami shooting.

Which is a five minute, you know what I mean? Just in the sun and these guys are putting the work in because they know what we do in August is going to determine if we’re playing in March. So my joy is really just seeing these guys get that and, and just doing it with my staff who are just great people, great friends.

And it just brings me joy every day. The next question is, is honestly a pretty easy one, just because of where we’re at in Sam, Marcus, we’re building a culture and these first two years are great, but then behind that, just the depth of players, we’re definitely going to have a big talent drop for a couple years.

It just is what it is. Good kids going to love the game, but it is what it is. We have two, probably really three division, one players on our team this year, and a couple other guys in our senior class who might be able to play small college basketball. So that next year we, we probably won’t, we may have one or two guys for sure two guys, I think that can play college basketball, but not the high level division one college.

So with that, it’s we talk about it on our board.  when we whiteboard things, we, we just throw things and we leave some things we leave up there and like, like when we came in, we didn’t really have any fundraising money. So we wanted to increase booster club money. So that stayed up there and just depth in our programs stayed up there.

Obviously we can’t recruit, we do have open enrollment, so people want to come and move into the river city record. It’s beautiful. And if it’s basketball players, that’s great. But, but if we have the people that are already here, we need to find ways to win with. So it’s, it’s finding ways with these younger kids to see what we’re going to do this year, but help them along the way and not lose track of them when we’re doing things with our varsity help, our sub varsities be great also, and then probably going to have to win a lot of close games in those next few years, till we get, we have a class coming up that incoming freshmen that’ll be pretty special too, but, but it’s, it’s just fun, but that is going to be our challenge.

I would say the depth part of it with the guys. Yeah.

[01:13:44] Mike Klinzing: Got it. Makes sense. Dan, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to jump on with us? Spend a lot of fun before we get out. Can you please share how people can follow your program? Tell ’em a little bit about your podcast, where they can find that.

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

[01:14:03] Dan Miller: Absolutely. And first of all really appreciate you guys, you know just having me on Mike and Jason, you guys will do a great podcast and you’re awesome. And you help grow the game. I hope you know that because it’s a lot of work, what you guys do, but you’re growing the game and it’s awesome.

 I don’t have any personal social media, but we have our basketball team, @rattlermbb, Twitter check us out. We have an exciting team.  I think that we’re going to be a, a team that’s going to be a lot of fun to watch and, and even follow on. As we post a lot of things on there at rattler, and then the podcast that we have a podcast basketball and brew that we started late spring and just, we just do it every few weeks and have some coaches on there and just took kind of talk and took a little page out of what you guys are doing and doing it down here.

It’s basketball and brew. They can come on and have a coffee or a brew, however they want. And just talk a little hoop. So yeah, that one is on Twitter at basketball and brew. And our YouTube page is basketball and brew.

[01:15:02] Mike Klinzing: If you get a chance to listen to Dan’s pod, make sure you do that highly recommend it.

And Dan, again, thank you for jumping out with us. Good luck as you continue to build the program there at San Marcos. And I know you’re going to do great things. You’ve been successful everywhere. You’ve been, and I know that’s going to continue and to everyone out there, thanks for listening. And we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.