DARRIS NICHOLS – LA SALLE UNIVERSITY MENS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1105

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

Email – nicholsdd@lasalle.edu

Twitter/X – @DarrisNichols

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Darris Nichols was hired as the Men’s Basketball Head Coach at La Salle University on March 11, 2025, succeeding Fran Dunphy.  Nichols most recently served as the head coach at Radford University, where he amassed two 20-win seasons in four years (68-63), including a 20-13 record during the 2024-25 season.
 
Nichols’ coaching experience includes stints as an assistant coach at Florida, Louisiana Tech, Wofford, and Northern Kentucky. He was named as a member of ESPN.com’s prestigious 40 Under 40 list in the summer of 2020 as one of the most influential people in the game of men’s college basketball. 

Nichols was a four-year standout as a player at West Virginia where he played for both John Beilein and Bob Huggins. He helped the Mountaineers to a 26-11 record and a to the 2008 NCAA Sweet 16 as a senior. He scored 993 career points and dished out 399 assists while shooting .375 from 3-point range.  Nichols was also twice a recipient of the Big East Academic All-Star and Sportsmanship Award.  After graduation, he played professionally overseas in Hungary until a knee injury cut short his playing days and launched him into a career in coaching.

On this episode Mike & Darris discuss the significance of adaptability in coaching philosophy, which is particularly relevant in an era where player transfers are increasingly common. He underscores the necessity of fostering competitiveness and toughness within his team, both on and off the court. Furthermore, Nichols articulates his approach to building team chemistry and how he aims to instill a culture that values effort and improvement over mere statistical outcomes. As he embarks on this new chapter at La Salle, his commitment to nurturing players and creating a winning environment stands at the forefront of his vision for the program.

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Take a few notes as you listen to this episode with Darris Nichols, Men’s Basketball Head Coach at LaSalle University.

What We Discuss with Darris Nichols

• The early influence of his father’s work ethic and basketball background
• The importance of pickup basketball in developing skills and understanding the game
• Adapting coaching philosophies based on personal experiences
• Coach John Beilein’s attention to detail and storytelling impacted Darris’s coaching style
• The transition from Coach Beilein to Coach Huggins at West Virginia taught Darris about adaptability in coaching
• The experience of playing for different coaches enriches a player’s understanding of the game
• As an assistant, your job is to make suggestions, not decisions
• Fostering a competitive environment and the need for varied practice structures
• The value of establishing strong relationships with players to enhance their development and overall team chemistry
• The response to decisions is as crucial as the decision itself
• Don’t expect players to know what you know, learn to teach
• His approach to recruiting, prioritizing toughness and resilience in players
• Creating a chaotic practice environment to simulate the unpredictability of games
• Drills where there is a scoring system that doesn’t involve scoring
• The evolution of college basketball recruiting, particularly in light of the transfer portal’s impact on team dynamics
• Building team chemistry is crucial, especially when integrating numerous new players into your program
• The importance of effective communication and understanding players’ backgrounds
• The challenges and opportunities in transitioning to head coach at a historic program like La Salle

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

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

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

High school and middle school basketball program directors, listen closely. Coaches are expected to do far more than just coach. You know this. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing the coaching yourself, or you have a full staff of coaches with you. You know very well that coaches handle scheduling, academic issues, parent communication, leadership development, and even mental health concerns for athletes. A lot to deal with, and they haven’t even gone home yet to balance those responsibilities.

No matter the passion for the game, and burning desire to help athletes develop, this level of responsibility can lead to burnout, inefficiency, and less time spent on actual coaching. You know it’s true.

When coaches are stretched too thin, it impacts the development of athletes, team morale, and the overall success of the program. Now here comes the outsiders throwing their two cents in about what’s happening. Then come the parents complaining about how you’re running things, as if they know what they’re talking about. When’s the last time you went to their place of work chiming in from outside their window?

Before you let that fire fizzle out, know that it doesn’t have to be that complicated. There are several ways to prevent you or your coaches from feeling overwhelmed. However, I’ll tell you one of our favorite ways to keep coaches firing on all cylinders, and that’s athlete-driven accountability and organization.

Instead of coaches constantly reminding players about assignments, grades, and practice schedules, our programs at Playmaker Planner puts the responsibility back on the athletes. By tracking their own academics, goals, and commitments, student-athletes become more self-sufficient, which of course allows the coach to put their babysitter hat in the closet, and put their coaching hat back on, allowing them to focus on what they love doing.

Are we offering planners that you can get at the dollar store as a solution? Of course not, but we are starting a conversation with you to see if our programs can be a compliment to what you’re already doing. Let’s find out. To learn more visit https://playmakerplanner.com/stop-is-this-for-you

THANKS, DARRIS NICHOLS

If you enjoyed this episode with Darris Nichols let him know by clicking on the link below and thanking him via Twitter.

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TRANSCRIPT FOR DARRIS NICHOLS – LA SALLE UNIVERSITY MENS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1105

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello, and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight. But I am pleased to be joined by Darris Nichols, Head Men’s Basketball Coach at LaSalle University. Darris, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:15] Darris Nichols: Mike, I appreciate you having me,

[00:00:17] Mike Klinzing: Thrilled to have you on, looking forward to diving into all of the interesting things that you’ve been able to do in your career, and also talk a little bit about taking over the program at LaSalle from Coach Dunphy.

Let’s start though by going back to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about how you got into the game when you were younger.

[00:00:34] Darris Nichols: Yeah, I mean, I got into the game because of my dad.  My dad was, he was a small college all American at the NAIA school at the time, Berea College in Kentucky. And ever since me and my brother, I have an older brother two years older than me, who we just come from a basketball family. I remember growing up in Radford, my dad taking us to the outdoor playground. And just watching him play everybody talking about how good he was, and me and my brother just sitting over there, we’re young. We’re just watching the games.

And so we’ve been exposed to basketball ever since we were born, and that’s all we knew.

[00:01:14] Mike Klinzing: When you think about the influence of your dad, both on you as a player and on you as a coach, what are some things that stand out to you in terms of the way he went about his business and the way that you go about yours today?

[00:01:28] Darris Nichols: I think the biggest thing with him is  a lot of stuff that you, that you grow up in your model. It’s not stuff that was verbalized, it’s stuff that you saw. And the biggest thing with my dad is we never heard him make excuses. We never, we always saw him working really hard. He worked two jobs, worked at a factory for over 30 some years, but he also poured concrete.

He poured concrete on the side like in the summertime, like the driveways stairs patios, and just seeing his work ethic. And I’ll never forget it was, it was summertime and  my dad expected me and my brother to work really hard on the basketball court. And a few times he would come home during the summer, obviously we’re not at school we’re laying on the couch kind of hanging out.

So he’s watching us and then the next day he came home same thing, hanging out. He was like, okay, well let me lemme take you. And show you what I do for a living. And  me and my brother, we were pouring concrete with them 9,500 degree heat in the middle of summertime. And it was like, listen I don’t make you guys get a job.

 basketball could be your job, but if you don’t work at it you going to end up probably doing something like, I’m doing like it. And if you, if you want to do this, if you really want to do this basketball piece, like you really have to work at it. And so forever since then I saw what he did.

I saw how he poured into our family and I was like, I’d rather be in the gym.

[00:03:00] Mike Klinzing: What did look, what did working hard look like than for you as a result of that influence? So in other words, how’d you get better? What was your regime for becoming a good player? Thinking about you as like a high school, college player, what were you doing in your off seasons?

[00:03:15] Darris Nichols: Man, it was, it was crazy because my high school coach, he was nuts to Rick Cormany. So that was the head coach, and my dad was assistant coach. So Coach Cormany would call me and my brother probably in the summertime, probably around 6:37 AM and we would pick it up and he wouldn’t even say who he was. He would just say, while you guys laying in bed, somebody’s out working you.

And he would hang up then. So we got we started saying, Hey, between 6 37 coach corn’s calling and don’t answer. So, but then that kind of guilted us into getting to the gym. And so I just worked out I just organized kind of my day. I would go in the morning workout at the rec center.

I would walk, I would dribble a ball the whole time I was walking  to the rec center, work on my handle. I would, I would come back, eat lunch, then go back to the gym, come back home, eat dinner, then go back late at night.  there was nothing to do around Virginia. I was trying to be the best player I could be.

I don’t, I didn’t know. So throughout those days, like I would, I would be like intentional about what I was working on at certain times of the day. Like if I felt I was tired, I would try to do spot shots. Or back in those days you couldn’t do spot shots ’cause you didn’t have rebounder. You had to, you had to rebound your ole miss.

So I tell the guys I coach now, I’m like, Hey, we didn’t have shooting machines. We didn’t have any of that. Like, if you missed it went the creek, so you have to go get it so you don’t miss. But  that was kind of my summertime regimen. Like, I went to the gym three times a day.

You can’t stay in the gym two or three hours at a time. You have to break it up. So that’s, that’s what I did.

[00:04:55] Mike Klinzing: What about from a pickup basketball standpoint? For you compared to the guys that you’re coaching today? I always think it’s interesting and, and I’m even a little bit older than you are, and I spent a lot of time playing pickup basketball and playing outdoors and, and all that kind of thing in terms of trying to get better playing against guys of all different ages and whatever.

And, and now guys grew up kind of in the a, a U system, but just kind of compare and contrast the guys that you coach today versus sort of the way that you grew up playing pickup basketball and working on your game in, in that particular aspect. I

[00:05:30] Darris Nichols: mean because I, like I said, we, me and my brother, we grew up watching my dad and he was playing against Radford University students those college players and the middle court was the best court.

That’s where you wanted to get to the middle court. And  just watching him play and then finally getting to the age where, okay, I think I can play a little bit. But it was those days where you had call next, you had pick your five. So what did you have to do when you sitting on side? You had to evaluate who can help you win.

And if they can help you win. You may play one game, you may not play till the next day or you play in the dark or whatever. So  the first time me and my brother have to play, well, my brother played before me because he was two years older. So then when I have to play, it was like, how can I impact winning?

 I’m like seventh grade playing with college students. I was fast, I was crafty. I had to get dude shots. So that’s how I could win. That’s how I could stay on the court. That’s what they needed me to do. And so as I got older I started being able to score the ball. I started be able to do, do more, but it was a natural progression when you played against older guys.

 you had, you had to prove that you got win or  you take your ball and you go home. That was so for me it was, it was good. And I don’t think, I think everything’s too organized now for our guys, and I think everything’s already determined where it’s like, okay Mike is ranked 20th in the country.

He’s going to, he’s going to get on the court whether he feels like playing or not. And  back in those days, we didn’t know who each other were. We didn’t have social media. We didn’t have any of that. And so what I’ve done now in my coaching in our practices, I’ve taken what I went through and I put it towards my team.

When practice gets monotonous, I’ll say, okay, today we’re picking, okay. Mike’s a gm. Darius is a gm. You have to pick. We’re picking teams today. But when you pick teams, you have to say what you think Mike is going to bring to your organization, but what you’re worried about Mike May bring to your organization.

So it’s kind of like the old school approach of what we went through.

[00:07:48] Mike Klinzing: Right. Yeah. No, that’s awesome, man. I think that it’s definitely something when you look at, I don’t know if necessarily what players are missing today, but when I think about guys that I grew up playing with in, in the atmosphere, like you’re describing that win or go home mentality is definitely one of the things.

And then the second thing is being able to evaluate yourself and being able to evaluate other guys in terms of, Hey, is this a dude that I want on my team, or is it not? I mean as well as I do that there’s guys that you show up at the park or the gym and. They might look like they have a lot of skill and you just see them on the side and they’re going between their legs and they’re doing all this and that, and then you play with them for two minutes.

You’re like, I never want to be on this guy’s team ever again. Yeah.

[00:08:35] Darris Nichols: Yeah.

[00:08:36] Mike Klinzing: And we all know who those guys, we all know who those guys are. And so it’s interesting just when you start thinking about how players have to be able to learn some of those same things that maybe you and I learned on the playground or just trying to fend for ourselves.

And as you said now you have to kind of give guys opportunities to do that. Where coaches back in the era when you and I were playing didn’t necessarily have to do those same things and, and I think that’s part of what being a good coach is all about, right? Is figuring out and being able to diagnose what does your team need, what do my guys need to be able to get them to where I want them to go?

And so I. Hearing you talk about just how you’re giving your guys a chance to be the GM and, and not only just randomly pick guys, but actually have to think about and defend, why am I picking this guy? Why do I want him on my team? Yeah. What’s he going to bring to the table? And then, okay, if he’s good here and maybe not so good in this area, well then maybe I have to get somebody who kind of fills in his weaknesses and compliments and all those kinds of things.

And how do I build a, a winning team, right? Which is what we did on the playground trying to figure out, because you just want to play.

[00:09:36] Darris Nichols: You were, you were, you were a general manager and then you had a play. Yeah. Yep, exactly. And  so another layer will add to it is okay, whoever’s the general manager that day, if we’re playing 5, 4, 5 and your team loses, the only person that runs when you lose is the general manager.

So then you don’t pick your friends.

[00:09:59] Mike Klinzing: I like it, man. That’s good. That is, that is good stuff. All right. Tell me about your favorite memory from playing high school basketball.

[00:10:07] Darris Nichols: I think my favorite memory was. Just the state championship runs we, every year we got there, we didn’t end up winning state championship.

But it’s, it’s different when you when you’re in high school because you grow up with those guys you’re around them every day. I thought that was important and how the community like really rallies around your team. So those are my memories was just the impact you see your high school having on the community.

[00:10:35] Mike Klinzing: It’s something that I think, again, when you’re in a basketball community, right, and you see that there, there’s still places and pockets where you have that same kind of community support and support from the, the students and staff in the school. I think that’s one of the best parts of high school basketball.

When you get an opportunity to play in front of those kinds of crowds in your own community. I love you talking about just the guys that you grew up with. ’cause so much of high school basketball, unfortunately we’ve seen the sort of trickle down effect of guys jumping from school to school and this and that.

And it’s just, when you think about, and it sounds like your experience was similar to mine, that, and I mean, I kind of knew who my high school teammates were going to be by the time I was in third, fourth, fifth grade. It was like you knew who those things were going to be and then you got an opportunity to grow up with them and play middle school basketball and then play high school basketball and play with them in the summertime on the playground and all that stuff.

And so, yeah, I think it’s something that if you’re in a community where that’s where, where that’s part of the fabric of what you do, I think that’s a, that’s a super, certainly a super special opportunity that not everybody gets that depending upon where you grow up and what your, what your high school experience was like.

So let’s get to your recruitment. Talk to me a little bit about decision making. Yeah. With college, what were some of the factors that you were looking at and just what eventually made you settle on West Virginia?

[00:11:54] Darris Nichols: Yeah, I think the biggest thing was being from a small town like it was back in the day, so you could do open gyms and anybody in the area could go to the open gym and people would come evaluate it so we used to have the best open gyms of Roanoke Catholic that was like 30, 35, 40 minutes away from me.

 JJ Rennick would be there, JR Reynolds my brother, me. And so everybody would congregate Tuesdays and Thursdays some of the, all the coaches in the country would go there. So I was younger and then everybody was coming there. John Beam was there when he was a Richmond.

And then so I committed early in that day as a junior. Because  John Beline was a Richmond recruiting me since I was in ninth grade. Then he ended up getting the West Virginia job, continued to recruit me.  I followed the biggie, followed the a, CC. Everybody in the a CC recruited me except North Carolina, duke.

It was crazy because I tell people now since it seems like everybody that recruited me ended up getting fired. When I look back on it my guy Larry s at Clemson, he ended up getting fired before I made a decision. Buzz Peterson, Tennessee ended up getting fired. I think it was Sidney Low NC State ended up getting fired.

And I’m like, now I look back on it, I was like I mean, I didn’t, I don’t know how many options I would’ve had. But a big part of me chose West Virginia because I wanted to get away from home, but I didn’t want to get too far. And Virginia Tech obviously it’s 15 minutes from where I grew up.

They had a lot of coaching changes as I was going through as I was going through high school. So we played an AU tournament up in Morgantown. That was, that was back in the days where the AU events were on campus and so we ended up winning it. And so obviously all the people in the community, the state knew West Virginia was recruiting.

And I never felt I felt so much love from the university, from the whole state. And I remember Bill Lilly, bill Lilly, he’s at Glenville State now. He used to be at Radford University when I was in high school. Then he got on at West Virginia. And he broke down a recruiting letter and he it was back before you had GPS and all that stuff.

So he wrote down notes and it said, okay, you take I 81 south here, stop here, get you some gas up here at this store. You’ll pass through here you’ll hit Summersville. Avoid the speed trap. Like he broke it down, wrote it all down. And, and that stood out to me for a long time because it was, it was really detail oriented.

He knew the route and I knew that was time consum and just connection there. And you think about it like, so Mike Jones recruited me. Jeff Neubauer recruited me. Those were the two lead recruits. And Mike Jones ended up leaving as I was going into my freshman year. He went to the University of Georgia and then, so Jeff Dauer kind of took over it.

And then he fast forward years ago and I’m taking over from Mike Jones at Radford and my dad coached Mike Jones’, kids at Radford High School. So it makes basketball really a small world. So my recruitment was all based off John Beline being relentless when I was in my career. Gotcha.

[00:15:25] Mike Klinzing: What were you thinking about career wise as you were heading into college?

Did you have any thoughts of coaching at that point? Or, or what were you, what, what was your mindset or were you still kind of just thinking mostly as a basketball player?

[00:15:35] Darris Nichols: I was like, every kid now I was going to play in the NBA for many years, retire lived a good life and just figure out what I want to do after that.

And that didn’t happen. So for me it was like, I told my academic advisor, I said, what, what degree can I get where I don’t have to take a lot of math classes? Because I’m terrible at math. And he said, sociology, you only take stats. I said, I’ll do that. So then I started taking a few of the classes. I enjoyed it study people  different families, all that stuff.

And I really liked it. And I was like,  what, like by my senior year I said, I can only see myself being like a social worker, like doing something to help youth. And  that’s kind of how I picked my major.

[00:16:23] Mike Klinzing: It’s interesting when you think about, again, your mindset when you’re 18 years old and trying to figure things out.

And I know obviously with all of your experience coaching at the college level and having lots of conversations with kids that you’ve coached and helping them, trying to figure out, well, what’s their, what’s their life plan and how are they going to go? What are they going to major in and what, what direction are they going to take?

And  I’ve got, I’ve got two, I’ve got two kids in college right now. And just, it’s interesting kind of watching them work through the different options of like, Hey, what can I, what I, you got all this all these possibilities laid out in front of you, right? And you can kind of go in whatever direction you want to go.

And it’s fun to watch kids be able to just kind of figure that out and try to, try to get to where it is that they want to be. Because everybody’s, everybody’s different. And the coaching world, typically, I think, at least in my experience with the, with interviewing lots of different people. You have guys who were drawing up plays when they were in third grade on a napkin and kind of thought of themselves as a coach from back in the time when they were super young.

And then you have other guys who, it kind of hits them a little bit later on and you maybe when they’re playing careers over as they start to look around, or maybe, I know that eventually were going to get to the injury that you, that you suffered that  kind of ended your playing career. But eventually guys get to coaching.

And so when you think about the, the opportunity to play for Coach Beeline, obviously somebody who’s well respected in the coaching community, what are some things that you took away from your time, playing from him, playing for him that you feel like now have made you a better coach? What’s one or two things that you pulled from him?

[00:18:03] Darris Nichols: I think his attention to detail, like he’s probably one of the most. He’s like, he keeps it really simple. Like like the things that a lot of guys don’t think about, like pivoting. Like we, we worked on pivoting every single day and  when I call him to this day, he will say, Hey are you doing donuts or waffles?

That’s what he called him inside pivot, outside Pivot Donuts. And I say, said, yeah, we’re pivoting. We’re just not calling him breakfast foods. But he’s, he was, he, he’s an elite storyteller. Like everything he does, there’s a story behind it and it, it gets your attention and it sticks with you the rest of your life.

And so he’s always been really good at that. And that’s, that’s what always stuck out to me was like, okay, this is what we’re doing. This is why we’re doing it, and this is why it’s worked for me in the past. And that’s kind of what I’ve taken on from from him and my coaching.

[00:19:02] Mike Klinzing: What’s your favorite story that he told?

[00:19:04] Darris Nichols: Favorite story that he told. I don’t know if the story that he told, but the thing that he was on me the most about was like when I first got to college obviously you’re doing high school threes  so I had a problem freshman or sophomore year of stepping on the line. Like I would always shoot long two and he would lose his mind about that.

Like every day just saying crazy stuff to me. It was long two whatever. And I’ll never forget, like my junior year  we’re in Madison Square, I hit a corner three to win the game and take us to the NIT championship and I was actually behind the line, so it was a three. So they won us the game and after the game he was just talking about it and he’s like, remember all the times like I was on you about shooting those long twos, like imagine if it was long two.

It would’ve been went to overtime. But I just thought of the story and he, he tells the story all the time. I was a freshman, we were playing Wake Forest, we wasn’t a triple overtime.  Chris Paul, all those guys one of the best games and n NCAA tournament in history. And so I’m sitting over there on the bench and I’m watching Chris Paul, he’s flying down the court.

JD Collins is getting in foul trouble, our point guard and I’m like, shoot, he’s got four fouls. I’m going to have to go in there pretty soon. Like this is, this is the tournament basketball wearing double overtime. Like I have to be ready. So I go in, I make a few plays, I get fouled. I think that game I went two for four from the free throw line or something like that.

Maybe one for three, I don’t know. But I missed two free throws. So we end up winning the game. We’re up in Cleveland. And then after the game families are waiting, loading, dock, whatever. And so Beline like runs into my dad and he’s thinking my dad is going to crush him. Like why didn’t you play my son more?

Blah, blah, blah. So Beline goes up to him, he says, Hey, bills good to see you. Like, I wish I could have got him in there more. And then my dad goes, Hey, nah, he ain’t ready. You have to make more free throws. So he tells that story all the time to to some of his players that he had. And he was like you have to have guys that come from families that people won’t tell them the truth.

[00:21:20] Mike Klinzing: That is so true. I mean, I think that when you look at, when you look at people who have played, and I think you have the advantage of. Your dad playing college basketball and kind of having an understanding right. Of, of what it takes in order to be able to have Right. Success. And I think that when you have somebody in your family, when you have a parent who has gone through it and it does, this doesn’t hold true every time.

Right. ’cause there’s, there’s parents that Right, have, have played, have played sports at a high level that sometimes can be just as crazy as anybody else. But, but I think it, a lot of times parents who have some level of achievement, they have an idea of what it, what it takes and, and what it’s all about.

And so they’re sometimes able to give their kids good advice and to maybe not be as, hypercritical of coaches when playing time is Yeah. Is an issue because they kind of understand how you have to go about your business and sounds like, and, and that story that  de despite what Coach Beline might have expected from your dad  your your, your dad was continuing to give you that Yeah.

Give that same he was given that same idea that when you were, you and your brother were sitting on the couch when he would come home, right. He is like, yeah you got some work to do to be able to get to where you want to, to where you want to go. And as coaches, I think we all, we all can appreciate those parents who have that have that sort, that sort of mentality, right?

That it’s the, it’s the work ethic and it’s the, the continuing to build. And it’s not just the, Hey, I got my hand out and just gimme something for nothing. Right. You have to put your time in and you have to work. And, and when you do that, then ultimately then you get the opportunity to. To reap the rewards.

Tell me about the coaching change. Coach Huggins comes in, right? And what’s that experience like? Obviously a, a different personality and anytime there’s a Yeah, anytime there’s a coaching change in the program, while you’re there, there’s obviously an adjustment. There’s obviously you have to figure out, okay, what’s this new guy all about compared to what the other guy was about that I’ve already built a relationship with.

So just talk to me a little bit about the transition from Coach Beline to Coach Huggins.

[00:23:22] Darris Nichols: Yeah. I think the biggest thing in the transition was  it was a time where, okay, you got a new coach, you’re not even thinking about leaving. You can’t leave. So it was a period like of two weeks. Like we didn’t have a coach, like and we are hearing rumors, we’re hearing Bob Hugs, so we don’t believe it.

And then people saying, oh, it’s Bob Hugs, so we’re going to go Jordan brand, like Hugs is coming back. So during that, those two weeks, like we were all over the place, like I was at home. Then they named the coach. So then I came back to school and I’ll never forget, so I called a I called a team meeting over at my house and then I told the guys, I said, Hey, listen, like I’m locked in.

Like we, we have like for this to work, it don’t matter who’s coaches, we have to buy in from day one, whatever it’s going to be like. And I remember like and we had some high level dudes on the team Deshaun Butler, who’s with the Celtics, Joe Missoula, head coach of Celtics, Johnny West  with the Warriors on down the line, like, and so we just made a decision like we’re going to buy him.

And then when Hugs came in and talked to us, it was like he knew us because he followed us because he’s from West Virginia, he played at West Virginia. So he already knew a lot about us and, at the time, I thought it was the worst thing ever. ’cause I remember like Beline he had bone balls, he had the beline balls.

So when he left, like I remember, I remember to this day, like Joe Missoula walking out there, he’s punting the balls, he’s kicking beline balls the rest of the freshmen, they kicking beline balls, they’re mad. And then  hugs comes in, we give and we give him a chance. And he gave us a chance because he, it wasn’t like, okay, you’re not my guys.

He said, you’re, you are my guys. And it was just, it was good because at, at that time I was like, this is the worst thing ever.  the coach had recruited me for all these years. He left. But looking back on it as a coach and where I’m now is the best thing ever. Because I’ve seen it different ways.

[00:25:23] Mike Klinzing: That opportunity to be able to play for different coaches, to be able to, and I know we’ll talk about your various coaching stops here in a little bit, but the opportunity to work under different head coaches and see how things can be done differently and still be done successfully. I tell people all the time that when I first started out, I played for the same high school coach my entire high school career.

I played for the same college coach my entire college career. And when I started coaching, that was pretty much all I knew was what those two guys had done. So any drill, any practice, anything that I put together was based off of only those two experiences. And so when I look back on it, and again, it was a different era in terms of no social media, no internet, no access to those kinds of things.

And I was arrogant enough back at the time to think I was a pretty good player. So that’s going to make me a pretty good coach. So, yeah, I didn’t put necessarily all the time, all the time that I put in as a player. I didn’t put the same time in as a coach to learn the game. And I think that one of the things that I wish I would’ve done is just had more exposure to, to more coaches just so I could have seen, Hey, there’s some different ways to be able to go about these things.

Or I wish somebody had kind of put their arm around me when I was a young coach and said, Hey, young fellow, you might’ve been a pretty good player, but you have to go and you have to really study the game and learn it from a, from a coaching perspective. And I think you obviously having a chance to play for two legendary coaches during your college career, I’m sure started to get your wheels turning in terms of, hey, maybe coaching somewhere where I want to end up.

Were you, were you at all thinking about why you were playing? Were you at all thinking, thinking, coaching as you got towards the end of your college career? Or were you still just focused on, Hey, I’m going to try to, I’m, I’m still going to try to play.

[00:27:15] Darris Nichols: No, I wasn’t thinking about coaching at all.  I was I had a few NBA workouts and I was hopeful to make a summer league, so that, that’s where my focus was.

And coaching never even crossed my mind.

[00:27:28] Mike Klinzing: Tell me about the opportunity to go and play overseas. How did that come about? Just what was your, what was your post-graduate process for, for trying to prepare yourself for a professional career?

[00:27:41] Darris Nichols: Yeah. It was crazy because and I talked to him to this day, Matt Lloyd, who’s with the Timberwolves now, I think he’s president of basketball operations, so he was with Chicago Bulls.

He was scouting me I did a workout with those guys and was doing the lottery and the Bulls didn’t think they had a chance of winning the lottery. And during that year they did and they drafted Dare Gross. And so I wasn’t thinking about getting drafted, I was just trying to get on the Summer League roster.

So you draft Derrick Rose and you don’t need me on a Summer league roster because  rookies all go to summer league. So the Bulls were really interested in me and then Derrick Rose gets drafted and then so I was okay, that’s out the window. And so I just worked out IMG over summer. And the crazy thing out is working out IMGI I still have those contacts to, I mean, today a lot of those guys that were working me out that were there they’re either still there or they’re still involved in basketball.

But we  my agent ended up looking over some different deals. I ended up signing a deal in Hungary and playing for, and it was a good, really good team. And so I’m over there, over there for a few months. I get hurt late January. Late January, late January, February, whatever. So we’re getting close to playoffs.

We’re good. We’re number one in the league. And I get hurt and I’ll never forget, like  my my coach was like, oh, you are a rookie. You have to play through, you have to play through it. And I’m, I’m literally playing through games and my knees locking up and I don’t know what’s going on.

I’m like, Hey, I can’t shrink my knee right now. Some, some days it was five. Some days we’ll lock up. And so I remember going to, so I would go to get an MRI and I’m in a Hungarian hospital and I’m like it’s like, it don’t look the same as the hospitals that we had. So they do MRII send it back home to my doctor at home.

At home and he is like, they’re saying it’s ACL. And he’s like, no, this is not ACL. So you can barely read it. So I ended up, I said just send me home. Like whatever. ’cause if I did the surgery over there I did surgery over there, the team would’ve taken care of it. So I went home. I ended up having to have microfracture surgery.

 what? Tracy McGrady had all those guys, like I forgot the guy Brandon Roy career ending injuries. So I ended up having that. And so at the time I had insurance, like just in between time when I was not overseas. But that insurance didn’t cover professional athletes. It was small, small fine print, didn’t cover professional athletes.

And so I had the surgery, but then what happens? I had to pay for it all out of pocket. So the money, the little bit of money I made while I was there is gone. Quickly Gone. Yeah. Quickly gone like, yeah. So I’m like, so I’m like, okay, what do I do now? So I’m like, I’m rehabbing. I was like, yeah, whatever season’s almost over, I’ll sign another deal.

 our team ended up winning it, but I wasn’t there. But they know I’m a winner. And I go to West Virginia. I’m like, I need free rehab. Where can I get free rehab? So I go to West Virginia and I’m working out there. I’m living on my teammate’s couch. He’s a walk-on. Me and him came in the year together.

He is finished up med school and at this time I don’t have more money. I ran out, they all went to surgeries. So I’m like, shoot, I have to make some money. So one of the donors that I’m really close with, he offered me a job, valeting cars at his hotel. So I’m still hobbling around my knee’s not right I’m parking cars, I have to run to get the car that I run to this spot where they can’t see me anymore than I walk.

So that seems like I’m working really hard. So I get a bigger tip and I tell people like a year before I was a starting point guard, now I’m pulling up people’s cars. So they all know me and  so they’re helping me. But at the same time, it’s a humbling experience because everybody’s like, you’re not playing anymore.

I’m like, got hurt. So that’s when I ended up back in Morgantown.

[00:31:53] Mike Klinzing: And when do you go and approach Coach Huggins about the idea of coming on and helping to coach? So I didn’t approach

[00:32:01] Darris Nichols: him. So I was, I was rehabbing and I was actually rehabbing, and then my other niece started acting up and I was like, this southern, you don’t feel right.

So I had to get that cleaned out. I had to get that scoped. And so I’m like, okay, this is a little setback. So it was fine, but at the same time I was like, I don’t know if it’s, if it, if it is fine my body doesn’t feel right. And so I started going over to the p To the practice facility. Yeah, they had a coliseum.

So I started going over there just watching watching practice hanging out. So Kevin Chappelle, who was a grad assistant, he was grad assistant when I played, and he’s still a grad assistant. He goes, Hey man, like I’m out after this year. Like I’m, I have to get a head. I mean, I have to get assistant job.

So like, if you want to be a, if you want to get into a coaching, like the ga spot’s yours, like you just have to talk to hugs. And I’m debating it, man. I’m like fighting it. I’m like struggling. Like, because I think a lot of people, and a good friend of mine, Marty Smith, wrote a piece, athletes Die twice.

And so you die when you die when your sport’s over and then you die your natural death. So it’s like, shoot, that’s like the first death of like, my career’s over. So I’m struggling with that for months. I go over there, I’m, I’m hanging around the team and I’m like, I kind of like this coaching stuff.

And then hugs goes if it’s, if, if you really want to get into coaching, like it’s yours if you want it. He said, but I think you should get into coaching. So that’s, that’s how that happened. I was parking cars and

[00:33:40] Mike Klinzing: bored. So what’d you like about it initially? What was it about coaching specifically?

Was there one aspect of it? What piece of it did you like other than just being around the game?

[00:33:53] Darris Nichols: I liked the fact that I could impact, like, it goes back to, it goes back to my degree and what I wanted to do. Like sociology, study people, like impacting youth. And then I said, okay, how can I, how can I stay involved in the game of basketball but also impact youth?

And I was like, you put the two together as coaching. So that’s, that’s what I just like seeing dudes get better.

[00:34:16] Mike Klinzing: So you come back and obviously you’re working in your same program with some of the coaches that had coached you and you’re getting to go kind of behind the scenes sort of in a way that maybe you hadn’t thought you would ever get the opportunity to do what?

What surprised you that maybe you didn’t realize when you’re playing in the program? Yeah. That the coaches spent a lot of time doing that. You were like, man, I had no idea while I was playing that this was going on behind the scenes,

[00:34:45] Darris Nichols: I didn’t know how much managing they had to do of, of personalities because I, all I know was myself, my, my personality and  the teammates I’m around.

It’s like, okay, I didn’t know you had to deal with so and so’s mom. I didn’t know she was a pain in the ass. I didn’t know, like I didn’t know all that. Yep. Like when I’m, when I’m watching coaches, they’re on the computer playing around, they’re driving nice cars. They come to practice. Then all the new gear, they got shoes that I’ve never seen, so I’m thinking like, I should do that.

Yeah. They don’t do, they don’t do anything, but I’m like, I, you didn’t see how much managing goes on.

[00:35:21] Mike Klinzing: It is amazing how, as players that, and I know I could speak to this same thing, like I had no. Idea what Yeah. A coaching staff actually did. I mean, if you would’ve told me that, yeah, maybe the coaches have a meeting for 15 minutes to talk about practice.

Yeah. And then I’m showing up for a three o’clock p practice at 2 45. They were probably rolling in about two 30 and then practice ends at six and I’m getting my shower in, and as soon as the shower, as soon as the shower room’s cleared out, they’re they’re out of there right after me going home and eating dinner with their family.

I had no idea what those guys, no idea were actually doing. And so I always think it’s interesting, again, unless, unless you grew up in a coaching family where you, you’ve actually seen like the coach’s life from the inside. I think most players, they really have no idea what, what a coaching staff does day to day.

They have no, they have no clue.

[00:36:18] Darris Nichols: Yeah. Yep. And then even my dad, like my dad, he’s a high school coach and I’m it’s, no, it’s no shot of high school coaches. I think high school coaches are some of the smartest coaches in the world because they don’t, they don’t have time to overanalyze everything like we do.

 they have other jobs. Yeah. But like my dad’s like when I was a Rafford, he saw what we did. He was like y’all just ride around on the golf carts all day. Well, y have no, like, I’m like, well, we have to get players. We’re not in school district, so we have to bring them in here.

[00:36:53] Mike Klinzing: That’s funny. That’s good stuff, Darius. Oh, man. All right. Walk me through your various stops as an assistant after you leave West Virginia. Just kind of talk a little bit about maybe what you learned along the way. At each one of the stops. And obviously you were at some different levels starting out at Northern Kentucky.

When you go from a school that’s transitioning from D two to D one, then you have some time at Wofford, you go to Florida. Just to walk me through some of those, some of the, the lessons you learned as an assistant coach.

[00:37:22] Darris Nichols: Yeah, my time at Northern Kentucky was really, really beneficial because like I said, like you were, we were D two and so D two, we didn’t have many recruiting roles.

So I can, I can go out on the road more than a division one assistant, so I built a lot of contacts that year going to Chicago, Milwaukee Cincinnati, Ohio. So that was good for me. But the best thing for me was, ’cause I could still play, like, I mean, I couldn’t play a professional level, but I could still get out there and practice and all that stuff.

And so my boss, Dave Bezel, who was really good for me, he, he just said you are a really good player. The thing that you can’t do is expect them to know or be able to do what you could do. You have to teach. And that’s the best lesson I got.  and I needed that at the time where I was going from player to coach.

And so that’s, that’s the best thing I’ve learned. Like, and still to this day, like, don’t expect them to know what like even if you get a transfer that’s transferred five times, they still you don’t know what they’ve been taught.

[00:38:27] Mike Klinzing: Mm-hmm. Did you, how long did it take you, were you frustrated early on by things that you kind of picked up or knew intuitively that you took for granted that guys would know?

Did you ever get frustrated with the fact of, man, how come this guy just doesn’t get this? Whether it’s just from a mentality standpoint or something fundamentally, or something from a, a basketball IQ or feel for the game. How long did it take you before you kind of felt like, okay. I know, like I know this, I kind of just had figured it out over the course of my playing career.

Now I have to be able to teach it. At what point did you start to, I guess, put those frustrations aside and realize, again, just what you said there, that I, not only do I have to know it, but I have to be able to teach it to my players, if that question makes any sense.

[00:39:15] Darris Nichols: I think probably, I think probably my second year in northern Kentucky, I really understood that when I was in northern Kentucky, I had two dudes on team older than me.

So it was about building those relationships and asking questions. I think as coaches we don’t ask enough questions and  that’s something I learned at early age. Like, you, if you’re going to attack a situation, you have to know enough information about how to attack it.

[00:39:42] Mike Klinzing: Where’d you go early on to learn beyond just the coaching staff that you were working with?

What were where, where were you going to try to learn more about the game? How were you studying? How were you trying to improve your craft early on?

[00:39:54] Darris Nichols: At, at that, at that time I was going to, a lot of clinics, like, that’s back when like people, you didn’t have a lot of live streaming. You didn’t have a lot of access.

Like we had so much access to learn without leaving your desk. Yep. And  I first got into coaching, like you had to actually go to a clinic and all that stuff. And I think that people should still do that because then you still, like in between sessions, you’re still connecting with different people.

You’re still building relationships that you never know where to take you. But I was I’ve always been the guy that listens to podcasts, clinics  I subscribe to pretty much everything. That doesn’t mean I’m going to read it or listen to it, but if I see it and it draws my attention, I’m going to, because I think sometimes, like you can be around the same people for such a long time that you have, you start developing like common interests or common thoughts.

Tell me about the jump to Wofford. It was good ’cause Mike Young  he’s from Rafford from my hometown small world. His his aunt was my elementary peed teacher. His dad was my middle school principal. His cousin was my high school principal. My brother played for him. So going, going to Wofford and I was only there for a year.

We ended up winning the league that year. It was the biggest thing to me that stood out was how he just navigates college campuses  makes people feel important, makes them feel a part of it. Just, just a great coach and a great dude

[00:41:26] Mike Klinzing: from there.

[00:41:27] Darris Nichols: Louisiana Tech. Yeah, so it’s funny, like how I got on Louisiana Tech is, what was that?

It was when I was in Northern Kentucky. So I was in Northern Kentucky. I go recruit the Hutch, the Junior College National Championship. So I go out there, I don’t even know what I’m looking at. I’m, I’m trying to recruit Marshall Henderson. He’s already committed Ole Miss. I don’t know what’s going on. So Mike White, he’s, he’s there.

Bill Armstrong is an assistant at Ole Miss, so obviously Andy Kennedy Bob Hugs, they work together, that whole connection. So I knew Bill Armstrong. I didn’t know I didn’t know Mike White. So Bill, bill hits me and he says, Hey, let’s go out to dinner. Like, I was like, who’s going? He is like, me, you and Mike White.

I’m like, who’s Mike White? He’s like, oh, he’s Louisiana Tech. So we go, we eat dinner and a lot of times when I meet new people, I try to write a handwritten note to them, like after I meet them, whatever. And  you fast forward that this was my first year in coaching in northern Kentucky. You fast that he has a spot open on the staff. Bill Armstrong pushes me. My name keeps coming up. Jordan EYs already on staff of Louisiana Tech. I’ve known Jordan since I played, and  I end up getting a job.

[00:42:38] Mike Klinzing: It’s amazing how the connections work in the coaching world and how important it is to just continue to build genuine relationships over the course of time of your career and really get to know people.

Because what you find, and this is something that whenever I talk to coaches on the podcast, that inevitably somebody has a story similar to this one that you’re telling that they met someone somewhere at some point. Maybe that person saw them coach, or maybe somebody that they know saw them coach. And then when there’s an opening, boom, all of a sudden those conversations are being had and suddenly an opportunity that you didn’t necessarily think was going to come your way all of a sudden.

Comes your way and, and I think that it’s a great lesson for young coaches, right? Is to, to make sure that when you’re out there and you’re talking to people that again, you’re looking to build. Genuine relationships, not just be able to put your hand out and try to have somebody do something for you, but really trying to get to know someone and and appreciate what they do.

And when you do that, again, it may not be that direct relationship. It may be that  one or two connections down the line where it ends up paying dividends for you at some point. And then obviously as you advance in your career, now it can go the other way. Right now you have guys that you maybe met that you can recommend to different coaches and positions.

And then, and the coaching world I think is those relationships end up being being really, really important. When you think about being an assistant coach. If you had to give a young guy starting out in the college, in college coaching one or two pieces of advice about what it would take to be a great assistant coach, what are the two things that you would define as being a great assistant?

[00:44:29] Darris Nichols: Focus on making your suggestions. But then if the head coach or the staff doesn’t go with your suggestion, do not become better. Just move on. Do not shut down. Just continue to say, okay, well coach, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? A lot of times you see assistants become opinionated where if the coach doesn’t do what they think, like they  mess up staff chemistry.

So I mean, your job is to make suggestions. Your job is not to make decisions.

[00:45:03] Mike Klinzing: That ability to be able to not take it personally right, is something that I think is a tremendous skill for an assistant coach. And it’s one of the things that, and I’m sure we’ll talk about this as we talk about the transition for you from going from an assistant to a head coach.

One of the things that I consistently hear from head coaches is that that transition from being a guy who makes suggestions. To all of a sudden being the guy who has to make all those decisions and take input from the assistants. I almost every head coach that I’ve ever talked to, especially guys who are young in their head coaching career, they all say that, man, I didn’t even realize how many decisions a head coach has to make.

And not only related to decisions on the basketball floor, but just decisions off the basketball court that impact how the program is going to be run. And I think sometimes as an assistant coach, sort of like we said, players don’t always necessarily know what the coaching staff is doing behind the scenes.

I think a lot of times, right, if you’ve only been an assistant coach, you don’t necessarily have an appreciation for all of the decisions that a head coach has to make. I don’t know if the word pressure is the right word that, that you would use in that circumstance, but there’s certainly a lot of, I. And again, I don’t think pressure is the right word, but I think there’s certainly just a lot of weight in terms of the decisions that a head coach has to make to be able to have a successful program that maybe assistant coaches who haven’t been in that chair before don’t necessarily understand.

So maybe you can speak to that just when you took over as a head coach, just the difference between the decision making process versus the suggestion making process.

[00:46:52] Darris Nichols: I think it’s, I think it’s a whole bunch of different processes, I think. Okay. You, you’re sifting through a whole bunch of suggestions, like, because you have a whole staff who’s coming at you with suggestions like nonstop or ideas or todos.

And then it becomes, okay, what decision do I make? And usually, a lot of times your decision is probably wrong or you make, you might, okay, I don’t know about the decision. So then it’s more about your response. So it’s not the decision, it’s the response to the decision. And a lot of people don’t understand that.

And that’s like, it’s one thing I didn’t understand. I understood it as assistance, but I didn’t understand how many, how many conversations you have in a day with different people, because it’s a whole nother layer. Like when you become a head coach, you’re, you’re talking more to administrators, you’re talking more to donors, you’re talking more to alumni.

So your conversations as an assistant are mostly recruits, players current players and your staff. But as a head coach, you, you’re piled into a whole nother group of different conversations that you have.

[00:48:02] Mike Klinzing: What’s an example of a decision that you make and then how you react to it is how the situation turns out.

Can you give us an example of something that kind of fits that description that you just gave us?

[00:48:16] Darris Nichols: You talking about? Like the response?

[00:48:18] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Yeah, the response. So when you make a decision, then how you respond to Yeah. The results of that decision.

[00:48:25] Darris Nichols: Yeah. It’s like for example  you suspend a kid or you so that’s the decision.

The response is, okay, well the response is you lose by 30 or 40 a pit as opposed to 20. But then you’re like, okay, well the response, the response is, Hey now you go back to the player and you say, Hey, well this is what it is. And at the end of the day, it’s like, where you going to lose that game anyways?

Probably probably. But the response is, Hey, did we do the right thing?

[00:49:00] Mike Klinzing: I think that doing the right thing, I go back to, it’s funny that when I hear you say that. I went back to the, an interview that I did, I think it was maybe my third podcast interview, and it was a guy who was a local high school coach here in the Cleveland area, and he talked about sort of his framework for making decisions, and it’s something that has stuck with me ever since.

Yeah. And whenever I hear coaches talk, whether it’s on a podcast interview or just in general, I think back to what he said and what, what he, what he told me was is that as a head coach, you’ve got so many decisions to make that nobody else in the program understands exactly what all those decisions are.

Your assistant coaches don’t necessarily get it, ’cause again, they’re not having the same. Level of conversations with people as you are, as the head coach and people on the outside certainly have no idea what those decisions are all about. Parents, even players. And what he said is he goes, ultimately, when you make a decision, not everybody’s going to be happy with that decision.

You’re going to probably make somebody unhappy, especially if you’re doing the job well. And what he said he always tried to frame it with was, when I go to bed at night, I want to be able to lay my head down on the pillow and know that I did what I thought was the right decision. And that doesn’t mean that he didn’t take suggestions.

That didn’t mean he didn’t listen to other people. But ultimately he took all that stuff and he waited and then he made a decision. And then to your point about how you react to it, it’s going back and laying down at night before you go to sleep and saying, did I make the decision that I felt was the best for my program or did I let outside influences?

Cloud my judgment or affect me. I really, that really stuck with me in terms of what I think successful coaches have to be able to do well is you have to be able to take input, but then ultimately you have to make the decision that you think is best. ’cause you as the head coach have to live with it and it’s your name ultimately that’s attached to that decision regardless of where the input or the suggestion came from in the first place.

I don’t know if that resonates with you or makes any sense.

[00:51:08] Darris Nichols: It does, especially in recruiting. ? In recruiting, especially in Florida. Okay. You the pressure is to recruit top 100 kids, top 50 kids. Well, a lot of times, I mean, we recruited, think about this, Shay, we recruited Shay. Gils Alexander not, not ranked nothing, and everybody in Canada, United States at the time was saying, why would you take that guy?

He ain’t good enough to play in Florida. Well, he’s committed to us for a whole year. And then everybody started seeing him and then he decommitted and went to Kentucky. So I imagine like it’s like you are clouded with noise of what other people think. Yeah. And as a head coach, like you have to just do what you want to do, what you believe.

[00:51:53] Mike Klinzing: It’s so true. And I just think that again, right, it’s, it’s easy sometimes to allow those outside influences, or whether it’s public opinion or just the opinion of lots of people, right? In terms of recruiting, you’re sitting around, you’re talking to coaches, you’re watching guys, and. It’s, it’s sometimes if you have an outlier, right?

Somebody that you think is a lot better than maybe what other people do, or, or maybe there’s the guy that everybody’s consensus is super high and you’re like, eh, no, I don’t know about that guy. For whatever the reason may be. And I think ultimately, right, you have to stick to your convictions and do what you believe.

’cause sometimes, sometimes beauty’s in the eye of the beholder and for sure that’s how you find, that’s how you find those, those hidden gems. Tell me about getting the head coaching job for the first time at Radford. Obviously for you it was an opportunity not only to become a head coach, but also to come back home and be right there in an area where you grew up so clearly a special opportunity for you.

So tell me how that chance crosses your desk. What do you remember about the process of, of getting that first head coaching job at Radford?

[00:53:04] Darris Nichols: The process happened fast and it was that job was the last job filled in that cycle, so it was in May. And I just remember Mike Jones taking the U US CUSC Greensboro job and then  Robert Lindenberg flying, him and the president, Dr.

Hanfield flying down, beating with me, me. And then we go out to eat and I say, okay, well they, they, when’s the press conference? They said tomorrow. And I was like, tomorrow. So then I had to rush home, get a suit I didn’t have any red ties. It was all orange and blue for Florida.

And I’m just sitting there and I.

And I remember calling my mom at dinner and I called her and it was around Mother’s Day and I said, Hey, what you doing tomorrow? And she said I’m not doing anything. I said, well, I’ll be in, I’m coming to the dentist center, we need the dentist center. She’s like, oh, you in town? And then she was like, I was like, yeah, I’m in town.

And she’s like, how long you in town for? I said, I don’t know, however long did it have me? And then I said, Hey, I got, I just became the head coach at Rafford University. I said, happy Mother’s Day. And she just broke down and was excited.

[00:54:16] Mike Klinzing: That’s awesome. That is very, that’s very, very, very cool.

[00:54:20] Darris Nichols: So it’s funny that when I was growing up, there was a guy, facilities guy at Rafford and me and my brother used sneak in and  play pickup with the college students and all that stuff.

So I get the job and I see the facilities guy, the one used to kick me and my brother out. And I was like, I told Shane, I said, Hey look, he’s still here. So I took a selfie, I kick

[00:54:41] Mike Klinzing: me out

[00:54:41] Darris Nichols: now.

[00:54:46] Mike Klinzing: That’s, that’s awesome. When you took over the program, they had been losing and it was a rebuilding situation. Tell me a little bit about your philosophy when it came to that rebuild, what it looked like. What were some of the most important things that you felt like you needed to do right away to be able to start to turn the tide to get the program going in the direction that you wanted to go?

[00:55:14] Darris Nichols: So, my philosophy was different. My, and this is part of coaching, like my whole plan everybody’s just have to packet all this time. I’m going to play when I’m a head coach. My whole plan of how I wanted to play ended up being totally different than that packet I put together. So I got the job in May.

It was last job filled. The portal was dried up. I did a meeting with, I did an individual meeting with all the guys, and then the next day they went home for the summer, didn’t come back to the end of June. And I’m like, I don’t even know who these guys are. So I didn’t, I didn’t even, I added some new guys.

You couldn’t really bring them in. The Val’s still going on, so it’s just like, whatever. So you couldn’t visit them. So I was just like guessing. So we brought that team in. And then that next year I’m just talking, I’m like, Hey, this, this is not how I want to do things. And I’m having a conversation with Billy Donovan.

I’m talking to him like, Hey if he was back in college, like what would be your emphasis like with this transfer portal, NIL, all the stuff. Like, what would be he said, just find the toughest guys you can find. Just find, like, evaluate toughness. Like the rules are the, the rules are different.

You can’t, you’re not going to have a guy for four years, basically have them for seven months. The guys are 25, 26 years old. You can’t practice them for four hours. Just find the toughest guys you can find. And so that’s, that’s what we’ve done.

[00:56:34] Mike Klinzing: What does toughness look like for you? How do you define it and how do you look for it when you’re recruiting players?

[00:56:41] Darris Nichols: I think the ability to move on to the next play, whether it’s good or bad. I think being consistently good every day, not being great. I think that’s a big thing. Positive energy, like off the court. I didn’t like, like my year one, I didn’t like the energy. There are guys like walked around with on campus and all that stuff.

Like I think that’s toughness. I think like walking around, speaking to people, holding the door open, like that’s so that, that’s kind of what it looks like for me.

[00:57:09] Mike Klinzing: How do you get to the bottom of that when you’re recruiting a kid, when you’re watching them play, whether it’s high school, a a u when you’re interviewing people around them, when you’re talking to the kid.

Yeah. What are the si, what are the signs, what are the things that you’re looking for that help you to identify, Hey, this kid is going to have the kind of toughness that, that I’m describing. A

[00:57:27] Darris Nichols: lot of times you can’t see it on film. And that’s the problem. That’s what you’re evaluating in the portal. So you, it’s have to be conversations.

And so what I’ve done over the years is I have a list of like questions that they’ve asked in the NBA combine on the the speed date and all that stuff, the interview process. And so we ask those questions and so those questions are more in depth. They tell the story. And  when you call another coach, they always tell you all the good, I say Gimme, gimme the bad.

I want to know the bad, right? Like, so I can figure out the good, gimme the bad, I can see the good on film. Like, I need the bad. So we, I mean, then we make a decision based off that. But we also, we also study numbers a lot.  for us we play with two bigs. So big thing for us is the big, the average of five points per game for a team that like is different than us it may be different.

So if we find a kid that’s top 30 in the country in offense, rebound, and that’s a big thing for us. We’re going to go get. So we study numbers, not points, not just points per game, but like other individual numbers. So we try to piece it together

[00:58:34] Mike Klinzing: and you’re looking at a kid and you start trying to think about how they fit into the way that you want to play.

That kind of gets to what you were just talking about, right? That you might have a kid that has a particular skill that can fit into what you guys want to do, schematically, offensively and defensively. How important is it for you to have conversations with your guys, both in the process of recruiting them, but also once they’re on campus?

Because what I always think is interesting is for so long, right, guys who end up playing college basketball, there’s a good chance that with their high school, they were the best or one of the. Two or three best, depending on what kind of high school program they’re playing in players. And yet, when they get to the college level, right, there’s very few guys that just get the ball handed to them and say, Hey man, go ahead and do your thing.

And the show’s all about you and you can kind of do what you want. It’s more, right? You have to figure out how guys can fit into the system. And maybe a kid who’s a star in high school or is a star on an AU team, now all of a sudden they have to come into a program and they have to be able to, to play a role.

They may not be the man on a particular team. So how do you evaluate that? How do you look at, well, hey, this kid has this particular skill, or this kid is the best player on their team, but how are they going to fit into what we’re trying to do? How do you think about that in terms of a kid transitioning from maybe being a star player at the high school level to being a player that can contribute and utilize their skill, but maybe do it in a different way as more of a role player in a college setting?

If that makes, again, if that makes sense.

[01:00:09] Darris Nichols: Yeah, I think first of all, you evaluate competitiveness and tough. So once that checks off, then you try to manage expectations. And kind of the way we do it is during the summertime I’ll, we’ll ask guys individually, Hey, how many points you going to give us?

And then we’ll tally them up and we usually equaled up like one year equal to 1 97.

So I went in there first team meeting and I like messing with my first team meetings. I said, Hey, listen, after this year I’m going to retire. I’m going to travel the world. I’m going to speak to different countries about how we scored 197 points per game. And then looking crazy like, what you talking about?

I’m like, well, I mean, based on y’all’s numbers, that’s how many we’re going to average this year. So after this year, I’m done. So it’s like just, it’s being real with them. It’s like getting ahead of their problems before they become problems. And it’s not that I don’t want them to think they’re going to score that, but what happened?

How do you act when you don’t

[01:01:14] Mike Klinzing: reaction? Right? It’s what you were talking about before. Same thing. You as a coach, right? You have to be able to react. How do you react to the situation being different than what you thought it was? Exactly. How do you continue to build the competitiveness that you’re looking for in a player that you bring into the program?

Obviously that piece of it is clearly important to you. How do you build a competitive practice environment? What does that look like for you in terms of your drills, in terms of the way you structure practice? Yeah. What are some things you try to do to, to build the competitiveness within your team?

[01:01:49] Darris Nichols: Well, first of all, we travel with a rebound bubble. His name’s Dennis, named after Dennis Rodman. There’s one player on the team that’s responsible for him. And we don’t leave until Dennis is on the bus or a plane because rebounding travels. So I think you have to do creative stuff to like really get these dudes to buy in to what you’re trying to what you’re emphasizing.

I think another thing is too, we do a lot of drills where we, we have a scoring system that doesn’t scoring. So we’ll put play five and five with the bubble up, put Dennis in there, and you only score points for paint, touches, offense, rebounds on offense, on defense, you score off defense rebounds and deflections.

So you, you just try to do creative stuff to make them think, okay, there’s way more to the game of basketball and the scoring. So then they get competitive in different ways.

[01:02:46] Mike Klinzing: I think that’s really important. Just saying competitive in different ways, right? Because I guess, right. One of the things that when you think about competitiveness, if someone first just says it to you, it’s a competitor.

Wants to win, right? And so typically when we think of winning, right, it means you have to score more than the other team. And scoring more means I have to make more baskets. And so often players translate to is I just have to outscore person that’s, that’s across from me. And you don’t think about all those little things that go into winning and losing a game.

There’s obviously much more, clearly putting the ball in the basket is an important part of winning games. But there’s so many other little things that you can incorporate and, and make sure that if your team is doing those little things, it just gives you a. That small edge. And if you can train that and if you can hone that competitiveness in all those areas, every single day, you’re going to end up with a team that’s competitive.

Not just as a team that loves to score and score 197 points, but a team that’s going to compete on the boards, A team team that’s going to compete defensively, a team that’s going to do all those little things that it takes to be able to outscore your opponent. When it comes time for, for games. When you’re playing a practice, do you like to have the same practice structure every day?

In other words, are you kind of going, let’s say offense, special situations, defense, defense first every day shooting, first player development, just, do you have a set rhythm to your practices or do you kind of like to go with whatever your team needs on a given day? You kind of planted it around that.

[01:04:21] Darris Nichols: No, I. I don’t want them thinking, okay, well the first two drills are these peer pressure drills and that’s the opportunity for me to get loose. I may do that for two days out of the week, but then the third day it may be okay, we’re getting right to it. And so now guys aren’t sitting around in the locker room or pre-practice just kind of messing around.

So I like to, I don’t, like, I came up with my philosophy as a coach of what I didn’t like as a player. So anything I didn’t like as a player, I don’t do. And so I don’t like the same drills every day. I don’t like not competing.  I hate running on the track. I hate running on the track. Like I, so I don’t do that.

And so our practices are complete chaos. You never know what’s going to happen. I think in the game, like some people  when I was a ran for, we had everybody in the gym indoor track, volleyball, dance, everybody’s in the gym and people said, do you mind if we practice while you practice?

No. I mean, when we play, there’s going to be over people here. So like, I want complete chaos.

[01:05:30] Mike Klinzing: Makes sense, right? I mean, I think a lot of times we think about having a practice setting where it’s quiet. We can hear everybody can do those things. And there’s times where obviously it’s important for you to be able to ha have a, a controlled environment where guys can hear what’s being said and, and can dial in and focus.

But yet to your point, right, the chaos is how you’re going to play the games. When there’s a crowd and there’s people doing whatever and, and there’s, there’s more, there’s more pressure, there’s more things going on, there’s more things that are being thrown at you and you have to be able to deal with them. So I can see where.

Having that environment where it’s chaotic. As a result of practice and just keeping guys on their toes, right? Instead of them knowing, like, okay. It kind of becomes almost that mindless routine of, all right, I know we’re going to start out with these two drills and we’re going to start out with defense or shell, and then we’re going to go to this and that.

And, and it kind of becomes this monotony. Whereas if you’re throwing something different at them every day, keeps them on their toes, keeps their mind fresh and, and keeps them ready to attack and ready to go, because they, they just never know what’s, what’s going to happen. So I think that when I hear you say that, and I think about to your point of trying to do things as a coach that you would’ve liked to do as a player, and then avoiding the things that as a player, you were like, oh, I can’t believe we have to do this.

Trying to avoid those things, right? Because especially in today’s world, right? It’s different, I think, than the world that you played, or the world that I played in where maybe there was a little bit of, we could take the, my, my way or the highway type of coaching. I think today I. Players much more want to know the why behind what you’re doing.

And, and so I think that when you start talking about being able to have practices that are engaging for players, that the players want to be a part of, that they want to compete. If you can do that as a coach, you, you’re man, you’re, you’re on your way to success. ’cause you’re going to get the most out of your players, which ultimately is what you’re trying to do is figure out what buttons do I need to push?

What situations do I need to put my players in? Do I need to put my team in to be able to have the most possible success that we can? And I think that requires what you said, which is you have to think about how do I inject chaos into it to be able to, to get them to react and be at their best when everything’s kind of going chaotic around them.

[01:07:45] Darris Nichols: Yeah.

[01:07:46] Mike Klinzing: The opportunity at LaSalle, what attracted you to it? Obviously a historic program taking over for Coach Dunphy. What, what made it attractive and how did you, what was the process like?

[01:08:03] Darris Nichols: The thing that made me attracted to it is, ’cause everybody said it’s hard. Oh, hard job. Hard job. Okay. I enjoy that.

 I mean, Rafford was a hard job. So that’s what attracted me to it. And not only that, it was the athletic director, Ash and the President, Dan Allen. Like, those guys are really, really aggressive and I think they fit my personality of what we want to do here. So just the conversations and this conversation with them was like, okay, there’s a, there’s alignment there brand new arena  in a basketball city.

 following hall of Famer dunk we did that in Florida, chasing the ghost of Billy Donovan.  it’s just exciting. It’s exciting for me. Like I love, I’ve always been a situation where I’ve been an underdog, so I I love the situation,

[01:09:00] Mike Klinzing: obviously a ton of history there with the Big Five and the city of Philadelphia. And how much have you dove into sort of the history of, of all the different rivalries within the city and, and just, yeah. The special opportunity that you have to recruit the city of Philadelphia and to compete in that kind of environment with so many other really good programs.

What’s that been like so far?

[01:09:24] Darris Nichols: It’s been great. I mean the city of Philadelphia’s been great.  I have a lot of contacts here from years of recruiting, so a lot of people have been supportive of me and I’m just I’m just excited. Like I’m, I’m ready to start practicing, ready to start playing.

The, the big thing about. It, it is funny being in a city because the last city I was actually in was when I was in Northern Kentucky at Cincinnati. And so I’m used to like having to get in a car, driving three hours to a high school game, driving back the same night being around for driving four hours to Richmond, coming back same night, or staying over watching stopping the for union.

And  the beauty of it is like obviously you’re going to recruit more than Philadelphia, but okay, we’re in the middle season. You can really put your roots into the area and so that’s refreshing. Especially the city with the basketball history has

[01:10:20] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Talk to me about the conversations that you had with your returning guys when you come in as a new guy, just like you experienced that as a player.

Back at West Virginia, when you come in to LaSalle, you got a roster of guys that are coming back that you’ve have to be able to have a conversation with them, figure out where you go, where they are in their career, how they fit into what your plans look like. What w How’d you go about that? What were those conversations like for you?

[01:10:48] Darris Nichols: Honestly, it’s different. Like when I was at Rafford and I got the job, you had a team meeting because like the transfer portal wasn’t what it’s now, and it was the last job filled. So then I get this job and most of dudes already in the portal so like the kind, like Ca Perry got the job last year, Arkansas, there is no team, so I brought one back.

So it’s like, alright, you’re just starting all over. But I just looked like, the way I’ve looked at it anyways over the last probably three years is everybody’s on one year deal anyways.

[01:11:26] Mike Klinzing: Has that been an easy. Adaptation for you in terms of compared to where you started and where guys it was more likely that maybe you were going to have guys that were going to be able to stick around for four years.

Now, as you said, because of the portal, because of NIL, because of just the landscape of the way things are, it’s a much more short term relationship. So how has that impacted the way that, and I go back to what you’ve said a couple times, right? Thinking back to majoring in sociology, that you want to be able to have an impact on young people.

And I know that I’ve had coaches kind of on both sides of this debate in terms of the portal and sort of the, the not necessarily always having the ability to have a kid for, for four years. And some guys are like, yeah, it feels like I can’t have the same impact. And other guys are like, I just try to have the biggest impact that I can in the year or the two or whatever, however many years it is that work together.

How have you kind of approached that in terms of. The impact that you can have on, on, on a player as a coach, and not necessarily on the floor in terms of their basketball, but just in terms of their life and the relationship that you build with them.

[01:12:38] Darris Nichols: I look at it as like this, I’m impacted more kids now because if you have a kid for four years, it is not as many.

If you have nine new kids every year, you are impact more positively. So what it’s made me do is spend more time with them while they’re on campus, as opposed to saying him  Soso going to be, he’s going to be there next year. So it’s made me spend more time with them and I appreciate that.

[01:13:09] Mike Klinzing: That makes sense.

I mean, I think that the more you can pour into a kid and the more you can find out what makes them tick and find out that earlier, then the easier it is for you then to reach them and to have an impact on them, both on and off the floor. I think that’s, that’s really important. When you look at where you’re at right now, having only been on the job for a short period of time, what do you think over the next year or two are the biggest keys to having success in your first year?

And I’ll leave it to you to define what success looks like, but what are you looking to be able to do here in this first year that you can look back on a year from now, next May and say, Hey, we had a successful season.

[01:13:56] Darris Nichols: I think the biggest thing is

 we have what, 13 new guys? 13 new guys last year had 11. Building the team chemistry as best we can. The thing is, like my goal, my first goal is to win the big five. I know how important it is to the people in the city of Philadelphia. Doing that in year one would be huge.  got a tough, a tough draw, but I’m excited about it.

I don’t know. I just, I just think like we, we have natural, we have certain goals that we do that equal success. One of them, one of them is offense rebounding. One of them is free throw rate. And so usually when we do those two things, like we we’re, we’re usually successful.

[01:14:36] Mike Klinzing: To be able to do that, obviously you have to go through and.

Work through that in practice, you have to emphasize it so often that you get what you, what you emphasize and try to get your players to buy into those things that are going to allow you to have that kind of success. And it sounds like that’s the type of foundation that you’re trying to build. What does the summer program look like for you guys?

How are you laying that out and designing it to sort of get a jumpstart on  when the guys get back to campus on the fall, obviously they’re going to be around in the summertime, but what do you guys do? What’s the summertime routine look like?

[01:15:11] Darris Nichols: We have a few guys here right now. The whole team will get here around June 14th.

But the summertime for me is all skill development and all teaching them how to play together because  how it is when you get to the season once plays break down because everybody’s scouts, everybody’s got video. You don’t have to drive from video exchange anymore. It’s just synergy. How do you, what do you do when a play breaks down?

Do  how to play with each other? So the whole summer, I don’t put any offense in. I’ll do defense, but I don’t put any offense in. I just put our basic motion concepts and just teach them reads and how to play with each other, like moving off the ball, all that stuff. So we’ll do that the whole summer, because I think that’s what the game comes down to.

What do you do when the play breaks down? So that’s, that’s what we’ve done the last two years. I think when you think about college, college practices way more than NBA, the NBA they just play way more in college. Like there has to be a balance. I don’t think we play enough in college basketball to understand, especially when you have a whole bunch of new guys to understand each other.

[01:16:20] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think right. Goes back to the very beginning of our conversation when you think about pickup basketball, right? You, you eventually, you keep showing, you keep showing up at the park with the same guys night, after night after night. And eventually you learn, they’re like, Hey man, this dude is a guy I want on my team.

And then, like I said earlier, here’s a guy that I never want to play with him. If you ask me to be on his team, yeah, I might, I might just sit another one so I can Exactly. So I could be on a be on somebody else’s team. And I, and I do think that, that that ability to feel and understand the game and how to play with other guys is so, so important.

And I. To your point here, you have to develop that relatively quickly because again, your team is turning over far more frequently than it was 10 years ago where you might be able to say, okay man, I got a really good freshman class here. And yeah, we’re going to take our lumps when we’re young, but man, by the time these guys are juniors and they played together for two, three years, things are really going to get rolling.

And now you can’t even have that internal conversation with yourself anymore because the odds of that happening are, are pretty slim. And so I think to what you’re saying there is you’ve have to be able to build that team chemistry. You have to be able to build that feel for playing together. How do you do that?

You have to do it through your practices and you have to be able to get guys together so that they can get that feel for. One another. All right. I got one final two part question for you. Part one, when you think ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every day as a head college basketball coach, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:18:10] Darris Nichols: I think the biggest challenge is always going to be, I think your biggest challenge is always going to be your resources. But there’s, there’s different type of resources. And when I say resources, obviously we’re in the NIS climate. And so you resources, there’s going to be money, but some of your resources could be a benefit to you.

You can be people. So I think resources could be a big problem. But the problem is, is, I mean, I mean the beauty of it is, is like evaluation is still a big part of this. You can pay the wrong players. People are still paying the wrong guys.  the beauty of it, and what I look forward to every day is just hanging out with the guys.

Like, not even on the court, like everybody talks about, oh, on the court. Like I just like hanging out with them in the office, like just talking. Especially a group of new guys that I’m getting to know. And then I find the beauty in, I just had graduation with her guys and all the guy, and I went back, saw the guys at R for the graduation.

And then when they tell me, coach, I just wish I came here to start that, that’s big for me. when I hear that, I wish I came here for a start.  I get a little emotional with them, but I say, well, you came here for start, you would’ve transferred on me too. So love you.

[01:19:31] Mike Klinzing: That’s awesome. All right, before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how can people connect with you, find out more about your program, share email, website, social media, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:19:44] Darris Nichols: I’m on all of them, I’m on Instagram, Twitter you hit me up, DM me, I don’t even know my handles, but just type in Darris Nichols and there’s no U in it. It’s Darris. So…

[01:19:55] Mike Klinzing: We’ll get all of it in the show notes. We’ll figure it out and put it out there for everybody. Darris, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us? Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.  Thanks.