JACOB FLEEGLE – EMORY UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 814

Website – https://www.emoryathletics.com/sports/mbkb/index

Email – jfleegl@emory.edu

Twitter – @Coach_Fleegz/

Jacob Fleegle is a Men’s Basketball Assistant Coach at Emory University.  Prior to his hiring at Emory in 2021, Fleegle spent three seasons on the basketball staff at Juniata College, his final campaign as Associate Head Coach.  

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Fleegle went to Juniata after serving on the Carnegie Mellon staff.  Prior to his experience at Carnegie Mellon Fleegle was at Waynesburg University where he was the Yellow Jackets graduate assistant for two seasons. 

While a student-athlete at Waynesburg, Fleegle started 102 of the 110 games in which he appeared. He became the 33rd player in Waynesburg’s history to record 1,000 career points, finishing with 1,070 points.  Following the 2015 season, he was named to the Capital One Division III Academic All-District Team.

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You’ll want to have your notebook handy as you listen to this episode with Jacob Fleegle, Men’s Basketball Assistant Coach at Emory University in the state of Georgia.

What We Discuss with Jacob Fleegle

• His first basketball camp experience in third grade
• “I do think there’s something special about being able to have yourself and a ball and a hoop and use your imagination and your creativity.”
• The AAU organization his Dad started so he would have a team to play on
• Identifying the 2 or 3 things you want in a school when being recruited
• His decision to attend Waynesburg
• Working camp at VCU and how that made him realize he wanted to become a college coach
• Making the transition from player to coach at Waynesburg
• Why recruiting is a critical skill to develop for assistant coaches
• “If you can get players, if you can build relationships with guys it, it sets everything else up.”
• “The ability to identify people who are going to be a good fit at your program is so important for that ability to retain them.”
• “We want our guys to be involved in stuff outside of just basketball.”
• “If you can establish a role for a guy and show them what success is going to look like for them as opposed to walking in somebody else’s shoes, I think that goes a long way.”
• “We love you enough to tell you the truth.”
• The opportunity to coach one season at Carnegie Mellon
• The uniqueness of the UAA as a D3 conference
• “You don’t have to compromise the academics or the basketball side of things.”
• The recruiting process at a high academic school like Emory
• Why the full time position at Juniata appealed to him
• “Defense is where team basketball begins.”
• Learning what it takes to run a program during his three seasons at Juniata
• Finding a peer group of coaches you can talk with and bounce ideas off of
• The contrast in styles between Juniata and Emory and how that helped him grow as a coach
• “We’re very easy to scout, but we’re really hard to play against.”
• “Things can be simple, but really hard to do.”
• Staying power and the ability to show up, every time
• Developing program leaders
• Some leadership keys – The ability to have guys trust you and understand that your intentions are for the team and to leave the jersey in a better place than where you found it.
• Are you a fountain or a drain?
• “Actions speak louder than words when it comes to leadership.”

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THANKS, JACOB FLEEGLE

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JACOB FLEEGLE – EMORY UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 814

[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 the assistant men’s basketball coach at Emory University in Atlanta. Jacob Fleegle. Jacob, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod. Thanks for

having

[00:00:15] Jacob Fleegle: Thanks for having me, Mike. I appreciate it.

[00:00:17] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely.  Excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all the things that you’ve been able to do in your career. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about some of your first memories of the game of basketball.

[00:00:28] Jacob Fleegle: Sure. Yeah. I think my first memory was kind of organized hoop was in third grade.

I went to a basketball camp that kind of a family back home that was like the basketball family all their kids played hoops growing up and they ended up running a camp every year for kids and trying to obviously build the game in a pretty rural, small town where hoops wasn’t really super popular.

It was more of a football type place. And I just remember going to camp in third grade. I honestly don’t even think I wanted to go, if I remember correctly. But I went anyways. My parents put me in the car and took me. And next thing I knew I couldn’t wait to go back the next day. And really started to look up to a guy, Drew who his mom was the one that ran it.

And then his dad was the high school coach at the time. But Drew was phenomenal. Went on to play at Sacred Heart University and then overseas in Germany for a while. But I was his, I ended up being the water boy on all high school teams and kind of following up through and he was kind that initial guy that really lit the me.

[00:01:30] Mike Klinzing: You never got hooked on football?

[00:01:32] Jacob Fleegle: I didn’t. No, I didn’t. Middle school and hoop was it .

[00:01:41] Mike Klinzing: Gotcha. All right, so as you’re getting into your high school career and you’re getting a little bit older and you’re taking the game a little bit more seriously, and obviously we’ll talk a little bit about you going on to be a college player as well, what do you remember about what you used to do to improve your game?

Were you playing a lot of pickup? Were you were working with a trainer? Were you working out on your own? What was your process for becoming a better player?

[00:02:02] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, there you know, growing up in Jenners town, Pennsylvania, population of maybe five, 600 people there wasn’t really much basketball being played.

It was really me just at my house there, there was a small playground. Just down the road that I walked through and just kind of me and a ball. And I think that was, that was good and bad in that obviously you’d like to be able to play with other guys, play pickup, play three on three, four and 4, 5, 5, whatever the case may be.

But I do think there’s something special about being able to have yourself and a ball and a hoop and use your imagination and your creativity. Certainly let you get up a lot of shots on your own. And a lot of rebounds with that too. So there wasn’t, yeah, there wasn’t really much pickup to be played.

It was more myself. And then like I mentioned before, I had Drew there look up in the summer, older work with.

For me developmentally going up through middle school and high school was the AAU that I played. And my dad actually started an AAU organization kind of in our area because if anyone around wanted to play AAU or wanted to get travel ball, you had to drive hour and a half to Pittsburgh.

But that’s obviously hard to do with a family two or three times a week to practice and then tournaments on the weekend. So my dad ended up starting team which ended up turning into about, I think at its peak when he was running it, he had like 10 different teams and everybody coaching for him.

And to my knowledge, he never made a dime off it. He just did it for all the kids in the area that really wanted to, to get into basketball and really wanted to you know, get better and have that opportunity. And threw that a bunch of his players, both boys and girls ended up playing college basketball because it that pretty special.

[00:03:46] Mike Klinzing: That’s pretty cool. Who was the first gm? Was it you or your dad?

[00:03:48] Jacob Fleegle: If you would asked me then it would’ve been me, but cause I was the one picking out the jersey colors and everything, but Alright, GM.

[00:03:56] Mike Klinzing: Ok, I gotcha. It’s funny because now I’m a lot older than you, but back when I played there was very little, I don’t even know if we called it AAU at the time, but I was the GM and I just picked up, I’m like, okay, who are the best kids in the surrounding communities around me?

And my dad ended up coaching our team, but I kind of served as the, I think when we started the team, maybe I was, man, I might have been 14 or something, 15, so I was a 14 or 15 year old GM just calling people up, trying to wheel and deal and get people to play on our team. Yeah, back in the day, that was when there was, like in the whole city of Cleveland, Ohio, there was maybe two teams.

There was one from like the west side of town that was ours. And then there was another team kind of from the east side of town and completely different landscape than. What it is now, but that’s pretty cool that you and your dad were able to put that thing together and obviously gave you a great opportunity, but also gave some other kids in your area that, as you said, would’ve had to previously travel and maybe had that be out of reach for them to be able to, to be able to do that.

Is your dad’s not still doing that anymore?

[00:04:58] Jacob Fleegle: He’s not, no. He ran it up through, up till Covid and then insurance costs, then it was harder to find Yeah. Kids to play and coaches and so it has kind of fallen off since, but he ran it, I mean, probably when I was in seventh grade we started and he, so he would’ve run it for 12 this year, 10 to 12 years, somewhere in there.

[00:05:17] Mike Klinzing: That’s cool. What’s your dad, what’s your dad do for a real living?

[00:05:20] Jacob Fleegle: He is a production supervisor at Lockheed Martin, actually in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

[00:05:26] Mike Klinzing: Nice. So, yeah, so he’s a junkie?

[00:05:29] Jacob Fleegle: On the side he’s an official ever since the AAU organization kind of took a back seat. He’s gotten really into high school officiating the past couple years.

[00:05:41] Mike Klinzing: Good for him, man. Cause we need more people that’ll of ate. I know. I give, look, I would never, ever in a million years want to be an official, but I am thankful that there are people out there that want to take the abuse and do what it takes in order to, to be an official. Because that, as you well know, is a thankless job.

So kudos to your dad for wanting to do that.

[00:05:59] Jacob Fleegle: Absolutely. And we live, or my family lives in a pretty rural area as I mentioned before. So he’s they’re traveling half hour, sometimes 45 minutes to games just to officiate. So it’s definitely a job, but appreciate the people that do it.

[00:06:15] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. All right. Tell me about your favorite memory from being a high school basketball player.

[00:06:19] Jacob Fleegle: Oh, that’s a good one. We had, we were fortunate. You know, like I said, basketball wasn’t necessarily the, the main sport round, but there were a lot of good athletes football players and some baseball players and everything.

So we had a really good high school team that was primarily made up of multi-sport athletes. Now I think I might have been the only, there was probably me and one other guy were the only kind of true just basketball guys. But we were fortunate to win a lot of games. And you know, the kind the way it’s set up back home is you have your conference championship and your district championship.

So you, you chance for eight total times, cutting the nets down. I think of the 8, 5 8 during my four years. You know, so we, we were fortunate enough to cut a lot of nets down and I think I still have those in a box in my parents’ house. Nice. Somewhere nice. There you go. So I just, those memories with my team and, and being able to have that success and kind of do it together.

So that was great.

[00:07:14] Mike Klinzing: When did college basketball get on your radar? Was that something that you thought about from the time that you were a little kid or was it something that became more of a reality as you were kind of out in the AAU scene and, and getting exposed to it? Or just when did you decide, or when did you know that you really wanted to play college basketball?

[00:07:31] Jacob Fleegle: I think I’ve always really had an affinity for college hoop. I never was super interested in the NBA, to be honest with you. I’ve only probably since I graduated college and got into coaching, have I, but I was fascinated by college hoop.

Freshman year of high school. And I didn’t play a ton. We had a really good team, didn’t play a ton as freshman. But just that I was going all the camps and it’s hoop group Now or was the camp at the time and is the camp now more so than five star at that has was gone by the wayside a little bit, but I started going to camps and really obviously that that AAU opportunity and just playing against really good players and it so I think once I got into high school and had a year or two of playing pretty high level basketball and AAU was that’s when it really started hitting me that, man, this could be a reality.

Like I think I have the ability to do this and that would be pretty cool.

[00:08:27] Mike Klinzing: How much familiarity did you have with the process of recruiting and choosing a school and the different levels and what was going to be a good fit for you or were you kind of going in flying blindly?

[00:08:41] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, we were flying blindly.

I have an older brother and he played basketball but he, it was never as much of a passion for him as it is for me. So he played on the high school team, but he was never trying to play in college or anything, so it was really pretty new to myself and my family.

And we had, had interest at all levels you know, going through the process. So feeling it out and kind of going through and figuring out where to visit and everything it, it was definitely, it was definitely eyeopening. I certainly in hindsight I don’t think I was prepared for it time, but you figure it out as you go a little bit,

[00:09:15] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely.  What do you remember in terms of your criteria for what was important to you when you think back to yourself as a 17, 18 year old kid?

[00:09:26] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think for me a place that academically was good. You know, I certainly, I wanted to, to know that I was going to be able to do everything I wanted to do post-college and you know, after those four years, cause I knew I wasn’t an NBA player maybe, maybe play a year or two after college, which didn’t end up panning out, and that’s fine.

But I never, never thought that I was going to be a professional basketball player. So I think I was really looking for a place to kind of set me up for those four years. Honestly, at the time I didn’t realize that it would be for college coaching, but as it has played out. But then for me, my faith is important for me.

And so having a place where, where it didn’t necessarily have to Christian college you know, Waynesburg is but just somewhere that I could explore that a little bit and get a little deeper. And then, The lastly was the connection that I felt with the team and the coach. You know, whatever school was recruiting me, that was pretty much how I based, the visits that I took were those conversations that I had with coaches.

And that relationship that we had started to build.

[00:10:33] Mike Klinzing: What relation or what things that you went through and your own experiences have helped you as you start thinking about the recruiting process now, on the other end of it, as a coach, when you’re trying to talk with kids and trying to talk with families, what are some things that you learned along the way in your own experience that you think you can now share with the people that you’re recruiting or the kids that you’re recruiting?

[00:10:55] Jacob Fleegle:  Yeah, I think the sooner that you can identify what are those two or three keys that that you’re looking for the better obviously the smoother your process is going to be. You know, it’s a question that I ask our recruits now early on in the process when I’m talking to him or you know, what are the two or three things that you’re going to base your decision on?

And then we go about evaluating if that checks a box for us or if, if we have to say no or if they have to say no. And that’s fine, we understand it. And I think the earlier you can have those transparent conversations the better off you’re going to be.

[00:11:34] Mike Klinzing: When you don’t want to waste either sides time, right. It’s a matter of exactly. Hey, is it a good fit for us as the school on that end of it? And then conversely, for the player, when you start looking at a school, you don’t want to spend a bunch of time at a place that you’re probably not going to end up going for whatever your own reasons may or may not be.

You mentioned a second ago that you maybe didn’t plan to get into coaching, or that wasn’t your thought when you went to school. What did you first think of in terms of a career when you went to school, what were you thinking about besides getting an opportunity maybe to play after you were done? What were you thinking about from an academic standpoint?

[00:12:07] Jacob Fleegle: I went into college thinking I was going to be a high school teacher and maybe coach some high school basketball. And then as I got into the process, like I said, college basketball, and then as I got into the process and you know, coach Chrisner, who I played for at Waynesburg, he and I, to this day, he’s one of my closest mentors and a really good friend now.

He started talking to me about well, do I have interest in college coaching maybe? And I ended up going to vcu before my, the summer between my junior and senior year, I ended up going to vcu and work camp with the assistant coach.

My eyes were opened and it was one of the coolest experiences ever that I could think of at that time. And you know, I met a couple other friends who were working their first camp and to this day we still all keep in touch and have built pretty good friendships. And so I think kind of just over my four years and then I came back from that camp saying, okay, well how do I go about getting into college coaching?

And then ultimately I do a GA position, was fortunate to have my masters paid for and begin my coaching career and then kind of move up through the ranks that way.

[00:13:16] Mike Klinzing: What was it like for you transitioning from playing to coaching and you also get to do it at the school where you just got done as a student athlete?

So that adds, I don’t know, another interesting wrinkle in that, okay, you went from being a player in the program to now suddenly you’re on. The other side of it. And a lot of guys that you played with are still part of the team, so just obviously you were excited, you knew that was a direction that you felt you wanted to go after having the camp experience, just kind of really starting to have your eyes opened, as you said, to what it would mean to coaching college.

But what do you remember about the transition from playing to coaching?

[00:13:51] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, I think it was a little bit unique like you said, given that I stayed at my alma mater to start coaching. So I had those relationships already. You have to kind of set some different boundaries with those relationships.

You know, some of my best friends still on the team and I just can’t hang out with them. I can’t go over to their, to their house and hang out anytime I want, or they can’t come over on the weekends whatever the case may be. But you, you still obviously you value those relationships and they’re important from a personal standpoint and a, a coaching and professional standpoint.

So you have to set other boundaries. You know, I was a captain for a couple years at Waynesburg.

There was a little bit of that feeling of respect that had already been established throughout my playing career. That certainly helped as I moved into that coaching role after I graduated. And I also think Coach Chrisner giving me opportunities to be on the court kind of teaching and coaching right away and, and being in the mix right away and not just off to the side or charting anything.

That was really, really important cause guys have to see me in that light and see me in a new role, in a coach setting. And I think that helped with that as well.

[00:15:03] Mike Klinzing: How long did it take you to go from the player coach relationship to more of a coach, to coach colleague relationship with your head coach?

Because I know that obviously when you’re playing for somebody and they’re your head coach, there’s one relationship and then. It clearly has to change in some way, but I know that as a player and as somebody who has made their life now in coaching, that we always have a ton of respect, right? For the people that coached us.

And I’m, whatever, 53 years old now, and I still see a high school coach that I had, or I see a college coach, and I still call him coach. It’s not like I’m suddenly calling him by their first name, just because of the way that relationship was. But obviously for you, that changed. So what was the transition like there in terms of your relationship with Coach Chrisner?

[00:15:56] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. I mean, he’ll always be coach to me. His number is still in my phone as Coach Chris. It’ll always stay that way. But I think the relationship we had as a player, we, I was part of his first recruiting class at Waynesburg and he inherited a program that hadn’t won very many games before he got there, Waynesburg was a pretty big NAIA power back, I believe in the eighties. You know, made it to some final fours had some nice runs, but there was never really as they transitioned to division three, there was never a really much division three success to that point.

So I think going through that process with him and being part of a group over that four years that kind of turned the program around a little bit. You know, those bonds were pretty deep and pretty special. And I think it was a little bit different than some of my classmates who as they graduate and they move on I was with Coach every single day then in the office for two more years, and my classmates had moved.

So I think our relationship. Changed quicker than a lot of my classmates which was interesting just talking to them and that dynamic. But I don’t think it took very long. You know, he’s been a, he’s been a phenomenal mentor to me and has helped me even as I’ve moved on from Waynesburg and now he’s at Calvin coaching the women’s team at Calvin.

We talk all the time and he’s still a big part of my life and my coaching life as well.

[00:17:22] Mike Klinzing: What part of coaching in those first two years as a GA did you take to right away that you thought, Hey, I feel like I have some natural ability in this area, or this feels like something that I can be really good at?

And then I’ll ask you the second part of the question. What was maybe a little bit harder or something that you maybe weren’t as prepared for as you thought? So something that came naturally and then maybe something that you had to work a little bit harder at?

[00:17:46] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. I think what came. Pretty naturally to me was just building relationships in general.

Because I had so much pride in Waynesburg and I wanted us to be so good. And so as you know, we brought guys to campus and as we started getting the guys in the gym in October and all that stuff that was all easy for me to talk about Waynesburg. And it was cause it was so fresh.

Obviously I just graduated. But one of the things I did as a GA that I think was invaluable is I just found, I started to really dive into kind of the national scene of division three basketball. I’ve always been attracted to division three. I want to be a division three head coach someday. But I really wanted to get division basketball and over in the off season. I just emailed some of the coaches, some of the head coaches, assistant coaches, some got back to me, some didn’t. And I was just can I pick your brain for 10 minutes on the phone? Can I meet for lunch? I’m going to be out next week. Know May. And, and I was just to find are the common threads.

And one of my favorite questions to ask is, what makes a good assistant what are you looking for in a good assistant coach? And the resounding response I got was the ability to recruit. If you can get players, if you can build relationships with guys it, it sets everything else up. So I really I decided that was, I was going to make that my thing.

And I wanted to be a really good recruiter. And to do that, I think you need to be able to build relationships. You have to really know the school that you’re working at you know, the academic standard, the fit piece, what you’re actually looking for on the basketball program from a basketball standpoint all those things that go into it.

I just decided that that was what I was going to try to do. And again, I think it tied into the relational side of things.

[00:19:39] Mike Klinzing: Alright. Let me ask you this about the recruiting side of it. Cause I think that one of the things that’s interesting is obviously at each institution where you coach, there are different parameters, things that you’re looking for, whether that’s the academics, whether that’s the style of play, whether that’s the personality of the head coach.

So at each of your different stops where you’ve been, how long did it take you to build a feel for the type of player that was going to have success in that program? So, as you’re having conversations, obviously with your head coach, You’re looking and coaching the players that are already in the program, how long does it take before you feel like, okay, I got a really solid feel of what types of players and individuals and students we need at this particular school?

[00:20:29] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, I don’t know that it’s necessarily a specific time. I think there’s always a baseline level of athleticism and skill. You know, I was now in my eighth year, just finished my eighth year division three coaching. I feel like I understand that baseline level of, of athleticism and skill, but I think that the details of what for example, junior out of college where I was before I came down to Emory stylistically it was it was a tough kind of blue collar defend, rebound we’re going to run motion offense and make you guard.

And so understanding the intricacies of that and the details and kind of the mentality that guys have to have and that specific fit it, it probably does take a. Feel like you know, what’s going on. But you know, like I said, there’s definitely a baseline that you can tell and you can see right away.

But to really understand it and to understand the school retention is so big right now. Obviously with the transfer portal, it’s as easy as it’s ever been to transfer. Yep. And especially with the state of a lot of small colleges you know, financially post covid retention is, is huge on everybody’s on everybody’s mind.

And so the ability to identify people who are going to be a good fit at your program is so important for that ability to retain them.

[00:21:48] Mike Klinzing: When you think about retention, obviously the first move there is to get the right people in the door so that there’s not as much of, they’re not looking for the grass being greener on the other side of it.

That’s a part of it. But what do you guys talk about? Like what do you and Coach Zimmerman talk about when it comes to making sure that you can retain your guys? When I, when I think about retaining, I think about two, like two scenarios where you have a kid who’s a really excelling early, maybe as a freshman or sophomore, and that kid’s going to potentially get an opportunity to go and maybe play at a higher level.

That’s one category. And then I guess the other category would be the kid who maybe comes in as a freshman, doesn’t play as much as they thought, but you guys feel like, Hey, this kid can be in a really important part of our program in the years ahead. But maybe that kid’s down because they didn’t play as much as they anticipated or that much as they thought they should have as a freshman.

And then those are other kids that sometimes leave. So what’s the conversation like when you start talking about trying to keep your roster together? What do you guys talk about?

[00:22:46] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, it, for me, it gets to the complete student athlete experience. You know, how are they doing socially what clubs, what other activities on campus are they in?

You know, we want our guys to be involved in stuff outside of just basketball. You know, we obviously don’t want them to be involved in everything under it because at some point you’re going to be stretched too thin. But I think, yeah, I think that balance is important. Then the academic piece are you having success academically?

You know, are you doing well in your classes? Are you in the major that you want to get into? You know, for example, did you get into the business school after your sophomore year at Emory? That’s a big thing for business majors here. And then obviously the basketball side of things. Well, and the biggest part of.

Is being truthful and honest with guys and establishing a role. If you can establish a role for a guy and show them what success is going to look like for them as opposed to walking in somebody else’s shoes, I think that goes a long way. And it helps, it helps establish expectations for the player as well.

[00:23:49] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. That truth telling is, I think, critical. Yeah. When you start talking about making sure that guys are on the same page and not that, obviously you can tell guys what they want to hear or the old saying, you can tell them what they need to hear. Yeah. Which is the truth. And I think that ultimately, even if a player is hearing something that they don’t necessarily love what they’re hearing, they still appreciate hearing the truth as opposed to somebody who tries to sugarcoat it and kind of dance around.

Well, hey, this is maybe it’ll work and maybe you’ll end up being a instead you just, Hey, this is where we see you, this is where it’s at, and if you want to change that, here’s what you can do in order to be able to do that. And I think players, even though they don’t always love to hear that truth, I think ultimately everybody’s a lot happier in the long run when the truth comes out early in the process as opposed to kind of stringing people along.

[00:24:42] Jacob Fleegle: Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think I like to think about like, we love you enough to tell you the truth, right?

[00:24:49] Mike Klinzing: Yep. That’s a great way to say it. After your experience at Waynesburg, you go to Carnegie Mellon. How does that happen?

[00:24:55] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. I certainly feel like Coach Christner and being at Waynesburg for those two years really prepared me.

I was ready, obviously I had to move was coaching an aau team at time in Pittsburgh. I in between jobs coaching aau, I think I had, I had the 16 and under team and I was helping out and team. We had lot of really good players, lot scholarship level guys on teams. And we always practiced together.

And Jeff Van Gorder was the assistant at Carnegie Mellon at the time. And he was recruiting two of the guys on the 17 and under team and came to one of our practices. I had never met Jeff before. He came to practice and I just started talking to him afterwards. You know, ended up asking him, do you know of any jobs?

I just finished my GA job looking for that next step. And he said, actually, we have a job that’s getting ready to be posted. Are you interested?

[00:25:48] Mike Klinzing: You bet, right place, right time. I like it, Jacob.

[00:25:51] Jacob Fleegle: So that was kind start of it and then obviously interviewed for it, the whole process and ended up at Carnegie Mellon with Jeff and Coach Wingen for one season.

And it was really good. I learned, I got a lot of perspective in that year. Kind of learned about the high academic world. You know, Carnegie Mellon is, is certainly one of the highest academic and schools. And so understanding what it takes. What does it look like to be a good fit at Carnegie Mellon?

And it really opened my eyes to the high academic side and to the uaa. You know, I remember being in Coach Kris’s office as my time at Waynesburg was wrapping up and we were trying to figure out what was going to be next, and he asked me what I want to do? I said I’d love to be an assistant in the uaa.

And now here we’re fast forward six years later, I’m on my second. Great. It’s a special conference and a lot of really good schools and really good coaches.

[00:26:45] Mike Klinzing: Talk a little bit about the conference. I know we’ve had a number of different coaches, obviously Coach Zimmerman’s been on a couple times with us, but just talk a little bit about what makes the league so special and why, when you were thinking about maybe where you wanted to end up, why the UAA is so special.

[00:27:00] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. I mean, first I think you just look at the, the schools it’s made up of a lot of high academic kind of research based institutions. You know, a lot of some of the best minds and I think being around those type of people and, and high achievers kind of pushes you to be better yourself and certainly the coaches at those schools and the league does too.

But I also think if you look at the track record of division three and the history and you know, a lot of the top programs in the top 25 there’s a lot of UAA schools that kind of fit that mold and have had a ton of success. And yeah, just wanted to be among the best that you can be in division three.

You know, certainly every conference in the country has teams that can compete at a really, really high level. But it was the UAA and certainly the travel the way we travel is special for division three. You know, we’re flying to, to a lot of cool cities and getting to have a lot of really, really fun experiences and meaningful experiences for our guys.

And I think that’s a big part of it as well.

[00:28:02] Mike Klinzing: What’s the best part? Now you’ve been at two places that are high academic. What’s the best part of coaching players from those types of institutions? What do you like about coaching the guys that can get in and then are thriving in those high academic institutions?

[00:28:22] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. I think a lot of the guys at those schools really challenge you to be a better coach. You know, they’re guys who always want to know more and want know why. Sometimes to a fault they want to know too much. Sometimes I don’t, just because I said so, but they’re insightful guys.

They’re really good guys. They want to be good and they want to do it at a high level. You don’t have to compromise the academics or the basketball side of things. At Emory, that’s one of the things we talk about. You know, you can do both at a really high level.

And I think. Those are two things that are really important to me. And so being around 15, 16 other guys who are all on that same page and working towards a common goal is really special.

[00:29:09] Mike Klinzing: From a recruiting standpoint. When you think about the trying to get players at those types of schools, so at Carnegie Mellon, at Emory, what do you, I know when we talked to Zimmerman and we talked to David Sloan, who is at Carnegie Mellon, just the fact that you have to first start with the academic side of it.

So just talk about what the process looks like there at Emory and how you guys go about first identifying the prospects that you can even put on your radar.

[00:29:37] Jacob Fleegle: Sure, yeah. It’s a little bit more front end work than some other division three schools.

An AAU tournament or a camp and just try to build a pool of guys. Usually if we’re out at those events, we have a group of guys that we know have the grades, they fit what we’re looking for in this class and we want to see them in person to be able to evaluate them. So I think the front end work of doing my research, talking to high school and AAU coaches certainly we get a lot of emails from a lot of high academic players.

So vetting those out, watching highlights and connecting with those guys and getting their schedules and then figuring out our schedule based on where those guys are going to be, as opposed to just picking a schedule where we think will yield the best and going to those events and sitting down and starting to watch.

So it’s a little bit different process. The pool size is definitely smaller. You know, the total number of guys we’re recruiting, it’s smaller. But it’s just different. I don’t know that it’s better or worse than Juniata, Carnegie Mellon, Waynesburg. It’s just different.

[00:30:47] Mike Klinzing: What’s interesting is like, I’m looking at your roster and I see Texas, Ohio, Maryland, Arizona, Tennessee, California, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Florida, you guys are all over the place.

So that begs the question of, all right, so you start to identify people, whether that’s through recommendations from high school coaches, AAU coaches, people that you’ve built relationships with. Your budget is obviously not unlimited to be able to fly across the country to be able to see all these guys.

So how do you go about narrowing it down? I know that a lot of schools in the high academics in the Northeast, they’ll go and maybe go to Yale’s camp or they’ll go to Cornell’s and their elite camp to be able to see. Players all in one place that have kind of been vetted already academically. Is there anything like that that you guys do to be able to identify players or just talk a little bit more about how you go through that entire process?

Like once you’re like, okay, this is a kid that we really would like, how do you make sure that you’re seeing them enough to make a good judgment on them?

[00:31:48] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, we do. We also go to to a lot of the Ivy and Patriot League elite camps. You know, that’s certainly a place where we’re going to probably have the best chance of yielding guys from, just again, because the academics that most of the guys that are there are want the high academic profile schools.

We’re also fortunate being in Atlanta, a lot of events in July, especially come to Atlanta on one of the two live weekends. So we see a ton of guys during that that July recruiting period as well. But as we work through that pool of guys, in that list of guys after we identify the academic fit, it usually comes down to one of the assistants on our staff seeing them either at one of those camps or we go to an AAU tournament or whatever the case may be.

And then we kind of narrow it down even more. Coach Zimmerman gets the list of five to 10 guys and, and he’s going to see these guys by the end of summer. You know, whether that’s making a trip out west to California for something for a West Coast Elite event, or maybe he’s going up to the event that’s happening at the end of June whatever the case may be.

Once we have the list. There’s a handful of guys that are going to be our priority guys as coaches. We make sure that he’s getting a chance to see them in person as much as possible. You know, certainly he can’t quite see everybody usually, but we are typically able to get most of those guys in front of him in one way or shape or form.

And then at the fall, as guys get back to campus, we start hosting visits and kind of again, we have to, at that point we have to figure out who are the priority guys. Cause when we get guys to campus, we usually yield pretty well. So we have to make sure that we’re getting the right guys at the right time to campus.

[00:33:30] Mike Klinzing: How many usually bring on to campus in any given year?

[00:33:33] Jacob Fleegle: Probably in that five to 10 range. It depends on how big of a class we’re recruiting right at the time. But usually it’s, it’s probably in that five to 10 range. And it’s a lot different. When I was at Juniata, the three years before I came down to Emory, we were having 25 to 30 visits.

Yielding 6, 7, 8. You know, we carried a little bit bigger of a bigger of a roster there. And we’re recruiting a larger number of guys. So again, it kind of goes back to, I don’t think it’s better or worse. It’s just a different process to go through.

[00:34:03] Mike Klinzing: All right. Going from Carnegie Mellon to Juniata, tell me about that transition and the what, where, why.

[00:34:11] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. So Greg Curley, the head coach of Juniata, actually recruited me when I was in high school. So I had known him for a little while. And you know, Juniata is in central PA a little over an hour from where I grew up. So I had a lot of familiarity with it. And I was friends with their assistant coach at the time who’s now the head coach at State College High School and Brian Hawley.

And he, as a lot of times what happens in the coaching world, he sends me a text that said, Hey, I’m, I’m probably getting this high school job would you be interested in coming to. And I said, yeah, absolutely. You know, at the time at Carnegie Mellon I was part-time but I was working it as full-time as possible.

I actually was using my teaching degree. I taught three classes in the morning at a local high school in Pittsburgh, and then was driving over to campus getting there at lunchtime and spending the rest of the day there. You know, kind of just figuring it out financially until I could get a full-time assistant job and then

[00:35:08] Mike Klinzing: Full-time work for part-time pay.  I never heard of that before.

[00:35:10] Jacob Fleegle: Never. That’s a novelty in the college basketball world. But yeah, so the opportunity to go to junior be pretty close to home recruit a lot of the high schools that I grew up playing against and a ton of really good relationships with those coaches and. And then, like I said being able to, to get a full-time assistant job you know, all those things.

I had a really, really good experience at Carnegie Mellon and loved working for Coach Wingen and with Jeff. But it was kind of one of those things that I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go take the job at Juniata whenever I got offered it.

[00:35:48] Mike Klinzing: Alright. As you’re going through these first three experiences, so Waynesburg, Carnegie Mellon, Juniata, what are you developing as, I don’t want to know if I want to say your specialty, but what are you learning on the basketball side of it?

What’s an area, Xs and os, Ys or just on the basketball floor that you felt like you were particularly drawn to or something that you really enjoyed? Diving deeper into offense, defense, something in particular that really you started to feel like, hey, this is kind of where I’m going to butter my bread and my career going forward, if that question makes sense.

[00:36:22] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, it does. Honestly, before I got the Juniata, I don’t know that I had that I think I was still trying to figure that out. You know, as a GA you just kind of, I was thrown into it and trying to figure it out. Didn’t really know other than the place that we ran four years and then Carnegie Mellon I really, like I said, that, that year gave me a ton of perspective, especially on the recruiting side of things.

And I was pretty involved in the offense and the dribble drive offense that we installed there. But really once I got the Juniata I was drawn to the defensive side of the ball. You know, I mentioned before, that’s kind of defend and rebound. To guard a team for 30 seconds and then not even get a shot off was like, whenever we had those possessions, it was like a thing of beauty. They have a saying at Juniata defense is where team basketball begins. Big sign up in the locker room and that was something that really stuck out to me then, and that I was drawn to.

You’re going to sacrifice to defend, you’re going to sacrifice for your teammates on the defensive end of the floor. It’s hard to be a good basketball team if you’re going to be selfish defensively. You’re just going to watch blown by and be like, man guard. Well, no, you, you can step up and help and we’ll rotate.

We’ll figure this out together. And so that’s, that’s something that you know, I’ve taken with me. I really, really love the defensive side of the ball. You know, ever since those three years.

[00:37:48] Mike Klinzing: It’s super interesting to hear you say that. Prior to leaving Waynesburg, it’s kind of like you knew Waynesburg.

Right. And I would say that when I got my first coaching job and I was coaching a JV high school team, my, I think it was my first year, no, my second year out of school. And I remember that basically I ran my practices and I did what my high school coach did and I did what my college coach did. And that was pretty much it.

And I always say that one of the things that I regret, looking back on it now, is I just didn’t, now the resources that I would’ve been had had available to me would’ve been a lot smaller than you have today. Obviously, when I was. Coaching at that point, that was like 1993, 94. So it wasn’t like people weren’t looking up stuff on YouTube and be able to get access to film and all the stuff that we have available to us now.

But one of the things I regret is I just kind of went with the things that I already knew and I didn’t really get exposed to a whole lot of stuff that was different from just what I experienced as a, as a player. And so for you to be able to go through these different stops and to be able to pick stuff up along the way from the coaches that you were able to pick things up from, and just as you said, kind of develop and find your voice and find your specialty, your expertise, your thing that was going to be the most important to you as you continued on in your coaching career, I think that that’s really being able to sort of diversify your knowledge is something that as a young coach is super important.

It sounds like that’s what was able to happen for you at Juta and just be able to get out on the floor when you think about. Roles. How did you define, or how did your head coach there sort of define roles for the staff? Were you just a jack of all trades? Did they have, how did he divide?

Obviously the division three level, you don’t have a huge staff. Just what was, what were your responsibilities like there?

[00:39:36] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. He coached Curly at the time was also the athletic director there. So I did a lot, actually, I had a lot on my plate. So, and then we also had, we had a part-time assistant as well who was an alum.

He was a really good player for us. And then joined the staff after he had graduated, he stayed in the area and joined the staff and it was great having him and his ability to relate to the guys and they knew where he was coming from cause he was in it before they were in their shoes.

So that was, that was the makeup of our staff. I had a lot going on there with Coach Curley being the ad and you know, I was. He promoted me to associate head coach for my third season there whenever I was there. Because of that, and he mentioned in my interview that this is, you’re going to be ready to be head coach after this job.

And I think that’s the case and I hope someday to be fortunate to have my own team, but that was, I kind of really embraced that and dove into it everything from all the scouting reports, recruiting coordinator you know, setting up camps and running camps, being the camp director in the summer alumni relations doing, organizing the alumni game, getting everything set up.

And it was I saw that as an opportunity to just dive in and see every side of it not just the Xs and Os and not just at practice and really truly get a full behind the scenes look at everything. I was also there during Covid, before Covid and then during Covid, and then right.

Atlanta. So we, we actually took that that summer whenever everything was shut down and we hopped on a Zoom call, the three of us, and we would talk for hours and we kind of tore the whole program apart and put it back together and figured out what we wanted to keep doing and what we were going to change.

And you know, I think that just gave me a, a really, really good look at, at what it takes to kind of run a program, what it takes to you know, put everything together, make sure everything works together and really just break everything down.

[00:41:34] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that wide ranging view I think is something that we’ve talked to a lot of guys about.

When you get an opportunity not just to do things on the floor, it’s interesting when you look at the perspective between like division three versus division one. Division one, where you have a huge staff and you might have somebody who starts out as an ops or they’re in the video room, but whatever it may be, and they’re not getting an opportunity to coach on the floor and they’re kind of just.

In their lane, but they’re at the division one level. And then conversely, you have guys like yourself that start out at the division three level, you’re a ga, then you’re a part-time. But in those experiences, you’re getting to touch all these different aspects of the program, not just as you said, the Xs and Os, but you’re getting a look at like, okay, fundraising and budgeting and travel and scheduling and all these other things that if you’re eventually, if your goal is to be a head coach, especially at the division three level, those are things that you’re going to have to do that are going to be on your plate eventually as a division three head coach.

And I think that everybody we talked to, and it sounds like you feel the same way, who had that kind of experience, feels like that really did a great job of preparing them for, as you described, your ultimate eventual opportunity to be a head coach. And I think when you get those experiences, it just really lends itself to.

You improving and just getting an idea of, hey, this is what it’s going to take to eventually become a head coach. Sounds like that’s exactly how you feel.

[00:42:59] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, it’s and I think having those experiences there, but also at Carnegie Mellon and Waynesburg, and now at Emory, I think if I am lucky enough to have my own program someday, I think all four coaches that I’ve worked for would be able to look at my program and see a little bit of theirs right in what I do.

At least I hope they would be able to see it. Otherwise, I’m not doing a very good job. But I’ve absolutely taken stuff from each one of those stops and things that I like, things that I don’t like, and kind of how you mold it and shape it into what you want it to be. But I’ve been very fortunate to work for four really, really good bosses.

[00:43:37] Mike Klinzing: How are you keeping track of all that stuff that you’ve learned, both in terms of the things you want to do, the things you don’t want to do, you have a notebook, you got a Google Drive. What are you using to kind of sort of put together your coaching portfolio, for lack of a better way of saying it?

[00:43:48] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. That’s actually kind of a little bit of a summer project for me.

Coach Zimmerman is a huge Excel guy. Everything that we do is on Microsoft Excel. But one of the things that I’ve taken from him is he kind of has this master plan. Then it has different tabs at the bottom for different without giving away too much of Coach Zimmerman’s secrets.

There’s it has different tabs for a press conference. This is recruiting, this is defense philosophy. This is baseline out of bounds plays this and it’s just this master plan and, and he updates it with dos, things he likes goes back and edits and changes. And so that’s something that I’m in the process of trying to formulate and organize for myself. I have a lot of Word documents right now just saved in a folder from each of the schools that I’ve worked at of things I like things I want. And I think one thing that that’s really important too, along with that is just reading. I have a huge folder that anytime I find an article that I really like I just print it out.

As I read over it, I might highlight something, might underline something, whatever but I just print it out and put it in that folder. And then from time to time if I have some time in the office, I’ll just pull out the folder and read one of the articles and see what sticks out. I might jog my memory.

It might be, oh man, I actually don’t agree with that now. You know, it, it’s a way to kind of challenge yourself to think about things. Do you have a

[00:45:11] Mike Klinzing: Do you have a go-to source where you go to read?

[00:45:12] Jacob Fleegle: I really like the Athletic. It’s a subscription but I think it’s like six or $7 a month or something.

I think it’s worth it. You know, the ability to kind of customize it and get your favorite teams, but also they do a lot of like you know, business, athletic business and athletic culture. And there’s a lot of really different really good different articles on there that you can, that you can kind of customize it to what you’re looking for.

[00:45:35] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s great to be able to have resources and like I said, when you think about what we have today coaching us as podcast hosts, the things that we can read and see and look at and just. Be able to pick up knowledge. It’s so much easier now than it’s ever been when you just think about the variety of sources from books to magazines to websites to podcasts, to the ability to just go on, and whether it’s huddle at the high school level, or synergy at the college level, or whatever service people are using.

I mean, it’s just, if you want to get better, there’s certainly opportunities to be able to do that. The information is out there. And then I think that the question that we just touched on is how do you curate all that stuff into something that isn’t overwhelming, but that you can actually refer to and reference and sort of build out what you want to be and who you want to be as a coach?

Because I’ve said this a bunch of times on the podcast, there’s lots of times where I’ll find something like, oh, that’s really cool, and I’ll write it down, or I’ll save it. But then you also have to have a system, not just for writing it down and saving it, but also going back and. Reviewing it and deciding, like you said, is this something that I still believe could work?

Is this something that’s relevant to my team or my situation right now? Or is it something that you get rid of? It’s one thing to grab something and put it in a Word document or grab something and make a copy of it, but then it’s another thing altogether to be able to implement it. And I think it, the combination of being organized, but then also actually figuring out what you can implement and what you can, I think to me that’s, that’s a real key to being able to learn and grow as a coach is those two things.

[00:47:13] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think also along with that, surrounding yourself with a circle of other coaches, whether it could be any level of college coaches, some high school coaches, prep school coaches whatever the case would be, surrounding yourself with guys who are in that same mind as you and, and working on towards similar goals that you can bounce ideas off of.

You know, Dave Sloan for example, at Carnegie Mellon had on a little bit ago, was one of my best friends in coaching and we talk. Pretty much daily and we’re he’s a big Princeton offense fan, and I’m not so much, and I give him a hard time about that, but it’s something that I want to learn more about the Princeton offense, so I’m going to talk to coach about it.

So I think surrounding yourself with a lot of a lot of really high level basketball coaches as well, and just picking their brain and having conversations is, is super important. Yeah,

[00:48:03] Mike Klinzing: I agree. And what I’ve found, and this has been something that now after having been doing the podcast for five years, we’ve come to the realization quite a while ago that just how willing everybody is to share.

And obviously you’re not giving away all your trade secrets, but just the number of coaches that care about the game of basketball, I mean, obviously they care about their team. They care about their one loss record, they care about their players, but ultimately people just love the game. And as a result of that, they want to share and they want to make things better.

For the game of basketball and for everybody who’s involved in it. I think that’s one of the things that has been really refreshing about the podcast. And it wasn’t something that necessarily be thought of when we, when we first started, but it’s been something that we’ve really enjoyed is just the fact that you can have people on and they’re willing to talk about their journey and talk about what they do and talk about how they’ve had success.

And hopefully in the course of that, they’re, they’re sharing things that makes the game better for everybody. And ultimately I think that’s when, that’s when we all win. Cause we all love the game of basketball and it’s been obviously very good to you and Jason and I feel the same way about what basketball has done for us.

And so that’s what makes it really special. Let’s talk a little bit about the opportunity at Emory and how you get to connected with Coach Zimmerman, how that opening comes to your attention. And talk about the decision to leave Juta and leave the state of Pennsylvania and leave home and, and head down to Atlanta.

[00:49:27] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, for sure. I I first met coach Zimmerman whenever I was at Carnegie Mellon. You know, obviously being in the same conference we’re playing him twice a year and seeing him out on the road and everything. So I had known him and we were acquaintances and some of that, but we really reconnected. 

Part of that covid times while I was at Juniata was we tore everything apart and build it back together. And one of the things we were considering was playing a little more uptempo, or being a little more opportunistic in transition is probably the best way to put it than we were.

And so I decided to pick up the phone and call the team that I know plays the fastest. So I called Coach Zimmerman and you know, picked his brain a little bit about you know, their transition and, and the tempo and decision making and shot selection. And I had had all these questions for him and It was really good.

It was really insightful obviously, and then afterwards we were just kind of catching up and connecting a little bit. And I was without going too far into it, I was my now wife, we were dating at the time. She was down here in Atlanta and I was in Pennsylvania. And you know, it kind of all worked out that there was an opportunity for me to join the staff here cause I had been planning on proposing and we got engaged and then it was time to decide was she moving to Pennsylvania or was I moving to Atlanta?

Coach Zimmerman really helped me out by offering me a job here on staff and bringing me down here. And that was ultimately what was a big part. It was, it was a personal move, but also a professional move as well. But it, it was one that, it’s been great. I’ve had a phenomenal experience and you know, working for coaches Zimmerman is awesome.

It’s a little bit, it was a little bit of an eyeopener coming down here. Like I said, at Juniata we were defend, rebound, run, motion, make you guard. And at Emory we do not do that. It’s the other end of the spectrum here. We play fast, we shoot a lot down the floor. Exactly. Yeah. Press and switch everything.

And so it was like two totally different styles and I think that, That polarization ha was so good for me. It was like hard, it was like culture shock for me at first. But it’s been so good for me. It’s really challenged me to like know, do I actually believe, especially on the defensive side of the ball, do I actually believe what I think I believe? Cause we’re doing it literally the opposite of what I just did for three years and everything that I built the foundation on what I wanted to do.

Probably more so than anything else down here. I’ve tried to be intentional and I really feel like I’ve made progress in, in having more of a feel for when to make what decisions as opposed to this is what we do, how we do it, figure it out, how to do it this way. You know, having a little bit more of a feel for, for the game and when to make decisions and when should we go zone for two possessions to throw a curve ball out there as opposed to you know, my personal preference is 40 minutes a man and we’re going to wear you down.

And so just being challenged in that way a lot was, was really good. And it’s really helped kind of shape the way I view the game now,

[00:52:37] Mike Klinzing: Being more flexible and also right, just again, being exposed to a whole new style of play in a different way of attacking the game. I think it’s interesting when you look again, You as somebody that studies a game at various levels and talking about earlier, watching NBA games once you started coaching.

But there’s just so many different ways to play the game. And you can watch one program and one team and be like, okay, they’re really successful with that. But then to your point, you can be somewhere else and see another program that is equally as successful doing it almost in the complete polar opposite way.

And that gets to figuring out who, what you are and who you are and what you really believe as a coach. And sometimes you just need to get enough exposure to different systems and different coaching styles to be able to figure out kind of where you fit on the spectrum. So eventually, when you do get your own program, as you said, you’re going to take bits and pieces of each one of the programs and each one of the coaches that you work for, and then ultimately mold them into who you are going to be.

As a head coach, and I think that when you have a multitude of experiences like you’ve had under different people with different playing styles, that’s ultimately, as you said, it’s going to make you a better coach because you’re going to be more flexible and open-minded as to, okay, how do we want to play? Maybe you dictate it more based off your personnel and a given year, and you just have more knowledge of these different systems or bits and pieces of these systems that can work for you and you eventually become a head coach.

What do you think about when you consider what you learned thus far from Coach Zimmerman, and let’s not break it down to necessarily the X’s and O’s, but just when you think about what it takes to run a successful basketball program, which obviously he’s been there for more than a decade and he’s done nothing but win since he’s been there.

So when you think about what he’s done in order to do that and what you’ve learned, what are some of the things that stick out for you?

[00:54:38] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. One of the things we’ve talked a lot lately about, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about is the idea that rarely is it, our thing is super complicated, but a lot of times they’re hard to do.

If things are pretty simple, but they’re hard to do. Like, I think there’s a, a Nick Saban quote that you really, if you want to be great, you really don’t have a lot of choices, right? There’s really a standard of what you have to do to be great. And that’s probably oversimplifying it.

But the point remains, we’re very easy to scout, but we’re really hard to play against. And so that idea of, you know what we do, we’re going to run and transition and you know, you’re going to have to do it with us for 40 minutes. And a lot of times we’ll see teams can hang and hang and hang, but then down the stretch we’re still going, we’re still conditioned to do it and disciplined to do it.

You know guys will ask like, oh, when you recruit, do you have to are you looking for the fastest players out there? And we tell guys all the time, we don’t really necessarily care how fast you’re it. You have the discipline to run every time. And so I think that’s one of the biggest things I’ve taken away from them is it can be simple, but it, it’s really hard to do.

And sometimes that’s, some of the best things are that way. And if you’re able to have the discipline to do it and the fortitude to stick with it and do it consistently. And we talk about staying power a lot, and the ability to just be there every time to do it consistently, every time to show up, every time.

If you’re able to do that, you’re going to have a chance.

[00:56:16] Mike Klinzing: Be a pain in the butt to play against, right? I mean, absolutely. That’s ultimately what it comes down to. I, when you’re talking about that, and look, I’m 53 years old. I haven’t played college basketball for 30 some odd years, but when I think about myself as a player or what I’ve tried to teach my kids when they play, it’s like I might not be the fastest guy in the first four minutes of the game.

Like there’s guys that when I played, if you’re going to set me up and you’re going to have me run one sprint from one end of the floor to the other, there’s lots of guys that I played against that probably were going to beat me, but with two minutes left in the game when we’ve been running all game and I’m still running at close to full capacity and they’re not.

Now suddenly I look a lot faster. And I think that’s kind of what you’re getting at, is you have to have the mental toughness and discipline to be able to do what you do in the first minute of the game. You have to still be able to do that in the last minute of the game. And that’s something that the conditioning is obviously a part of that, but part of that is just the mental toughness.

So let me ask you this. When you start trying to develop that skill in players, obviously part of that is watching them while you’re recruiting them and trying to figure out if they have that in them already. I don’t want to say naturally, but if they have that in them. But obviously that’s something that you can continue to improve and develop and emphasize.

So what do you guys do as part of the program there to make sure that your guys understand how important that piece of it is? What are you talking about? What are you doing in practice, day in and day out to emphasize that particular, I guess I’ll call it a skill.

[00:58:01] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, it does, it definitely does start in the recruiting process.

Like I said, we don’t necessarily have to have the fastest guys, but I think that laying it out especially when we bring them to campus and we do a little bit of film work during our visits, but so guys understand what they’re getting into. I don’t think they ever fully get it until they’re thrown into it and they’re gassed after the first week of week, but Absolutely.

[00:58:24] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. You’re not figuring that out on a high school team, let’s put it that way. You can be, you can be told how much that’s going to happen, but until it happens, yeah. You’re not getting it.

[00:58:33] Jacob Fleegle: Exactly. I think a big part of the culture of our program we have. The senior leadership that keeps getting passed down.

And it’s such a big part of Division three in general, in my opinion. Some of the most, probably the most successful division three programs. A huge part of it is just the leadership. And the way that guys approach the off season, both preseason and postseason. It’s such a big part of Division three basketball.

But our guys set that tone with the way we play open gym in the fall and they understand the standard and what it takes to be successful at Emory. And then also our strength and conditioning staff. They do a really good job with our guys and the preseason whenever we’re not allowed to be in there working with the guys you know, we, they know exactly what we as coaches need come October 15th when we’re going.

And they do a great job of preparing our guys.

[00:59:23] Mike Klinzing: What’s your role in the off season right now? Cause we’ve talked to a lot of division three head coaches and kind of ask them, well, hey, what are you doing during this time when. You can’t be with your guys. It’s not like the division level one level where you can be having workouts every day and all the things that they do at that level.

So when you think about what you’re doing right now in the off season is June 8th, what are your day-to-day tasks? What are you, what are you doing throughout the months when you can’t have that contact directly with your players? Yeah.

[00:59:55] Jacob Fleegle: Right now June is pretty crazy with our camps. Actually. Our day camps, we have three out of four weeks.

We have youth day camp. We just finished up today actually. That’s on forefront of everything we’re doing right now. You know, recruiting never really stop. You’re constantly trying to evaluate guys. And even the guys we know now, we’re getting full game film and watching that, we’re getting updated transcripts.

We’re calling guys, texting guys. We always try to have a little bit of a summer project every summer that we work on, usually involving some film work. You know, last summer my big project was taking the top Defenses in division one, two, and three and just watching a bunch of each of their games and trying to figure out are there common threads?

Are there, is there something that we can take from these teams that are really good defensively to implement it to what we do to make us better defensively? And a lot of that, it boiled down to a lot of the pace of games and possessions which obviously we play high possession games, so that was a little bit challenging yeah, to keep things in context there.

But I always have a little bit of a summer project that I’m working on and working through and that we’re talking about as a staff.

[01:01:06] Mike Klinzing: What’s the project for this summer?

[01:01:06] Jacob Fleegle: Right now, currently we’re going back and watching our conference games.  Watching specific actions and kind what happens the most and how can we teach those areas better. You know, next season and obviously, and preparing film work for the fall, when guys get back. And this year, division three has a little bit of a change. You know, we’re allowed eight days outside of the October 15th through the end of your season window this year for the first time.

So we’re really trying to figure out how to best use those eight days to prepare our guys for the team, or prepare the team for the season, so that October 15th we’re in the best position we can to really be going daily.

[01:01:58] Mike Klinzing: What’s the plan so far? What do you got? What do you do?

[01:01:59] Jacob Fleegle: The big topic is how many, if any, do we save for the spring. You know, like I said, the, the leadership of your seniors and that off season work is so important in Division three, because our guys aren’t on campus all summer. And so you know how to manage the spring so that guys fully understand what they need to be doing over the summer to come back in the best position possible.

So it’s looking like we’re leaning towards saving some days for the spring a day or two in the spring to, to do that summer work, but then also using, I guess that leaves us either six or seven in the fall. And a combination of teaching and installing some stuff, but really letting guys play us having a chance to evaluate our freshmen and seeing who’s ready to take a different role and role and what their growth is going to look like.

[01:02:53] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I would think that, obviously there’s a ton of value in it in a lot of different ways, but I would think that just being able to have that contact on the floor with your freshmen who are not only coming in fresh as basketball players, but also just coming in. As students to be able to get them out on the basketball court, which is obviously a huge part of the reason why they choose Emory.

So to be able to be connected to those guys on the basketball floor, I would think would have to be huge. A, for you going in the season. But also just for those guys transitioning from being high school student athletes to being college student athletes. I have to believe that that’s going to be something that is really going to help, again, not just every program, but it’s going to help those kids to make that transition.

[01:03:43] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, absolutely. And that opportunity to, to play more in an organized setting with our teammates to get to know us as coaches. Better style.

[01:04:00] Mike Klinzing: When you think about how Coach Zimmerman develops leaders in the program. And you mentioned how important leadership is at Division three level, especially when it comes to making sure that guys are doing what they need to do in the off season. When you look at it from an assistant coaching perspective, how do you try to give kids an opportunity to develop that leadership?

What do you guys do as a staff to make sure that there’s room for players to grow as leaders and that all the leadership isn’t coming through you as the coaching staff?

[01:04:31] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. I think it goes back to loving guys enough to tell him the truth and establishing a role for a guy. You know, I think some of our best leaders that we’ve had at Emory and certainly here for all of the program and what it means to develop the code at Emory. They weren’t necessarily the guys that played the most, or had the most points or the most the best stats or any of that, but it was guys who, who really trusted the coaching staff, obviously, but their teammates and they could be trusted that’s a huge part of it.

The ability to have guys trust you and understand that your intentions are for the team and to leave the jersey in a better place than where you found it. And obviously guys that are committed to the team and to making themselves and the team better and guys that care about their teammates, care about the program, care about their coaches.

You know, guys who, who embody those characteristics. I think that’s usually the most telling signs of who has the leadership potential and who’s going to, who are going to be your leaders ultimately. And that’s a process for sure. It’s not something that they just walk in the office and you see it, and some guys have it inherently more than others.

Right. But there’s certainly a process of, of kind of going through it and having experiences and coming out the other side of it and understanding what it looks like. And like I said, we’ve had a big part of our ability to sustain our success has been because guys really buy into to what we’re trying to do.

And they you know, they carry that responsibility of it matters where we leave the jersey in four years.

[01:06:14] Mike Klinzing: Let me ask you this, because I think this is something that. Is sometimes difficult for both players and coaches to navigate. It’s obviously easy to develop a leader if that leader who kind of develops naturally is your best player.

And if your best players, your leader, then people can follow them both on and off the floor. And that player kind of has a natural authority because they’re your best player. And that happens sometimes, but obviously, you know well that it doesn’t always happen, that your best player on the floor isn’t necessarily always your best leader.

So how do you get your players to, I don’t know if the right word is respect, but how do you get your players to buy into somebody as a leader who maybe doesn’t have. A huge role on the floor. So like maybe you have a guy who doesn’t play a whole lot, but he’s the guy in the weight room who kind of leads and shows the way and is super intense.

Or maybe you have a guy who doesn’t play a lot and he’s on the bench and he’s always cheering and just is a great teammate. I think it’s important for coaching staffs to be able to empower those guys. So how do you approach that when maybe your best player isn’t your best leader, but you have other leaders, but maybe they just don’t have as big a role on the floor?

How do you make sure that all your team are buying into those kinds of leaders?

[01:07:45] Jacob Fleegle: Sure. Yeah. I think the actions speak louder than words. Sometimes I think you know, the way that. Go about  their daily business whether that’s in the weight room as you mentioned, or on the floor before practice in our pre-practice sessions or even in practice, how they handle adversity and games.

You know, are they a fountain or a drain? As Coach Copper, one of our other assistants talks about a lot. You know, are you draining the energy from the team? Are you taking the teams and the coaching staff’s energy or are you giving it, are you providing it for the team? Are you building guys up?

Are you bringing guys along? Are you there to kick them in the butt when they need it? And then love them in the locker room after practice. You know, that’s a huge part of it the actions speak louder than words. I think when guys see you know, somebody who really cares and really goes about it the right way and is committed to doing it that’s where that, that leadership grows regardless of their production on the floor or their role on the floor how many minutes they’re playing.

Just the way that they handle their business and go about their business and interact with teammates. And at the end of the day I want to know that I can trust the guy sitting next to me on the bench you know, regardless of what their role is. And so I think their ability to connect with guys and be connectors is important.

[01:09:02] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think when you give players that opportunity and you as a coaching staff recognize the contributions of everybody regardless of their role on the floor, but you make everybody’s role equally important that I think that’s really where you get. Those types of leaders that we just talked about showing up.

We’ve had an opportunity to talk to you about all your different stops, and obviously throughout the course of the conversation we’ve talked about your eventual goal to be a division three head coach. So when you look at the things that you’ve learned and you were trying to sell yourself to a program as a head coach, what do you think are one or two qualities about yourself that if you were to get an opportunity you feel like would be drivers of your success?

[01:09:53] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think the way that I approach the game. And it’s not necessarily the xs and o side of things, but maybe the game isn’t the right way to put it. The way that I would approach a program in terms of my care for the guys that I bring in and recruit and are my end up being my players.

You know, the way that I interact in an athletic department and the ability to build relationships and to understand the department as a whole is a team as well that we’re on. But really, really building that team. Like I mentioned, the, the quote Juniata had on the wall defense, begin understanding how team bring and how it The best players, just put your five best players out there and let them go.

It’s how do all the pieces connect and together. And so having relationships with your guys, understanding your guys and what makes them tick and coached and just that ability connect is, is so important. And I think that’s one of the biggest things that I’ve learned over my eight years. You know, it’s a, it’s a collective.

It’s not just, let’s just recruit the best players and get them here and that’s going to solve all our problems. Cause honestly, that might create more problems than it’s actually solved. So I think understanding the bigger picture of things is probably the simplest way to put it.

[01:11:21] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. There’s more than putting together a team than just throwing a collection of talent out on the floor. You certainly have to have guys that fit in and buy in and work well together and, and fit the culture of what you’re trying to build. Makes complete sense. All right, one final two part question here, Jacob.

Sure. Part one, when you look 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, what’s your biggest joy? So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:11:49] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. And that’s just to clarify, that’s my biggest challenge personally.

Yes. Yes. That’s a good question. I think my biggest challenge personally coming up will be to continue we feel like we have a string of a couple really good recruiting classes. And I think the more that you do that, sometimes the harder it can be because guys don’t necessarily see opportunity because there’s a lot of really good young guys playing a lot of minutes.

And so I think that’s a big challenge moving forward will be the recruiting. And I think this class that we’re working on, the class of twenty four is really important. It’s, that’s one of my concerns for this class is that. Don’t necessarily see that because we only graduate two guys in this coming year.

Maybe a third they’re, one of our players has an opportunity for a fifth year if he wants it. And we’re still working through that decision with him and that’s fine. But trying to figure out how to fill in the cracks that we still do have in our roster, but being very specific and intentional about how.

I think it’s going to be really beneficial for me to go through that process, once we do get to the other side of it. But that’s one of my biggest challenges that I think I’m facing. I think one of the, the biggest joys for me is now going into year three, having played a, a role in recruiting the majority of the team now, or you know, as opposed to your first year or so, whenever you get there, it’s the guys are there, they’re in place and you’re coming in and joining them, how you fit in and you know, add value to what’s going on.

But now those relationships just continue to get deeper, continue to get better. And you’re in it a lot more. You’re not trying to just figure it all out. And I think that’s something that I’m really excited about is seeing these guys that I quote unquote came in with the, all the freshmen that first year that I got here, and now they’re in their third year, they’re juniors, and kind of going through that whole process with them as as well as adding guys that can help us ultimately go as far as we can against NCAA tournament.

That’s our goal. Obviously play as many games as possible in March. So that’s what I’m really excited about, that whole process.

[01:14:05] Mike Klinzing: That’s a double-edged sword, right? You have tons of talent that you’ve recruited, but now you have to find a way to maximize those guys and, and keep everybody bought in when there may not be as many minutes as maybe people.

Had hoped. Right. So it’s absolutely, it’s a combination. Let’s put it this way, it’s a good problem to have. It’s better to be on that side of the equation than searching for talent. Let’s put it that way.

[01:14:30] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. Double-edged sword for sure.

[01:14:35] Mike Klinzing: All right. Before we get out, I want to give you a chance, share how people can connect with you, social media, email, program, website, whatever you want to share.

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

[01:14:46] Jacob Fleegle: Yeah. On most social media platforms my handle is @Coach_Fleegz. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram primarily are my two.

That can be beneficial. And then my email address is on our website jfleegle@emory edu. Feel free to to shoot an email. I’d love to connect.

[01:15:13] Mike Klinzing: Awesome. Jacob, can I 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.