JARREN DYSON – ARMY WEST POINT MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 937

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

Email – jarren.dyson@westpoint.edu

Twitter/X – @CoachJDyson

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Jarren Dyson is a men’s basketball assistant coach at Army West Point. Prior to Army he helped Christopher Newport University win the D3 National Championship in 2023 as an assistant to Head Coach John Krikorian. 

Dyson previously spent 5 seasons at Lafayette College as an assistant where he served as the program’s recruiting coordinator and was involved in player development.

Before joining the staff at Lafayette, Dyson had his first stint at Christopher Newport University where helped lead the team to back-to-back conference championships and a run to the program’s first-ever Final Four appearance in 2016. The Captains recorded a 99-19 record and three conference championships during his first tenure.

Prior to his time with the Captains, Dyson was an assistant at Tabb High School for two years, leading the Tigers to the state quarterfinals both years. As a student-athlete at Emory & Henry, Dyson started all four years, serving as a team captain for his final two seasons. He remains fourth all-time in assists at his alma mater and was selected as the team’s Most Valuable Player following the 2009-10 season.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Jarren Dyson, men’s basketball assistant coach at Army West Point.

What We Discuss with Jarren Dyson

• Watching Michael Jordan and the Bulls in Germany when his Mom was stationed there in the Air Force
• “I always felt like I had to outwork people just because I wasn’t the biggest, I wasn’t the tallest, I wasn’t the fastest.”
• Have the discipline to be consistent
• “Growing up in a military household discipline and accountability were at the top of everything.”
• His decision to attend Emory & Henry College
• “I knew pretty early that I wanted to be a college basketball coach.”
• “As I got to my junior year, I started to really focus a little more on the coaching side as I was playing.”
• “The more information I can give myself, I just think it helps with decision making.”
• Why he took a coaching job at his alma mater, Tabb (VA) High School right out of college
• “It was a great foundation for me as far as teaching and getting into coaching.”
• “I couldn’t get a job and I was willing to take anything, but it’s just a hard profession to get into and you do have to catch a break.”
• The break that landed him an opportunity as a part-time coach at Christopher Newport University with Coach John Krikorian
• His love for recruiting and becoming a more well-rounded coach at CNU
• The variety of experiences that coaches who start in D3 get to be a part of in terms of running a program
• Joining the staff at Lafayette and learning from an offensive minded coach like Fran O’Hanlon
• “The number one thing I like about those type of student athletes is they are extremely driven to be as successful on the court as they are in the classroom. For me, that’s why you want to coach. You want guys that want to be successful in all aspects of life. And these guys in the Patriot League and the Ivy League, they are driven to do well.”
• “I had to take my coaching game to another level because these dudes are going to ask a lot of questions and you better know the answer.”
• Adjustments from D3 to D1 – off-season workouts and scholarship limits
• Finding the right balance in off-season workouts and allowing assistant coaches to take the lead
• Winning a National Championship at Christopher Newport
• Coaching at West Point and the type of student-athlete that thrives in that environment
• “The players that want to be really good, are going to find time to get extra work in.”
• “West Point makes you want to give these guys everything you have. You do not want to let these guys down. When you see the sacrifice, the discipline, the focus that these guys have… as a coach, I want to bring it every day.”
• “I just try to find solutions because that’s what our guys do. Nobody cares, figure it out. And that’s just kind of what I’ve started to do since I’ve worked at West Point. I’ve just tried to be as tough as our guys, because I just think they’re the toughest dudes in the country.”
• “Being a good leader is also being a good listener.”
• “You have to learn before you can lead.”
• Don’t skip steps
• Treat your staff well
• Be organized in every aspect of your program
• The value of keeping a journal and what he includes in it
• “The more times you can watch a kid play, in my opinion, the better.”

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THANKS, JARREN DYSON

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JARREN DYSON – ARMY WEST POINT MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 937

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Bye. 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 Jarren Dyson, assistant men’s basketball coach at Army West Point. Jarren, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:15] Jarren Dyson: Mike, thanks for having me on, man. I’m really excited and looking forward to talking some hoops.

[00:00:21] Mike Klinzing: Thrilled to have you on, looking forward to diving into all the interesting 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 experiences with the game of basketball.

[00:00:34] Jarren Dyson: Yeah. So I fell in love with the game, I want to say when I was around three years old my mom who was in the Air Force at the time, she’s retired now used to take me with her. When she used to go work out and I would always just somehow I’d find a ball and I would just be dribbling around and it’s just something that I’ve always enjoyed and enjoyed playing.

So from an early age, I want to say from around three years old, I kind of just fell in love with it because of my mom. And then when we moved to we ended up living in Germany. Over there they would have the Chicago Bulls games would be on. And I would just watch, sit in front of the TV and watch Michael Jordan and the Bulls play all the time.

So I fell in love with it since a young age and it’s something that has brought me great joy and I’m excited that I get to work with basketball as my profession.

[00:01:26] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. So how long were you guys in Germany?

[00:01:28] Jarren Dyson: We were there. I want to say we were there for five years. We were there for about five years.  Yeah. I lived a lot of places, but that was one of the ones that I remember that I had a lot of fun at.

[00:01:38] Mike Klinzing: What was your favorite place that you lived in when you were growing up?

[00:01:42] Jarren Dyson: Ooh, great question. I would say one of them is probably Nebraska.

[00:01:49] Mike Klinzing: It’s probably not the top on everybody’s list, but all right.

[00:01:54] Jarren Dyson: Yeah. So for me, I’m an East coast guy. You know, most of my family is on the East coast, but when my mom was in the military after Germany, we moved to Nebraska and I’ll be honest, I did not want to go at the time, but when I got there, I just met some incredible people. Everybody was just so friendly.

I had never seen cornfields and that was around the time when Nebraska football was loaded. I want to say, I think this is when like Eric Crouch was playing, I want to say Scott Frost, maybe a little bit before that. So the whole state was just all red and only Nebraska fans, and I just thought it was pretty cool.  So Nebraska is one of my favorite places that I lived in, and then obviously Virginia where spent most of my time.

[00:02:44] Mike Klinzing: So by the time you got to high school, you were in Virginia at that point, is that right?

[00:02:49] Jarren Dyson: Yeah. So my mom ended up retiring from the military. I want to say in the sixth grade and then ever since then I had been in Virginia going forward.

[00:02:59] Mike Klinzing: Gotcha. Okay. So growing up, did you play any other sports besides basketball or was it always hoops?

[00:03:05] Jarren Dyson: I actually, no, I played basketball, baseball, and football. And I really. baseball. I really love baseball. My mom was a softball player. And me and her would play catch.

And it was something that I really enjoyed. And then as I got older with AAU basketball, it was tough to do both. And then obviously with baseball, it got kind of started getting a little too hot for me, especially in Virginia. So I had to make some decisions. And I decided to stick with the basketball and it hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

[00:03:38] Mike Klinzing: As a high school player, thinking back to that time, what do you remember about just how you went about becoming a better player? What did you do to work on your game and get better while you were in high school?

[00:03:50] Jarren Dyson: Yeah, so I think one thing that I think about with my high school career was I always felt like I had to outwork people just because I wasn’t the biggest I wasn’t the tallest, I wasn’t the fastest.

So the biggest thing I can think about is just having that discipline to be consistent. I would wake up every day before school, I want to say around 5:45 and there was like a local YMCA. And I would always go there before school and just do some ball handling drills.

A lot of shooting, a lot of floaters. I would lift weights. I would try and knock all that out before school just because I wanted to be a better player and I when I was a younger player, I wasn’t playing as much and I just thought my work ethic would be the thing that separated me.

So I would think one thing would just be having that discipline to be consistent with my workouts. And then the other thing in Virginia, Virginia is such a competitive, especially where I’m from in the Hampton Roads area, just a competitive place to play basketball. There’s so many talented guys.

I’m just going to a bunch of open gyms and just playing with guys that were older and better than me. I think that’s one way, in my opinion, to really test your game is to go against guys that are just going to kick your butt. And for me, that was, I think a thing that changed my perspective on the game and made me realize I have so much further to go, but I’m never going to run away from competition.

[00:05:16] Mike Klinzing: As a high school player. What’s your favorite memory?

[00:05:19] Jarren Dyson: My favorite memory would probably be, we ended up going to the state quarterfinals my high school Tabb high school for the first time. And I want to say it was like 10 years. So I think that for me was probably my favorite memory just to do something that hadn’t been done in a while.

Especially with so many. You know, great teams that Tabb had that none of them kind of got over the hump. And for me and my guys to get over the hump, I thought it was special and it was a great way to end my senior year.

[00:05:51] Mike Klinzing: You still stay in touch with a lot of your high school teammates? Are there guys you’re still in contact with?

[00:05:56] Jarren Dyson: There are some, there are some that I do stay in contact with, obviously with, with social media, it’s a little easier to stay in touch with everybody, but I’m also very close with my high school coach, Doug Baggett. Who ended up retiring a couple of years ago from tab, but he coached, I want to say for like 30 years at tab and he’s all the time winningest coach at Tabb.

And every time I go home to Virginia, I go to his house and we spent a lot of time together. He’s been a great mentor for me. And one of the reasons why I decided to get into coaching. So I do try to stay in contact with as many people as I can.

[00:06:29] Mike Klinzing: When you think about him and his influence on you as a coach and you look at yourself, your coaching style, kind of how you go about things, is there one or two things that you can look at that you maybe took from him growing up?

Because obviously as a high school coach, makes a big impression on you. But when you think about his coaching style and then kind of who you are as a coach, what are some things that maybe you took from him?

[00:06:52] Jarren Dyson: I would say one thing that I definitely took from him is discipline. You know, when we were in high school, he pushed us to the limit and we had to be disciplined enough to make sure we did what we had to do every day.

Every day we started off practice he would split the team in half and one half would, would run the mile and the other half would jump rope and you had to do it under six minutes. And then once you were done, you would switch. And we did that literally every day. Now I don’t even know if that’s allowed now in this, in this day and age, but the discipline that he did with us was phenomenal and it really pushed us all mentally, to another level.

Obviously there was days where we all wanted to we all wanted to quit or there was days you just don’t want to be there, but to have the discipline, not just physical discipline, but the mental discipline that show up every day and to keep going. It’s something that I’ve tried to take with me in all my coaching stops.

[00:07:55] Mike Klinzing: How much of that discipline that has kind of been a theme that you’ve talked about to this point, how much of that comes from your mom and her military experience and kind of passing that along to you? Do you think that was a big influence kind of on who you gravitated towards and why that discipline piece of it was so important to you and is so important to you?

[00:08:16] Jarren Dyson: I think you’re 100 percent correct. My mom would be glad to hear that. Obviously growing up in a military household discipline and accountability were at the top of everything. And I think because I was so used to growing up like that, that you’re right. I did gravitate towards Coach Baggett because that was our whole program was being disciplined and being accountable.

They both had a, a huge impact on my life. And at the time when I was younger, I probably didn’t understand all the lessons that they both were trying to teach me, but as I’ve gotten older and became a coach and obviously being a father and a husband now, I understand what they were doing. And the better, the more discipline you have, the more accountable you are.  I just think it’s that much easier to be successful in life.

[00:09:07] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. As you think back to being a high school basketball player and you start looking around for what your plans are when you graduate, your mom has a military background. Obviously you’re a good basketball player that’s going to have some opportunities maybe to play at the college level.

What was your thought process in terms of looking for what you were going to do after graduation? Were you focused on, Hey, I want to really be able to play college basketball. When did that get on your radar? Just what was your decision making process as you were finishing up high school and making a decision about what you were going to do next in your life?

[00:09:44] Jarren Dyson: Yeah. So once I entered high school, I knew that I wanted to play college basketball. That has always been a dream of mine ever since I started playing. And I was one of those kids when I was six, seven years old, I was watching college basketball all the time. And I knew that I wanted to play at the next level.

I will say though, I wasn’t so fixated on level division one, two, three, NAIA, I just wanted an opportunity to play at the next level. That was for me, the biggest goal. And I was fortunate enough after my senior year that I had an opportunity to play at Emory Henry College in Southwest Virginia under Bob Johnson which was a great opportunity for me.

And I just knew that in high school that I wanted to play at the next level and I was going to do whatever it took to make that dream happen.

[00:10:39] Mike Klinzing: So when you think about making that decision to go to Emory & Henry, what pushed it over the top that that was the right place for you? Was it Coach Johnson? Was it the program itself?

Was it the location? Was it comparing to other schools? Just what made you pick Emory & Henry?

[00:10:58] Jarren Dyson: Well, one, one thing that made me pick Emory & Henry was there was an assistant there, Jamion Christian, who is the former head coach at George Washington and Sienna at Mount St. Mary’s. He actually recruited me to Emory & Henry and I just loved how personable he was and how he made me see the vision of me being a college basketball player.

I thought he did a phenomenal job recruiting me and my family. And the other thing that kind of stood out to me was, where I’m from in Virginia and Emory & Henry are on the opposite sides of the state. So it’s about five six hours away. And I thought I needed to get away. I wanted to get away from home a little bit.

I wanted to kind of grow and mature. And I thought being in an environment like Emory & Henry, where there’s not much to do, Would really help me focus, not just with basketball, but it would help me focus in the classroom and it would help me grow up a lot faster than being right up the street from my mom, where I’d probably be home every Sunday and have her do my laundry and all that stuff.

So I thought it was good for me to get away. So I would say Jamion was a big part of that. And then I just think the distance from home was something I thought at 17, 18 years old, I thought I needed, because obviously when you become an adult. You know, most of the times you’re not going to be close to home.  So I kind of wanted to try that out.

[00:12:22] Mike Klinzing: What was your thought career wise going in as an 18 year old, obviously most kids at 18 and I always say I’m 54 and I’m not really sure what I want to do next, so I’m not sure we can expect 18 year olds to know exactly what they want to do, but where were you at career wise, academically, what were you thinking about when you went into Emory & Henry?

Was coaching already on your radar at that point or what were you thinking?

[00:12:43] Jarren Dyson: Yes, sir. I knew I wanted to coach. So for me, that was another reason why I decided to go to Emory & Henry Jamion did a good job of explaining to me how being in that Emory Henry family could help jumpstart my coaching career as there’s other guys that have graduated or work there that are in coaching.

So for me, I knew pretty early that I wanted to be a college basketball coach because I just wanted to have an impact on young people like my high school coach had on me and like coach Johnson and Jamie had on me as well. So I’ve kind of known since I got to college, like that’s what I wanted to do.

But having an opportunity to play an extra four years surely didn’t help. I mean, it didn’t hurt it.

[00:13:27] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. When you think about your playing career and you’re going through and you’re at practice or you’re playing in a game or you’re working on your game, where you have the mindset to be thinking about what you were doing, not only from a player perspective, but were you also kind of looking at things from a coach’s perspective? Or while you were playing, were you still kind of in player mode with the idea that, hey, coaching’s in the back of my head. I maybe know that’s where I’m going to end up, but I’m not really looking at it from a coach’s perspective.

How did you look at the game? In other words, as a player, were you looking at the game from strictly a player’s point of view or were you kind of seeing it from both sides, the player and the coach side?

[00:14:07] Jarren Dyson: I would say when I got to college, my first two years, I really saw it more just as a player. I was just playing and hooping I just was competing.

I was just trying to win games. Like I wasn’t really thinking on the coach’s side at that time. And some of that was just because of my I was 18, 19 years old. And I was just trying to prove myself, I would say as I got to my junior year, I started to really focus a little more on the coaching side as I was playing.

So while I was in practice, I would start noticing things with what the coach was saying or what coach was doing. With the scouting reports, I came up more interested in those and paying a lot more attention and asking better questions and wanting to know why and how we were doing things.

And I would say like my senior year is when I really kind of took off and I spent a lot of time with my coach pretty much every day I was in his office. While he was watching film or we would talk recruiting while he was watching you know, highlights, what I thought. And so I would think as I got older, those last two years, I think when I really started to see the game a little more as a coach and not as a player.

[00:15:25] Mike Klinzing: Was that an explicit conversation, your coach? In other words, did you say to him or did he say to you, Hey, do you want to get into coaching? Or, Hey, I want to get into coaching. Let’s walk through, let’s talk through this stuff. Or was it more just kind of organic that you were just showing up and you’re talking, or did you guys have an explicit conversation about a coaching career?

[00:15:48] Jarren Dyson: Yes. So we had a conversation about it when I was a freshman. And I think one thing I’m happy with my college coaches that they did was they understood what my goal was, but they also let me figure some things out. My coach kind of told me. You know, right now most kids really don’t know what they want to do.

So he never like forced me to like watch film and have those conversations with him. He was more like, okay, this is what you want to do. Let’s just kind of take it year by year. You know, let’s see how you mature. Let’s see, do you really want to coach in another year and the year after that? And I would say as I got to my junior year, I kind of approached him and was like, Hey coach, I know we talked about this as a freshman, but now that I’m a little older and starting to think about the rest of my life this is something I definitely want to do.

Do you mind if I just sit in here while you’re watching film or talking to recruits or I just want to know I’m a big information guy. So the more information I can give myself, I just think it helps with decision making. So I’m just like a sponge my last two years and I’m thankful that my, all my college coaches allow me to have that opportunity.

[00:16:58] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. To be able to have that kind of access to their thought process and what they’re doing had to be invaluable as you move into your career. And so you graduate and then what do you remember about the job search? And you said earlier that you really were focused on wanting to be a college coach and you end up taking a job as an assistant coach back at your high school.

So just talk a little about the job search when you first graduate and kind of what led you back home to your alma mater.

[00:17:28] Jarren Dyson: Yeah. So once I graduated, I was kind of thrown into the fire. So while I was finishing up my senior year, my college coach started treating me as if I was on the staff already. So I was doing 5:45 am workouts with the guys.

He would actually let me run the workouts. We had recruiting meetings and recruits would come on campus. I was in charge of showing them around and things like that. So I got a really early introduction to it. But then I’ll be honest, what happened was I graduated from college. And my coach offered me a job on the staff and at first I was going to do it.

And then I went home to Virginia, I went home to Hampton, Virginia for a couple of weeks. And I really just wanted to be closer to home. Like I had been away from home so long that I had just decided like I need to spend some time closer to my mom and to my family. So I actually ended up taking the high school job with my, my alma mater. And I actually did that for two years, just because I wanted to get closer to home just because I had been away from so long. It was honestly a great experience. I know that I wanted to be in college, but those two years I think really gave me the passion to teach and to impact young people because 99 percent of high school basketball players are not going to play in college, but those kids don’t care.

They showed up every day and they wanted to just get better and just being around those kids every day gave me that energy and juice that I needed.

[00:19:11] Mike Klinzing: What did you love about the high school experience? And even though you kind of knew that that wasn’t necessarily where you wanted to end up, as you look back on it now, what are some aspects of coaching in high school that you really liked?

[00:19:26] Jarren Dyson: I think one thing that I loved was the attitudes of the kids I got to coach and you’re coaching kids that play multiple sports and they were just so interested in learning. And obviously there’s some great high school coaches in the country and high school coaches, you have to teach you don’t always get to recruit your team.

And like I said, at Tabb high school, you kind of just coach who shows up and I love the fact that we had to teach these guys pretty much from scratch every year, just the fundamentals of the game steps that I think sometimes in college get skipped just the footwork and the passing and they showed up.

These kids showed up every day with the same passion, the same energy, just eager to learn. And for me, that was phenomenal. I mean, I just loved working with those kids. And it’s funny, I actually still talk to some of the players that I coached back then. Now that I’m, I’m getting a little bit older these guys are getting married and having families.

So I feel like I’m getting old. Those two years at Tabb coaching those high school kids was, was great. And obviously working with my high school coach and we went to the state tournament both years. So it was a great foundation for me as far as teaching and getting into coaching.

[00:20:48] Mike Klinzing: What was it like sort of transitioning from your coach is your coach to now your coach is your colleague. And clearly, I think anybody who’s played for someone at whatever level, I know that my college assistant coach actually just texted me today and he signs his full name and his first name and whatever at the end of the text.

And I just write back. I’m like, Hey coach, because I’m 54 years old. He’s still my coach. So how did you handle the transition and just in the relationship of, Hey, this is a guy who was my high school coach. He was a guy that when I was a kid, he was guiding me. He was the person that I looked up to. And now all of a sudden you’re on the same staff and your colleagues, how’d you handle that change sort of in the relationship dynamic?

[00:21:41] Jarren Dyson: Mike, I think it made us closer because I got to see. the human side of coach. And I feel like most times when you’re coaching kids, they only see you as a coach. They see what you’re hollering and yelling and working out and doing all that. But the time that I got to spend with coach at his house, just talking about life seeing him as a father, seeing him as a husband I just think we became so much closer where the fact that now, like, he’s like a second dad to me and it’s because I got to spend that time with him.

To understand that he is not just a coach. He’s just like anybody else. And I know when I was playing for him, I was afraid to talk to him and ask him things. He’s a pretty strict guy, but anybody that knows coach Baggett knows he has the heart of gold and to see the things that he would do behind the scenes, but not just for his players, but for players on other teams and, and his former players and other coaches, like to see that side of him was phenomenal.

It really changed our relationship and it’s made it so much, like I said, when I go home, I always go see him. Because we got close once I was able to join his staff.

[00:23:00] Mike Klinzing: That’s awesome that you still have that kind of relationship that boom, when you’re in town that he’s a stop on your itinerary every time you come into town.

So that’s really cool. So during the two years there, are you still looking around for college jobs? Are you reaching out to people using your network? What’s the process for trying to get your first college job?

[00:23:21] Jarren Dyson: Yeah. So I was still reaching out to people back then. I was sending a lot of not just emails, but I was sending a lot of handwritten letters.

I was coaching an AAU team. So when I would see coaches that I had played against or coached against before, trying to get in contact with them, but it’s hard. This is a really tough profession. And you have to catch a break. And it was tough that first year I didn’t get anything and I was lucky that I was allowed to, like I said, continue coaching at my alma mater in high school, but I was unsuccessful.  I couldn’t get a job and I was willing to take anything, but it’s just a hard profession to get into and you do have to catch a break. And I just tried to continue to network as much as possible, showed up to AAU events, showed up to high school games. Just wanted to kind of get my face out there just so that people could put a face with a name.

And, and so I knew one day I would get a chance. And when I did get that chance, I just had to take advantage of it.

[00:24:22] Mike Klinzing: So what was the break that you needed?

[00:24:25] Jarren Dyson: So Christopher Newport University is where I’m from in that area, they were recruiting one of our players at Tabb at the time. And Coach Krikorian had just moved to the area, so he only had been coaching at CNU, I want to say maybe two or three years.

And he came to a practice, And he saw me in practice and he liked my energy and he liked how the guys responded to me. So we kind of just stayed in touch, to be honest with you. It really wasn’t anything major. We just kind of stayed in touch. And like I said, he was recruiting one of our guys, so he came to a lot of our games.

So he kind of saw me all the time. And I was lucky once the season had ended. He offered me a part time position at Christopher Newport that paid like, I want to say pay like $5,000. And I ran with it, to be honest with you. I was, you would have thought I got a million dollar job offer when he called me that day.

And I just wanted to get my foot in the door. And I’ve always had a tremendous amount of respect for Christopher Newport. And I’m thankful that coach gave me that chance. And this was especially at the beginning of Christopher Newport, where he was trying to rebuild the program. So that’s kind of how I caught my break.

[00:25:46] Mike Klinzing: That story is one that sort of resonates with a lesson that has come through as a theme of our podcast over the course of, again, I don’t even know how many, Interviews we’ve done, but there’s, there’s such a common thread that runs through so many people’s stories of like, when you were at that practice and coach Krikorian shows up, you’re not running that practice thinking that, Hey, I’m trying to impress coach Krikorian so I could get my next job.

Like, that’s not the thought process. The thought process is you’re pouring everything you have into those kids at tab to give them the best experience and to, to be the kind of coach that you want to be. And so many people have stories like that, Jaren, where it’s like, you just have to work hard in whatever job you’re at.

And it could be a high school job. It could be an AAU job. It could be a middle school job. It could be a graduate assistant job, whatever it is. If you’re having one eye looking at the next opportunity and you’re not putting your full self into the opportunity that you have right in front of you, things usually don’t work out very well.

But conversely, when much like in your story, when somebody is at their job and they’re putting in the work and they’re doing what they’re going to do and they’re enthusiastic and they’re giving it everything they have, then usually that’s where, as you said, you end up catching a break. And clearly I’m sure back at the time, you had no idea that coach Krikorian walking in the gym, recruit one of your players is going to lead to your first opportunity as a college job.

But it’s definitely a theme that we’ve talked to so many people that have shared that. As advice because of what’s happened to them and their careers. And I always love hearing those stories because again, I think what it comes down to is, is that if you’re a basketball coach, and it probably applies across professions, but certainly if you’re a basketball coach, if you’re giving everything you have to those kids and that team and that program that you’re working for in the moment, then good things are going to happen for you.

They’re either going to happen for you right there in the program that you’re already in, or they’re just going to open up opportunities for you to be able to. go on and advance in your career. And so the opportunity at Christopher Newport, like you said, right there around your hometown, coach Krikorian, obviously we’ve had him on a couple of times.

I met him personally at the Jay Bilas camp. Fantastic coach, just a great human being. I’m sure the opportunity to work for him was just tremendous in terms of your learning. So talk a little bit about the experience there at Christopher Newport and how you go about just growing as a during that time.

[00:28:23] Jarren Dyson: Yeah. So I would say one Coach Krikorian is one of the best coaches in the country at any level one, two, three, NBA. I mean, he’s phenomenal. And to be a part of that program, especially at the beginning of his tenure was one of the best experiences of my life. I mean, we really had to kind of dig in and find the right pieces to, to get the culture to where we wanted and to get the right kids on the bus and work with the right staff and to take some tough losses that we took to kind of get to where we needed to get coach Krikorian that whole program to me is just about resilience.

We take our punches. And you show up the next day, ready to work. And those first couple of years when I was there was great. We won, I want to say we won a championship my first year. My second year, I think we ended up losing in the championship game. at the buzzer, did not make the NCAA tournament.

And to see those kids come back that next year with that level of focus, that level of resilience and competitiveness, we ended up taking the program to our first Final Four. And to do that at Christopher Newport and do it with Coach K is something that I still am lucky to be a part of because that experience, I think, changed my life as a coach, to be honest with you.

So I’m just thankful to be a part of it. To have a small part in help building in my opinion, the best division three program in the country.

[00:30:06] Mike Klinzing: As an assistant there when you think about your growth as a coach, what’s something that you came in as a college coach kind of, Hey man, I don’t, I just been in high school and obviously you played at the college level, but everywhere you go, there’s adjustments to be made and there’s new things to learn.

So when you think about just your growth in a particular area of coaching, what area do you think you grew the most in during that time when you were at Christopher Newport?

[00:30:38] Jarren Dyson: I would say when I first got to Christopher Newport, all I wanted to do was recruit. Like literally all I wanted to do was recruit.

If you could have sent me on the road every day, I would have been as happy as possible. I would go wherever you sent me.

[00:30:58] Mike Klinzing: Why? Why? I’m curious.

[00:31:00] Jarren Dyson: I’ll be honest with you. I just love evaluating kids. I love watching, I just love watching basketball and I love kind of predicting how a kid’s going to turn out and for me at the beginning of my coaching tenure, like I said, that’s kind of what I wanted to be known for, but I’m thankful to this day that coach K sat me down one day and he literally told me that JD, for you to excel in this business and for you to become the best version of yourself, you need to do everything and not just want to recruit. That same passion that you have in recruiting, you have to have that same passion in the scouting, into player development, into academics, into admissions into community service, into everything to be well rounded. And I think for me, that is the biggest thing that I take away from that is Coach K challenging me and pushing me to be a well rounded coach and not just be known as a guy that can get you players. For me, I think that really changed my career because he told me he wanted me to be ready to be a head coach one day. And I think that if I don’t change my perspective during that time, I don’t know if I will ever have been ready to be a head coach if it was not for Coach K making me become a more well rounded coach.

[00:32:27] Mike Klinzing: It’s interesting that you say that is another thing that has kind of run through the podcast is you have guys who start their careers at different levels of college basketball. And so you’ve obviously worked at different levels. What you think about as a Division III assistant coach, the experience is kind of similar usually to what you just described, where maybe that coach has one full time assistant and then maybe they have a part time.

Sometimes, depending on the school, you might only have a part time or maybe you have a graduate assistant. But what that often means is that those guys who are getting a start in their career at the Division III level often have their hands in almost every aspect of what you’re doing. The program, and then you have other guys who start out at the division one level, and maybe they’re an ops guy or whatever they start out in the video room.

And so they have more of this is just your strict responsibility. And it’s always interesting to me to hear the different perspectives of depending upon where you started your career. How guys feel about that experience and how it helped them as they moved on to different positions. And eventually, as you said, if you have a goal of being a head coach, to me, I always feel like that experience at the division three level of getting to see kind of everything and being able to be involved in everything.

I think just helps because then you have a better understanding when you eventually get to the point where you’re ready to run your own program. And again, I don’t think it matters the level, but you at least have some idea of what goes on in all these different aspects of the program versus if you, as you said, if you had been like, Hey man, I’m the recruiter.

Yeah. Maybe that keeps getting you jobs, but eventually you got to be able to do more than recruit if you want to be if you want to be a head coach and run your own program. So it’s just interesting to hear you again, kind of reiterate something that You know, that we’ve heard from people all throughout the course of the podcast and the different interviews, just how people feel it’s beneficial to be able to have their hands in all those different pieces after you leave.

[00:34:34] Jarren Dyson: I think too, though, there’s been so many successful coaches that are now at the division one level that have come from Division 2, Division 3, and a reason, a lot of the reason I think they are successful is because of those experience that they had at those lower levels where they’ve had to do everything they’ve had to work with less.  They’ve had to make the budget work they’ve had to teach on the floor and, and just do things that a lot of coaches are not, they don’t do at the division one level. And I think those experiences are why you’re seeing so many successful coaches like Josh Schertz and guys like that are going to be successful because they’ve been doing this that this isn’t something that he just started, they’ve been doing this. And I think you’re going to continue to see many more coaches that have come from lower levels.

[00:35:37] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Tell me about the opportunity at Lafayette. How does that come across your desk and just what was the thought process in leaving CNU to take that Lafayette job?

[00:35:49] Jarren Dyson: Yeah. So I had been at Christopher Newport. I want to say that was year four. I had been there four years. And we had had some success obviously going to the final four. And then the following year we were number two in the country and I was ready for a new challenge. I was ready.

I always. wanted to coach Division One, but I wasn’t in a rush. I was just kind of waiting for the right opportunity. And I was fortunate that Coach Krikorian had previously worked for Coach O’Hanlon back in the day, and they had a relationship. And Coach O’Hanlon was, was looking for another coach. And I’m lucky that Coach K gave me the recommendation and that’s kind of how it worked out.

And the other aspect of it was Coach O’Hanlon is an offensive basketball coach. Like he’s this offensive savant and at Christopher Newport, everything we do there was pretty much about defense and rebounding. And I really wanted to work for a coach that was a little more offensive minded just to be a little more well rounded as a coach.

And I just wanted to learn and I don’t think there was a better coach for me to learn offense from than Coach O’Hanlon at Lafayette.

[00:37:13] Mike Klinzing: What’s the experience like coaching in the Patriot League, obviously Christopher Newport, Army West Point, Lafayette, all outstanding academic schools. When you think about being at Lafayette and being in the Patriot League, similar to the Ivy, what’s it like recruiting and working with those high academic basketball players?

What do you like about that particular type of student athlete?

[00:37:42] Jarren Dyson: The number one thing I like about those type of student athletes is They are extremely driven to be as successful on the court as they are in the classroom. For me, that’s why you want a coach. You want guys that want to be successful in all aspects of life.

And these guys in the Patriot League and the Ivy League, they are driven to do well. I’m talking about on a road trip, they’re, they’re doing, they’re studying in their rooms, on the bus, they’re studying. You know, and then they’re still in the gym getting their work in. They are extremely driven. You don’t really have to push too many buttons to get them to do extra work because they want to be successful.

And I think that was something that I really appreciated, especially when I got to Lafayette was you just see how hard our guys worked on and off the floor with everything they did. And it just kind of made me realize like I had to take my coaching game to another level because these dudes are going to ask a lot of questions and you better know the answer.

You better know the answer because they will, they will, they will find out that you, if you don’t know the answer. So to me, just coaching driven kids that come from great families and their families all have great perspectives, obviously high character kids. They know what they want. And I just think it’s a great opportunity to coach kids like that.

[00:39:09] Mike Klinzing: Transition from Division III to Division I. What do you remember about that first year? Were there any adjustments? Did it just feel like I’m kind of doing the same thing that I was doing at Christopher Newport? Maybe the players are just a little bit bigger, a little bit faster, a little bit quicker, or just what do you remember about the transition?

[00:39:31] Jarren Dyson: The number one thing I remember about the transition was obviously with division one, you’re allowed more time on the court with guys. Right. In the preseason, the postseason, you’re allowed, the summers, you’re allowed to work out. Whereas when division three at the time, you started practice, I want to say it was October 15th.

And then once your season was over you weren’t allowed to do anything with them on the basketball court. So I think for me, that was the biggest transition was after the season was you take a like two week break and then you’re right back in the workouts, which I love because I love being in the gym.

But again division three, you just don’t do it. So that was a big transition for me. And then obviously the, the recruiting at division one, you have a scholarship limit. So that was, different than at Christopher Newport where we, I want to say we had 16, 17 guys. You could kind of recruit six guys a class, where at Division One, you might only have two spots open in that class.

So you have to be pretty careful with who you take and you got to get the right guys. So those are probably the two things that were the biggest adjustments for me when, when I got to Division One.

[00:40:51] Mike Klinzing: Where do you stand on, I guess the rules is maybe the wrong way to say it, but just in terms of the off season workouts, Division III, obviously, since you left there, now they added the eight days that Division III coaches can work with their players outside of the season, which I know, Pretty much I haven’t talked to any division three coach, head coach, assistant coach from anywhere in the country that has not wanted those eight days, they’re all pretty excited that they have something finally that they can do with their players in the off season.

And a conversation that I’ve had with. several division one coaches, and then also division three, Jarren, is when you talk about that access to players. And I think back to my own experience. So my experience is a long, long time ago. I played division one college basketball from 88 to 92. And I always tell people that.

When my season ended, the off season workout was coaches handed me like a two page ditto and was like, Hey, here’s some stuff that you can do. We’ll see you back here in August when school starts. And clearly that’s not the way that things are today. And I oftentimes look at it and I wonder, and I was a kid who loved hoops and I couldn’t get enough of it, but I always looked forward to the end of the season where I could go and work on my game and play pickup and just sort of be away from the coaching staff that was in my ear the whole season.

And so I often wonder about. the experience that coaches and players at the division one level have, where there’s again, so much access, which on one hand is super positive that those guys are getting coached all year round. They’re getting people that care about them, that are working with them, that are helping them to improve and get better.

But I just wonder, how do you guys balance out as a staff? How’d you do it at Lafayette? How do you do it at Army in terms of making sure that the voices that they’re hearing are fresh and that guys aren’t getting burned out. How do you guys think about that? Talk about it, handle it to make sure that you’re getting the most out of all that contact time.

[00:42:47] Jarren Dyson: Yeah. So I think you hit it on the head once the season is over, I do think kids can kind of get tired of hearing the same messages that they’ve kind of heard the whole year. So I do think it is kind of good to, to give them a little bit of a break. I think at Lafayette, one thing that I love that Coach O’Hanlon did was once the season was over and we took that break, we might do we would do individual workouts.

You’d work out one on one with the player. And a lot of it was just like skill stuff a lot of shooting and footwork, but he just wanted the guys to play. Like he wanted them to just play as much three on three, five on five. as possible. Like just play with no coaches in the gym because that’s where your love or basketball kind of comes from.

You know, so like I said, once the spring and summer, it was just a lot of just playing. And obviously we do some shooting one on one stuff, but a lot of just playing and finding your love for the game. He would want our guys to go to other colleges and play, just find good runs.

If they were playing in pro ams or summer leagues. whatever they had to do to just play basketball. And I think that’s great because when they come back to college in the fall, everybody’s just so much more rejuvenated and excited and ready to go. Whereas when you’re constantly on them, they just never get that break that I think they need.

So I think that was something that we did really well at Laf. And I think here at Army, coach has done a really good job with our workouts now in the spring of He’s allowing the coaches to have voices. So all of the assistants, we’re kind of running the workouts and it gives the guys a break from just hearing coaches voice all year, obviously he’s still in the gym, he’s still around, but it allows us to all kind of teach and do drills that we want to do introduce some new things that maybe we didn’t have time to do during the year.

So I think it’s been great. And I think it’s just about finding that balance of not trying to overdo it. Because like I said, you want these kids to be excited to be in the gym. You don’t want them to dread when they see a coach or when they have to go to work out. You want them to be as excited to go to the gym in the spring and the summer as they are in the fall.

[00:45:13] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. To me, I think that’s a huge key. If you can maintain that enthusiasm, I, I can pretty much guarantee you’re getting a lot more out of your players if they’re excited and enthusiastic every day when they’re showing up, as opposed to, as you said, it’s kind of a drudgery of, Oh man, here we go again.

And so I, it’s just something that I always wonder about because again, my own experience, even though it was a long time ago, Oftentimes we’ll frame things through, through that lens. And I know that it would have been, it would have been tough to spend an entire summer with the same coaching staff on you the same way they’re on you during the season.

And so I know that what you mentioned about head coaches taking a step back and allowing their staffs to really take over that off season part so that the kids are hearing a different voice. I think that staffs do, I’m sure helps to make it a little bit better in terms of that constant voice that the players are hearing makes it a little bit better.

And again, I think when you start talking about players at division one level at all levels of college basketball, but dudes want to get better, right? I mean, ultimately, if you as a coach can help make them better, that’s really what guys are looking for. And it goes back to what you talked about, that they’re going to ask you questions.

They’re going to ask you why they’re going to ask you about this. And you know, you’re going to, if you can help them and you can answer those questions, then they’re going to believe in you. And now You’re really getting something done both as an individual and then collectively as a team and as a program.

And that’s really, I think, ultimately what you’re trying to do from a coaching standpoint. Tell me about the opportunity at Army. Why jump from Lafayette to Army? What was it about the opportunity that was attracted to you? Obviously, your mom has a military background. You grew up in a military family. So I’m assuming that that played at least some role in the decision, but just talk about what the opportunity at Army was all about and why it was so special.

[00:47:05] Jarren Dyson: Yeah. So actually what happened was My last year at Lafayette, Coach O’Hanlon retired. He ended up retiring. And after that season, I actually went back and I coached at Christopher Newport last year. So I went back with Coach Krikorian last year and coached on that staff. And we obviously had a pretty good year.

I would say, I would say. Yeah. So when I was on that staff, I had moved back home my wife and my daughter, we were back in the area with around family and you know, everything was great. Won a national championship. You know, I’m pretty, pretty happy. I wasn’t really looking to leave. And I ended up getting in contact with coach Kewick who had just gotten the job.

And had heard of me from some other people that he had worked with. He wanted somebody that had some Patriot League experience. And for me, obviously my mom being in the military, me being a military brat, I’ve always had a tremendous amount of respect for all the service academies. Even when I played them at Lafayette, those kids played extremely hard.

They were always respectful. And they just always seemed so grateful just to be playing Division One basketball. And when I had an opportunity to kind of hear Coach Kuwik’s vision of what he thought he was going to do with the program. And the fact that he wanted me on his first staff to do something at Army, they haven’t, we haven’t made the NCAA tournament here to try to do something that hadn’t been done really intrigued me.

So the more I kind of thought about it, it was an opportunity to kind of get back into Division I, but it was also an opportunity to work with tremendous young men. And for me, that’s why you want to coach. You want to coach kids with character and you want to coach kids that want to get better. And you want to coach kids that want to try to win a championship.

So for me, that’s kind of how it happened. And it’s pretty much going on like a year now. So I’m excited. And so far, everything’s been great.

[00:49:24] Mike Klinzing: What’s the recruiting profile look like for a kid that wants to go to. Army West Point. Obviously it’s a unique environment. It’s an environment that not every kid is going to be searching out and yet there are a lot of kids that do search it out, that do fit the profile.

So when you think about the type of kid that you have to recruit and sort of maybe your learning curve or your understanding of what those kids are all about, obviously at Lafayette it’s a similar profile academically, but just talk a little bit about How you guys put together your list of who you’re looking at that you can recruit and what’s the process look like for getting that recruiting list together?

[00:50:08] Jarren Dyson: I think the big adjustment, and I don’t think it was as a big adjustment for me just because I had coached division three before. It’s very similar to division three recruiting, where you have to recruit a lot of names, you have to watch a lot of games, and you have to call a lot of people. And you really just want to get as many kids as possible that you obviously think that are good enough to play at this level that can help you win.

And then once you kind of do that, it’s really about the character piece. Just, just trying to figure out the families, the background, are these the type of kids that can thrive in an environment like this? Because it’s not for everybody. And that’s the good thing about it is you don’t want people that don’t want to be here.

So we’re pretty Coach Kuwik has been really upfront with all of our recruits. And he tells us that too, is they have to embrace what comes with coming to Army West Point. Yes, you’re going to get an opportunity to play division one basketball, which is a lot of these kids dream, but you’re also going to get an opportunity to not only just serve your country, but you’re going to get an opportunity to learn at the number one leadership development school in the world.

So for us, it’s like I said, getting a lot of names, talking to a lot of people, and then really digging down on the character piece. And seeing how do they handle adversity? You know, is this something that they can do when, when things don’t go their way? Because at West Point, a lot of things are not going to go your way sometimes.

But how are you going to fight back when that doesn’t happen? So that’s been the way we’ve kind of attacked the recruiting process. And I think that’s why we’ve had the success we’ve had so far.

[00:51:53] Mike Klinzing: How, I’m just curious, and I don’t know the answer to this question in any way, shape, or form. How does the basketball experience at West Point fit into the experience that A normal student athlete or a normal student at West Point experiences in terms of just fitting that into their day.

And it just feels like again, because of the highly demanding environment that you have there. How does the basketball piece of it fit in? I don’t even know if that question makes any sense to you, but just how does it all fit together?

[00:52:37] Jarren Dyson: I think as I’ve been here a little longer, I’ve learned that the players that want to be really good, are going to find time to get extra work in.

Now, you’re still going to have your requirements that you have to do, but in the afternoon, after lunch, that’s usually when the guys are with us. We have workouts, we have practice. And that’s generally when we have them. And then after that, depending on how you’re doing in school, if you’re on top of your schoolwork, like our guys are, you’ll see a lot of our guys in here at night working out getting up shots with the coach, watching film on the weekends.

They’re in the gym, they’re working out. I think it’s just more about time management, to be honest with you, the guys that are more organized and on top of their schoolwork and communicating with professors, they find plenty of time to get in the gym when they need to, to get better. So I just think it’s more about how you organize yourself to make it work.

[00:53:39] Mike Klinzing: How about for you as a coach, your staff together as a group, how does the environment of the school contribute to how you guys approach working with your players, how you approach from a personal standpoint, when you see the level of discipline required by the students there, how does that just impact you as a human being, not only as a coach, but just walking around and doing what you do in your daily life, just when you see how disciplined those kids are and what they’re doing each and every day. How does that impact you both personally and as a coach?

[00:54:21] Jarren Dyson: I would say as a coach, it makes you want to give these guys everything you have. And you do not want to let these guys down. When you see the sacrifice, the discipline, the focus that these guys have as a coach, I want to bring it every day.

I have to bring it every day. I cannot show up not ready to go. Because they deserve it. to get 100 percent from not just me, but the rest of our coaching staff. Like they deserve it because there’s not many people in the country that can do what our guys do. So as a coach, for me, it just reminds me every day, I got to be ready to go.

No matter what’s going on in my personal life, or if we just lost the game, I can’t, I can’t pout. I can’t moan. I got to be ready to go because these guys deserve it. For my personal life, I would say it has taught me so much more about resilience and to just be grateful. Like to see what these guys go through on the daily grind and how they don’t complain. They show up every day, no matter if they’ve had, if they’ve been up since five, if they’ve had to do a three mile run or whatever they have, they just show up every day. And for me, I’ve kind of taken that to my personal life is I just try not to make excuses.

I just try to find solutions because that’s what our guys do and nobody cares, figure it out. And that’s just kind of what I’ve started to do since I worked at West Point is I’ve just tried to be as tough as our guys, because I just think they’re the toughest dudes in the country. And if they can show up after some of the stuff they have to do, then I can show up and be ready with any aspect of my life.

[00:56:17] Mike Klinzing: How do you guys as a staff there at Army, how do you divide up responsibilities and how would you describe your role currently on the staff?

[00:56:29] Jarren Dyson: Yeah, so coach did a really good job once we all got together last May of kind of breaking our whole organization in a part. So everybody has a little piece of something.

So for me, I’m in charge of the point guards and I’m the defensive coordinator. So we have other guys that are in charge of the big guys. We have another guy that’s in charge of the wings. We have another guy that’s our special teams coordinator. Another guy is our offensive coordinator. I also work with compliance.

We have another guy that works with academics. So I think Coach has done a really good job of giving all of us a little bit of the organization so that we all don’t get overwhelmed. And I think that has been one thing that I’ve really respected about Coach Kuwik is how organized he is and how he’s Make sure everybody knows what their role is. And he just wants us to attack it with enthusiasm and to try to be really good at it.

[00:57:34] Mike Klinzing: When it comes to working with this group of players, and obviously you have super high character guys, as you said, there’s no better place to learn leadership. in the country. So I’m guessing that you have amongst your players, a lot of guys who are alphas and leaders.

And so sometimes you might need to find some followers. So how do you guys think about leadership on your team? And what does that look like when you guys are talking about that in a coach’s meeting? And then how does that kind of manifest itself on the floor in terms of player leadership?

[00:58:12] Jarren Dyson: Well, I think one thing we did in the fall was that was really good is we had some leadership meetings with our whole team where we had different people on West Point come talk to our team and just let them understand different aspects of leadership.

And in my opinion being a good leader is also being a good listener. And I think that is something that we’ve really tried to incorporate with our guys, is that you don’t always have to be in charge. And obviously they already know that coming from coming at West Point, because that is pretty much.

The thing here at West Point is you have to learn before you can lead. You have to learn, you have to follow and, and listen. And I think our guys do a great job of that is because they get these lessons at West Point pretty much every day from the time they step on campus. They do a really good job of not feeling like one guy has to be in charge.

It might be somebody else’s day. It might we’ve had some games where we’ve had a freshman step up and talk to the team. And everybody’s looking at him right in the eye as if he’s the coach or as if he’s a senior. So I think it’s just more about not having an ego, which none of our guys have, and just being ready to listen and, and lead and help the team in any way that you can.

[00:59:39] Mike Klinzing: Did you look back over the course of the three head coaches that you’ve had the good fortune of working under as a college coach. And also you can think back to your time working under your high school coach. What are some things that you pulled from them that are going to make you when you eventually get an opportunity to be a head coach?

What are one or two things, you can either attribute it directly to one of them or just kind of speak in generalities, things that you’ve learned from them that you feel like will make you prepared to be a head coach when that time eventually comes?

[01:00:20] Jarren Dyson: I think at Christopher Newport with Coach Krikorian, I learned how to build a program and to not skip the steps that are necessary to be successful.

At Christopher Newport obviously it’s a lot of pressure there. They expect you to win, but he never skipped steps. You know, with the recruiting. You know, he didn’t, Oh, we didn’t always go after the guy that everybody wanted us to go after. It was really about character and toughness.

And he never went away from that. And that’s something that I just always valued. Like, this is how I want to coach. These are the type of kids I want to coach. And. This is how I’m going to be successful. So just learning that from him was, was great. I would think for Coach O’Hanlon, I learned obviously how to teach the game offensively, but I think the number one thing I learned from him was he just treats his staff phenomenal. Like people loved working for Coach O’Hanlon. And that was something that will always stick with me is that while you can hold your staff accountable, and you obviously have to push them, but you want people to want to work with you. And he never once made it feel like I didn’t have a voice, like that I couldn’t speak up or that it, I wasn’t a part of as important part of the program just as he was.

So I think that humility that he had with how he treated his staff and he wanted us to spend a lot of time with our families when my daughter was born, just little things like that. Like I will always remember that. And I think that’ll help me one day if I’m fortunate to be a head coach is like, I want my assistants to feel how I felt working for Coach O’Hanlon.

And I would say for Coach Kuwik. The number one thing that I’ve learned is the organization. Tthis was the first time that I’ve worked with a first time head coach and he is organized. Like we have a plan for everything with how we travel, with how we recruit, with practice, with scouting.

We meet every day and we go over everything. No stone unturned. And to see how organized he is, some days, I don’t even know how he does it. I don’t think he sleeps much. But to see how organized he is for everything has allowed me to understand when you do become a head coach, there’s going to be a lot of things thrown at your plate that you have to take the time to make sure you try to have a plan.

It might not work, but at least if you have a plan and you’re organized. Everybody will be on the same page. And I think coach Kuwik’s done a phenomenal job of keeping us organized and, and communicating with us. So we all know what we need to do to make this program successful.

[01:03:31] Mike Klinzing: How have you organized your thoughts, things that you’ve picked up that you’re kind of filing away either for what you’re doing now, for the eventuality that you get the opportunity to take over your program?

How do you keep all that stuff organized? Do you store it? Are you a Google drive guy. Are you an old fashioned three ring binder guy? Do you have journals? Just how do you kind of keep track of the learnings over the course of time so that you can have those to go back and refer to it? Do you have an organized system?

Are you more haphazard? Just how do you go about cataloging and keeping track of the things that you’re learning over the course of time?

[01:04:12] Jarren Dyson: Yes. So I do have a journal that I like to write in that I started when I was at Christopher Newport, where I just write my thoughts and feelings and just about like, not just games, but like practices and meetings and just how I felt.

And I’ve been doing that since then. I still do it here at Army. But I do have like a folder that has pretty much all my philosophies and things that we’ve done at each spot. I kind of keep it all organized by the year different practice plans, just sometimes obviously for the future, but also sometimes you just want to go back and just look at things from three years ago.

Like, man, what did we do at Lafayette to start Patriot League play? Like, what were we working on? I don’t know. And I think what that has allowed me to do is to kind of help where I’m here at Army. To give some ideas, like, Hey, this is what we were doing in February at Laf, where I felt like we were always playing pretty well in February.

Like these are the kind of drills, these are the thoughts that we were doing. So I am pretty organized with that. And I think most coaches probably should be, I’m probably not as organized as I need to be just because of the chaos of the season, but I do try to obviously write in my journal. I try to do that once a week.

And then obviously I have a little folder of everything that I’ve went through as a coach at all my spots.

[01:05:47] Mike Klinzing: I want to ask you one more recruiting question. AAU versus high school basketball, when you’re watching a player in one of those two settings, do you have a preference? What are you looking for in one, maybe that you’re not looking for in the other?

What do you try to gain from seeing a kid in one environment versus the other? Just talk a little bit about how you balance out evaluating a kid when you see him in AAU versus what you’re looking for when you see him in high school.

[01:06:15] Jarren Dyson: Yes. So I think AAU and high school recruiting are both valuable tools when it comes to recruiting players.

The thing that I do love about AAU is the level of competition that a lot of these guys play against. Generally, you go to a really good tournament, most of those guys that are playing AAU are going to play or want to play college basketball. So for me, I’ve always appreciated seeing the level of competition that these kids go through, especially in the summer when all these coaches are watching to see how they respond a little bit when things aren’t going their way.

I do like to see that. I like to see the guys that maybe they get benched or they’re having a tough game. You can see a lot of that in AAU because of the pressure of these kids feeling like they need to get recruited. And so I think you could find a lot about their character during that time. The thing that I love about watching high school, especially in June, is a lot of the high school coaches are running their systems and a lot of these kids have been with these coaches since they were freshmen, so to see how kids play in different systems, how they think the game, how they treat their teammates that are their boys, how they interact with their high school coach there’s just some phenomenal high school coaches in the country and to just see them up close and how they go about their business every day.

You know, I think they’re both great. I think they’re both great. Obviously in high school, you can probably see a kid have a different role with his high school team than he will with his AAU team. So that’s, those are obviously things that kind of take into consideration, but I think both are great tools.

I’m not going to say I prefer either one because I have gotten players from AAU and I’ve also found a player or two just from watching them in high school that didn’t play AAU. So I don’t think I think you can get it done either way. I just think, like I said, the more times you can watch a kid play, in my opinion, the better.

And I’m a guy that likes to be in the gym, so. If I can watch you play high school and I can watch you play AAU, I will be there.

[01:08:36] Mike Klinzing: The more information, the better, right? You can never have too much information. And then even then, right, Jarren is still an inexact science. No matter what you do, no matter how, no matter how certain you think you are one way or the other, there are always outliers going one direction or the other.

The kid that you thought, man, this kid’s never going to make it or they’re the last recruit in a recruiting class and end up being the best kid that you recruited. And conversely, you got a kid that you think, man, this kid can’t miss. And then boom, it does it doesn’t work. And it’s, look, pro leagues and colleges are spending millions and millions of dollars trying to figure it out.

And it’s still an inexact science. So I think that your point is well taken that the more, different situations you can see kids in. The more times you can put eyeballs on them, the better off you’re going to be and the more at least relatively accurate you can be in, in making an assessment of those kids.

And it’s tough, man. That is a tough gig trying to figure out who can play where but to your point, it’s a lot of fun to be in the gym, watching kids and trying to evaluate them for sure. So I want to wrap up with one final two part question. Part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge and then when you think about what you get to do every day, what brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:10:00] Jarren Dyson: I think for me, my biggest challenge and it’s probably more, it’s my problem is I put a lot of pressure on myself to be successful, not just for me, but every group I coach I just want them all to do well.

And I think for me, sometimes I have to remember that every situation is different and the journey is the journey and you have to go through the process. So even though like I said, Coach K taught me not to skip steps. There are times where I do want to skip steps. I want these guys at Army to get a championship tomorrow.

Like I want them to get it really bad because I understand how fun it is and how great it is to accomplish something that people don’t think you can accomplish. So I think for me, that will probably be my biggest challenges. To just remind myself it’s a process don’t skip steps, keep pushing these guys it’s going to work out and it’s going to work out like it’s supposed to.

My biggest joy, honestly, has been my daughter, who she’s five now, and I think she’s starting to understand what I do every day and to see her face. At the games, like she’s cheering. We had the Army Navy game, which everybody knows is an intense game.

It’s a crazy game. And to look in the crowd, to see her cheering and getting nervous. And when I get home, she wants to talk to me about the games and to go through this process with her and my wife. I think that’s what’s bringing me the most joy is that I really feel like my family is a part of this.

They really support me because being a college coach is not easy on the family and you spend a lot of time away and missing some important things. So to kind of go through this with my wife and my daughter and for them to really enjoy what I do and enjoy where I work, that has really brought me so much joy this past year.

I am excited to continue to involve them and hopefully do great things here at Army.

[01:12:36] Mike Klinzing: That’s awesome and it’s well said and I think that there’s nothing better than being able to meld your two families, your basketball family and your quote unquote real family to be able to meld them together and have them share.

That’s just, that, that’s an incredible feeling when you get an opportunity to do that. So before we wrap up, Jarren, I want to give you a chance to share how people can reach out to you, get in contact with you, whether you want to share email, social media, website, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I will jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:13:07] Jarren Dyson: Well, one, I want to say Mike, again, I really appreciate. You allowed me to be on this podcast. This was great. I love, we felt like we were just talking. Didn’t even feel like I was on a podcast. I just felt llike we were at the house or at a restaurant, just kind of talking hoops.

If anybody wants to reach me, I’m on social media, I’m on Twitter @CoachJDyson. You can reach me on social media send me messages. I always get back. And like I said, I’m looking forward to, to meeting people and hopefully doing great things here at Army.

[01:13:48] Mike Klinzing: Jarren, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to jump on and join us. Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.