JASON LEONE – OSWEGO STATE UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH, – EPISODE 798

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

Email – jason.leone@oswego.edu

Twitter – @OswegoMBball @leone_coach

Jason Leone is the men’s basketball head coach at Oswego State in New York.  Over the past 12 seasons, Oswego has played in eight NCAA Division III Championships. The Lakers have finished inside the D3hoops.com Top 25 poll on five separate occasions during Leone’s tenure (2023, 2022, 2019, 2016, 2012). Leone is 9th nationally in the history of Division III Men’s Basketball in career winning percentage and No. 1 in the East Region among active Division III head coaches with at least 10 years of head coaching experience.

 Prior to Oswego, Leone brought Keystone College to the program’s first-ever NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional Ranking. In addition to amassing a .670 winning percentage.

As a player, Leone began his career at NCAA Division I Lafayette College, where he played for two seasons before transferring to the University of Rochester. The three-time Dean’s List honoree was a captain of the 1998-99 squad that qualified for the NCAA tournament. On the court, Leone won the UAA individual scoring title with Rochester as a junior and was named All-UAA for both of his seasons with the Yellowjackets. 

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Grab pen and paper before you listen to this episode with Jason Leone, men’s basketball head coach at Oswego State.

What We Discuss with Jason Leone

• Growing up in a family of basketball coaches
• Watching Syracuse basketball and the rest of the Big East growing up
• “There was a certain level of toughness and camaraderie that was built with the good old pickup game.”
• How college players can find pick-up runs in the off-season
• “I think one of the things I’ve learned is you want to, at this level, give them some space to figure some things out, but at the same time, you don’t want to let them crash and burn.”
• “I feel like our team plays well at the right moments in February and March.”
• “I think that break the last six or seven weeks after we’re done before they leave for the summer, is therapeutic for the players to be normal college students, both academically and socially.”
• “I think the way that you get better is by including other people.”
• “I think when people feel empowered within your organization I think you have a strong organization.”
• “I think the cooperative model of coaching is the most effective model of coaching with today’s student athlete. And we try to try to embody that with everything we do.”
• Learning that not everything is important or in need of a solution right away
• “Understanding the level of effort that you have to put in to be really good regardless of level.”
• Figuring out the best way to coach each particular team each year
• “We do push guys. We are demanding. But I think the thing that really helps us coach these guys hard is that they know we’re invested in their personal identity.”
• The recruiting process at Oswego State
• “You want self-driven people both academically and personally.”
• “Success is about your mindset and part of your mindset is you have to have a vision for how you want to get better. You have to have a method for how you’re going to do that, and then you have to have the discipline to execute that every day.”
• Why moody players are team killers
• “In AAU you really get a chance to go and see yourself outside of your normal circle of competition.”
• Being adaptable to the changing rules in college recruiting
• .”I think offense takes more time. That’s the harder side of the ball for us to kind of figure out every year.”
• “There’s a lot that you can get done in that small amount of time. I really believe that.”
• “When we do player development, most of the things that we do involve absorbing contact and playing more physical.”
• “Getting guys to where they feel confident enough and they can execute, making plays on their own in a one-on-one fashion.”
• Shooting is the difference maker
• “I think basketball is a game of who is able to get the best shots.”
• “Rebounding attempts, offensive rebounds and turnovers. Those are the three things that we will chart.”
• Coaching players when they come off the floor in a game
• “We coach every player individually and in a way where we know how they need to be coached, how they want to be coached, and how they best respond to communication.”
• “If you were to watch our team practice in particular this last two years that we’ve had in our record setting years you’d be able to see the joy within our gym.”
• Finding and pointing out examples of great communication
• “When I meet with my players individually and I ask them what they like about our practice model every year, the thing that I hear the most is we like how much we scrimmage and we play.”
• “I want the players to find practice to be a function of what’s going to make them most excited to be there”
• Keeping freshman engaged with the team
• Adaptability is a critical quality

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THANKS, JASON LEONE

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JASON LEONE – OSWEGO STATE UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH, – EPISODE 798

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello, and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Suckle tonight, and we are pleased to welcome another Jason, Jason Leon, head coach of the Men’s Basketball Program at Oswego State. Jason, welcome to the Hoop Pets Pod.

[00:00:15] Jason Leone: Hey, Mike and Jay, thanks for having me on.

Really excited to be here.

[00:00:19] Mike Klinzing: Thrilled to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all the things that you’ve been able to do throughout your basketball career. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. What are your earliest memories of the game of basketball?

[00:00:35] Jason Leone: Well, I was very fortunate.

I grew up in a coaching family. My uncle John Leon was a basketball coach at Lafayette College in the Patriot League for 15 years. And I have another uncle who is a high school coach in the area where I grew up in Syracuse, New York Christian Brothers Academy. And then my father was very active in coaching and in Syracuse as well in youth leagues and things like that.

So to say we were a basketball family would be an understatement. So I grew up around the game, was very fortunate at a young age to be able to go to some great camps and that sparked my interest. John Bielein, when I was growing up was the head coach at Lemoyne College here in Syracuse.

And our family got to be close with him and he was a tremendous instructor of the fundamentals of basketball, let alone shooting. And I went to all his camps and I just was really fortunate to be around the game as much as I was. And met some really good friends along the way and then I got to be good enough where I played in a good high school program and then had an opportunity to play both at division one and division three level at high academic institutions.

And got my interest going in the game and met some great people along the way. And here we are. I’m 46 years old and I’ve been coaching for over 22 years now. Who’s your favorite Syracuse player growing up? Sherman Douglas. So, Sherman Douglas was my favorite.

I just loved the way that he played point guard. The way he threw the lob passes to Derek Coleman, Ronnie Siekaly the Big East in the eighties when I was growing up was, it was nothing like it. And he watched the program, the 30 for 30 on the Requeim for the Big East. And I watched that and it is an emotional thing because I grew up and my dad and some close buddies of mine, our dads would drop us off up at the carrier dome and give us 10 or $15 and we’d get a ticket at all the way up at the top of the dome.

And all those games drew 30,000 plus. And we watched Chris Mullen, Patrick Ewing, all those games and it was you talk about memorable experiences and things that sparked your interest in basketball. Watching that level in the Big East and in the late eighties and early nineties was just an incredible experience.

[00:02:59] Mike Klinzing: I can only imagine. I mean, I think back to watching Big Monday, sitting on the floor of my living room and free remote control and just having the cable box sitting on top of the TV.

[00:03:11] Jason Leone: It was crazy being a Syracuse fan growing up. And now I’ve gotten to have a relationship with Coach Boeheim.

It’s  really important to me. But I was in fourth grade when they, when Keith Smart hit the shot in 1987 to beat Syracuse in, in the championship game. And I remember I was in fourth grade and I remember watching it with a friend at their house, and my dad picked me up and it was one of those nights, the game’s on late, so I got to stay up late that night.

It was such an important experience being a Syracuse fan. They had never really made it that far. And when they lost, I remember going home and crying and saying, they’re never going to make it this far again, and the free throw shooting back in that day was always a thing that people made fun of Syracuse about and that game was tough to swallow because they missed some really important free throws down at the end.

And anyways, it was just some great, great times growing up in Syracuse, New York being a part of a place that was a basketball crazy city.

[00:04:12] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I mean, when I think of Syracuse basketball, I guess the first guy I always think of is the Pearl and he was just somebody that when I was a kid that I’m 53 now, so I’m a couple years older than you.

So I remember just watching Pearl Washington and just the things that that guy could do and now you kind of look back on it and you’re like, man, the guy had kind of a strange body for a division, one point guard for the guy who was as, as successful as he was. And obviously just had a tremendous college career and never quite made it to the same level that a lot of people thought he might as a pro player. But yeah, Syracuse basketball and biggies basketball in general back then. I mean, it was just, it’s crazy. I was always a North Carolina guy. I had a friend growing up who was always a Georgetown guy, so he and I would go back and forth between Carolina, Georgetown, Carolina, Georgetown, and it just college basketball at that time.

When you think about the players who played it and just what a different era it was than the era of college basketball that we’re in now, which is the college game today is still incredible, but we just don’t have the same connection with the players now.

[00:05:17] Jason Leone: You make a great point, Mike. It’s like when we were growing up and we watched those teams, you could wrap your arms around a program or a team for three, four years because you saw those players playing together.

That connectedness is something that we don’t have now. And it doesn’t mean that there’s not a different way that you can fall in love with the game, but it’s certainly, there’s not a lot of similarities between the way the game was then and the way it was now.

But I still try to focus on the positive where we have a lot of great memories growing up and, and watching those teams play. I had a group of guys I was fortunate enough that had access to Big East Tournament tickets and when I got to be a younger adult and you know, I was in my late twenties.

We had a way that the four or five of my good buddies, we would go to the Big East tournament every year and watch those games and we’d go from like Wednesday or Thursday to Saturday.  You know, just some great memories and, and such a high level of basketball, great coaches and there’s just so much fanfare there and just some of my best memories not only as a young adult, but even as an adult in my thirties it was awesome going to those Big East Games.

[00:06:29] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I think what’s interesting

is when you think about the players from that era, and obviously you can associate Patrick Ewing with the Knicks, but I think you can just as easily associate Patrick Ewing with. The Georgetown Hoyas and Chris Mullen with the Warriors, but also Chris Mullen with St. John’s. And you can go down the line with guy after guy, after guy, after guy where not only what they did as professional players, but their college careers were immensely important to sort of their legacy and how we remember them. And I just don’t think that that’s not the same really anymore.

It’s more difficult I think, because again, those best guys are one and done. And heck, now we’re getting to the point right where some of the best high school players, they’re not even going and playing college basketball. They’re going to all these different, whether it’s overseas or overtime elite or whatever it is that they’re going to the G League.

There’s just so many more options now for guys and so it’s, it’s definitely had an effect on the way we watch college basketball. There’s no question that it’s way different than when you and I were growing up and just. As you said, wrapping your arms around a team that was together for three or four years and you just knew, hey, this is, this is the Michael Jordan, North Carolina Tar Heels, or this is the Patrick Ewing, Georgetown Hoyas, or this is the Sherman Douglas, Derek Coleman, Syracuse Orangeman.

I mean, it’s just the way it was back then and it’s, it’s never going, it’s never going back. It’s not going back to that. So we just have to kind of enjoy the memories that we had and, and, and move forward. When you think about your time as a player growing up, what were some of the things that you did to improve and work on your game when you were a high school player?

Because obviously things are different today than they were when you were, I were growing up in terms of just a a u and trainers and the difference between being in a gym all the time versus, I’m sure you played some basketball outside on the playground, which when you tell your players, Hey, we used to play outside.

They probably look at you like you got three heads, but totally different growing up in that era versus now. But just talk a little bit about how you improved yourself as a player.

[00:08:26] Jason Leone: Well, I at that point the high school coaches had much more influence over high school players. To your point, we still hadn’t started AAU yet.

I played high school basketball between 1990 and 1994 at a really strong Catholic high school program Christian Brothers Academy and Syracuse. And I played for a Hall of Fame high school coach, Buddy Linsky, who’s still coaching. And we played summer leagues. We got in the gym and we worked together.

And we went to the park and there was no cell phones, so we just knew every day of the week during the summer where the good games were going to be. And that’s where we went and that’s where we played. And if you didn’t win you were sitting out for another hour before you got on the court.

And there was a great sense about competition that grew from that and great lessons that were learned and we went and played in these places that right now in the inner city and stuff like that, I’m not sure that it can’t be the same to your point, Mike it’s, things change and you’ve have to adapt.

But there was a certain level of toughness and camaraderie that was built with the good old pickup game that you would play and have an argument over calls and people didn’t call fouls. And if you lost, you sat and the competitive spirit that grew from that experience was something that I don’t think you can replicate nowadays.

And it’s not that the players nowadays can’t develop that. It’s just developed in a different way. But those were some of the things that were really important. It was just getting into the gym. There wasn’t air conditioning, there wasn’t beautiful lines on the court. And the courts weren’t glamorous and didn’t have logos.

And I spent a lot of time in Catholic school gyms that weren’t regulation size and, but there was something about that that was very romantic, so to speak and it helped you get better. It helped you meet people. It forced you to go outside your comfort zone.

And those are all applicable skills when you want to be a good player.

[00:10:46] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, there’s no question about it. I always say, said it numerous times on the podcast that the situation that we have today, in terms of the AAU basketball and the way the kids grow up in the game, there’s certainly a ton of positives to it, but I’m really glad that I grew up in the era where, It was pickup basketball and it was me kind of working on my game on my own.

And as you said, one of the, I think besides just making me a better basketball player, I think it made me a better person because I had to interact with people of all different races from all different places, all different ages. And like I said, it made me a better player, but I think it also made me a better person and helped me to figure out how to negotiate and figure stuff out and, and do things that, as you said, kids today can still figure that stuff out.

We just have to give it to them in a different way. I’m curious from, let’s talk a little bit about your guys now, when they’re trying to play pickup basketball in the off season. Where do they go? What do they do? Where do your guys play in the off-season when they want to get a game? Because I know that at least around here, it’s really difficult when you start talking about trying to find a quote pickup game for college players or even good high school players.

It’s really, really hard to find those games. Whereas I feel like. To your point, when you and I were growing up, you kind of knew, hey, this gym or this playground on a Tuesday night or a Sunday night, that’s where all the players were going to be. How do your guys find those games in the off season?  

[00:12:09] Jason Leone: Well, I mean, while, while classes are in session, Mike we’ve got one of the really positive things about coaching at Oswego State is we’ve got a facility that we don’t have to share with recreation or intermurals or anything like that.

So our gym is borderline exclusively of use to our players. So during classes we rely on our players to put together games where they’re going to play during the season, obviously we are unable to do that within the NCAA rules as coaches, but being here 12 years, we’ve got a environment that’s set up where our older guys really do a great job just communicating with our players.

This is when we’re going to be playing, this is what we’re going to be doing, and if we want to be really good, we have to get in here and we have to compete together and push each other. I think when the players go home for the summer, one of the unique things we do is we sit down with every player during the off season and not only ask them what their thoughts are on their game and what their two or three things are that they want to improve upon before next season. But after they tell us those things, we say, okay, well what, what’s your method for how you’re going to improve? Just to hear what their thoughts are. And it’s, it’s quite interesting to hear young people nowadays they may have ideas about what they’re going to do, but then they don’t really have an answer for what the method’s going to be.

So at that point, that opens the door for us as coaches and as a coaching staff to say, look at, these are things that we used to do. You have to go outside the box and you have to be willing to call people in your area where you grew up and say, okay, what are the good summer leagues and where are the good pickup runs?

And these are the things you need to do to be a good player. And we encourage them to do that. I think that’s a great personal development piece. To your point where you have to research and figure out where these places are, where you can play and get better during the summer.

I think kids the players, one of the things I’ve noticed from coaching as long as they have now is more students are involved at our level with internships and working a lot more than what we did when we were players. I think kids would go and they maybe wouldn’t have as many demanding jobs over the summer and everything was revolved around basketball.

Now kids, their life revolves around how they’re going to make money and then, When they’re done with work, where am I going to play? So that’s something that I’ve noticed over the years has really changed. So for us, we encourage them and give them as much input as we can on how to go about finding these places where they can get better.

But it certainly is, is interesting as an adult to watch the way that they find their way towards improvement, you know? You don’t want to interrupt the things that they want to do because division three is a very unique model. So you want to let them figure some things out for themselves, but at the same time, you know that they want to improve and their goals that you have to be able to nudge them in the right direction.

[00:15:24] Mike Klinzing: What are some things that they’re doing going in the wrong direction? I’m just curious.

[00:15:25] Jason Leone: Well, I don’t think it’s anything that’s earth shattering, I think in terms of going in the wrong direction. These student athletes have a lot of things tugging at their time.

I mean, yep. Good things are internships, things that they want to do during the summer. I think social media and their social lives are quite a bit different than what they were when we were in college. And again, I think one of the things I’ve learned is you want to, at this level, give them some space to figure some things out, but at the same time, you don’t want to let them crash and burn because inevitably we’ve all had players that maybe have things that they want to do, and then you watch them go into the following season, maybe they haven’t put in the time and you don’t want to see them discouraged and so you have to.

It’s certainly a tap dance, so to speak with players at our level where you want to push them, but you’ve have to do it in the right way, you know? I watched something that Rick Pitino said one time, and he was like, everybody’s motivated in a different way. Right? And part of a coach’s job is to have that skill of communication where you can find out what motivates each individual player that you coach, and then you have to communicate with them in a way where you can find out what makes them tick and motivate them to do things that you need them to do to improve.  I really agree with that method.

[00:16:56] Mike Klinzing: What does that look like? I’m assuming that at the end of the season here, you kind of wrapped up and you’ve been going through and having your post-season meetings with your guys. What does that look like in terms of the conversations that you’re having with different players based on, again, those different motivational styles or things that.

Each player needs differently in order to push them in the right direction. What are those post-season meeting looks like for you?

[00:17:18] Jason Leone: Well, this year we took a little bit more time before we met with our players. We’ve had two exceptional seasons in a row where we’ve set program records for wins.

So we’ve been 55 and six over the last two years, and we made we’ve made the sweet 16 four times in the last seven years. And this year we broke through, had a program changing win against Randolph Macon, made the elite eight. So we’ve got a really veteran group right now.

We’ve got 13 of our 14 players returning next year. So we’re going to play a lot of fifth and sixth year guys next year. So going into this offseason, I wanted to give the guys a little bit of time to themselves. But in terms of your question, we’ve met with every guy and we did a little bit more as a staff, a little bit more listening in these sessions rather than us dictating what we thought they needed to do.

I think one of the things is when you coach an older team, and you can only learn this from coaching for a, a little bit of a, a spell, is you’ve really have to give them ownership. I think that’s a really important thing. You don’t want to burn them out from a mental perspective. You know, especially we’re going to be coaching guys that are 22 to 24 years old next year.

And the thing I worry most about at this level, given their the things that tug at their time academically and socially is I don’t want them to be burned out come February 1st. You know? We’re going to have very high expectations for our program next year as we did going into this year.

And I really think it’s important you want them to get certain things done and you want to communicate with them in a post-season meeting, but at the same time, I really believe less is more. And you have to give them a little bit of space especially at this time of year. I think the more they hear your voice sometimes that can be detrimental towards progress.

So those are some of the things that we focused on this year. I think the way that it’s costed us is sometimes we’re a slow starting team in November.  I feel like every year we have one or two head scratching losses. But I think it helps us later in the year, I feel like our team plays well at the right moments in February and March.

And that’s just the model that we’ve adopted and we believe in. What are you going to do with your eight days? That’s a great question. I think the way we’re going to handle it is we’re going to, I’m going to first do my practice schedule for the whole year, a skeleton of that, and then figure out, based on how I’ve coached the team as a head coach for 16 year, what days we can spare to do the days that we want to do in the fall.

I can tell you right now, we won’t do anything in the spring. I just don’t think there’s enough carryover between the spring and then they go home for the summer and then they come back. And I think that break the last six or seven weeks after we’re done before they leave for the summer, is therapeutic for the players to be normal college students, both academically and socially.

So it’ll be somewhere between four and eight days. I think one of the nice things is there’s not an hour limitation. So my gut feeling early on is we’re going to take four straight weeks, do one day in each of those four weeks do kind of some positional stuff for an hour and then have a team practice.

So that’s my initial feeling, but I haven’t really done a deep dive into that yet.

[00:20:48] Mike Klinzing: Let me ask you this, because obviously you had experience as a player. At the division one and the division three level, and I think back to my time as a division one player, and I know that it’s completely different now in terms of the off season and the demands that both players and coaches have on them, the access that the coaches have to the players.

But when I was playing, I know that our season ended and I got handed like a three page ditto of like, Hey, here’s your workouts, man. We’ll see you back here and we’ll, we’ll see you back here in August. And obviously it’s not that way today. And I often look at it, I still tend to look at a lot of this stuff through a player’s lens as opposed to a coach’s lens.

And I know that, man, I think about these guys that are on campus for 52 weeks a year and they got the same guys chirping in their ear for that entire time. And I just wonder how you can possibly be at your best and be fresh. As a player when you’re hearing coaches year round. And conversely, I think from a coaching standpoint too, right?

You’re with those guys so much and I, I kind of heard it in in your answer of you kind of need a break and you need to get away. And obviously that’s built into the model of division three basketball. But I know when I look at what the division one level does now, I just think, look, I get it that you’re getting to work with coaches and players are getting to work with coaches and there’s certainly benefit to that.

But I wonder deep down inside sometimes whether or not that is the amount of access they have, I wonder if it’s truly beneficial because of just all the things that you laid out.

[00:22:28] Jason Leone: Yeah, I think that’s a great thought. Our model, one of the things I believe in is collaboration. And I think the longer I do this, I think empowering the players is such an important thing.

We coach really intelligent student athletes at our level. And one of the things that I really try to do is I really try to rely on other people. I rely on my staff and I rely on our players. It’s not uncommon for me to meet with players and say, Hey, what do you think of this?

I’m not afraid of answers that could be something that is offensive to a coach. I ask our guys routinely, what do you think of this?  What are things that you don’t like about our program? What are the things that you don’t like about the way that I coach the team?

How do you want to be coached? I think sometimes it could be a scenario where you’re afraid of those answers, but to me sometimes, You can open up a can of worms, but my thing is I can find out the things that the players really feel strongly about. And I think the way that you get better is by including other people.

I think that when, I mean, I think about it from a corporate standpoint, right? I work for somebody when my boss brings me into her office and asks me my opinion on how things are going or how I would like to do things, whether people within my program or within the athletic department, that makes me feel special, you know?

And we try to run our program the same way and, and I think when people feel empowered within your organization I think you have a strong organization. I really do. I’m also very clear with the players that empowerment doesn’t include in the middle of the game.

I may not ask them what defense we’re going to run but. I want them to feel like there’s a time and a place where we can agree or we can disagree, but we can get better from that. And so that’s something within our model that I think I’ve gotten better with and that direct style of communication, I think people appreciate especially the people that answer to you.

And we really try to do a good job of that. I think today’s player, I teach a coaching class at our university and one of the things that, there’s three different styles of coaches, right? There’s the authoritarian model, there’s a submissive model, and then there’s this cooperative style coach.

And I think the cooperative model of coaching is the most effective model of coaching with today’s student athlete. And we try to try to embody that with everything we do.

[00:25:14] Mike Klinzing: How far into your head coaching career were you until you got comfortable with having those kinds of. Honest conversations and seeking that feedback from your players, was that something you had right away or was that something you sort of had to build into?

[00:25:27] Jason Leone: No, no. I still consider myself young at 46, but when you first start out, one of the things I noticed is I thought everything was the most important thing. You know, when you problem solve, you want to do everything and get a solution to every problem right away.

And the longer you do things, you realize the things that you can be more patient with. Everything doesn’t have to be a rock fight with players or with administrators and things like that. And you learn to let things marinate a little bit. think I started out at a very, very small college that was not a high profile college and a high profile league, and I thought, I worked through a lot of my weaknesses there and I was fortunate when I got the Oswego State job, I took over a program that had just made their first ever NCAA tournament and I inherited a really strong group of seniors.

So during that year, I was the one that had to fit in and not screw the thing up. And I thought coaching that team that went undefeated in our league and made the  NCAA tournament. I really took a big step forward after I from a personal perspective after coaching that team. And I learned a lot about myself and I learned a lot about communication and I learned a lot about coexisting with the people that I worked with.

And it doesn’t mean that I didn’t make mistakes after that, but I felt like that was a really, really good professional development piece for me.

[00:27:00] Mike Klinzing: What was an early strength as a head coach. And then what was would you say was a weakness early on in your coaching career?

[00:27:06] Jason Leone: I think I always had the work ethic, so I mentioned to you off air, one of my first bosses is Tobin Anderson who I’m sure most people know now was the coach at FDU and he is now at Iona.

And working for him as an assistant up at Clarkson, my first, my second year into coaching. I really learned the effort level that you had to put into recruiting and the job and how competitive coaching was and making your way within the profession. So I think a strength of mine was understanding the level of effort that you had to put in to be really good regardless of level.

I thought my, probably one of my weaknesses was I didn’t think I had a great understanding of taking my foot off the gas with our teams. And again, I just mentioned like one of the things that I think is very hard is when you’re pedal to the metal for the whole season and that’s something that you just learn through experience and having that work-life balance, the longer you do it, you’re going to gain that stuff.

And sometimes work-life balance has a negative connotation, but I think the older you get, you figure out the times when you have to really put great amount of time in. And then there’s times where everything’s not the most important thing. There’s certain things that can wait.

[00:28:38] Mike Klinzing: How do you prioritize and think about what it is that. Is important day-to-day, do you have a process for going through, figuring that out? Do you do it through watching film with a previous game, the previous practice? Do you sit down for 15 minutes and just kind of think through it as a discussion with your staff?

Just what does that process look like in terms of figuring out, Hey, what do we have to do today? How do we prioritize that? Because as you said, it is very easy to think about the million things that you have to do or that you want to do, or that you want your team to improve on. How do you narrow that down?

[00:29:13] Jason Leone: Well, I think that’s an awesome question because at our level, like I don’t I’ve got assistants that have secondary jobs. So look, I don’t have a full-time assistant. Our staff, it’s comprised of two younger guys that. They work full-time hours for me, but they’re not paid full-time. So one of them is student teaching and the other one does some training on the side just to make ends meet.

And then I have a volunteer assistant that’s been with the program for over 20 years. So collaboration is really important to me. And I think it’s important to them. So You know, we each have a specific role within our program based on our strengths and weaknesses. I think one of the things that I’ve adopted that I think is really important is I have a weekly meeting with my captains.

Sometimes that takes place over a meal. Sometimes it just is a 10 or 15 minute meeting before a practice or after a practice. But how we prioritize things every team is different. So there’s certain years where I may let things sit a little bit more. There’s teams I watch more film with than others.

There’s teams we practice with longer than others. There’s certain teams where we have to spend individual time with players more than others. So I think one of the things I believe in is really identifying and relationship building with our players to figure out, okay, what is the best way to coach this particular team?

And then from there that’s how we prioritize what we’re going to do in terms of film study. In terms of scout reports I’d hope when I first started coaching our scouting reports are 2, 3, 4 pages long, and now I give my guys one page it’s one page and we keep this thing pretty simplistic.

[00:31:05] Mike Klinzing: When you think about just building the relationships that it takes to be able to have that understanding of each individual player and your teams, how do you go about building those relationships? Is that just. Sort of the informal conversations do you have of formal team building things, do you just, what do you do to build the relationships with your guys?

How does that, how does that happen for you?

[00:31:33] Jason Leone: Well, we’re lucky. I’m at an institution, at a public school where we don’t have to mass recruit. I think a lot of times you see it at our level, you’ll see teams that have 20, 21 guys on the team. Like we had one year where it was like that because of this covid thing that we’re working through.

And it’s, that’s put a wrench into the way people comprise their teams a little bit with people being here fifth and sixth years. But we’re almost through all that, but. You know, for me you know, I think it’s really important that we spend, it’s almost like the Jerry McGuire thing like less, like more personal attention, less people, you know.

So we try to identify our models. We try to identify 15 kids that we’re really going to go after hard, get to know their families, their high school coaches, all their people that are quote unquote in their circle of trust. And I think that’s a really important thing within our model. So it starts there and then once they get on campus we spend individual time in three areas.

You know, obviously they’re academic development, their personal development, and then obviously their basketball development. We’re able to recruit a smaller number of kids because our cost of going to school at our institution is typically going to be less than a private school in our state.

And from an admissions perspective, we could cast a pretty wide net. I’ve got guys on my team that are first generation college students, and I’ve also got guys that are 13, 13 50 on the s a t that just are not going to pay 75, $80,000 to go to a private school so that allows us.

To have a very diverse team not just in terms of race, but in terms of socioeconomics and geographics within our state. And that helps us to build relationships because we know, and we get to know where they come from, what the environment is within how they grew up. And I think the more you know about people personally, the more you ask questions and you listen that’s not a big secret, it’s going to help you coach that person. And I think as we’ve built a program that has been very connected the players stay invested in our program. After they leave, they go on and do great things with their lives. And it’s just, it’s, it’s been an awesome, awesome experience coaching at this particular school.

But it takes a lot of time. You’ve got to be there. And not every kid that’s played for me has loved it every second of the time. We do push guys. We are demanding. But I think the thing that really helps us coach these guys hard is that they know we’re invested in their personal identity.

And it’s been a lot of fun and something that we’re really proud of.

[00:34:25] Mike Klinzing: When you think about the recruiting process and bringing the right guys in that are going to fit what you’re trying to do. And obviously, as you said, you’re starting to build that relationship even before they set foot on campus as you’re beginning that recruiting process.

So what does that look like in terms of how do you come up with your initial list of guys that. You want to target and go after? And then how do you narrow that funnel as you go through the process? Well,

[00:34:53] Jason Leone: Yeah, it’s a great thought because we’re at a state institution, we’re going to have two different types of lists.

So we’ll start obviously we want to have a footprint within a two hour radius of our campus. Our program is at this point a little bit more established because of some of the, the success that’s gone on here. So I’ve noticed that we’re able to get involved with a little bit better player now than maybe when I first got here. Just because of that type of success, I think we’ve gained some national respect within our level and with kids that are along the three way in New York state, I think we can be a pretty good option for them based on academics and financial aid and things like that.

So we identified those guys pretty early you know, that are high school seniors. And obviously like every college coach we’re going in, we’re covering the AAU events and things like that. Although we’re doing less and less of that now. You know, word of mouth has been as important function of our recruiting as anything.

And then we go through the whole year and like any small college school, there’s kids that we really like that during the normal recruiting cycle, are thinking that they want to get a scholarship and play at a higher level. Or maybe prep school is an option. So we’ve have to kind of have a function with rolling admissions where we kind of just hang in there with certain guys.

And then once our season’s over, we get another list of guys where kids that maybe cross us off the list early, they find out that maybe won’t get a scholarship and they need us financially. And then we may get another list of guys like that. Then obviously the new thing that everybody’s dealing with now is the transfer portal, and obviously we do a little bit of that, but you know, it’s like any school, you, you take a job and you figure out kind of what your niche is and that adapt, you adapt to that every year that changes.

I know with transfer stuff, we’ve done that quite a bit over my 12 years here, but before the portal it was kind of word of mouth stuff and now with the portal, it’s become something where everybody knows about everybody early on and you’ve kind of have to sift through those things.

Almost like a recruiting list that you get if you covered in a hoop group or an AAU tournament. So it’s kind of one of those things in recruiting, you kind of adapt or die. You can complain about a lot of things in recruiting nowadays, but the reality is you have to have to figure it out. We certainly try to do that as best we can.

[00:37:34] Mike Klinzing: What do you look for in a player in terms of intangibles? I mean, clearly there’s a level of skill that you want players to have to be able to succeed at your level, and a lot of times, like you said, you’re looking at guys that maybe want to get a scholarship and those are the kind of kids that you’re trying to recruit because you’re trying to get players that probably are capable of playing at a higher level.

But just what are some of the intangible things that you’re looking for? Not so much the skills, but just Sure. The things that make, the things that make your team what it is and then build your culture.

[00:38:04] Jason Leone: Yeah, so obviously at our level, although this is about to change next fall you want self-driven people both academically and personally.

And then obviously on the basketball court. We at our level, we have not been able to work with the players during the off season. So you want people that are driven to and smart enough to know how to get better. We have a saying that for us, like success is about your mindset and part of your mindset is you have to have a vision for how you want to get better.

You have to have a method for how you’re going to do that, and then you have to have the discipline to execute that every day. So that’s a pretty unique individual that kind of understands that mindset. And then second thing I heard about five years ago from Ben McCollum, who was the coach at Northwest Missouri State and is a very accomplished coach at the division two level.

And I think he just took a division one assistance job recently here. Anyways, I heard him talk about recruiting one time and this really resonated with me. One of the intangibles we will force, we don’t, we don’t want moody guys. And he talked about that and it, I know that sounds a little trivial or you know, however you want to call it.

I think about the people that I want to spend my days with and guys who you can’t count on what they’re going to be like emotionally every day that those guys are difficult to coach, and if I try to do one thing in recruiting from an intangible standpoint, one of the questions I’ll ask a high schooler AAU coach is what’s this guy like on a day-to-day basis?

Are they moody? You know I think when you can’t count on the way somebody’s going to be every day from an emotional perspective, that’s a really difficult guy to coach. You know? So you know, we’re looking for guys that aren’t moody. I think moodiness really crushes team spirit. So that’s certainly a couple things that we look for in players.

[00:39:52] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, those guys are draining.  I mean, when you have to figure out what you have to do to get the guy to the level that he can be, to be able to practice and be at his best, yeah. That, that gets old really, really fast. So I can completely, I completely understand where you’re coming from there. Talk a little bit about, AAU versus high school.

You talked about it a little earlier how the high school coach used to be way more involved in the process than they are today. And it’s one of the things that’s interesting, I think about the recruiting process is how much sort of AAU has taken over in terms of its importance in recruiting and just, it’s obviously easier for coaches to go to one big AAU event and see a ton of players all playing under one roof in one place, as opposed to driving on a Tuesday night to see one high school game.

So how do you think about what you’re looking for when you watch a player with their high school team versus with their AAU team? Are you looking for different things, the same thing? Do you have a preference of seeing a player in one environment versus the other? Just talk a little bit about how you balance those two when you’re trying to evaluate who that player is and whether or not they’re a good fit.

[00:41:01] Jason Leone: Well, I think both have their benefits. AAU coaches, I think aau, there’s a negative connotation with it more than probably what it deserves. There’s negative aspects to high school basketball and AAU basketball, just like there’s positives to both.

I think one of the challenges for us at our level is we can recruit a kid all year and they may not even be a part of a significant AAU program. And by significant, I mean one of the ones that’s on a prominent circuit and that type of thing. And we can do a good job and get to that point before that May 1st deposit deadline that most schools encourage.

And then we have these two live periods that are going on right now and a kid can go and play for a more prominent team to help that team win games. And then when they’re a part of that prominent team, that AAU coach may not have been a part of the process you know, the whole time. And then, then you have another voice that enters the conversation in terms of the recruitment.

And that can sometimes be a frustrating thing. Now by the same token I think the fact that the players have a lot more places to play against really good Players. I think that’s a really positive thing about aau, you really get a chance to go and see yourself outside of your normal circle of competition.

So I know when I was growing up, like I thought I was pretty good, but all I really played against was players in Central New York, growing up in Syracuse. And my first experience outside of my comfort circle was going to five star basketball camp in Pittsburgh and I went down there and kind of got my tail kicked in and I was like, wow, there’s a big wide world out there outside of Syracuse, New York, you know?

So I think AAU provides a method for players to learn a lot about themselves and about their games. That’s a really positive thing. From a high school perspective, what I look for is still, that’s the most pure form of basketball where the high school coach is probably a little bit more like the model that we have in college because they’re practicing five to six days a week.

They’re playing a schedule, they’re doing summer leagues, team camps together. So that allows a coach, I think, to maybe see a player in a little bit more of a setting that would be like the college program. So I think both have their benefits and both have their challenges, but I firmly believe within recruiting Mike, that it’s an adapt or die portion of the job. I think we can complain as much as we want about the changing landscape of college basketball and the way people recruit. But the reality is like, I’m not going to go do something different at this point in my life, so I have to figure this out, you know?

So we try to do the best we can given whatever the landscape is. I’m sure you know, if I’m lucky enough to be coaching another 10 or 15 years here, this is going to change again at some point.

[00:44:22] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, there’s no doubt. I mean, it is going to be interesting to see just how, as you said, with these extra years of eligibility with Covid and the portal and just kind of trying to figure out, okay, how’s this all, this whole thing going to settle out and what’s it going to look like?

And NIL obviously, depending on your level and sure where you’re at that’s going to, I think eventually that’s going to settle down and it’s going to, it’s going to get figured out. But right now it’s just in a lot of ways it’s just like the wild, wild West for you guys trying to figure out how to navigate the whole thing.

And certainly different than it was. 10 years ago. The landscape looks a lot different and it certainly is going to look different 10 years from now. And as you said, you either adapt or you’re going to get left behind because there’s going to be people out there that are going to adapt and, and make it work and figure it out.

So let’s talk a little bit about once you get these guys on campus and you’re putting together your team and you’re, and you’re trying to build it and you’re getting ready for, you’re getting ready for a season. So let’s kind of take it into, into the fall as you’re getting ready and you’re thinking about what you want your team to look like and how you want your team to play.

Obviously you have offensive and defensive philosophy and the things that you normally do, but when you’re thinking about one season with your personnel, how do you go about, what’s the process we’re looking at, Hey, here’s what we have. What do we need to do? How do we need to tweak what we did in previous years to be able to take most advantage of the personnel that we have?

What does that process look like for you and your staff trying to figure out what you’re going to do in a particular season?

[00:45:49] Jason Leone: That’s an awesome question. I’m going to tell you something that I think will be a little humorous. So I think of all the years I’ve been a head coach, every time I’ve sat down and mapped out what we’re going to do and then I look at the way our team looks in February look like it, none of the things that I thought I wanted to do end up looking like what our team looked like in February.

I think that’s a function of just division three, where we don’t have the time with them during the summer and during the off season. So I think it’s probably a little bit easier for teams at higher levels, I would imagine to kind of figure things out because they have more time spent with their team.

So that’s certainly one thing. I think the thing is at our level because. We’ve got so much time away from the players. I sit there like a lot of coaches, I watch Synergy, I’m watching the nba, I’m watching all this stuff, and I’m going, I’ve got all this time to myself because I’m not interacting with the players on the court where you almost to a point of paralyzation.

Yeah, you get all these ideas and they’re great ideas. They really are. And I go and meet with people and I talk to people and I do zooms and all that stuff and, and then we eventually settle on something after watching our teams play so that those first 20 to 25 practices before we play our first game.

Those are probably the best fact finding methods that we have within our program. You know, there’s a lot of different ways to do this and for me, one of the things that we haven’t deviated from within our practice model is we do at least 30 to 40 minutes of our 120 minute practice with player development every day.

And that to me is so important because that’s how I really learn about our players. You know, I learn how they work and I learn what their skillset is. And we certainly have a systematic approach to how we do things on offense and defense that the core values don’t change, but we do tweak how we play every single year so you know, and so that’s kind of how we get from point A to point B within our program.

But again, I certainly collaborate with my assistant coaches. I think offense takes more time. That’s the harder side of the ball for us to kind of figure out every year and to get to a certain point. I feel like our team consistently on an annual basis doesn’t look great early on offensively.

I think offense seems to be a little bit more of an ab abstract part of the game. Defense is a little bit more, you go here, you go here, and it’s a little bit more of tangible. Things when this happens, this is what you do. And I wouldn’t use the word easy, but it’s, it’s a little bit easier to coach than the offensive end offense.

Takes a little bit more patience and you have to spend a little bit more time to get your team playing the way that you want them to play. So those are some thoughts on how we eventually get to the tactical parts of, of how we want to look. But it’s certainly tough and I really do think the change in the rules this year is going to be a game changer for our level where we can work with the guys.

Albeit it may not seem like a ton of days. There’s a lot that you can get done in that small amount of time. I really believe that.

[00:49:07] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t think there’s any question that, just to be able to have that eight day head start with guys in terms of putting things in and having them prepared and going through and just as you said, being able to evaluate them through some of the player development stuff that you do to me, that’s going to give you.

It’s just going to be a huge, a huge bonus to be able to have team, your team ready to play for game one as opposed to you’re trying to rush and get as many things in which as trying to get stuff in before the first game. I don’t care what level of basketball you’re in, that’s always, always a challenge.

It never feels like you have enough time.

[00:49:42] Jason Leone: Yeah. Well you know, this, you know this too, Mike, it’s like, part of this thing is not just a basketball thing, it’s at our level. You look at like a sport, like basketball, wrestling hockey, ice hockey. Like we’re the only sports that don’t have any contact with our players those first six weeks of school.

I think a lot of coaches that may listen to this would probably agree. I don’t think there’s a coach out there that hasn’t dealt with a freshman that comes in that’s homesick or right. That’s just trying to find their way and that contact that we can have with our players, I really think can’t be, I don’t think it can be underestimated with how important that’s going to be.

So I think we may initially look at this as like, oh, it’s a great thing from a basketball perspective. But I think in terms of relationship building, I think this is a whole nother level that, that our programs can get to. Just in terms of the student athlete experience. I really think it’s going to be a positive.

[00:50:37] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s a huge point because I think when you start talking about why a kid chooses a school, and we’d all like to think that every kid chooses a school for the academics and the environment and all these other different things that go into it. But the honest truth is that the basketball program, the basketball coach oftentimes has, look, if you’re being recruited as a basketball player, the coaching staff is a, is a big part of why you end up choosing one school over another.

And now you show up at the school and those people who you’ve built a relationship with in the recruiting process, suddenly now, You can’t have that contact with them. And so it feels like, it does feel like you’re almost doing those student athletes a disservice by not allowing them to have that contact with the people who probably had more to do with them attending that school than just about anybody else.

And so I think you’re right that from a psychological standpoint and from a orientation standpoint, and just getting those kids oriented to school to me at, yeah, I could see where that would be just invaluable when it comes to beyond the basketball court, but just helping them to adjust to being a college student, which we all know that beyond the basketball, just adjusting to being a college student for a lot of people, the freedom and just being able to manage your own time and keep on top of things and not having your mom and dad looking over your shoulder all the time.

For a lot of kids, that’s really difficult. Absolutely.

[00:52:07] Jason Leone: I think those things are the things that maybe go unnoticed. But with basketball coaches, part of the reason that we’ve worked so hard to get this past was because of the things that maybe don’t involve basketball.

I also think part of the reasons why we could never get it past, I think one of the, maybe the only, one of the only good things about Covid is we saw when we went to a days model that This could be a, a beneficial thing because during Covid we had opportunities to work with players during the off season for the first time based on the going to a model where instead of weeks we used days.

And we had contact with our athletes during, during our non-traditional segment. So and we saw that it could be done from a facility perspective, from a perspective with our, our athletic trainers and things like that. So I think they had a lot to do with this thing finally getting passed. So yeah, I’m excited to be a part of it.

I really think this is going to be a good thing for our level. Yeah, absolutely. All

[00:53:11] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. All right. Talk a little bit about player development. You mentioned when you talked about practice that you like to dedicate time every single day to player development. What does that look like for you? When you say player development, what are the kinds of things that you’re talking about or that you’re working with your guys on?

[00:53:24] Jason Leone: Well I think the hardest thing that we have to do is coach freshman, coach first year players in our program. Because ultimately you get a first year player, whether it’s a transfer of freshman, and you’ve have to mold them into the way that mold them into an ability to co-exist within the way that you want your program to function.

Right. So I’ve noticed with freshmen, a couple of things that year to year I just noticed are you know, something that we need to focus on to get them levels improvement. ADD is being able to absorb contact. It’s just, it’s every time you go up levels, the physicality of the game changes.

Right. And then embracing the physicality of the game, you know? So for us when we do player development, most of the things that we do involve absorbing contact and playing more physical, you know I just think that that’s such an important part of the game, and it’s not to say we don’t work on the skillset that is involved by position for each player.

We do, we certainly do that. But I will say this from having coached in the NCAA tournament seven times, is that the deeper you get into the season, Mike the more you have to have players that are able to make and finish plays you know, the later you play into a season, you have to have guys that can do things on their own, they may have to coexist within your system and however you want to play, but they’ve got to be able to make plays and to finish plays. So our player development program exclusively revolves around getting these guys to where they feel confident enough and they can execute, making plays on their own in a one-on-one fashion.

So that takes on a lot of different lives, from finishing to the way we move without the ball, the way we play with the ball in our hands the way we read defenses, the way we play defense, in a one-on-one fashion. So we’re teaching technique and obviously I’m a big coach on shooting.

We do a lot of shooting in our practices. I’m a big believer in that skill being a difference maker in our game. So we do a lot of that as well.

[00:56:00] Mike Klinzing: When you’re working on the ability to finish through contact, are you doing that through one-on-one, two on two, three on three? Are you breaking it down like that?

Are you working on specific skills where a player is working with a coach? Are you doing it positionally? Just what does that specifically look like in terms of how you’re designing the drills for, for your kids to be able to work on finishing?

[00:56:23] Jason Leone: We match our athletes appropriately.  So we want them to see some success early and before we put them in positions where they’re going to go against an older or more physical player. So I think teaching the technique first is important. Maybe one on zero. And then we add a defender. And then sometimes we go to an advanced technique where we add maybe two defenders, but we do it by position.

We do it where we cross positions. And there’s a lot of different ways that, that, that we teach that a lot of things we’ve stolen over the years. A lot of things that we’ve made up on our own. I think one of the things we believe in with any type of thing that we do with, with shooting which finishing is a portion of shooting, is we’re going to put them in positions where they’re finishing plays or shooting shots to head play offensively. So those are the things that we try to focus on. But that’s probably the number one thing that we do within our practices is, is the finishing drills. I think basketball is a game of, to me, is a game of who is able to get the best shots in the game and defensively you’re trying to force people into bad shots offensively you’re trying to get shots that are closer to the basket, trying to get shots that are when you’re going to the foul line shots that are in transition and odd man situations that favor the offense.

So offensive rebounding, all those things. So those are the things that we really practice every day. Do you chart anything in practice? No. No. You know, we, we don’t well, I shouldn’t say that. We chart turnovers and offensive rebounds. We do do that. And attempts. And attempts at rebounding.

So those are the three things that when we have the managers that help us out and we have the manpower to do it rebounding attempts, offensive rebounds and turnovers. Those are the three things that we will chart.

[00:58:30] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, the manpower is always a challenge. I know. It’s one of the things that, most of the coaching that I’ve done, Jason, in the last whatever since I got out of high school coaching, now it’s been, it’s been more than 10 years, but coaching my own kids and typically it maybe me or I have another dad that’s helping me out as an assistant.

And I’m always having these great intentions of trying to be able to chart some things or keep track of stuff. And inevitably, even if I try to do that, I just end up, I just end up coaching and forgetting about trying to chart stuff or even trying to keep score of like competitive drills. Kids will be playing for 45 seconds.

Kids will be like, what’s the score? I’m like, I don’t know. You guys have to keep the score if we’re going to keep it. Cause I, I have no idea. I’m just focused on trying to coach. So I’m always amazed by guys, especially if you have a small staff that can kind of keep track and, and, and really do a good job of, of, of tracking stuff.

Because I’ve never been able to do a very good job of that, even though I sometimes have the best of intentions to try it.

[00:59:24] Jason Leone: We don’t do it in the games. I mean, I want my coaches coaching during the games. I think a really important function during the game. To me, something that I value is when players come out of the game, I want the coaches to coach them so if they exit the game and that’s typically a very emotional time when kids come off the floor.

Whether they’ve made a mistake and that’s why they’re coming off the floor or not. I want my assistant coaches talking to them when they come off the floor, you know it’s not maybe immediately, but eventually we want to give them some sort of a message so when they go back in, they’re able to execute whatever it is that we need them to do within their role within the team.

So my assistants don’t really chart anything other than I do have an assistant that does the fouls and the timeouts and that type of thing.

[01:00:15] Mike Klinzing: So do you assign then bench roles during games of what, here’s what Guy X is doing, here’s what Guy Y is doing, or is it more just a case of, Hey, this kid comes off and this coach saw something and so that’s the coach who pulls him aside and talks to him, or how do you set that up on your bench on game day?

[01:00:30] Jason Leone: Yeah, that’s a great question. So we identify all of our players, and there’s some guys on our team that it’s not going to be a good function for us to speak with them when they come out of the game, you know? So we coach every player individually and in a way where we know how they need to be coached, how they want to be coached, and how they best respond to communication.

So we know ahead of time, okay, this is a guy that needs to be talked to. This is a guy, we have to maybe give him a minute. This is a guy that I think really values feedback immediately when he comes out of the game. So that’s been identified. We spend a ton of time.

If I would have to communicate to you something that we, what’s the thing you spend most time with in your program? It’s communication with these players and getting to know them and how they respond and what motivates them.  I just think the longer I do this, the more time I spend on communication and the less time I spend on tactics and technique.

I just think in college basketball connecting with people is just such an important function.

[01:01:46] Mike Klinzing: How do you teach communication amongst your players? Because I know, look, every coach that you talk to on any level always wants their players to communicate more. But I think one of the things that I know I don’t always do well is you talk about, Hey, we need you to talk more.

We need you to communicate. But then we don’t always teach what that looks like. And I think leadership is sort of the same way where we’ll say, Hey, we want more leaders in our program, but then we don’t always. Tell or show the kids what that actually looks like. So when you’re talking about teaching communication, obviously you were discussing it when it comes to your staff communicating with players, but what about the player to player communication?

How do you get that to the level that you want it to be?

[01:02:29] Jason Leone: Well, I think that we don’t try to choreograph anything. I think you have to have something where you trust the players. I don’t think it’s a part of your program that you can connect the dots all the time for the players. There’s certain parts of that that you have to let them figure out.

I’m a big believer in that. But there are points in time, like one of the things before our practice starts, we’ll have a thought for the day or we’ll bring our players in a circle and we’ll talk to them. And I think just my experience when you’re in a gym.

Okay. I think If you were to watch our team practice in particular this last two years that we’ve had in our record setting years you’d be able to see the joy within our gym. You know, the joy in practice. We practice in a gym that’s, that’s loud, it’s boisterous. And we find time to recognize when the gym is vibrant.

When players are talking, we say this is what this is supposed to look like. Okay. And we need to find value in that. And it has to be authentic. It can’t be something that’s like, what I don’t like is I don’t like some of the stuff that I call it, like, rah rah.

It’s kind of non-authentic. It’s just kind of standing up and acting weird on the bench and jumping around and chest bumping and like that stuff to me, it has to be authentic communication. And the players have to find value in that. And I think from a coaching perspective, when we see something going on that we really like and that we think is good and positive with respect to communication, we’ve have to find a way to point that out and say, okay, this is, this is what we’re after.

It’s not uncommon for us to make edits of our bench during a game and say, okay, this is what we want our bench to look like in terms of positive interaction, guys come out of the game, guys have positive interaction with one another. A good play happens in the game. We see our bench up and rooting on a teammate.

I’m very cautious about choreographing that. I just don’t think when a coach sticks their nose in that too much, I’m not sure that that’s the best method to develop communication. But we certainly do emphasize having a loud gym during our practices and guys rooting each other on and talking to each other.

[01:05:05] Mike Klinzing: I love that idea of pointing it out when you see it, because I think a lot of times, again, you can talk about it and say, Hey, this is what we want. But kids, as you know, don’t always recognize or completely comprehend what it is that a coach is saying when you’re talking about, Hey, this is what it should look like.

This is what it should sound like. But when they have it right in front of them, whether that’s on film or whether you’re stopping it in practice saying, Hey, this is what we want it to look like, to me that’s a powerful way of doing it because so often. I think this goes to culture. People talk about the pillars of their program and you’ll say, Hey, we’re about competitiveness, or we’re about, whatever it might be.

Pick any number of things that people put out as their pillars. And I think what you have to do is you have to attach behaviors to those things and be like, okay, well here’s where we’re showing competitive this, this is what that looks like. And then anytime that that happens, as you said, you try to stop it, you try to point it out, you say, Hey, this is what we’re talking about.

And then I think the more you recognize it and the more you praise it, the more that you’re going to get. And I think that goes along with, I, I really liked what you said about panning to the bench with the film and looking and saying, okay, look, here’s, we just made a three. Who’s up on the bench cheering?

Who’s not up on the bench cheering? Do, what do we get? What do we want our bench to look like in those situations? And I think you can carry that from the bench onto the court too, where you start talking about, How you’re going to play. And a lot of times, I know, I’m sure this is probably the way it was in your era, but I know when I was watching film as a player, most of that film work was negative.

It was, Hey, we’re going to stop. We’re going to watch this play where Mike screwed up and we’re going to watch it 15 times and we’re just going to keep watching it. And now I think coaches do a much better job of, of balancing out, Hey, here’s something that maybe we didn’t do so well. But also pointing out as you said, those things that you’re doing positively.

So when you’re watching film with the players, how do you think about, or do you think about that balance between positive and negative plays, and then how much film are you sharing with the players? How much do they watch with you or together as a team?

[01:07:12] Jason Leone: We don’t really watch film with the players. So our model in terms of preparation for opponents, we’ll watch 15 edits the night before a game.

We will go through within our practice three on three, four on four different actions throughout the year that we think we may see. But we really don’t watch a ton of film with our team. We really don’t. The times when we do watch film, it’ll be a teaching thing. So for instance, before our season starts, we’ll talk about bench decorum and make the edits that I just referred to show the team how we want them to coexist on the bench.

There may be times if a player is struggling or if a player does something really well, an assistant coach might pull them in and show them five or seven edits on something. If a player comes to us and says, coach, can you watch film with me? The answer’s always yes. And we do do that, but we just don’t watch a ton of film with the team.

I just am not a huge believer in it. I just think at this level again, I think the thing that I get most anxious about is burnout. And we never practice more than three days in a row, Mike without a day off after that. We don’t watch a ton of film.

We’ll get our lifts in two or three times a week. We never practice more than two hours a day. We don’t do double sessions, but the two hours a day that we’re in there is, I can’t be more direct with you than telling you how competitive that environment is for those two hours. And one of the things I try to convey to our players is like, look at, we can get a lot done in a little time if you’re focused and you guys have buy-in to what we’re doing here, you know?

So the competitive level in our practices, I feel like is terrific, especially right now you with our talent level being what it is.

[01:09:26] Mike Klinzing: What do you think is the key to building a competitive practice?

[01:09:28] Jason Leone: Well, I think that for us, we play a lot, every coach has certain coaches that they really follow and believe in learning from.

You know, one of the guys that I really listen to and find great value in is Jeff Van Gundy. I grew up in Syracuse, so I’ve spent a lot of time with Coach Boeheim and watching his practices. And one of the common denominators, if I listen to a podcast with Jeff Van Van Gundy or if I talk to Coach Boeheim, is there’s no shape, like game shape and, and we play a lot, you know our first 30 to 40 minutes is player development.

Early in the season we’ll have to some install of our office,

We certainly have some drills that we do, but we play a lot and I think our players enjoy that. we play and we keep score. And I think when I meet with my players individually and I ask them what they like about our practice model every year, the thing that I hear the most is we like how much we scrimmage and we play.

[01:10:55] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. I think players today, right, they want to play the game and clearly there’s been a trend over the last four or five years, right? The games based approach and using small sided games and making the practices look more like the games. And that’s how learning transfers where I think in the past you might have done more drills on air just working on individual moves without a defense.

And I think people have realized that in a dynamic sport like basketball, the key to being successful is, yeah, you have to have the skill, but you also have to. Be able to know when to apply that skill. And so you have to be able to make decisions and then utilize the skill based on that decision making.

And so I think that when you’re playing and when you’re scrimmaging and when you’re going against a live defense, you’re going to get much more out of that. And it’s going to be more fun. I mean, ultimately that’s what it’s going to be. It’s going to be more fun and players are going to be more competitive than they are if you’re just working on drills.

[01:11:56] Jason Leone: Absolutely. And I think there’s a factor of boredom and practice, and I think the deeper you go into the season, I think there’s a monotony that can happen with drill work and in voices and things like that. And I just firmly believe in five on five play. I really do. So that’s a big part of our model.

Doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do it, but I’ve noticed that the longer I keep doing this, we really play a lot.

[01:12:24] Mike Klinzing: Do you think that helps players develop basketball iq? And talk a little bit about what you think about when you think about helping players to develop a higher basketball iq.

[01:12:37] Jason Leone: Well, the first reason we play five on five is I think it gets them in game shape. We don’t run line drills.  I don’t worry about our guys being in great physical condition when we play, you know? But yeah, to your point, I really believe that the best way for them to learn how to read a defense the best way for them to learn how to score in competitive defense.

The best way for them to learn how to rotate properly defensively or to lock in and guard their man one-on-one is by playing in a game type situation. So And not only do I believe that, but again, I collaborate with my assistants, I collaborate with our players, and I ask them, look, look at, here’s what I believe.  I want the players to find practice to be a function of what’s going to make them most excited to be there?

We all want the same thing, right? Like, daily improvement is such an important part of a team growing together, right? So we want to utilize practice in order to get not only individuals better, but get the team better. And what better way to do that than by competing every day in that type of setting.

So yeah, I really believe that the guys get better at reading offense and defense. The tactics, the techniques the more you put them in game situations, I think that’s a really good thing. And they’re locked in when they’re playing.

[01:14:29] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, There’s no doubt.  I mean, I think that you’re just going to get more out of them. I mean, anybody who’s been a player, look, why do we all pick up a ball and start playing? Because we like to play, right? I mean, yeah. Yeah. You have to put in work and there’s times where you’re working individually that there’s, there’s skill work to be done, but ultimately the reason why kids picked up a ball when they were five, six years old is because it was fun.

And because they were getting to play. And I think that’s really what it’s all about. We’re coming towards an hour and a half. Jason, I want to ask you one final two part question. So part one is when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

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

[01:15:15] Jason Leone: Well, my biggest challenge is developing freshmen. Our program is at a point I think if you look at any program at our level where we have guys that are here for four years, five years you know, the top 25, 30, 40 programs in the country, you’re not relying on freshmen.

You may have one or two that have an impact, but really, Freshman still typical. So the way basketball was when we grew up, Mike, they’re sometimes they come in and they’re highly touted or they’re high profile recruits and sometimes they don’t get to play a lot and or they don’t have the role that they’re used to having in high school.

And keeping them engaged and keeping them in your program. When they go through the ups and downs of a freshman year, both from a basketball perspective and from a perspective just getting used to being a college student, I think that’s a challenge, you know?

And that’s not getting easier, you know? So I think that’s probably my biggest challenge as a coach. My biggest joy is honestly, for lack of complicatedness, is I mean, I genuinely love spending time with the players. I really do. When they come in and we spend time together and I feel like I’m making an impact with them, and I can tell when they pop in and, and they sit down in my office and we talk, and there’s a genuine they’re learning about me and I’m learning about them.

Division three is such a unique model because typically our players don’t play professionally, so you’re watching them. That growth that takes place over a four year period is immeasurable and, and you can’t. Replicate that. You know, athletics is such a great thing on a college campus because there’s things that they learn within your program that can’t be replicated in a classroom setting that are so applicable when they go out after graduation and get a job.

And that’s just such a fun part of things. And you know, the second thing that brings me joy is I keep getting older and the kids that coach stay the same age. And that’s kind of a cool job to have.

[01:17:46] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. That’s very cool. That’s something that I think that we don’t always think about, but yeah, it definitely keeps you young and it keeps you, like, if we go back to the beginning, you have to adapt, right?

Yep. In the beginning of our conversation, we talked about having to adapt and change with the times and certainly that’s what coaching forces you to do on a lot of levels. It forces you to do that from a xs and o strategic standpoint, but it also forces you to do that because, Times change and just the way that you have to coach and the young people that you’re dealing with, they stay the same age.

And we keep changing our perspective as we get older, but those kids are still looking to us for the same things, just a matter of who deliver it to them.

[01:18:28] Jason Leone: Yep. Adaptability is a critical quality.

[01:18:32] Mike Klinzing: There’s no question about it. Alright, before we get out, Jason, I want to give you a chance to share how people can get in touch with you.

You want to share website, email, social media, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I will jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:18:45] Jason Leone: Thanks, Mike. Well, if anybody feels the need to contact me and has any questions about our program they can contact me by email at Jason.leone@oswego.edu.

My Twitter handle is @LeoneCoach and my office line is 3 1 5 – 3 1 2 – 2 3 7 9. So I’d love to hear from anybody that you know has questions about our program and how we do things. We’ve got a great group of guys and really proud of the things we’ve done at Oswego State.

[01:19:20] Mike Klinzing: Jason can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight and being willing to jump on with us.

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