JEFF CLARK – INDIANA WESLEYAN MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1009

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

Email – jeff.clark@indwes.edu

Twitter/X – @IWUHoops

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Jeff Clark is the Men’s Basketball Associate Head Coach at NAIA Indiana Wesleyan University.  In his 17  seasons the Wildcats have posted a record of 481-116 which includes 3 NAIA National Championships under Head Coach Greg Tonagel.  Indiana Wesleyan has also made 4 NAIA Semifinal Appearances and 10 NAIA Quarterfinal Appearances.

Clark serves as both the Offensive Coordinator and Recruiting Coordinator and is known as a great coach of people who knows how to lead young men to be the best they can be on and off the court.

On this episode Mike & Jeff discuss the transformative power of a coaching philosophy centered around the principles of “I am third” and “fearless.” Jeff emphasizes the importance of creating an environment where players prioritize teamwork and selflessness, which ultimately leads to success both on and off the court. Throughout the conversation, Clark shares insights into his own journey from a frustrated player to a passionate coach, highlighting how personal experiences shaped his current approach. The episode also delves into the challenges posed by the modern landscape of college basketball, including the rise of the transfer portal and NIL, and how these factors can threaten team cohesion and culture. Clark’s commitment to fostering deep relationships and a culture of growth within his program shines through, offering valuable lessons for coaches at all levels.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this episode with Jeff Clark, Men’s Basketball Associate Head Coach at NAIA Indiana Wesleyan University.

What We Discuss with Jeff Clark

• Growing up in a basketball-obsessed family and community in Indiana
• The transformative experiences during college that influenced his coaching philosophy
• Self-evaluation helps coaches stay true to their vision and goals
• Creating a Selfless Team Environment
• X’s and O’s: Adapting to Player Strengths
• The challenges posed by the modern landscape of college basketball, including the transfer portal and NIL
• Maintaining a culture that prioritizes personal growth and team success over transactional relationships
• The I Am Third philosophy which emphasizes selflessness, with God first and others second
• Fearlessness in players translates into both on-court success and personal growth
• Adaptability in coaching is key, especially in the face of changing college basketball dynamics
• Creating a culture of joy and support leads to a more cohesive team environment
• Transformational coaching emphasizes the development of players both on and off the court
• Building relationships with players involves trust, honesty, and a willingness to grow together
• Finding joy in teammates’ successes and collective accountability

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THANKS, JEFF CLARK

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JEFF CLARK – INDIANA WESLEYAN MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1009

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight, but I am pleased to be joined by Jeff Clark, the men’s basketball associate head coach at Indiana Wesleyan University. Jeff, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:19] Jeff Clark: Thanks, Mike. I’m excited to talk some hoops tonight.

[00:00:25] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely thrilled to have you on, looking forward to diving into all the success that you’ve had 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. What made you fall in love with it?

[00:00:36] Jeff Clark: Yeah, so I grew up in a basketball crazy family and community.  Leo, Indiana, just north of Fort Wayne. And from first grade, my best friend was a kid who was equally obsessed with basketball. Tony Bollier, he’s still in the game. His father ended up being my high school coach. It was like my second family. So just grew up playing with my brothers.

I got four brothers who all loved to play with my friends and it was just in a community that loved the game. So it was around in my whole life and can’t remember a time I didn’t love the game.

[00:01:07] Mike Klinzing: Where are you in the, in the order of brothers?

[00:01:11] Jeff Clark: I’m a number four out of five. So definitely got beat up on by my older brothers and sometimes by my little brother as well. So I, I faced everything you can imagine with, with all five of us growing up playing the game.

[00:01:24] Mike Klinzing: What’s the best basketball story amongst, amongst the brothers in the backyard or on the driveway or wherever?

[00:01:31] Jeff Clark: The one that comes to mind was on the day of my wedding. We woke up and my younger brother is my best man. And he said, Hey, let’s go, let’s go play basketball today. And I said, listen, I will go play, but I do not want any fighting on my wedding day. And we probably had 12 or 15 guys there. We ended the score at two points and two of my brothers were throwing a ball at each other over some argument over a ball.

And I just picked the ball up and I said, we’re done. We are not playing five on five on my wedding day.

[00:02:00] Mike Klinzing: So it’s funny because, so I grew up with just one sister, never had a brother. And then in my family, I have two daughters and a son. And so I’ve never in my home seen the dynamics between brothers. But I know that when I was a kid growing up, any family that had either all boys or multiple boys in the family, that, that scene that you just described just is, is so poetic in terms of what.

I experienced, again, from the outside, seeing those brothers fight and basically they kill each other over backyard games of whatever it may have been. And it sounds like your experience was probably pretty similar to the ones that I witnessed from the outside. So I can completely relate to that. And it is nice to be able to have internal competition right there in the house that can beat you up and push you around and kind of just get you motivated to try to get better at whatever it is that you’re doing.

As you get a little bit older, you get into middle school, high school. Tell me a little bit about your routine, your regimen for trying to get better as a player. What, what did you do thinking about just the way the kids grew up in the game today versus the way that you may have grown up in the game a little bit differently, what was it like for you trying to get better as a, as a young basketball player,

[00:03:23] Jeff Clark: Very, very different. In Leo, there was these legendary open gym. So four times a week at six o’clock. Everybody in the community went to the gym and there were five full courts and there was a winner’s court. And your job, your goal that night was to get over to the winner’s court, stay in the winner’s court.

Because if you lost, you went all the way down to the end and had to work your way back up. So I, I did, we did spend a lot of time just one on one shooting. But it was a shooting where you shoot it and you go get your own rebound and you spin it to yourself and you shoot it again. There was no gun.

There was, I didn’t know what an individual trainer was, So most of it was going to the gym and just playing competitive five on five basketball.

[00:04:06] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it is amazing how different the way that youth basketball is set up today. And prevalence of trainers who, as you just stated, weren’t around when you were a kid, they certainly weren’t around when I was a kid.

And you had to be, I guess, more creative. Although I always say I was very uncreative. I had two workouts that I did probably from the time I was 14 until the time I was 22, which One was with myself where I had my own workout, if I was doing it by myself, and then I had another workout that if I was fortunate enough to find somebody that I could drag into the workout I could do with them.

And then I look at all the drills and just ways that we have of kids having an opportunity to get better and just the, the resources that are out there. And I had none of that. I just kind of did the same thing every day. Now I look back at it and I’m like maybe that was the Maybe that was the Kobe Bryant.

I just keep repping the fundamentals or maybe it was just the fact that I wasn’t very creative and somehow I, I worked my way past that boredom, but I completely understand what that’s all about. So growing up in a town like Leo, Indiana, did you, as you’re growing up, are you playing all kinds of different sports and particularly basketball with the kids who end up being your high school teammates?

Is that kind of how things went for you?

[00:05:25] Jeff Clark: Yeah, growing up and you’re early on, you’re playing three, four sports and then you slowly you didn’t specialize as early in those days.  I, I played multiple sports as a freshman, then two sports for several years and as a senior at that point went to solely basketball.

But  you’re with the same group of guys basically in every sport and you just kind of went from one to the next. Basketball was a few of our favorites or we did that year round. But it was definitely more of the, hey, we’re all playing all these sports together and competing and whatever we can do, we’re going to go compete in.

[00:05:57] Mike Klinzing: How about coaches that you had in a variety of sports? When you look at yourself today as a coach, are there some specific things about, Your coaching style, your coaching demeanor that you can point back to some of those early coaches, whether it was a youth coach, whether it was a high school coach, something that you took from one of those guys that you still as a feel, you feel is still a part of your coaching DNA today.

[00:06:24] Jeff Clark: Absolutely. I, I use Tony Bollier was my best friend. His father Phil was my varsity coach and he was a coach that went after the hearts of his players. He was a genius. Ahead of his time in some of the ways he used, built culture did motivation, weaved in character concepts  looking back at some of the materials he gave us, he was just a incredible mentor, father figure.

impacted me so far beyond the game. And there’s oftentimes I think of him as I’m coaching and know his impact on me was very, very deep.

[00:06:57] Mike Klinzing: Did  at the time as you’re playing for him and you’re having those experiences and he’s sharing some of that stuff that, again, maybe not every kid got the opportunity to be impacted in that way by their high school coach.

Were you thinking about coaching as a profession, as a high school player? Was that something that was on your mind or were you strictly focused on at that point? I’m, I’m a basketball player and you weren’t really thinking about the coaching part of it.

[00:07:26] Jeff Clark: Coaching never entered my mind until after my junior year of college.

 I, I obviously love the game and I love being around it and I love playing, but I wasn’t thinking that far ahead, I was just competing and trying to get better and play. And it wasn’t until really after my junior year, when I thought about life without basketball and was thinking about some different opportunities when, when coaching really became something I felt.  I really wanted to go at.

[00:07:51] Mike Klinzing: So heading into college, what was it that you thought you were going to do at that point? As a freshman, you’re going to school. What are you, what are you thinking about in terms of your career at that point?

[00:08:02] Jeff Clark: Yeah it’s, I went in and I was studying finance and I went through and I, candidly, I had a frustrating college basketball experience.

I would say I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be. We were not a winning program. Sometimes it felt to me that. Some people I was around didn’t care if we won or lost and it was just hard for me to I couldn’t impact winning as much as I wanted to so I was frustrated and I was thinking I was just gonna leave the game and study finance and I had some good opportunities and Go make a bunch of money and be be done with the game and it was my junior year I was in a upper level finance course and the final question on the test was if you could hire anyone in this room, who would you hire?

You And after the test, the professor called me up to his office and it was the, one of the kindest things anyone’s ever said to me. He said, Jeff you did, you, you got the best score on this test. And every person in this class picked you You are the best we have at analyzing financial statements.

You have a bright career ahead of you. And it was, again, such intentionality of a professor, but what’s interesting, that was a life changing moment for me. Cause when he gave me that compliment about analyzing financial statement, there was something in my heart that knew that was not the compliment I should go after for the rest of my life.

Not that there’s some of my deepest friends and people I admire most are in finance, but for me, It was that moment when I was kind of disoriented and said,  what, I don’t think this is what I’m supposed to do. And that sent me on this journey. And that summer I went on a mission trip with Athletes in Action went over and played in Russia.

And I was around, I, for the first time really in my playing career, men who were as serious about their faith in Christ as I was, but loved the game and competed. And it gave me a new vision for the game and, and the, the way it could be used as a tool. And it was really on that trip when I got a vision for coaching and I’ve never looked back since.

What

[00:10:02] Mike Klinzing: was that experience like going and playing in Russia overseas? Had you been out of the country in an experience like that at all? Just what was it like to, to leave the country, play basketball, be in, be in a foreign, be in a foreign country and just adapt to that?

[00:10:19] Jeff Clark: I think it was a lot of just the type of men I was around, the coaches some of the players on that team Neil Young, Omar Manns, Artie Culver, I could go down the list, men I’m still friends with deeply to this day and just being in an environment with people who took the game seriously but were passionate about their faith and they found a way to, to really bring these two things I was passionate about together in a way that I couldn’t see.

And I just, I loved it. The trip was transformational for me just in how I saw life in the game. And I carried a lot of those things back into my senior season and it changed the way I approached the year and has really made a deep impact on the way that I coach. So you have those moments in life that are they, they alter the trajectory of your life.

And that trip was, was one of those things for me.

[00:11:08] Mike Klinzing: Well, how did that change the way you approach that senior season? I can tell from the conversation that you were sort of frustrated, felt like, hey, I want to be able to impact winning in a larger way. You weren’t necessarily able to do that. And you go on this trip, you come back for your senior season.

I’m guessing that the external environment around you hadn’t changed. So there had to be something internal that changed for you. What was that internal change and how did that manifest itself to allow you to have a more. A more positive outlook on basketball.

[00:11:47] Jeff Clark: Wow. What great insight and what a great question.Cause you’re nailing it. Before that trip, I think I only had a category for success that was measured in stats and winning. So if, if that’s how you measure yourself and you’re not good enough to impact winning and you don’t have any stats and your team loses, it’s a miserable experience. So that was the, that was the only way I could evaluate how things were going.

And I was frustrated because it didn’t matter. I, I just have limitations athletically to the type of player I can be. It didn’t matter how hard I worked. I just, I wasn’t good enough. So when you, you place your identity so much in the scoreboard and on stats and you don’t have it in you to improve those things, it’s frustrating.

Well, as I came back from that trip, there was way deeper things in terms of how, how does my faith, how’s my identity rooted there? What are relationships like in this? How do I. Evaluate myself based on the way I elevate other people. Well, there was a different scorecard all of a sudden, and now I was able to place my love of basketball underneath those things so that the, the love exploded again, because I found a way to, to find joy and a purpose beyond just, did I win or did I play

[00:13:02] Mike Klinzing: well?

Would you initially think about that primarily from a player standpoint, or was that the moment where you started to think about, Hey, I can take all this stuff that I just experienced as a player and maybe I can translate that into the coaching. Or were you still, were you still thinking from a player perspective?

[00:13:25] Jeff Clark: I was, I was a coach that year. Yeah. I mean, it’s not that I nailed it in as a player, but my passion was to coaching the younger guys and influencing people and trying to help in any way I could. And so yeah, I I wasn’t technically a coach, but more or less, that’s, that’s what I did that year.

And I, I love that you

[00:13:43] Mike Klinzing: have then conversations with your coaching staff about, Hey, I want to get into coaching and what are the steps I need to take in order to do that? Was that something that you guys were talking about actively, or was it just kind of a conversation that you were having in your own mind?

No, I’ll tell

[00:14:02] Jeff Clark: you the, I’ll tell you the conversation that I remember our, our athletic director at the time, Mike Zapolsky I had been on a student leadership advisory committee that he had, and as I was in my senior year, he just asked me to breakfast. And we went down and he was just, he was a great guy, great leader.

He’s still in athletics at a different school now. And I I’ve lost touch with him, but I, I love the guy. And he taught me a lot and over dinner or over breakfast, he just asked me what I was thinking about doing. Well, I knew how hard it was to get into college basketball. And I knew you needed to either be good or have connections or come from a good program.

And I didn’t have any of those things. Right. So as I was talking to him, I was just thinking I, I

After my junior year when I made that decision I decided to get an education degree as well. So my senior year I finished my finance degree. My first semester I took 23 hours. My second semester I took 22 hours. I basically took a double load my senior year thinking I want to coach high school basketball because that’s the only vision I had.

So I still had to student teach. So my, my idea that I presented him is I’m going to go find the best high school program I can. And I’m going to try to, to coach there and student teach there. Just volunteer and just say, Hey, can I hang around a great coach? Do it for free, add value. And he said, well, have you ever thought about doing that for college?

And I said, I don’t, I just, I don’t have any connections. And he said, well, if you’re saying you’ll work for free, you don’t need connections, right? So, so what, what can you do? Well, when he said it, I just hadn’t thought about it, but my junior year at Anderson, a coach, I was extremely close with Jake Nelk just an incredible mind for the game.

I spent a ton of time talking hoops with him my junior year. He was the assistant at Indiana Wesleyan in coach Greg Tonegal’s first year. But they were the only two on staff. This was my senior year. So I, I called him up and I said, Hey here’s what I’m thinking.  do you guys need any free help?

I’d love to do it. And he said, man, that sounds incredible. I got to introduce you to Coach Tonegal. So about a week, I’m all of a sudden pumped up. There’s a potential opportunity. So about a week later, I go up to one of their games. They play against Taylor University. It’s a rivalry. It’s, it’s their first year.

So they’re. Running around, it’s crazy. And they get beat by 40. So I’m standing around after for about 20 minutes and Jake comes down and he goes, Hey, coach Tonegal doesn’t really feel like talking to anybody tonight.  sorry, we’ll do it another time. So about three weeks later, I come back again to another game and that night they lost on a last second shot.

So again, I’m waiting around about 20 minutes later, Jake comes out and says, Hey, coach Tonegal doesn’t really feel like talking to anybody. So I’m like, okay, what, like what’s going on here? Well, the next day Jake called me and said, you’re hired. So coach Tangle hired me without ever talking to me, meeting me.

He ducked me in both my quote unquote times. I was going to come up for an interview. And the first time I met him, we were on a recruiting trip together and I was on his staff. So that’s how I ended up in college basketball.

[00:17:07] Mike Klinzing: The value of working for 0, Jeff. That’s exactly what that is right there.

That is the value of working for free. There’s, there’s no question that that helps in any way, shape or form. If you want to get in the door, if you’ll do stuff for free, great way to, great way to break in. All right. So did you at some point have a conversation with your parents of like, Hey, I just gave up this lucrative finance dream that I was living for three years and now suddenly I’m going to go and coach college basketball for, for a salary of a whopping 0.

What was that conversation like if you had it?

[00:17:42] Jeff Clark: My mom is one of those teachers who won every teacher of the year award. My dad is a chiropractor, but he is just a person who loves and influences people. So they didn’t, they weren’t thinking about money at all. They just, they’ve always just pushed us and me to say, Hey, where can you go serve people?

Where can you love what you do? So they were elated that I had found something I was really passionate about.

[00:18:05] Mike Klinzing: When you get started, the first couple of weeks on the job, do  immediately that, Hey, I’ve made the right decision, or was there some hesitation because of X, Y, or Z? Which, which one better describes your Your reaction to getting that first job in the first couple of weeks on it?

[00:18:26] Jeff Clark: Immediately.  Coach Tonegal and Coach Nelp was there at the time. I loved those guys. The program was young. It was building and growing. I was learning so much. I was just drinking from a fire hose and I was just loving every minute of it. I would go to the student teach during the day I’d leave early.

And I’d come over. I didn’t have a set of keys. I didn’t have anything. So I’d go into offices afterwards and everybody would leave and I would stay there until I had to go to the bathroom. Cause once I had to go to the bathroom, I had no way back in the office. I just stay and watch film or work or do whatever I can.

As soon as I go to the bathroom, I was done for the night. And that was just kind of my rhythm cause I wasn’t married yet. And I, I just really loved it from, from day

[00:19:09] Mike Klinzing: one. When you think about that first couple of weeks on the job and just the experiences that you had, what was maybe surprising to you about the coaching profession that you hadn’t thought about when you first started?

You were playing, were there things that the coaching staff did, things that you did that when you look back on your time as a player, you’re like, man, I had no idea either a, they did this or B that they spent so much time doing whatever it might be this particular task. So anything that was surprising to you that maybe you didn’t realize as a player?

Two guys I

[00:19:50] Jeff Clark: was working for coach Tonegal is, has the greatest will to win of any person I’ve been around. He’s an incredible competitor. And there was just a, the program is building, and you just felt the weight of that every day. And Coach Nelp has a incredible mind for the game and his attention to detail and the way he thinks and sees the game of basketball.

Both of those things from day one were just very, very impressive to me. And things I learned from both of them in deep ways that you, so. But I do think the way they thought about the game and talked about the game I was, I was learning every day and came in feeling like I knew nothing at the time.

And so I was just absorbing it all and taking it all in and  trying to process and catch up to be able to think and see the game in the way that they could, because I really admired

[00:20:44] Mike Klinzing: it. Besides learning from them and just the day to day process of seeing what they were doing, how else were you trying to grow yourself?

As a young coach, are you watching? I obviously just talked about being locked in the office and being able to chin back in if you have to go to the bathroom and watching film and just talk a little bit of how’d you try to grow? What was your, what was your process for trying to grow and improve as a young coach?

Did you, did you have a, did you have an organized strategy or was it just, as you said, you’re drinking out of the fire hose and stuff’s coming at you, just trying to absorb it as it comes at you?

[00:21:19] Jeff Clark: An organized strategy. I was just trying to keep up. I, I remember though, the first project I was given that was when John Beeline was at West Virginia and they had just went on their run.

And we had access to some of their film and they told me to do a breakdown of West Virginia and I didn’t know what a breakdown was or I didn’t know you could  I watched every NCAA tournament game in those days but you could actually like watch and rewind and watch again and see what was going on like all that stuff was so foreign to me at the time so again trying to piece it all together and see what was going on.

What were the turns that they were doing? And it was incredible. I, I, I remember just basketball, so much of it was like a foreign language to me at that time. But in terms of a, an organized strategy for growth, I

[00:22:06] Mike Klinzing: was just surviving. Were you, at this point, Let’s say, as you get through that first season, are you now sold on the fact that college basketball was the right place for you?

Or was there still a thought that maybe at some point you might, obviously you’re still at Indiana Wesleyan, so clearly it ended up being the right decision to jump into college basketball. Was there ever a point where you considered, hey, maybe I should go back and coach at the high school level and be a teacher?

[00:22:38] Jeff Clark: Never really looked back.  there, there’ve been times along the way where you really think and pray and process what, what should I be doing? How am I spending my life? In terms of being out of college basketball, that’s really never been something that I’d really seriously consider.

[00:22:55] Mike Klinzing: When you think about the experience and let’s look at it as a whole in the total number of years that you’ve been there. So you get there in 2007. So as you’re there for that length of time, what are some of the things that You love just about college basketball specifically and the, the, the opportunity to coach at the college level.

Just give me one or two things that when you think about, man, I, I just, I love what I get to do every day. What are the one or two most favorite things that pop into your head when I, when I asked that question? Three things come to

[00:23:29] Jeff Clark: mind immediately. One is just relationships over the course of time from recruiting all the way through the process of a player graduating all the way into life later Deep relationships where you experience the highs and lows of life.

I love that. Number two would just be team building, trying to bring a group of people together towards the same vision. I love that process. And number three, just be the strategy of the game. I just, I love to think about and watch and talk about the strategy of basketball. So those three things are, are really the, the

[00:24:02] Mike Klinzing: heartbeat of what I love.

Let’s talk about, let’s talk about each one of those one at a time. Let’s start with the relationship side of it. So obviously 18 years ago, you’re a lot younger guy, you’re a lot closer in age to the players than you are now. So has the way you build relationships with your players, has that changed at all in terms of your approach, in terms of how you relate to them?

What’s your process for building those kinds of relationships, which as you described are lifelong. They’re not just during the recruiting process. They’re not just during the four years where that player plays for you, but hopefully you’re building relationships that 20, 30 years down the road, you’re still going to be able to have contact with those guys.

So what’s your process for building those relationships? And has it changed as you’ve aged and matured?

[00:24:55] Jeff Clark: I remember the first time that I walked in the locker room, And players got quiet before it had been like, I walk in and they invited me into what they were talking about. And the first time I walked in and they got quiet, like, Oh, should we be talking about this?

And I, I kind of looked around, like, what just happened? And as I thought, I was like, Oh, wait, I’m, I’m the old coach now. So I think the way relationships happen has changed. Absolutely. But, but the foundation, and we’ll talk about this more, there’s really two things that we talk about. At Indiana Wesleyan all the time.

The first is what we call I am third. I am third is God first, other second, self third. The second is what we call fearless. As coaches, how do we take fear out of the game? So in every relationship we have, in every part of the program we have, we’re trying to bring these two things into it. What does it look like to have an I am third relationship and build that into players and what does it look like to create a fearless mind in the players?

So the way that. expresses itself as different when you’re close to the same age versus you’re viewed as older. Of course it’s different, but the, the foundation and the heartbeat of what those relationships are has remained the same whatever age we are.

[00:26:05] Mike Klinzing: I think that’s a good point in that it’s sort of in how you make that approach, right?

And how you get to the player and what that conversation may look like. Ultimately, the goal of building that relationship is the same. in terms of making sure that it’s a deep connection between you as the coach and them as the player. So give me some examples of how you guys go about doing that as a coaching staff.

Is it more formal, more informal? How do you let those guys know that, hey, we’re invested in you, not just as a basketball player, but we’re invested in you as a student, as a human being. What does that look like for you guys on a daily basis? Boots on the ground. How do you build those relationships? A

[00:26:54] Jeff Clark: hundred different ways.

But from the very start of the recruiting process, trust is the most important thing. You want the player to know that at a heart level, what you care about is their heart. Who they’re becoming over time. And you want a relationship where there’s trust both ways. Now, sometimes that means you have to challenge them.

Sometimes it means you have to pat them on the butt. Sometimes it means you have to hold them accountable, but, but in whatever it is, there’s a, there’s a heart to heart connection where we’re both moving in the same direction. And the, the two things we talk about all the time with our players, and this is both on the court, in the classroom, in faith is it doesn’t matter to us exactly where you’re at.

It’s just, are you willing to be honest about it? And do you want to grow? And as long as you have those two things, we’ll meet you in any way to help you move along. So sometimes that means there’s players in our office and we’re watching film and we’re growing the game. Sometimes they’re in our office and we’re talking about family or anything else.

Sometimes we have scripture open and we’re studying the word and we’re praying together. Sometimes we’re just laughing. So, but in all the case, we’re, we’re building trust and we’re trying to get to the heartbeat of a player and move them along towards growth. in a way that then creates a greater momentum for the entire program.

[00:28:15] Mike Klinzing: Would you say that most of that is done informally or formally? Is there a, how do you balance out? Oh, are you having a meeting? Hey, this is our, this is our weekly check in meeting, or is it more sort of organically? You’re talking to him before, after practice, you’re, you’re grabbing lunch with a guy. How would you kind of characterize when and where you’re, you’re meeting the guys to be able to have those kinds of conversations?

[00:28:39] Jeff Clark: Happens in, in so many ways. So let’s just talk today. Today there was a I had lunch with the player and this player I had lunch with, there was no agenda on it. It was just relationship time. And this doesn’t happen every day, but this was a player that  just kind of, he, he’d had a couple of good weeks and just wanted to see where he was at and how he was processing things, how things were going in his life.

There was a player led meeting today. But this was more positioned by us. So we could just tell the team needed a little spark. So we called a couple players that we really trust and say, Hey, what are you guys seeing? How can we position them to be leaders on the team? There was some individual film with about four players.

That was more four to five minute check ins. But while you’re watching film, you’re, you’re trying to, Again, build trust. So, so you’re seeing multiple touch points, some with just player led, some one on one, some through film, some specifically about basketball, some not, but I think every day there’s different ways that you’re putting little in pieces of, of input into players to help them grow.

[00:29:41] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. I mean, I think that’s probably when I think about the coaches that we’ve had on here and talk to them about the relationship side of it. I think there’s always a balance, right? There’s first of all, knowing, as you said, the pulse of your team and knowing what they need and knowing when they need it and how they need it.

And then that also gets down to the individual player as well, that you get a feel for that player, who they are, what they are, what’s, what they’re about, what motivates them. And the more  them, the easier it is to see that, Hey, things are going really well for this kid right now, or man, I could see that this kid’s struggling a little bit.

Let’s see what we can do to bring him back to where we need him to be. Both as a basketball player, but more importantly, just as a human being. And I think that balance between formal and informal, and just, again, investing in your players makes a huge, huge difference when it comes to building those deeper relationships.

The second thing you talked about was team building. And obviously I think the relationship piece with individual players, obviously plays a big factor in getting those guys to buy in and trust you. And trust the coaching staff and conversely, you to be able to trust them. And when that starts to come together, now you’re talking about building the trust between teammates and getting everybody on the same page.

So we’re all moving in the same direction with the same goals. So how do you guys take those individual relationships that you’re building and then put that together in a, in a team building process?

[00:31:15] Jeff Clark: So the two concepts I touched on briefly, I am third and fearless. So we would call these the two pillars of our program.

And what we try to do is take every aspect of our program and try to align them around those two things. So if you take offense, what does it look like for our offense to be I am third and fearless? Every time a player comes across half court, is he thinking about how can I create a shot for a teammate?

But every time he catches the ball, does he have a fearless mindset as he catches the ball? So to go to the weight room, go to the locker room, we’re always talking about what does I am third look like and what does fearless look like? And because of that, where is their selfishness and where is their fear?

And how as coaches can we address those two things and try to root them out of our program? And it’s a challenge because it sounds great in theory, but every program deals with selfishness. And every person deals with fear. So all the time you’re looking for these and you’re trying to root them out and you’re trying to figure out how can we address the root cause of these things.

Cause when a team plays both I Am Third and Fearless, it is a fun game to play. And it’s a fun locker room to be a part of. And that’s really, when we think of a team that we want to build, you come watch us on the court and you see those things come to life.

[00:32:32] Mike Klinzing: How long into a particular season, and again, obviously this varies.

But when you’re evaluating and looking at your team, what are the signs that you’re looking for that, Hey, they’ve got it. They’ve got the, I am third mentality. They’ve got the fearless mentality. What are the things that you look for that when you guys sit down together as a coaching staff, you’re like, okay, they got it.

[00:32:58] Jeff Clark: First thing that comes to mind is joy in other people’s success. It’s not that they’re not competitive, even with each other. When a teammate succeeds at a heart level, how do I respond? And you can often see that by looking at the end of a bench. You can see it on the court. You can see it when things go well and don’t go well.

When it doesn’t go well, are they pointing fingers at someone else or are they taking ownership? When it does go well, am I authentically happy when something goes well for someone else and they get the credit? And when you find that in a team, that’s when you have.

[00:33:31] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I think that’s something that, again, when you look at our society in general and you start thinking about the selfish nature that we see promoted so often that I think as a coach, if you can put together and build something where players are genuinely happy for the success of one another.

And then obviously you as coaches have to model that and put that in place so that they see you living by that same, that same philosophy. I think that’s, that’s really important. But yeah, it’s, it’s one of those things that, man, when, when that comes together, Where you have guys that genuinely care about each other and genuinely care about the success of their teammates.

That’s really when  you have something. And I think that it’s, it’s probably a lot more rare than you and I would probably like to, like to imagine that it is. It’s that, that’s something that it’s easy. It’s easy to say, it’s a lot harder to do. Let’s put it that way, Jeff.

[00:34:32] Jeff Clark: We see college basketball becoming more and more of a me first world.

It’s some of the side effects, whether you like it or don’t like it, the Transfer Portal and NIL are part of our reality. And one of the side effects is that things become more transactional with both of those things. And as things become more transactional, it becomes more me first. So, we’ve tried to say, we’re not against those things.

We’re trying to figure out how to leverage them, but we want to double down in trying to create an I am third environment because we think it stands out even more as it seems like the world of basketball becomes more and more me first and it’s. If it was all about transactional relationships, I don’t think I would want to coach.

That would be the time when I would want to get out of college basketball. But when you can really be part of building something that’s bigger than any one person, and you can see players really buy into something that’s bigger than themselves, and they grow in their faith, they grow as players, but they really learn how to be with a teammate and elevate other people, that’s what makes the profession so much fun.

[00:35:37] Mike Klinzing: You feel like One of the best ways for you to be able to get to that point where guys are playing for each other and playing selflessly is to continuously point out when you see those behaviors, whether you’re looking at, as you said, maybe the end of the bench on the film, or you’re just in practice when you’re seeing guys celebrating.

Do you find that the more you reinforce that and recognize it and point it out that those behaviors tend to Multiply when you’re pointing them out so the guys can see what it is that that you expect.

[00:36:15] Jeff Clark: But I think even to another level, when your players are pointing that out, and when your players are dissatisfied when that’s not in the locker room, that’s when you have something.

And that’s what we’re facing as a team right now. We have seven new players this year, which is the most we’ve ever had. And they’re all great kids. We love them all. But we have a very different environment and a very different culture. And one of the things we’re seeing in our program right now is the older players who’ve been around are kind of saying, Hey, I’m not sure these guys fully understand how different we operate in some things, whether it be how we approach some of our practice, what we do in the weight room.

And it’s not that they’re bad people. They’ve just never been around something like this and because it’s half the team now, we as players need to take aggressive ownership to make sure they understand it, hold to that standard. That’s when you’re excited when players not only do it themselves, but they want that for every player in the locker room because they’ve experienced it.

They say, hey, this is the most joyful way to play the game. This is the way that it should be lived. And if you’re not, you’re missing out. And I want to pull you along to it. So more than us pointing it out when players do it with each other, that’s when it becomes really,

[00:37:26] Mike Klinzing: so how do you approach it with guys who, again, when you think about a college basketball player, you think about yourself prior to sort of your own transformation, where you’re thinking about.

Your ability to impact a team, help them win, your statistics, your playing time. Every team is going to have guys who don’t play as much as they want to play, who don’t get as many shots as they want to get. And so, how do you approach those, whether it’s conversations or just the way that you make sure that you bring guys along who, cause sometimes.

Let’s face it, right? Guys who are getting what they want or need, darters who are playing a lot of minutes, it’s a lot easier to get those guys to buy into, Hey, this is, Again, I’m third, because I’m getting, I’m getting my, I’m getting my share. Maybe a guy that’s not getting their share, it’s sometimes harder, right, for those kids to buy in.

So, how do you approach that with the guys who, again, maybe aren’t getting the visual results that everybody on the outside sees of, hey, you’re not a starter, or hey, you’re not getting as many shots, or hey, you’re only doing this or that. How do you make sure those guys are buying into the team mentality and that I am third in the fearless part of it?

[00:38:51] Jeff Clark: You draw on a lot of your past experiences. So something I believe deeply is frustration never leads to transformation. And so often in those moments, I want to respond with frustration, but that’s never worked. So I often will think back to. How can I resonate with this person where they’re at right now?

We said earlier, we don’t care where you’re at. Can you be honest and do you want to grow? So I’ll first sometimes go back to when I was a player. What was I thinking? What was I experiencing? Candidly, my professional journey, I never planned to still be at Indiana Wesleyan 19 years later. And there’s some of my own professional journey and story has been laying down some of my own desires to be part of something bigger.

And I can remember those times where I was wrestling with those things. Hey, I shouldn’t be getting more credit. I shouldn’t be getting more things. So When I can put myself in their place and I can meet them where they’re at, not judging them, not with condemnation, but truly understanding, but then also saying, Hey, listen, there’s a better way to live.

I am third. It’s not just a slogan. This is the best way to live your life. And let me tell you why, but I can understand why you would be, why are you going to me first? I can resonate with that because I’ve been there and I know what that’s like. I can’t say I’m never there now, but man, when I put God first and put other people second, let me tell you how much better of a way it is to live and to play the game.

Now, all of a sudden, it’s landing at a different place than if I’m just frustrated and mad because they’re not doing what I want them to do.

[00:40:21] Mike Klinzing: That makes sense, right? To help them to come to that realization, right? You have a conversation, you help them to look at it from a different perspective, and then they’re able to reach that conclusion on their own, which is much better, obviously, than You force me to get down somebody who may not want to hear exactly what you have to say.

Just thinking that, okay, I’ve got to instead come to that realization. And by giving them examples and being able to talk about it and process that, eventually that gets them to where, to where they need to be. The third thing that you mentioned earlier after the relationship building and the team building, you talked about X’s and O’s, the X’s and O’s of the college game.

And so now as a guy who has a ton of experience as a college coach. Compared to that first kid who was locked in the office and couldn’t get out to go to the bathroom and, and those kinds of things. From an X’s and O’s standpoint, where are you going to learn, to grow, to study the X’s and O’s? Do you have some go to places, teams?

I know we’ve talked to a lot of coaches that like to look at European stuff. There’s coaches that like to look at the college game. There’s coaches that are trying to steal stuff from The NBA, where do you go as you’re trying to improve from an X’s and O’s standpoint? Where or who do you go to?

[00:41:42] Jeff Clark:  if I think of just in here recently  we’ve got a, a former player, Joel Okafer and Luke Stevens, who are both with the Pacers organization.

And they just recently sent us a bunch of European stuff that they put out. So talking to those guys, what are you guys installing right now? What’s it look like as you build it up? What’d you take from here? Hey, we’ll share you this cut up as long as you don’t share so Some of that there’s different websites.

Now we go listen to your podcast Listen to podcasts of coaches all the time so you’re always I think watching things and trying to learn but then piece it together Where does that fit with what we’re doing and how can it make what we’re doing a little bit better because something I fall into so easily is I’ll hear someone say something or I’ll watch a cut up of Serbia scoring 20 times in a row out of this action and I’ll think, man, if we just did it just like them, everything would be perfect.

That’s not how basketball works, right? Or I’ll listen to a coach who can articulate a vision so well and I’ll be like, I just want to do what they do. But it’s way more about how does, how, how can I take a little bit and add to, to who we are and what we’re doing and who we have and, and maybe a little tweak here and a little tweak there to get us closer to being the close to our potential we can be as a

[00:42:53] Mike Klinzing: team.

It’s a great point, Jeff. I think that it’s something that, especially again, when you think about how easy it is now to go out on to YouTube to go on to social media and define, Hey, look at that, or check this out, or wow, look at what they’re running here and just say, man, we’ll just take that. And like you said, we’ll run it exactly the way that they run it.

And everything’s going to work beautifully. And obviously we know that there are certain things that in the game of basketball, that your personnel helps you to dictate, obviously what you do. There are also Systems and philosophies that, yeah, when you take a one little 10 second clip, you’re like, Oh, that looks pretty cool.

And then you try to figure out how does that fit into the greater scheme of, of what it is that we do. So I do think that you’re a hundred percent right. That it’s very easy to sort of find that next shiny object. And I’m guilty of that, not just in X’s and O’s, but I’ll hear something about like, Oh, whether it’s again, culture or a team building or whatever it might be.

I’m like, I’m going to try that. And oftentimes I know when I was coaching, you try something. And then I was notorious for Trying something and doing it for a week or two. And then all of a sudden just kind of letting it fall off. Cause I got excited by the next, by the next thing that I, that I wrote down or that I read about.

And so I think that’s, that’s one of the dangers that I think probably, especially as a young coach, you tend to before you’ve established kind of who you are, what your philosophy is, what you believe in, you’re kind of more susceptible to that next shiny object mentality, if that makes any sense.

[00:44:29] Jeff Clark: And I’ll be kidding. I’ve never heard another coach talk about this, but I’ll just share it. Cause I’m sure there’s someone who might resonate for whatever reason, if we’re in a timeout and I draw up a perfect play and we score, it feels like we scored 10 points, but we only scored two, but if you go to social media, all you’re going to see is the perfectly executed design play.

And in all that coach is a genius, right? But if you go over the course of the game, That’s not happening as much as it feels like it should. And, and there’s a part of my own coaching growth where it’s had to be like, wait a second, me drawing the perfect play up doesn’t impact how many points per possession we score as much as I think it does or wish it does.

So, while I want to have a great play and we can execute it well, it’s way more about can we get our players in position to make plays and play off their instincts and, and score over the course of a game, not just in this one moment. And it doesn’t matter if I feel like I control that or not as a coach.

So there’s a little bit of a surrendering of control and a recognition of players gifts that I think can be underrated relative to finding the perfect play.

[00:45:40] Mike Klinzing: Tell me about what that looks like in a practice setting. So I agree with you a hundred percent, right? That I can draw up a million things on the whiteboard.

I can diagram it. I can have it, whatever. It can look perfect on paper. And then when we execute it, it doesn’t look the same way in real life as it does on paper, because ultimately the game is played by the players. So in a practice setting, how do you put your guys in positions to make the types of dynamic decisions?

In other words, how do you guys design your practices to, to maximize the player’s ability to, as you just described, make a play within the confines of what you guys are trying to run?

[00:46:31] Jeff Clark: And going in, not with assumptions of what, who they should be, but learning where do they naturally go to, what do they do well instinctively, then we’re just going to be very intentional about something at one of our favorite games, something as simple as we’ll play four on four, but we’ll call it a plus.

So, Hey, you didn’t get in groups of four. You guys can choose one action and one player. And if, as you play, you score out of that action, you get a bonus point. Well, now what’s happening is there’s role recognition. They’re discovering on their own, how to get into those actions, what that action looks like.

They’re determined cause they all want to win. If I went in the huddle and I say, Hey, we’re going to run a, a pin down for this player, they’d all be ticked at me cause I didn’t draw it up for them. But when they get in that huddle with just those four, they want to win the game. So they’re picking that thing that I would have drawn up anyway, and they’re discovering how to find it.

So then it’s sitting back and kind of watching. And you’re, you’re constantly just saying, where, where are we really hard to guard? What are the things our guy do guys do naturally that we can’t guard at all? Then how do we incorporate that into what we do within the offense and structure it a little bit more after we see those things?

[00:47:44] Mike Klinzing: How long does it take as you get to know the strengths and weaknesses of your players for you guys to put that into place? How long do you have to watch a kid play, whether it’s. Pre season pickup games, whether it’s in the practices leading up to, obviously once you’ve had a guy in the program for more than a year, but when a guy like, so this year you got seven new players coming into the program on day one, you don’t know where their instincts are going to go or what they’re going to naturally gravitate towards.

So how long does it take you to get a feel for sort of that individual personnel? And then also sort of the collective instinct of your team, for lack of a better way of saying it, how long does it take you guys to kind of put that together so that you can create the framework of, of how you want to play in a given year?

An entire season,

[00:48:39] Jeff Clark: an entire career. You’re hoping players are adding things as they go. So.  this may be because we’re  both Coach Allen and I, I think we just love discovering new things. Each season does not look the same and I love the way he leads this way. He is an emotional leader who will go after the things he sees.

And he just is a leader who discerns very well what the team needs in that moment. And I think that translates down to how we do offense. So I think early on we’re discovering some of those pieces. And we’re trying to manipulate it to what we see. But then we’re always remaining, giving room to discover new things.

To get players input we want players to discover things. We want them to come to us with ideas. We want them to tinker and come and say, What do you think about this? What do you think about that? And we have enough strength to tell them no, but we have enough intentionality and trust where they sometimes have the best ideas because they’re the ones who are on the court.

I think back there was actually one year where we had a senior’s name with Ben Carlson. He wasn’t a starter, but just a really heavy player. And We were playing one of these four on four games and he, he basically came up with an action that we hadn’t seen very much where he would flash the high post, someone else would dive in the post.

And it ended up being the action that legitimately led us to the national championship. When we charted the final month of the season, we ran the action 24 times and scored 21, which doesn’t even make sense, right? That, but this is something we, we discovered it from a player in February. And it ended up being, we’d go to it three times in a game and we knew we were going to score out of it because it was, it was pretty hard to scout and to guard.

And, and there’s an example of the entire season we’re trying to discover new things and give input to our players to where they really feel like things work. And if we can make it happen in practice, then we’ll try the game and constantly evolve and discover new things.

[00:50:28] Mike Klinzing: So you guys are putting together a practice plan.

And so we went from sort of the general. of how you kind of design the way you play over the course of a season to the more specific. Tell me a little bit about the practice planning process for you and Greg.

[00:50:45] Jeff Clark: Oh, it’s crazy, but we, we always start with prayer in both recruiting, practice planning, everything.

We will always just go to prayer and just say, God, is there anything you want us to know or do in this practice? And then we’ll move to film, we’ll move to conversation, we’ll move to how the team’s feeling and if you look year to year, week to week, month to month, we do not have a structure that remains the same.

There’s a lot of commonalities, there’s a lot of themes, there’s a, there’s a non negotiables, but the flow and rhythm and structure, we’re changing often based on what we think the team needs. And, and where the team’s at. So, so every day we’ll meet and sometimes we’ll plan out the whole week based on that.

Sometimes it’ll just be day by day, but we’re just always meeting and talking and saying, what did we see yesterday? What was good? What wasn’t? Watch film. What, what do we need to do again? What do we need to do different? So you can see we’re always evolving with the team and trying to understand exactly where is this team at right now?

What do they need to grow in? What’s the next step for this team? We talked

[00:51:47] Mike Klinzing: about relationships earlier and. Obviously, the relationship between you and Coach Tonegal, you’ve been together now for, this is, I believe, what, 18, this will be your upcoming, it’ll be your 18th season. And so, clearly, it’s a relationship that works both on a personal and a professional level.

Talk about why it works, what makes the relationship between the two of you so special, just first from a personal standpoint, but then also in terms of. What you guys each bring to the table from a coaching perspective, that’s allowed you to have the type of success that you’ve had both on and off the court over the course of his tenure.

And most of which coincides with yours. I

[00:52:37] Jeff Clark: think in general to just career advancement I I think I was like most people in college basketball, where I really only had a lens for three things, what level are you at, what title do you have and what salary do you make? And that was really going back to what I was saying about, that was the only way I could evaluate things.

And there was a time where I had a really, really good head coaching opportunity and I was going through and I was praying and I was trying to sort of, what, what matters for me? Do  are those three things, the three things that matter for me? And I kind of came away from some real intentional time in prayer and trying to discover who I am and what I’m about.

I have a different lens. One is where can I really express my faith at the deepest level? Where can I be a great father and husband? And where can I be around people who push me to grow? And when you go to that last one I think relationships are undervalued in college basketball. There’s not enough college basketball coaches that have great marriages, great families, and great friends.

And I want to be around people who push me to grow, who are better than me. I think coach Tannegal is. An elite coach, an elite motivator, but more elite leader. So I’m always learning from him and, and over time that’s better to me to be in a place where I’m, I’m able to continue to be pushed to grow.

He’s the best motivator that I’ve been around. He’s got incredible vision, but he also is an empowering leader. So he’s given me new opportunities all the time. He’s allowed me to grow as a coach in my own way.  and we have, we have a very similar vision for the world, but we have different strengths and how we go about that.

So it’s just really worked well to be alongside somebody. Tell

[00:54:15] Mike Klinzing: me a little bit about that balance in your life as a college basketball coach, because We all know that, A, the higher the level you go, that the pressure to win, to be able to keep your job. Obviously, you guys have had a tremendous amount of success on the floor.

Being able to balance out your family, as you said, your marriage, obviously your faith and your relationship with God is very, very important to you. So how does it work for you to be able to maintain? the balance in your life so that all of those parts of, which are very important to you, I’m sure. How do you balance all those out?

How do you approach that? And how does Coach Tonegal help you to approach that? One is family’s around all the

[00:55:09] Jeff Clark: time. So if you’re going to come to our gym, you’re, you’re going to be annoyed by my kids or his kids, or they’re going to be running around and our players just know, like, that’s part of it.

I love it because I There’s nobody I want to influence my sons than the players we have in our locker room. So the fact that they’re around, my kids, my kids don’t listen to me anymore.  if I say something that they think I don’t know anything about anything, right? But our players are, they know everything.

So that’s an amazing piece of it. The other thing that Coach Tyler has been  over time, I think he has allowed me to not do things that don’t work. And I’ll explain that a little bit more. I just think so often college basketball, so many coaches who do things just because other coaches do them and they don’t want to do the things other people do.

So, so many programs just start to copy each other, whether it’s the recruiting calendar or the way we do X, Y or Z. And some of it’s just spinning your wheels and some of it’s not efficient and some of it doesn’t work. And he’s had enough trust in me when something’s not working or isn’t adding.

He’s not making sure I do that thing. He’s just saying I, I, I think there’s a deep trust from working over time. And he’s saying, what are you like the things I’m in charge of, offensive coordinator, recruiting  we’re always talking about a lot of those post players. What are the results?

And I always love to try new things. I want to be ahead of the curve, but to be ahead, you have to be able to leave some things behind and not continue to do things that aren’t working. And when I look around at so many of my friends, I see him spending a lot of time working on things that don’t matter or don’t advance a program.

So Coach Tonico both has allowed the family to be around but also has not held me to do things that aren’t continuing to work, which allows us to stay ahead and gives more time because you’re not wasting your time.

[00:57:10] Mike Klinzing: It’s interesting that you say that. I, as you’re having that particular, as you’re sharing that answer, What I’m thinking about, and I love how you talked about that a lot of times people do things because other people are doing them.

And so one of the things that I’ve always found to be interesting is when I think about my time as a player. So I played division one basketball at Kent State and back when I was playing, when our season ended, coaching staff handed me a two page ditto. Here’s your workout. We’ll see you back here.

Hopefully you’re going to be in shape when you come back to school in August. And that was it. And now I look at the amount of time that coaches have access to players. And I just always think about the fact that, man, that’s a lot of time for both players to spend with coaches and coaches to spend with players.

And I know when you have that time that everybody feels pressure to utilize that time. But in a lot of ways, I think about the times when I grew as a player. For me, when I was away from the coaching staff, and again, I was a hardworking kid or whatever, I didn’t just go home and sit on the couch and eat potato chips, I was working on my game and whatever.

But I feel like during that summer time, that’s when I added stuff to my game, and that’s what I did. I felt like I came back refreshed, whereas if I was hearing those same voices four years straight over the summer that, and I think that coaches don’t necessarily want to admit that it’s too much because to your point, to admit that, hey, we’re getting too much contact time with our players.

There, there’s not many people that, that want to that want to admit that, but I think in some ways the, the situation that we have in division one basketball, It’s almost, I feel like, again, this is my perspective of, from a player’s perspective, 30 some odd years ago. I feel like in some ways it can be overkill.

And I think that’s kind of what you’re describing that in some ways, right? There’s things that everybody, you feel like you have to do them because everybody else is doing them. And if you don’t, you’re going to fall behind, or if your record’s not as good as it should be, your administration is going to come to you and say, well, you should have been doing duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, because everybody else is doing it and it’s just.

I think you make a really, really good point that you really have to evaluate what you’re doing in your program and ask yourself, does it impact the things that we want to be impacting, right? Does it impact winning? Does it impact the way we’re having our relationships with our player? Whatever it is that the goal that you’re talking about isn’t having an impact on those goals.

And I think a lot of times, as you said, we lose sight of that. I don’t know if that makes sense to you, to you, kind of the perspective that I’m sharing there. Yeah. I, I think in every,

[01:00:05] Jeff Clark: whether it be team building or players, comparison drives so much of that, right? And it’s, it’s hard not to live in comparison because you look over and it seems like things are working for someone else.

So you try to copy them. And I think comparison and copying both can rob you from understanding what are we called to? What are we supposed to build? And it’s hard to do something new or transformational or different if you’re just copying what other people are doing. And I think Coach Tinegal is allowed.

We’re not going to have to copy what everyone’s doing. We’re going to build it different. And we’re going to discover new ways to do it. And that just, I think the proof’s in the pudding. If you look at all of college basketball in the last ten years, Gonzaga’s number one in wins, and Indiana Wesleyan’s number two.

And there’s a part of the ongoing and sustained success that I think is a byproduct of us being willing to do it differently than the world. We haven’t been perfect. We’ve tried some things that have failed miserably, but we’re always trying to find what is it that this team needs, not what is someone else doing?

And that just led to a lot of success on our program.

[01:01:09] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I mean, it makes a lot of sense, right? When you can, I think that ability to be self aware and to self evaluate is a tremendously, it’s a tremendously valuable skill in any walk of life. But I think so often in coaching, you’re right that there is a lot of comparison of, Hey, here’s this program over here that’s doing X, Y, and Z, and then they’re having success, but we don’t necessarily know, is it X, Y, and Z that’s causing that success or is it A, B, and C over here that we can’t see behind the scenes?

And I think only obviously  within the confines of your own program, what it is that you’re doing. that leads to your success. And so, yeah, if you’re just looking constantly at, it’s almost like the social media trap, right? You can, you can look at other programs and you see all the shiny stuff and things on the outside you think are what is leading to their success, but you don’t necessarily see the things behind the scenes that, that are really making the difference.

And I think what I hear you guys saying is it’s important to self evaluate, Hey, we’re going to do this. And then is it going to have the impact that we want it to have? And if it does, we keep doing it. And as you said, it’s not always, it doesn’t always work. Things that you try don’t always work. And sometimes you try something, it doesn’t, but then you evaluate and say, okay, we tried that.

Well, it didn’t work. So let’s move on and try to figure out something else. And I think too often self awareness and sort of self evaluation piece is, is difficult, I think, in the coaching profession sometimes. I couldn’t agree more with that. All right, before we wrap up, I want to ask you a final two part question.

So the first part of the question is, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every day. So you get up, you get to coach college basketball at Indiana Wesleyan University, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge first, and then your biggest joy.

[01:03:17] Jeff Clark: This is what we just talked about as we lost our first player to the portal last year, the first time in 19 years, we lost a player we didn’t want to lose and candidly, it just rips your heart out because when you invest your heart into a player and we love this player and we are rooting him on and he did it in the best possible way, but it rips your heart out and the tendency, I think, is to get sucked into that way of thinking, right?

Yes. Now we gotta go react to that. We need to get sucked into the way everyone else is doing it. Not that all those things are bad necessarily, but we want to continue to say, how do we continue to be different? How do we continue to build something that’s countercultural in the midst of all of this? How do we stay with transformational coaching?

How do we not worry about those things, but just build something more compelling that a player wants to stay here? Why, why couldn’t we at Indiana Wesleyan have a player who chooses us over Many levels and we’ve had that we’ve had transfers from the highest levels we’ve had guys who haven’t left and they’re playing at the highest level of the professional basketball because they love it here so much Why can’t we do that again in this era?

So I think the biggest challenge is to not get sucked into transactional coaching and that corresponds to the greatest joy The greatest joy is just seeing life changing players both on the court, but off the court seeing growth in faith seeing growth in on relationship scene, deep, deep relationships that last over the course of life and then seeing ultimately former players who are living, I am third and fearless as fathers, as professionals and whatever they’re doing.

That’s where the real joy is. And that’s why we can’t get sucked into this transactional way of thinking that is so tempting right now in the way that college basketball business.

[01:04:59] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s well said. And I think that the impact of again, NIL and the transfer portal and all those things that you just talked about.

I think the risk of moving in a transactional direction is really real. And as you said, you have to really, really focus in on, Hey, what are we trying to do? Who are we, what are we all about? And when you do that, you’re going to end up having the success that you want to have. So I can definitely see where that’s a challenge to maintain that sort of mentality when you’re surrounded by so much of the, the other, the transactional mentality.

And then obviously the joy part of it, I think is one that. any coach, teacher can relate to, right? That the impact that you have through the game of basketball that you love 20 years down the road when a kid calls you up and invites you to their wedding or share some news from their life. I mean, there, there’s nothing There’s nothing better.

There’s nothing that brings more of a smile, more of a sense of joy than, than that for, for any coach. So I think that’s really well said. Before we get out, Jeff, I want to give you a chance to share. How can people connect with you, find out more about your program, whether you want to share website, social media, email, whatever you feel comfortable with, and then after you do that I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:06:13] Jeff Clark: Don’t have personal social media. You can follow us at IWUHOOPS on any of the platforms. We have our own program website, IWUHOOPS.net. And email me if you have any questions about any of this, jeff.clark@indwes.edu I love talking about culture and philosophy.

So reach out anytime. We love having those conversations.

[01:06:32] Mike Klinzing: Jeff, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us. Really, really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening, and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.