JERMAINE KIMBROUGH – ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH – EPISODE 699

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

Email – jermaine.kimbrough@gmail.com

Twitter – @jermainekimbrou

Jermaine Kimbrough is the Men’s Basketball Associate Head Coach at Arizona State University. He joined Head Coach Bobby Hurley’s Sun Devil staff in the spring of 2021.
 
Kimbrough spent the previous two seasons at Loyola-Chicago and the three prior seasons at the University of Wyoming.  Before heading to Wyoming, Kimbrough spent one season at the University of Nevada.

Kimbrough spent the bulk of his career at Cleveland State University, where he served nine seasons as an assistant coach under Gary Waters.
 
After graduating from Virginia Tech, Kimbrough moved right into the coaching ranks, first serving as an assistant at Howard College from 2001-03 before moving on to Cleveland State as director of operations. After a season at CSU, he spent one year (2004-05) as the director of operations at Massachusetts and then one season at Purdue Fort Wayne as an assistant coach before returning to Cleveland State.
 
Kimbrough began his playing career at St. Catherine College before transferring to Virginia Tech, where he played two seasons (1998-2000) before graduating with a degree in psychology. He was a prep standout at Shaker Heights High School in Cleveland, earning all-league honors on four occasions and all-city accolades three times. As a senior, he was second team all-state after pouring in 26 points per game.

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Grab a pen and paper as you listen to this episode with Jermaine Kimbrough, Men’s Basketball Associate Head Coach at Arizona State University.

What We Discuss with Jermaine Kimbrough

• Going from working for Porter Moser at Loyola of Chicago to Bobby Hurley at Arizona State
• “The most important thing about these experiences is you get to go to work every day and work with guys that you truly care about.”
• “You have to spend so much more time with developing the mental aspect of the game with these young men.”
• “It’s not about you anymore. It’s about them. And it’s about where can you help me and how can you help me? And where can you get me?”
• Building relationships with players on and off the court
• Helping players navigate their use of social media
• “We try to make the main thing the main thing, right? Like the basketball piece is still the most important thing.”
• The impact of NIL
• Why the age of “professional” athletes is dropping
• “I think Universities going forward need to have someone in place that can actually filter, guide and direct families and young people and student athletes in the right direction when they get to campus.”
• Why he loves the transfer portal and the ability for college teams to “stay old”
• “I’ve grown so much as a coach, as an individual, just with the responsibilities and delegation that Coach Hurley has given me within the program.”
• His responsibilities being the defensive coordinator at Arizona State
• The trust between a head coach and an assistant
• “Every day I go to work, I’m writing in my journal, I’m taking notes.”
• “I want to be a head coach one day. So you have to be around people that are going to allow you to grow into that situation.”
• Attitude, atmosphere, action, and alignment
• “You have to have an atmosphere where people can grow, they can develop, they can trust, they can love, they can care for one another.”
• “I care more about where they’re going to be 40 years from now than they are going to be four months from now.”
• “We’re not just basketball coaches, we’re life coaches.”
• The challenges of moving your family when you get a new job
• Building connections and being a national recruiter
• “I’m a firm believer that you have to see everybody with your own set of eyes. You can’t believe what somebody else says.”
• “If things aren’t done right on time and done with energy and toughness, you going to hear about it.”
• How to develop leaders on your team
• Avoiding burnout
• Getting players to the games healthy and keeping them fresh
• “We try to make our summers fun and about getting them better.”
• Using “identity” drills – what is the staple of your program?
• “As a leader, you have to decide what’s the best thing for your program today. Is it practice or is it getting to ’em mentally?”
• Having a feel for what your team needs
• Asking players, “What’s going on in your life today?”
• “The best way to do that is you have to fight for your culture and your student athletes every single day.”
• Building a consistent winner at Arizona State
• “It’s easy to work for somebody who’s a competitor and wants to win at a high level.”

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THANKS, JERMAINE KIMBROUGH

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JERMAINE KIMBROUGH – ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH – EPISODE 699

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here without my cohost Jason Sunkle tonight. But I am pleased to welcome back to the Hoop Heads Pod. Jermaine Kimbrough, Associate Head Coach at Arizona State University for his second appearance. Jermaine, welcome back man.

[00:00:15] Jermaine Kimbrough: Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:19] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. We’re excited to have you back on, and definitely looking forward to diving into the changes that have taken place for you since we last talked. You were at Loyola of Chicago with Coach Porter Moser, and now you are at Arizona State with Coach Bobby Hurley. So let’s start there with just how the opportunity comes to you at Arizona State and what life has been like going from Chicago to Arizona.

[00:00:45] Jermaine Kimbrough: It’s been great. It’s always a challenge and anytime you take a step from mid major basketball to the PAC 12 is always a challenge with so many different entities that go on in college basketball. But I figured it out and I’ve been prepared, I’ve been trained the right way.

I’ve had a lot of great coaches to learn under. Most definitely felt like Coach Moser has helped me, he helped train me to get to this level to be able to be an asset for Bobby Hurley. And getting here. This is going on my second season and man it has been great. Coach Hurley’s a competitor and his track record speaks for itself.

I’ve been doing this for 23, 24 years and Coach Hurley’s one of the best I’ve been around, his pedigree, his background, his track record, he’s a two time NCAA champion and seventh pick in the NBA draft to the Sacramento Kings, and I’ve learned a lot from him since I’ve been here at Arizona State.

Fortunately enough, he believed in me enough to name me the associate head coach to continue to help him grow this program in the right way. It all started for me at Loyola Chicago. When I left there, we went to a Sweet 16. I had a chance to work with some great individuals.

Matt Gordon, Drew Valentine, who’s the head coach there now at Loyola Chicago, Pat Wallace and Coach London there. He I learned a lot at Loyola Chicago and it was a great experience and it was one of the best programs I’ve ever been a part of and had a pleasure to coach at.

Anytime you can bring that experience over to your new spot, like here at Arizona State Man it has been great. Just trying to get these guys to buy in and believe in what we’re teaching them. And it’s a challenge.  We didn’t have a great season last year. But it was a learning lesson.

We finished up 14 and 17, but that’s life, right? It’s peaks and valleys and you go back to the drawing board, you figure it out and you draw from experiences from the past. And it has been great, man. It’s been great to work with the guys that I work with now Brandon Rosenthal, Nick Irvin, Justin McClain, Coach George has been awesome.

And the most important thing about these experiences is you get to go to work every day and work with guys that you truly care about.

[00:03:23] Mike Klinzing: Did you have a relationship with Coach Hurley prior to getting to Arizona State? Or how did you get connected to him, if not?

[00:03:30] Jermaine Kimbrough: Well, I always tell people it’s not what you do, it’s kind of who you know who wants to help you. And for me being in the business for a long time you kind of just have to let your work speak for you. And no, I did, I did know coach Hurly in passing by name, by face, or saying hi to him on the recruiting trail.

But in this profession it’s about who you are as a player, as a coach. And you a character. I’m a character coach and for me just taking care of the business, taking care of my business where I’m at every single day allowed me to have this opportunity and being connected treating people the right way.

Showing up every single day doing my job has been great. And that’s the reason why I got here, because of my track record and my body of work.

[00:04:29] Mike Klinzing: When you look at the season. You mentioned coming off a season at 14 and 17, and then you guys are sitting down in the coach’s office in the weeks after the season, and you’re starting to look at what do we need to do?

How do we need to approach this? When you talk about your off season and you think about trying to get your team to where they need to be to be prepared for this season, what do those meetings look like as a staff? What are some of the things you guys are talking about in terms of here’s what we need to accomplish over the summer, both from an individual player development standpoint and from a team cohesion standpoint

[00:05:10] Jermaine Kimbrough: For us when you go through this process and you break down what’s important, I think it starts with the mental piece. Especially in today’s game. The summer was long hours and we sat around and we talked about the mental health of every individual and person that’s in our program because it’s not about the basketball. It is between the ears. And when you think about the modern day athlete, what they have to go through every single day is different.

It’s not how it was 20, 25, 30, 40 years ago. It’s something that we all have to make an adjustment to. And it is a different way of living. It’s a different way of life. And how you develop your team right now is not really just on a basketball court. You have to spend so much more time with developing the mental aspect of the game with these young men.

You have to be connected. You have to be able to communicate. You have to be consistent. It is just so many other different things that go into it nowadays. It doesn’t have anything to do with basketball. And these young men need to know that you care about ’em, that you’re willing to go through a brick wall for them because they’re, they have so much information and, and if you think about it, they, their way of communicating now is through social media and that’s where they get that identity from.

So if you are an old school coach and you’re used to a young man that’s going to run through a brick wall back how they did when Coach Knight was around and Gene Keady, its not that era anymore. It’s almost like these young men and young women, they, they want to know, Are you going to run through a brick wall for me too, Coach?

They know everything about your contract. They know everything about your family. They got so much information that it’s not about you anymore. It’s about them. And it’s about where can you help me and how can you help me? And where can you get me?

And I think as, as coaches today, as modern day coaches, we have to understand that the world has changed with the nil, the collective these young men, these people. I remember playing college basketball at Virginia Tech. And I had to find my next meal. And you know what? I didn’t complain. I didn’t complain about it, Mike.

[00:07:45] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. You weren’t signing any deals back then, man.

[00:07:48] Jermaine Kimbrough: No I wasn’t signing any deals. I just had to figure it out. I just had to figure it out. Nowadays everything have to be lined up. You as a coach, you have to make sure everything is lined up for these young men.

It’s not that this is a softer generation, I just think they got more resources. They don’t have to go through what we went through. So we have to train them a little bit different than the way we were trained. And I think once coaches kind of realize, once coaches realize that I think we’ll be in good shape.

So those meetings were just really about how can we help our culture, how can we help develop these young men into being better people? The community that’s around us. Who do we have that? There’s another voice outside of just the coaching voice. Having a sports psychologist in your program, a nutrition you know, someone that can come in and talk to ’em about just taking care of their bodies.

Just different voices. So all that plays a part and is prevalent in today’s game. And, and you need that, You need the resources to allow these young men to express themselves, to believe in themselves, and to be comfortable within who they are as people.

[00:09:04] Mike Klinzing: For you, as an assistant coach, when you’re thinking about what you guys do in the summertime, obviously there’s workouts that you guys are doing on the floor, but you mentioned some of the things that.

You’re required to do in order to be able to build those relationships with guys off the floor. So what does that look like in the summer? I think people have maybe at least some understanding of, Hey, we’re getting guys out on the floor. We’re trying to develop ’em. We’re trying to improve them as individual players, which is obviously going to help our team to get better.

But what are you doing as an assistant coach to build those relationships during the off hours in the summertime where you’re getting a chance to just have conversations and build that relationship with the kids that are a part of your team?

[00:09:46] Jermaine Kimbrough: You know, for us here just helping young men get to class and meeting them in the weight room, meeting them in in the training room meeting them in the study hall room spending time with them in the office going to visit them in their apartments in the lobby area.

I mean, going to grab lunch with them, all these little different things, these nuances that that’s very minute. People think they’re minute, but they’re very big. And that’s something that on the court, we spend a lot of time with our guys on the court getting them better because that’s what they want.

They want to get better. You know, a lot of these guys are hungry to play at the next level. And we spent a ton of time with them on the floor, within the rules, but we take that time to try to try to develop that relationship so it’s authentic and organic and transparent to make sure these guys know we care about ’em.

And it starts on the basketball court and it kind of trickles down to the personal life, asking questions, the right questions about who they are and talk about their family. I mean, it’s so many different ways to connect with them through FaceTime, through Zoom it’s so many ways to connect to these guys.

We have to continue to find ways to connect to ’em. That is the reason why we have jobs, right? Like we have to take care of ’em. We have to make sure they, they, okay. They are in our presence and we are kind of like the last line of defense. And for us here at Arizona State, we spend so much time with our guys in the summertime, in the fall, the pre-season, in the season, probably more so than we do on the court.

You know, just being in our office, talking to us, walking the halls. So any chance we get to bump into ’em and talk to ’em, we do it.

[00:11:43] Mike Klinzing: There’s three things that when you think about where college basketball is today, and you think back five years ago even, that they were things that coaches, players wasn’t probably even on their radar to any degree.

And now you guys have. I l the transfer, the transfer portal, and social media. So let’s talk about, let’s take each one of those one at a time and just how you guys at Arizona State, what you’re doing, how you’re handling that, how you’re helping players to navigate it. Let’s start with let’s start with social media.

How do you guys work social media? How do you use social media? How do you help your players to use social media to make sure they’re doing it in a positive way?

[00:12:29] Jermaine Kimbrough: We educate ’em. We want to make sure the right content is going out and we want to make sure that we are a part of that too. Because as coaches, sometimes that social media piece doesn’t mean a lot to us.

So you have to entrench yourself into their world and we follow them. We make sure they have the information and the content that go out. So whatever they need that’s going to allow them to. You know, that’s their life. That’s their livelihood’s. Like the first thing they do when they pick up, when they wake up in the morning is to pick up their phone and see if they got likes followers.

And, and you know what’s crazy with this with everything is they, that’s how they continue to make money. Right? That’s what, Right, exactly. Like, it’s, it’s really a job. It is. That’s how important those social media sites and and apps are to them. That’s how they make they money.

That’s how they get extra money. That’s how they pay for things. That’s how they promote things. They promote themselves, their brand. And what we’ve tried to is bring people to the table that can allow them to express themselves, but also educate them and, and let them know that.

The promoting the marketing and the branding is way more important, a positive influence on social media. Because when you look at the social media, you can get a lot of negativity. And then just teaching them how to filter through the dms, the direct messages, and what to listen to and not to listen to, and to also run that by us as coaches.

That’s where the relationship piece come in. You know, we want to know what’s going on in the social media world with you.

[00:14:20] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I can’t imagine being a player and having to navigate all that. And you think about players getting messages and, Hey, you have a great game. Great. You have a not so great game, and you don’t want to go in there and check.

Yeah. I mean, it’s one thing that back in the day when you and I were playing and maybe your roommate said, Hey man, you stunk. And you just take that and move on. But now you’re getting it from all different angles. And I think it’s, it’s the same way for, for kids at the high school level and younger and just they, they, there’s no, there’s no escape.

They, they can’t get away from it because as you said, they, they’re connected to their phone, They’re picking it up all the time. And I think you said the key word, I think is, is being able to educate the players about what they should be doing, what they shouldn’t be doing. And then again, what should they be looking at and what they should not be looking at, what they should be able to ignore.

And I’m sure that that’s a constant conversation that you guys have with them to make sure that they’re on the same page with what you guys are trying to get accomplished with them. And obviously they want to be able to, as you said, utilize that to be able to make money, which is a whole different set of circumstances than anything that any coach or player in the NCAA has had to deal with in the past.

So where are you guys? IL in terms of feeling like you have a pretty good handle on what it looks like. I mean, I know everybody’s still kind of feeling their way sort of through the dark and trying to figure out what this whole thing’s going to look like, but where are you with, in terms of your comfort level with NIL and then where are you with the players?

[00:15:59] Jermaine Kimbrough: You know, for us, again we can only do so much with our guys, but we give them the freedom to try to try to go out and, and do what they need to do with the NIL It is a space that I think everybody’s continuing to grow with it and to try to figure it out. And, and we, we got young men in our program now that got NIL deals and they’re figuring this space out, whether they got car deals or bike deals or grocery deals, or whatever deals they got, we give them the freedom to try to figure it out and to help them because we know how important that is for today’s generation to be able to promote that.

Social media wise, it’s tough. It’s a tough field because it all depends on where we try not to make that, We try to make the main thing the main thing, right? Like the basketball piece is still the most important thing for sure. We try to, we try to make these guys understand like, We’re going to help you, but the main thing is being here for basketball.

Being on a basketball scholarship and getting you better and preparing you for the real world. And it’s unfortunately, that I tell parents this all the time. The professional athlete, now it’s probably from the age of 15 to like 22 . Yep, Yep. It’s not like when I was growing up.

You graduate from college, you become a professional athlete. No. These young people are striking million dollar deals now at the age of 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19, 20. And then when they get to college, it’s the same thing. So their professional career is starting at a young age. So you have to be prepared for that on a day to day basis.

And that’s why I think Universities going forward need to have someone in place that can actually filter, guide and direct families and young people and student athletes in the right direction when they get to campus. So as coaches, we don’t have to necessarily deal with something that’s probably not your expertise, right?

Like we could talk to ’em about it, but we can’t really truly be there every second, every minute, every hour of the day and filter through all the marketing deals or any NIL deals so they can bring us the information and then we have to we have to channel it to the right person.

But it’s. Because at the end of the day, I’m a basketball coach. Exactly.

[00:18:43] Mike Klinzing: You’re not an agent. You’re not an agent. Come on.

[00:18:43] Jermaine Kimbrough: I’m not an agent. I truly don’t want to deal with it. I’d rather watch film with you. I’d rather get on the floor and help you develop your ball. You’re shooting your passing and understanding the plays.

But it’s something that I truly don’t. It is not second nature to me as a, as a coach,

[00:19:04] Mike Klinzing: How far away are we from pretty much every Division one school having aperson who’s in place within the athletic department to be able to at least assist the athletes and the coaching staff in working their way through that.

Do you think we’re, I mean, I have to think we’re probably pretty close to getting to the point where that’s almost going to become a, a prerequisite that athletic departments are going to have to have a person in place.

[00:19:31] Jermaine Kimbrough: I think we are maybe a season or two away. I think once they kind of figure out the alignments, the new alignments of the schools and the conferences, and get things in place and kind of filter out what what’s real and what’s not real and what’s here to stay and what’s not here to stay.

I think we’re about at season or two away from that.

[00:19:54] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s really, it’s hard for me to sort of wrap my head around the whole fact that guys in college have this opportunity. It’s a great opportunity. I think it’s something that probably is long overdue and yet at the same time, I would imagine for you guys as college coaches, that being able to navigate one more thing that you talked about trying to build your culture, and so you have this situation where guys are getting different levels of IL deals.

If I’m this player X and I, I’m a starter versus I’m the eighth man, versus I’m the leading score versus I’m the leading rebound. There’s just, there’s just, I would think it just adds a whole nother layer of things that maybe don’t necessarily cause problems, but just things that you have to kind of keep an eye on and make sure that you’re on top of sort of those dynamics amongst the players when it comes to this ni.

[00:20:51] Jermaine Kimbrough: Well, we’re professional coaches now, so we wear many hats. We are agents, we are coaches, we give these guys so much information. It’s an overload. And what gets lost is the basketball piece. And for us here at Arizona State, I don’t know how other universities do it, but ours is very mild right now.

We’re trying to make sure everybody is fed. We’re trying to make sure everyone gets equal opportunity, right? And so we don’t want to put ourselves in jeopardy with I mean, we can’t control if someone has a hundred thousand followers versus someone who has a thousand, someone who has a thousand followers, right?

Like, we can’t control that, but when it comes down to the collective, and my philosophy behind it is I think you should try to make sure everyone has equal, just about, equal across the board so you don’t have any issues in your locker room, your culture. So everybody can walk out every single day and say, Hey I have enough to survive in college.

And because that’s what college is, is the springboard to get you to your professional level, whether it’s sports, education, business, it’s, you’re here to be a student athlete. And I think we, we can’t forget that.

[00:22:22] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. There’s no question about that. That, as you said, you have to keep the main thing, the main thing.

And you have to keep the players focused on, hey, you’re here to get an education and you’re here to play ball. Get better, improve and prepare for whatever your career you’re going to end up having. Whether that ends up being a professional basketball career, whether that ends up. Being something else entirely in the business world or wherever you end up where you end up going.

And I think sometimes we get a lot of these conversations and you find out that there’s all these ancillary things, but ultimately, why’d you get into coaching? Right? Cause you love basketball. You didn’t get into that. So you could negotiate IL deals for guys and check out their social media account.

You want to dive in, you want to help ’em to be a better basketball player and, and, and get involved in that piece of it. And so I think that’s something that is really critical when you start talking about making sure that the players have the first thing. It’s right at top of mind’s. Have to be, Hey, I have to, I have to focus on my studies and I have to focus on, focus on basketball and this other stuff.

Yeah, there’s time for it, but I have to make sure that I, as you said, keep the main thing. The main thing. And then the last piece of it, we talked social media, we talked to il. The transfer portal is clearly something that has had an impact across the landscape of college basketball. Talk to me about, we hear a lot of negative things about the transfer portal.

Talk to me a little bit about what you see as being the positive. Let’s spin this positive. What’s a good piece of the transfer portal in your mind as a college basketball coach?

[00:23:52] Jermaine Kimbrough: I actually love it. I was a JUCO coach, so I, I’m kind of used to, I had, I mean, the portal for me was, I’ve been doing this for 23 years and when I was in the junior college ranks, we had a new team every year, and I would get a new team every year. I actually think it’s pretty good because I don’t think, I don’t like the recycle piece of it where people, or players or student athletes try to move on because they’re unhappy with not earning what they think they deserve. But I think that’s the downward piece to it.

But to be able to rebuild your program, In a short period of time. You know, if you bring in, if you lose three seniors, you can replace ’em with three seniors, someone who has, who’s logged a lot of minutes, someone who has a ton of experience. So you don’t have to truly, this isn’t, I still think you have to develop your young players and get them prepared and ready to play at this level.

But I also think it gives you the opportunity to not have a down year as much as possible. But because you’re so used to remember how college basketball was, it’s like, Hey, if I’m young, I’m going to be down a little bit this year because we got a young group. Well, you don’t necessarily have to be young.

You can filter in and you can bring in older players that can kind of keep you older and able to compete at a high level. And I truly believe it’s a great asset to college basketball. I’m not overly concerned about it.

I’ve never really looked at it as a bad thing. I always looked at it as an opportunity for you to stay old and get old and keep developing your program. I just never looked at it as a negative. I love the transfer portal, man. I love the relationships you get a chance to build, and it’s not a four year commitment.

It’s almost sometimes either a two year commitment or one year commitment.

[00:26:10] Mike Klinzing: Those guys, certainly you bring in some upperclassmen that have college basketball experience and you think about in the past when you’re building your program and you bring in an 18 year old high school kid, and regardless of how good they are as a high school player, there’s still an adjustment to college basketball.

There’s still guys that never make that adjustment and don’t end up being as good a college players as maybe people thought coming outta high school. Whereas you look in the transfer portal and you’ve got guys who are proven commodities at the college level. And so I would think from a coaching staff standpoint, the positive of that is you’re bringing in guys who have already adjusted, adapted to the level of play in college.

They’ve already adapted to being away from home, they’ve already adapted to the academic piece of it. So clearly you got a more experienced player and you’re just bringing in somebody who has. A lot less risk. A lot less risk. Right. Somebody who’s already done it versus a high school kid where you might think, hey, they can do it, but until they do it, you’re never sure.

Whereas with these guys in the portal that are coming in that have already played college basketball and already demonstrated they can do that, that’s where I see. As you said, that’s a huge advantage to be able to keep the continuity of your program in terms of that age and having an experienced team out on the floor.

[00:27:33] Jermaine Kimbrough: Oh, for sure. I mean, you spend so much more time on basketball than you do trying to make sure you guys are going to class right. For sure. You guys already know they have to go to class and stay hall, they have to eat three meals. They kind of already know how to gain weight, lose weight.

They kind of already been through it a little bit. They know they bodies, they know exactly what they need to do. They get to the gym early, they know they need to stretch, get a sweat going before coach gets out there. So it’s almost kind of, it’s not even, it’s just reprogramming them, you know?

So I think that’s the most important thing for us. It’s been great. We’ve had some great transfers transfer in over the last two years since I’ve been here. Arizona State and you’d be surprised what they know how to play what they’re looking for offensively and defensively.

They kind of know how to take care of themselves off the court. You don’t have to talk to ’em about taking care of their bodies and treatment and ice and cold tubs and hot tubs and massages. They kind of already got their routines figured out.

[00:28:39] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that has to be a huge advantage in terms of just being able to build a team year after year and having those kinds of guys be a part of it again, as opposed to having to do a little bit more handholding like you have to do with players who are freshmen that are coming in that haven’t gone through and done that.

So, as you guys are putting together and figuring out how you’re going to go about coaching your team, what’s Coach Harley’s philosophy on. Dividing up responsibilities among the staff. So you, as the associate head coach, what are some of the responsibilities that have been delegated to you, and then how does it break down across, across the rest of the staff?

[00:29:20] Jermaine Kimbrough: Oh, I think Coach really does a great job with growing his coaches and giving them responsibilities all the way across the board. He’s second to none in my eyes. That’s why I love working for him. I’ve grown so much as a coach as an individual, but just with the responsibilities and delegation that he’s given me within the program.

But he gives you so much freedom. He’s not a micromanager, but he’s one of those guys that want results. So you have to figure out how to get the results. And you might have to come up with your own game plan, but you have to get the results done. And, That’s been a blessing for me and my growth.

You know, for me, as a coach, I handle a lot of the defense and oversee what we do on the floor practice wise every single day, just kind like a overall. Overall view of the program, whether it’s dealing with scheduling, budget, academics I kind of got my hands in everything, but we kind of delegate and put a leader on each one, a coach on each one.

So one coach would have academics, one coach would have the budget, the scheduling camps, and then we kind of just meet every single day you know, two, three times a week on just where, where are we at with everything. And he gives us the freedom to kind of figure that out and then present something to him on a weekly basis.

So it being here at Arizona State, I’ve grown so much because he is giving me the freedom and the ability to go out and try to figure things out on my own.

[00:31:03] Mike Klinzing: As a coach is there one thing or multiple things that you can point to that you’ve been able to do or have a hand in here at Arizona State that maybe you hadn’t been as involved in at some of your previous stops?

[00:31:19] Jermaine Kimbrough: He’s kind of giving me the total control over the defense. Like it’s kind of my philosophy, right? It’s kind like not necessarily his philosophy, but he’s like, Hey, you got total control over the defense. You know, you know what you put in is what we’re going to do. And that’s total freedom.

And so that means it is more on me than it is on him because it’s not his philosophy it’s mine. So when you’re given that kind of responsibility, you take pride in it and you want to make sure it’s right because someone believes in you to get the job done and you want to make sure you get the job done.

Meeting with administration. The trust factors to meet with administration, the recruiting aspect maybe doing a home visit by yourself, meeting with parents someone to give you that type of trust within your program is the ultimate trust factor for any assistant coach when your head coach believes in you.

[00:32:26] Mike Klinzing: When you look ahead in your career and you start thinking about, and again, I know you’re not trying to get out, but just as you think about the possibility of eventually becoming a head coach, how valuable will be the experience that you’ve been able to have here at Arizona State to be the associate head coach, to have that total control over the defense, to be able to have your hand in all the things that you’ve talked about.

Are you taking notes and, and writing things down and, and making sure that you’re, you’re trying to maximize. Every bit of knowledge that you can. So that if and when you get that opportunity, you’ll have that stuff in place and, and you’ll really have thought through the process of, Hey, when I’m a head coach, these are the things that I need to make sure that I’m doing correct.

[00:33:10] Jermaine Kimbrough: Now, Mike, I’m a student of the game and I’m kind of old school. So every day I go to work, I’m writing in my journal, I’m taking notes I’m sitting down, I’m talking to coach. I’m figuring things out with him. I’m also talking to each staff member that’s in charge of their area, whether it’s being an offensive coordinator or academic coordinator, someone overseeing our budget.

All these things are preparing you to one day lead your own program, and that’s important to me. That’s the reason why I’m here. And that’s what I want to be. I want to be a head coach one day. So you have to be around people that’s going to allow you to grow into that situation. I take notes.

I keep notebooks year in and year out, from offense to defense, to culture, to player development, to academics, to budgeting, to scheduling, to what we do on recruiting visits, what we do on home visits, you know the community, the classroom boosters, donors you get a chance to check off so many boxes sitting in the seat as the associate head coach that is preparing you.

And all you have to do is take advantage of the advantage. And that’s keeping notes, mental notes, written notes just knowing exactly what you need to do. So when you do get your opportunity to be a head coach, you can take that opportunity and run with it. So I think right now it’s prepared me to be able to lead a staff meeting with or without coach Hurley.

That’s important. To communicate within the staff, to know what to look for within your staff, what’s important to you as a leader. All those things are important. And at the end of the day, what I’ve learned over my 23 years of being an assistant coach that is, is human to human relationships.

It’s communication. It’s how you treat people. And I think the most important thing too is giving people that you work with a vision, right? They have to have a vision, they have to have a plan, and then they have to have action. And over, over the last few months I’m an avid reader and what I think is important?

I call it three a’s I think attitude, atmosphere, and action is vital for any program. You know, when you think about attitude, that that kind of falls under culture, that that falls under who you are every single day within your culture, to me culture is every day, but attitude is every day.

Having a positive attitude every single day and not worrying about things you can’t control, but just get the job done, then I think you have to create an atmosphere for everyone to be successful in, right? You have to have an atmosphere where people can grow, they can develop, they can trust, they can love, they can care for one another.

They can communicate, and not just the coaches, but the players. And I think if you have the right atmosphere for young people to come in, and also adults. And when I say that, I’m talking about, I think. In today’s world, we talk about mental health in so many different ways, and I’m an advocate of that and I understand where that falls under with atmosphere.

So you have to have people that feel loved and trust. They can trust you. They, they feel like they can grow under you. They feel like you’re working for them. So atmosphere is important to me. And then lastly, it’s action. You have to have action. And what I mean by action is you have to have everyday guys that are willing to work.

Student athletes, coaches, administration, everything has to be aligned up. You have to align everything. So those A’s means so much to me, and I’ll say it again, you have to have attitude, have to have atmosphere, have to have action, and you have alignment. And I think if you have those four A’s you’re bound to win.

You’re bound to be successful.

[00:37:24] Mike Klinzing: When you think about those experiences that you’ve been able to have as the associate head coach, and let’s take the on the floor coaching piece of it off the table, because I know that would be your number one thing. That’s what every coach, that’s the most fun part of the job.

And we all know that you don’t spend nearly enough of your time as far as percentages doing that on the floor stuff. But when you think about some of the things off the floor that you see either that Coach Hurley has to do or things that you are doing as part of your role as the associate head coach, are there, is there something, one or two things that you really like that stand out to you that are sort of not on the floor things, but things that you enjoy doing that are a piece of what it means to be eventually a head coach?

So something that’s not on the floor, an aspect of coaching, not on the floor that you like.

[00:38:21] Jermaine Kimbrough: Yeah, I think for me, Mike, it’s is relational, right? Like it’s when I got into this business, it was really about relationships. Now it was kind of more transactional. And for me, I’m not a transactional coach.

I’m a relational coach. I’m a transformational coach. So when I touch a young person whether it’s a young lady in terms of like just talking to ’em on a day to day basis, or a young man within my program, anybody that I encounter, I want to make sure it’s transformational. Like, man, I love to have a sit down with the young men that’s in our program.

I care more about where they’re going to be 40 years from now than they are going to be four months from now. I want to make sure that when they come into our program and they get a chance to know who I am, that they, I transform ’em, I help ’em, I develop ’em as, as a person. I give them a game, playing a map for the rest of their life.

So the basketball piece is there, but more importantly, I want the relationships, and I say this all the time, if I don’t get an invite to your wedding, I haven’t done my job, You know? And I want those young men to be able to call me back and be like, Coach, man, I appreciate everything you did. You helped me.

I was struggling when I was 18, 19, 20, 21. But you know what? You stuck with me. You communicated with me. You put a note in my locker that changed my life. You took me out to dinner and you talked to me, and you know what? That day it changed me. I had an opportunity to talk to a young man just about, just life in general.

What it’s like to be a functional adult, what it’s like to be a husband, what it’s like to be a father what it’s like to be a mentor. What it’s like talk to ’em about their finances what’s important in terms of investments, what’s important in terms of savings so we’re not just basketball coaches, we’re life coaches.

And I look at this, my opportunity here at Arizona State as an assistant coach, I’m a life coach, more so than I am a basketball coach.  I’m into changing lives. Coach is into changing young people lives, and he gives everybody in our program the opportunity to be life coach. And that’s the most important to me.

[00:40:57] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let’s talk about being your own life coach and the transition of moving your family from Chicago to Arizona. You got a wife, you got kids. They all have lives that they’ve built up in the various stops and places that you’ve been. So when you have to pick up and you have to move, and I know you and I talked about it before we came on, just about the fact that your family is allowing you to pursue those dreams.

But just talk a little bit about just in general that how you have to have a family that’s supportive, and then maybe talk specifically about this move from Chicago to Arizona and how you guys have adjusted.

[00:41:34] Jermaine Kimbrough: Oh, I mean, again I know we talked about a little bit, but, and I’ll say it again. I’ve been blessed to have a wife who supports me, who believes in me who allows me to live out my dream every single day and don’t question it. I’m very fortunate and not only does she allow me to do that, she educates my family, my kids, and my children on what I’m doing. And she’s a life partner and she trusts me and my decision making, and it’s worked out over the last 23 years.

But I have to say the reason why I’m where I’m at today is because of my family. You know, my nine year old son who’s like, Oh, dad I, man, I have to, I met a lot of nice people here. I love it here in Phoenix and I love it in Tempe. I love the weather. I don’t know if I really want to leave.

I love the swimming pool I love going outside and being able to play basketball. And I was like, so he is like, Well we are not going to leave here. And I was like, Well, I mean, you just never know. I mean, what? And he’s like, Well, if you get another job, I understand, but if you don’t get another job,  this is a good spot to be.

This is a good spot to be in. You know, when they start getting into that age Mike, where they kind of have their own life and they kind of got their own rhythms going and they own routines and they’re going to basketball practice and they got school and they got friends and they spend the night over their friend’s house.

And I mean, that’s kind of hard as a coach, as they get older, it’s easy when they’re younger, but when they get older it’s kind of hard to just pack up and move. . And for me as a coach, the life that I’ve chose and the career that I’ve chose this is I remember one time I had to live without my family for a year and, and I was hard and I was like, I’ll never do that again.

But as coaches, we sacrificed so much to be able to take care of our fam families and you know, but if you don’t have the right mindset, if your wife don’t have the right mindset, You know what’s really good? My wife is now connected with other wives in the business. So they got like a wives club and actually we had about 60 wives in Phoenix this past weekend with the nation of coaches.

And those wives get a chance to share. So our college wives and professional NBA wives or whatever, they live a different lifestyle. It’s not a nine to five. So they kind of have to go through some bumps and bruises or last minute let downs. You know, I have to go recruiting this weekend.

I know it’s your birthday, but I didn’t know I had to go recruiting. Now all of a sudden I have to go recruiting and I was supposed to take you out to dinner on Saturday. Is it possible that I can take you out to dinner on Monday? And if people don’t truly, if you don’t have a wife that truly understand that it’s hard to get through this profession.

I’ve just been blessed to have a wife to say, Oh, you know what? We can go out on Monday. I mean, Monday, Saturday, Sunday, don’t matter just as long as you take me out. But it’s not a lot of coaches that probably have that, that supportive wife. But I think the most important thing is my wife has found a, a coaches’ club, wives club where she can be a part of and they can kind of share, talk, fellowship and hang out with each other because they kind of live the same lives.

Their stories are the same. So I think that’s important that you are connected as, as a family, but also connect your family to your business and what you’re doing to your career. You can’t have to, this, this is a hard business to separate family and career. So my wife and my kids, they come to the game.

They know my players. They stop by the office on the weekends. You know, all that stuff is important. They come on recruiting trips when they can. They, they’re part of the recruiting visits when families come in. So, all that stuff is important if they don’t feel a part of it. This is, is hard to be a leader of your own family if they’re not a part of who you are in every day.

Mike, I’ll be honest with you, I spend more time with the coaches in our office I’m sure, than I do with my family. So I have to love the guys I work with, but more importantly, if I need to leave at five o’clock, I’m blessed to have a boss that understands, Hey, your son has a game at five, at five o’clock today on Saturday or Sunday, or, Hey, go take care of that.

You know, Bobby Hurley’s been really good with that. And that’s the reason why I love working for him, because he puts family first. He’s about the right things. He’s passionate about his family. He’s passionate about your family and he’s not going to allow you to miss a family function for something that he can change in the schedule, just to make sure that your family’s happy and taken care of.

And that’s why I love working for him.

[00:46:43] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. How long did it take for you guys to feel like. Arizona’s home, How long does that process take? You’ve obviously done it a couple times, just what does it, what does it take to, to make it, to make it feel like home for, for you and the family?

[00:46:59] Jermaine Kimbrough: You know, to be honest with you, when it’s January and you get pictures of 12 inches of snow, feels pretty, it feels pretty good, right?

It feels pretty good when, you know it’s 82 degrees on Christmas day and you outside riding bikes and everything and you know Arizona’s a great spot. But at the end of the day what makes it feel like home is the people that you are around and is human and human relationships. And is, is is the time that you spend with other people and with your family, that that makes it special.

And if you can’t have great human to human relationships with your coaches and family members, your wife, your kids, then you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

[00:47:48] Mike Klinzing: How long to go Along with that, you talk about building relationships with your coaches on your staff, and obviously you’re helping to build relationships for your family and get ’em into school and get your wife connected and all those kinds of things.

But there’s also, on the business side of it, you have to go out and you’re in a completely new geographic area and you’re leaving behind your contacts that you had When you’re in Chicago or when you’re at University of Wyoming or when you’re at Cleveland State. You’ve built relationships with the high school coaches and the AAU coaches in those areas.

So when you come into a new place, how long does it take you to be able to start to build those relationships and what’s the process like for you personally to go out and make connections with high school coaches, make connections with AAU coaches and start to build that network that obviously you need to be able to recruit.

[00:48:41] Jermaine Kimbrough: For me it just is the people that you already connected to, they, they connect you with someone that they know the power of one, I always call it the power of one, and it takes one person to tell another person about who you are as a person, your character, and they connect you to that person.

So you’re looking for those connections. And when I coached at Nevada it was probably the first time I was really out on the West coast and I really got out and met a ton of people in California, Las Vegas. I, I really worked the phones and when I was at Wyoming, I did the same thing in that area.

And then being back in Arizona, Right now recruiting is a little different, right? It’s right. Now’s more about phone conversations, FaceTimes and Zooms, and you can see people now and you can talk to ’em. It’s not like when I first got into business where you were kind of territorial, like you kind had to know everybody in Ohio or everybody, Illinois and Michigan, there’s no reason why you can’t be a national recruiter now, Right? Like, you should know everybody because it’s the opportunity for you to know everybody is at your fingertips, you know? So it’s not like 20 years ago when I, 23 years ago when I first got into business, I, there was no reason for me to talk to anyone in California or Las Vegas because we just never were.

That just wasn’t the game at that time. It was more about take care of the, the young men in Ohio, Illinois Mission, your Bread basket states.  Nowadays you can get a young man to leave New York City and surpass all the big East schools to come out and play in the Pac 12.

It’s just connections. It’s just getting on the phone and talking selling your program, selling your head coach, and you have to have genuine relationships, authentic organic relationships. And you have to keep your nose clean as an assistant coach. And you have to be transparent. And I think you have to be real and you have to tell people the truth and you have to be honest.

And you have to treat people the right way. And I think once you treat people the right way, that spreads positively spreads too. And not just being negative.

[00:51:13] Mike Klinzing: What are some things that when you sit down, and obviously you have to get to know Coach Hurley, you have to get to know the type of player that he likes to coach.

That’s one thing that I’ve heard consistently across. A ton of episodes on the podcast talking to coaches at all different levels, especially assistants saying that I’ve have to get to know the type of player that is going to thrive underneath my head coach, and I have to understand what kind of player he wants to coach.

So when you think about the profile of a player that’s going to succeed underneath Coach Hurley, what does that profile look like? And obviously there’s a skillset that a player needs to have in order to be able to play at your level in the PAC 12, but just when you think about maybe some of those intangible things, what’s Coach Hurley’s type of player?

Who are you looking for when you’re out there on the recruiting trail?

[00:52:01] Jermaine Kimbrough: I mean, to me, I think it’s easy because when you look at Coach’s track record, when you look at Coach Hurley’s track record, he’s a two time national Champion. He won a state championship. He won a national championship in high school.

He’s a winner, right? And for, for coach Hurly, he wants winners, he want competitors, he want toughness. If you watch coach Hurley play, I mean, he was tough. He was competitive. He want guys to be able to sustain condition. He well conditioned athletes. And I mean, it, to me, it’s very simple. I love working for him because we kind of got the same philosophy on what we’re trying to find and what young man that we’re looking for and for our program that fits him in the program and that’s toughness.

We try to go out and find young men that’s competitive that want to be here at Arizona State that want be tough, that want to be coached the right way, that want be coached with toughness and tough love. And I think if we. And that’s hard to find, it’s not like a lot of young men out there fit that description.

So we have to kind of turn over every stone. We try to find young men that play with a chip on they shoulder. Something to prove you know, to everybody. So when coaches out there looking at potential student athletes, he’s looking at guys, that’s tough. You know, that, that play physical, that’s mentally tough that want to be at Arizona State that, that wants to play for him and have the same fiber in DNA that he had when he was a player.

And that play played with that fire. And, and that wants to win at all at win at all calls. And, and that’s who Coach Hurley is and that’s how he wants his teams to look when you faced them. He want teams to say, That was the hardest playing team that we played against all year.

[00:54:06] Mike Klinzing: Is it easy to identify that with the amount of experience that you’ve had?  Is it easy to identify that if you’re watching video? Or do you need to see a player in person to really be able to, to pin down the fact that, hey, this guy’s physically tough, he’s mentally tough, he has that ship on his shoulder. Is that something that you feel like you need to see a kid in person? Is that something that you can identify easier?

Then maybe in the past through film, just what’s your thought process on being able to, to identify those characteristics and pick those out in a particular player?

[00:54:46] Jermaine Kimbrough: It’s probably a little bit more trickier today than it was 20 years ago because we didn’t have a lot of film and, and we didn’t have a transfer portal and we didn’t have you know, there’s so many people involved in this game, whether it’s scouting, whether it’s scouting services, whether it’s recruiters or AAU coaches that you can kind of talk to, when I first got into it, you got into this business, you had to go, you went to go see kids seven times to play, right? You talked to the cafeteria worker, you talked to the gym teacher, the academic advisor, the guidance counselor, the history teacher, the basketball coach.

If he played multiple sports, you talk to the baseball coach. And it was a long process. Nobody wanted to commit early. Nobody wanted to kind of put out their top three and get things done, or it was a process. And right now the process has trimmed down, that has trimmed down to the point where everything is sped up, the evaluations is sped up.

So you have to truly be careful on what you’re looking for. And I think you still have to go through the process. You just have to speed it up because when you think of transfer portal guys that might take a week, maybe three days to get a commitment from a kid, because you kind of already know what he wants to do.

Right, So in three days you have to talk to the parents, the coach, you have to call the coaches in the league to find out any information on a young man that you can get. Because you just don’t know. And for me, I’m going to always go back to the way I was brought up and I have to do everything with my own eyes.

I have to be able to, I would, I would like to just to sit down with a young man and just talk to him face to face. When you think about the Covid era, when those two years where it wasn’t any visits and you had young people committing to universities to go play, but they never visited the university or the coach, they just did it over Zoom and they watched film and that’s hard to, That’s crazy that that’s hard to recruit a kid just off film and we had to do that.

And then all of a sudden you realize like it’s not a good fit, it, it doesn’t look the same. So I’m a firm believer that you have to see everybody with your own set of eyes. You can’t believe what somebody else says. You have to see it with your own set of eyes.

[00:57:28] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let’s say here now you got guys in the fold and you brought in your recruits and now you guys got your team.

And obviously we talked a little about what you’ve done over the summer and now you’re into preseason practice. When you guys are breaking down things in practice and somebody walks in to watch Arizona State go through a preseason practice at this time of year, what does it look like in terms of.

Who’s leading the practice, how it looks. You mentioned again that you’re taking care of the defense. So when, I’m assuming, when defense is the focus, there’s a lot more of you leading that phase of practice. But just break down for us, what does a practice look like in terms of what are the roles of each one of your coaches on the staff?

[00:58:21] Jermaine Kimbrough: We’re breaking that down. We have coaches that’s dealing with offense. We got coaches that’s dealing with the nuances of the game, whether it’s the first three steps and transition offensively and defensively rebounding. Shell positioning, high hands on the catch communication.

We consider ourselves a two way program, but the one thing you will see with us is energy. Energy, toughness. Fast pace, like we want to get up and down. A lot of conditioning a lot of pace and speed that you will see in our program. You will see our coaches just as involved and engaged with the practice as the players.

So our coaches come with a lot of energy. Our coaches are talking in practice, so we, we, we practice what we preach and, and, and that’s important to coach early. Like coach Hurley is an everyday guy. He’s going to bring it. The competitiveness is going to come out. And if things aren’t done right on time and done with energy and toughness, you going to hear about it.

When you walk into our practice, you’ll have, you’ll see an offensive coach, a defensive coach. And then you’ll see guys that kind of handling special situations whether there’s baseline, out of bounds sideline out bounds, late clock. And, but then you’ll also see leaders. We got leaders in our program that, that we call coaches, players that we call coaches that’s helping the guys stay locked in, engaged in the preseason you go about 45 minutes, so that’s kind of short temper.

Now you’re going three hours, two and half, three hours. So your attention span have to be there. And so you have to be locked in for three hours and that’s what you’ll see within our program.

[01:00:09] Mike Klinzing: When you’re talking about developing those players as leaders, what are some of the things that you’re talking about with those players that you’ve identified as leaders within the team to be able to help them to step into that role and make sure that they’re leading?

I don’t want to say in the right way because everybody has a different way of leading, but just what kind of guidance are you giving those coaches on the floor, so to speak, in terms of your players? What guidance are you giving them to help them to be even better leaders?

[01:00:45] Jermaine Kimbrough: Body language, speaking first it don’t always have to be a coach to confront, not confront or speak up.

It can’t always be the coaches that’s going to bring the energy. Like, where’s your energy at? Where are you holding somebody accountable today? Are you here today? Are you present? Are you locked in? Are you helping your teammates get better? Are you talking to your teammates?

Are you building them in a positive way. Are you holding guys accountable? So those are the little things that you would hear us talk to our leaders about. Our older guys, our vets on the team. Hey man, where you at today? Somebody missed a box out. I shouldn’t have to say something to ’em about missing the box out.

You should hold ’em accountable. So that peer to peer relationship and just kind of coaching everybody through that, whether that’s our managers, our GA’s, our, our freshmen, our sophomores, our juniors, our seniors, our fifth year guys, all that’s important and coach is real good at allowing freshmen to come in and coach and, and talk.

If that’s who you are, we give you the freedom to be who you, but also give you the confidence to be who you are and help coach the team.

[01:02:13] Mike Klinzing: Compared to when you started and you think about the summer workouts and what you guys are able to do with your players on campus over the summer, and now we’re very, very early here as we’re recording this in preseason practice where you’re coming in and you’re trying to get your team prepared for the first game.

How much further along are you on day one of official practice in the year 2022 compared to in the year 2000?

[01:02:46] Jermaine Kimbrough: Oh, way, way, way, way ahead. We’re so far ahead is, man, it’s crazy because you put a lot of that stuff in and in June, July, and August and now in September, October, all you’re doing is kind of reviewing and polishing up and adding layers to your identity and offensively and defensively, you just adding layers to it.

But I think the hardest piece now is maintaining and the being healthy like their bodies. Yeah. Because now you can kind of wear guys down quickly. You’re going all summer. When I first started we would start up October 15th and then you got three weeks to get ready for a game.

And then you have to, you do tour days and you kind of put things in on Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday night, come back Sunday you getting ready for this game and then all of a sudden they break, they make these new rules and now you’re sitting here in the summertime and you’re doing skill development, you’re doing defensive work, individuals, you’re doing offensive work, individuals.

And now when you get to August, September, your team kind of already knows your offense. You already know what you’re doing defensively. So now it’s just reviewed, but more importantly, it’s just taking care of their bodies and don’t burn ’em out.

[01:04:12] Mike Klinzing: What does that look like? So how do you guys talk about or think about making sure that you’re keeping players fresh?

Because I think about my own experience and I’m not sure that keeping anybody fresh was ever on anybody’s mind back in the late eighties, early nineties when I played. And obviously things are so much different now, but how are you guys going about figuring, hey, here’s where maybe we need to take a step back, or here’s where we can go a little bit harder.

Is that trying to get a feel? Talking to guys is. Part of the, the training staff that’s actually coming to you with data, how do you guys go about making sure that you keep your guys at a peak so that when game time comes, they’re at their, they’re at their absolute physical best?

[01:05:04] Jermaine Kimbrough:  I read something today and it said, get, get them to the game because we got so much time with them.

Now, your job as a coach is to get your guys to the game, to be healthy and to get them to the game. And that’s the most important thing, right? Like, that’s, if, if you’re practicing in, you, you’ve been practicing since June, July, August, and all the way up until November. That’s a long time. And your job as a coach is to make sure they’re ready to play and be fresh.

So you can’t burn ’em out, right? You can’t burn ’em out. You can’t put so much wear and tear on their bodies mentally, physically to the point where they’re not ready to play a game on the first day. They can’t be so burnt out that they’re not ready to step in and perform at a high level.

And I think the biggest thing you need to have is the conditioning program. Your strength coach. The fueling their bodies making sure they eating three, four meals a day, getting proper sleep. And then more importantly, being in the training room, making sure they’re getting in the cold tub, hot tub, ices, massages, whatever you have to do to keep their bodies healthy at, at 100%, you have to do it.

[01:06:25] Mike Klinzing: What about on the mental side in terms of the mental fatigue? I know one of the things that I always think about, Jermaine, is the amount of time that you guys spend together. In the summertime, and obviously you’re spending an unbelievable amount of time together during the season, and as you’ve said multiple times, right?

You want guys that are coming into your program that want to be coached, that want to be coached hard, that want to be pushed. And so they’re hearing your voice, they’re hearing your voice, they’re hearing coach Hurley’s voice all the time. And then you look at, okay, in the summertime, used to be 15, 20, 30 years ago, guys could sort of step away from the game and go home.

And maybe they do their own thing and they’re working to get better, but they’re not, The coaching staff didn’t have the same access to players that you guys have today. So how do you guys handle that mental side of it to make sure that, I guess what I think of is, man, I’m not sure I would want the same staff harping at me for 11 and a half months out of the year.

It feels like. Without taking a break that sometimes that could wear on guys. So are, how do you guys think about that or talk about that when you sort of design what you’re doing in the summer, in the preseason and just sort of looking at the entire calendar to make sure not only you’re keeping ’em physically fresh, but you’re keeping ’em mentally fresh and making sure that they’re, they’re juiced up and ready to go when the season gets here.

[01:07:51] Jermaine Kimbrough: Yeah. I just think you can’t make everything about basketball. I think you have to make it about, you have to have some fun, right, whether that’s going, taking them to top golf, whether that’s going bowling, whether that’s eating at coach’s house, watching games and family dinners and dinners with coaches and maybe even coach, a head coach would say, Hey, you know what, I’m going to let my assistant handle the skill development piece so they just don’t hear my voice every single day.

So that gives the assistant coaches the opportunity to go out and work with the guys. Or maybe it’s just one coach to go down there for one week and then next week is another coach. Or, it’s so many different ways to kind of, to kind of get where guys don’t get burnt out from one person, whether that’s the head coach or assistant coach.

I just think it’s different ways to do it. But for us here we try to make our summers fun about them, about getting them better. We do small pods, maybe two, three players, and we get them guys better. So we might be on the floor for four hours every single day, four times a four times a week. Just getting our guys better in small groups. So because, so they don’t get caught up into, man, it just seemed like we’ve been doing team practices and it’s the same drills or, so we just try to have fun in the summertime. So when it get to the fall, it’s strictly about the team.

[01:09:25] Mike Klinzing: All right, two questions around game prep. When you guys are practicing the day before a game, what do those practices look like in terms of what you’re actually doing? And then in terms of. The timeframe, how long you’re practicing on that day before the game, And then same thing on day of the game, shoot around, walk through.

What’s the philosophy there? So day before the game and then day of the game, what are some of the things that you guys are doing that maybe coaches out there that are listening can maybe incorporate some of the ideas and thoughts that you guys use at Arizona State into their program?

[01:10:01] Jermaine Kimbrough: For us, we don’t go a lot of time on the court, maybe an hour, hour, 15 hour 30, at the most. We kind of just go through what we call identity drills that gets us ready for the game. What’s the staple of your program? Is that shell defense? Is that transition offense? Is that closeouts? Is that rebounding drill?

What’s your staple, What’s your identity drills that you can go to that your guys know that’s going to prepare you as a coach and your programming players to get ready to win a basketball game? Sometimes it’s not really about the opponent. It might be a day where the day before the game you need to talk to ’em a little bit more depending on how the last game went.

So you have to be flexible within your program. It can’t be the same thing, sometimes it’s not just getting out on the court and just throwing up the ball and figuring some things out. Sometimes you have to sit down and talk to guys individually And I think that’s called Feel, and I think that’s called coaching and understanding your players.

And in today’s game it might not always be the same. So I think it’s predicated on the vibe and the energy of the gym with your players and what’s going on in your program. I think that’s, as a leader, you have to decide what’s the best thing for your program today. Is it practice or is it getting to ’em mentally?

Because if you think about performance anxiety, I’m a big believer that. A lot of when you start thinking about social media and these kids are these players are being attacked, or if they didn’t play good the last game, you might not need to practice. You might need to really sit down and have a mental one-on-one session with someone and meet with your team as a collective, as a group, and also individually during that practice hour, just so they’re are ready to play a game on Saturday.

And then you might come in on Saturday morning and kind of walk through visualize watch film talk to ’em again and get ready to play. And then some days you might go out there and do a full walkthrough where everybody’s healthy, everybody’s ready to go, you don’t have no issues.

We can get through a good walkthrough. So I think really it just comes down to. If I was the head coach, it would be how do I feel about our team and where we are at this particular time, in this moment. And I would develop a plan based off where this team is at right now.

[01:12:40] Mike Klinzing: Yeah.  Getting to know your team and having a feel for the pulse of where they are in the given moment, both mentally and physically.

I’m sure. Then that allows you to adequately prepare them and make sure that you’re getting things together.

[01:12:54] Jermaine Kimbrough: I’ve been doing this for so long, I’ve seen coaches have walkthroughs and lose. I’ve seen coaches have no walk, a walk a no walkthrough and win for sure. So it is just so many different ways to doing it.

I thought one of the ways I liked, I always liked doing is what we did at Loyola Chicago the day of the game. It was never going out there and going up and down. We talked it out. We talked out what the game plan was defensively. We talked out. We talked out what we were going to do offensively versus this team on both ends of the floor.

And it was more of a mental approach than it was getting a sweat and getting up shots.

[01:13:37] Mike Klinzing: That visualization piece, that mental piece, clearly you’ve mentioned it a couple times, and anybody who’s paid attention to basketball and the coaching profession understands at this point how important being in the right mental frame of mind is heading into a game and just being confident.

And we know we forget sometimes, especially when you’re talking about division one college players, especially at a big time program like Arizona State. These guys are on TV all the time and there’s people coming up to ’em and everybody knows who they are and sometimes we forget, right. That. 18, 19, 20 year old kids that are still kind of trying to figure it out and they’re still trying to go to class and they’re still trying to figure out what’s going on with their girlfriend and what’s going on back at home with their family, and they got a roommate that’s doing this or that, or whatever it might be.

And sometimes I think we, we forget that, that they’re young kids. And as you said, I think getting a feel for your team and your players and understanding what they need in the given moment, that’s really what coaching’s all about, right? It’s in art, there’s, there’s things that you can plan for and things that obviously you have to be prepared for, but at the same time, being able to understand and, and adjust to the moment to be able to give your team what they need when they need it.

To me, that’s one of the most important skills that any coach can have.

[01:14:56] Jermaine Kimbrough: One of the things that I say, Mike, to our guys, what’s going on in your life today? You know? Anything going on in your life that is going to prevent you. You’re 100% focused, what’s going to prevent your 100% focus?

It is a way to allow people an out and how to balance the need and the need for their personal time. Like we don’t know what’s going on in their life. We don’t know what’s going on back home. So that’s why I always ask a guy, Hey man, what’s going on in your life today? You good?

Because I think if you start putting that the ball back in their court, they’ll tell you what’s going on. And then as a coach, you have to inform your staff and your head coach, or if you are the head coach now you  kind of know what’s going on and you can kind of prepare, practice or workouts.

And you might even say I tell people all the time, it’s okay for a young man to miss a workout nowadays. I mean, it is not like, it’s not like how it was in the old days where you get three weeks to prepare and you can’t miss a workout. Now it’s like, I mean, what’s, what’s one or two workouts. You know, go hurt a young man to go get his mind right, go get his self right.

And I think it’s important that you educate your players that way and that some people might need that extra day. Everybody’s different everybody mental space and, and mental health is different. So man, nowadays it’s hard to be a head coach because it’s not just the old school run through a brick wall, everybody show up on time and be here and go through it three hours a day for nine months. It’s not that anymore. You know? It’s so many other factors that go into it that you have to be, you have to be skeptical of because they can come back and bite you.

[01:16:54] Mike Klinzing: Well, it used to be that it was, you’re going to do this and if you don’t, then you’re not going to be around. You’re not going to be a part of it. And you do it this way, not because I explained it to you or not because I’m telling you it’s in your best interest. You’re going to do it that way because I said that’s the way we’re going to do it. And as you’ve said many times with today’s athletes that way, one, I don’t know how effective it was, even when , it was, even when it was being used, I’m not sure that we couldn’t have got more out of athletes doing it the way that we do today.

But certainly the way we do things today, and just as you’ve mentioned, the resources that programs have from the high school level all the way up to the level where you’re coaching, where there’s just so much more awareness of the science, the nutrition, the mental health, all these things that really were not a huge factor even 15 or 20 years ago.

And now we’ve become so much more sophisticated, and as you said, You think about the number of hats that you have to wear as a head coach, as an assistant coach, and all the things that you’re having to deal with from social media to ni l, to mental health, to just building the relationship and getting to know a kid and making sure that they’re in the right head space to be able to perform at their best.

Man, it’s a lot on your plate on any given day to be able to manage all that and do all that. And that’s why again, you’re, you’re working 12, 14, 16 hour days to make sure that you’re given your players everything that you have, and given your team the best opportunity to succeed and you as an assistant coach that you’re doing right by your head coach to make sure you’re being able to support them in any way that you possibly can.

Let me ask you this as a final two part question. When you think about. The next year or two for your program at Arizona State, what do you see as the biggest challenge within the program over the next year or two? And then the second part, when you think about being the associate head coach at Arizona State and working for Coach early, what brings you the most joy in what you get to do every day?

So the biggest challenge ahead in the program over the next year or two, and then the biggest joy that you get from what you get to do day in, day out.

[01:19:24] Jermaine Kimbrough: Well, I think for the biggest challenge for us is being consistent winner. Coach Hurleys went to three straight NCAA tournaments and had three straight winning seasons out of the last five years.

And Covid hit and some things happened within the program people I think one year they probably had their starting five only play a total of three games together through that tough spell. And you have young men that went straight to the NBA one and done guys, and guys transferred.

And so it’s not the same it is different because you don’t know who’s coming, who’s going you don’t know. It is not like you have a team that you’re going to have for three to four years. So you have to figure that out and you have to be consistent in your approach. And your approach, your culture what you’re teaching is good to have consistency with players.

Bringing in three, four year guys that’s going to be with you for the next three to four years and try to stay old. And I think all that has to do with consistency and your recruiting consistency within your program and retention. I think all that’s important. And then that’s how you have sustained success.

So I think our biggest challenge is trying to limit the revolving door that everybody is going through in college basketball. And the best way to do that is you have to fight for your culture and your student athletes every single day. You have to have a relationship. So I think over the next two years, the biggest challenge is being consistent.

My biggest joy is I get to go to work every single day and work for a boss that I care about, I love, and that I learn from, and that I know he cares about me and wants to see me grow, but not just me, our whole staff. And it’s easy to work for somebody who’s a competitor and wants to win at a high level.

And it’s easy to take that because he’s done it. It’s easy to, to listen to what he has to say and believe what he has to say because he’s done it. He, he’s won a national championship. He, he was a lottery pick, so he’s coached and played at the highest level. And I think that’s a joy to learn from every single day.

I mean,  when you look up point guard in the dictionary, his name is by it. So just being around. Don’t, I think Mike, we call him living trophies, right? Like, Yep. He’s a living trophy man. I mean, he’s Bobby Hurley. And, I mean, I remember growing up and watching Duke play, and I get a chance to be around that guy every single day that that.

I think we all at some point admired Coach Hurley in his play at Duke. We kind of still remember the U N L V days, the Michiganjust everything. So we remember those games. So that’s a joy within itself. But more importantly I find joy in helping people. So when I get up to go help our student athletes every single day.

[01:22:37] Mike Klinzing: Well said, Jermaine. Well said. Before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance to share how people can reach out to you, find out more about your program at Arizona State. So if you want to share. Social media, email, website, whatever you want to. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:22:56] Jermaine Kimbrough: Oh, for sure. They can reach me by Twitter. I always like more followers on Twitter now, and so I’m, I’m getting close to 6,000 followers.

[01:23:02] Mike Klinzing: You can get your own NIL deal, man. Yeah,

[01:23:06] Jermaine Kimbrough: I know, right? I can get that to 10 k I always give everybody my Twitter handle. Say follow me on that, but there you go.

My Twitter handle is @j e r m a i n e k i m b r o u, all one word. And again, I’ll give it to you again @ J e r m a i n e k i m b r o u is all one word. And they can also email me Jermaine.kimbrough@gmail.com.

[01:23:38] Mike Klinzing: Jermaine, great stuff tonight.  Excited that you were able to come back on for a second time. Put you in an exclusive club of two timers here on the Hoop Head Pod. Appreciate your time. Wish you nothing but the best of luck this season at Arizona State. I know you guys are going to get it turned around and get it going and have a great season there, you and Coach Hurley. So again, good luck and to everyone who’s out there listening, we appreciate you being a part of the Hoop Heads Pod audience and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.