JOEL WALLACE – LETOURNEAU UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1044

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

Email –  joelwallace@letu.edu

Twitter/X – @CoachWallace30

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Joel Wallace is the Men’s Basketball Associate Head Coach at LeTourneau University where he works under his brother James who is the YellowJackets Head Coach.  Wallace was named the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches Small College Assistant Coach of the Year following the 2023-24 season.

Previously, Wallace spent two seasons as a graduate assistant with the Minot State men’s basketball program.  Prior to Minot, Wallace spent two years at Ridgewater College as an assistant coach after beginning his coaching career as a student assistant at Southwest Minnesota State under head coach Brad Bigler.

On this episode Mike and Joel discuss the profound impact of relationships in coaching and the importance of prioritizing player development over wins. Growing up in a basketball-centric family, Joel reflects on how his father’s coaching style shaped his approach, emphasizing connection and understanding with players. He shares insights on the balance between maintaining high standards and providing emotional support to athletes, particularly in a collegiate environment. As he navigates the challenges of building a competitive team, including roster changes and the quest for NCAA tournament success, Joel highlights the joy he finds in coaching and the new experiences of being a father. His journey illustrates how fostering a nurturing culture can lead to success on and off the court, reinforcing the idea that coaching is fundamentally about relationships.

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You’ll want to have your notebook handy as you listen to this episode with Joel Wallace, Men’s Basketball Associate Head Coach at LeTourneau University.

What We Discuss with Joel Wallace

• The early influence of his father and him and his siblings
• How his journey into coaching started unexpectedly after an injury ended his playing aspirations
• The importance of building relationships over focusing solely on wins and losses in coaching
• Working camps can provide valuable experience and connections
• How the dynamic between assistant coaches and head coaches can greatly affect player relationships and team culture
• The necessity of adaptability in coaching styles based on the team and players’ needs
• Why coaches need emotional intelligence to manage player relationships effectively
• The challenges of recruiting and maintaining team standards while balancing family life
• Coaching with his brother James brings both joy and challenges, as they push each other to improve
• Striking a balance between high standards and personal connection is crucial for effective coaching
• Understanding your role as an assistant
• Mentorship plays a crucial role in a coach’s development
• Networking and hard work are vital for career advancement
• How learning from different coaching styles enhances your own philosophy
• Why the joy of coaching comes from impacting players’ lives

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THANKS, JOEL WALLACE

If you enjoyed this episode with Joel Wallace let him know by clicking on the link below and thanking him via Twitter.

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TRANSCRIPT FOR JOEL WALLACE – LETOURNEAU UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1044

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here this morning without my co-host Jason Sunkle, but I am pleased to be joined by Joel Wallace, men’s basketball assistant coach at LeTourneau University. Joel, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:17] Joel Wallace: Thanks for having me. Appreciate being here.

[00:00:20] Mike Klinzing: Thrilled to have you on, looking forward to diving into all the things that you’ve been able to do in your career. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about some of your first experiences with the game of basketball. What made you fall in love with it?

[00:00:31] Joel Wallace: Yeah, well, I think basketball is synonymous with the name Wallace.

In my baby book, actually, my first basketball game was when I was less than two weeks old. I have I’ve got a dad that is super influential in my life and in my, my siblings lives. And he was a college coach for a while. And then he started having kids with my mom and. Realized it’s really hard, especially back then, to support your family on an assistant coach’s salary.

So then he went into education, the high school level, and was a head coach and an assistant coach for years. And so wherever he went, his three boys and daughter followed, and we had a basketball in our hands, and that’s where we really learned how to love the game. We’re from, from Omaha, Nebraska, originally Bellevue, a suburb there.

And  it just like, we just had a ball all the time and we were in a gym somewhere. And so we got to watch him just have an impact on people and an impact on just young individuals lives. And we got to see it from not an X’s and O’s standpoint I could care less. I had my favorite players just because I loved watching them be on the floor.

And they would come over to the house and there’d be meals and Christmas breaks and everything in between. And so that’s really, Where I started to dive into the game, but also dive into the relationship.

[00:01:49] Mike Klinzing: When you think about your dad and his influence, and as you just described, watching him as a young kid, you think that relationship piece is one of the main things that you take from what he was like as a coach.

And maybe is there something else as well, that when you see yourself or think about yourself and your coaching style, what reflects your dad and what you saw growing up?

[00:02:09] Joel Wallace: Yeah. I think one thing that’s interesting about my dad and I, I always thought it was an interesting comment that he would make. And I guess I didn’t fully comprehend it until now much later in my coaching career.

But he used to say that I, he felt more comfortable as an assistant and he didn’t have a huge desire to be a head coach. And to me, I thought that was always strange. Like, why wouldn’t you want to have your own program? But then I started to realize he loved, loved the relationship piece and he wanted it to be that.

He wanted that to be the main thing, not so much the win loss record, not so much kind of the The other stuff outside of the game that goes on with being ahead and everything that you have to kind of manage. He just wanted to be there and make kids better. We call him the shot doctor. I mean, the guy’s got a beautiful shot.

And so he would work one v one with guys. And so watching that, I think going into coaching, it was never about the really cool lifestyle that some of those D1 guys, it was never about like, Oh, if I can get here, I can make this much, or I can be on TV or.  I could be deep, like I just, I never went into it with that mentality.

It was always, man, I can really impact people with this game and I can really love people and show love to these people through this game from all different backgrounds. I mean, you could be from rural Minnesota, which I’ve been in and coached to inner city Houston and Dallas kids that we get now.

And so to be able to just impact them in different ways and not that you need to go in with some sort of savior complex. We don’t, we don’t need that. But sometimes they just need somebody to hear them and listen to them. And so I think back to my dad and the way that he coached and the way that he valued relationship over wins.

That’s really how I’ve kind of viewed my coaching trajectory of, all right, remember, this is, this is about the kids. This is about relationships. It’s about getting them better. Especially at the division three level, most of these kids are not going to go pro and that’s okay. And that’s okay.  they’re especially at our school at Letourneau, they’re going to be engineers, they’re going to be doctors, they’re going to be cyber security computer science, like they’re going to impact the world in a lot of different ways.

And so I need to love them for not the basketball player that they are, but the person. So how do

[00:04:27] Mike Klinzing: you, this is an interesting point in terms of relationships. And when you think about a head coach’s relationship with a player versus. an assistant coach’s relationship with the player, right?

The stereotype is the assistant kind of plays almost the good guy, the confidant that the player can come to when the head coach isn’t giving the player as many minutes. And sometimes it’s harder for players to have those types of conversations with an assistant coach. But how do you look at that piece of it in terms of the relationship with what you’ve seen on the staffs you’ve been with and the head coaches that you’ve worked under in terms of, The relationship building, how you have to approach it differently as a head coach versus as an assistant coach.

[00:05:07] Joel Wallace: Yeah, I think every good assistant knows his role and can find his role. If you go in predetermining what you’re going to do. I think you’re going to be in for a shock.  I’ve been at what, four different places now. I was at Southwest Minnesota State with Brad Bigler and with there, it was, I needed to be seen, not heard.

 in a negative way, by any means, like Bigler ran his practices and he ran the drills and he, and we made sure that those things were ready to go and we could have our side conversations when we needed to. But  my job was to just kind of do the little things there. And then just I got put in charge of like hype videos and stuff by any means, but it was like, Hey, the other guy looked at me and said, let’s do this it’s all you.

I was like, okay. So I figured it out, but it’s like, that’s how I built relationship with guys was like, Hey, like I’m going to put this video and I’ve got clips of you or I’ve got clips of whatever. So that was my job there. I went to JUCO and it was very much more, it was only two of us on staff and it was like a lot more engaged and got to stay on guys and just really walk alongside kids that were I was in, in Wilmer, Minnesota at Ridgewater College with Nate Tuft and we had kids from Apopka, Florida that were experiencing their first winter ever in Minnesota with, and seeing, oh, for the first time in their lives.

And  that’s really hard. Like they’re these kids are 18 years old and they’re trying to figure out life by themselves. Like, that’s really hard. I don’t know about you, but when I was 18, I wasn’t necessarily making the smartest decisions or to have life figured out and sometimes we think we place an unfair burden on them to like have it all figured out and that’s, that’s not right.

And so. There, I learned how to just kind of be tough because if you give them an inch, they’ll take three feet. Right. And so you had to be kind of stern a little bit there for the betterment of them, not for the sake of being the  totalitarian or anything.

And then at Minot, Merkin, like, that guy’s intense and he’s going to be intense with his guys. And so it was us as an assistant to like, really come alongside those guys and love on them. Because Merkin was going to set the standard and we needed to come alongside and just reinforce the standard.

So not cut him at his knees, reinforce it, maybe say it in a different way or give them the positivity that they needed in those moments. And that’s what Merkin told us, Hey, I’m going to be this way. So you guys all need to be great in this one. And  we grew in all those different roles and here at Letourneau, me and James kind of.

My brother James, like you mentioned we kind of have a really  balanced relationship with the guys especially. And so, we kind of feed off of each other I’m a little bit more intense and go getter and James is a little bit more stoic and methodical in his approaches and, but that really works rah, rah with even keel.

And so like I, going back to your point, relationships can differ based off of head coaches, personalities, because at the end of the day, it all becomes about personal. It’s one of their personal. How can I balance that personality? If you’ve got five guys that all scream and yell on staff, even three guys that scream and yell on staff, well, you guys are they’re going, you’re going to, they’re going to be deaf to your ears or to your voices by the end of the season.

And so someone’s got to be able to speak into that and love on that from a different, different angle. But I think that goes to just kind of an emotional intelligence and emotional IQ that you really need to have. If you’re going to get into coaching.

[00:08:36] Mike Klinzing: And going back to your childhood and growing up with your dad as a coach.

And obviously, as you said, you and your siblings are spending a ton of time in the gym. Were you one of those kids that always knew you wanted to end up in coaching, kind of be like your dad? Or was that something that came to you a little bit later on as you get into school? Like you said, as an 18 year old, some people have it all figured out.

Most of us have no idea where we want to go or what direction we want to take in our lives. So where do you kind of fall on that spectrum?

[00:09:03] Joel Wallace: Yeah, no, I had, it was not on my radar one bit. I grew up in a my mom was a military brat. And so I grew up, sorry, ended up in Omaha. Our family ended up in Omaha.

My mom’s dad, so my grandpa was in the air force. So off an air force base is right there in Bellevue. And so I wanted to go to the military and that was what I was going to do. I was going to go into the Navy. Actually. I wanted to fly. I wanted to be a pilot. And going all the way into high school, that was my dream.

To this day, I still have pictures of blue angels in my office. I if there’s a documentary on Prime, I highly recommend going and watching it. It’s fantastic. The accountability and relationships that they build at a high, high level in a life and death situation, truly is life and death.

So recommend that. But with that, that’s what I wanted to do. And then I’m a man of faith and, and so I, I believe that God put me in a different direction. I actually got diagnosed with a spinal disorder. And was told that I would not, one, be able to go in the military and then two, college sports were not going to happen for me.

So I got ripped one foul swoop of both of my dreams were just gone. So with that Coach Bigler, Brad Bigler at Southwest Minnesota State, he said well, if you can’t play anywhere, why don’t you come be a part of something bigger than yourself and just stick around the game while you figure everything else else out.

And so  I can’t thank him enough for that. And so I got into coaching. And I was like, man, this is kind of fun, ? And then I kept putting more and more and more on my plate. And I was like, man, I think, I think this is kind of the door that is being opened for me. I think it’s time I start walking into this all in.

And so from that moment on, I was all in the coaching game and had, I’ve loved it. But yeah, it was, it was kind of forced upon me. I think that’s a lot of coaches stories too, is they either weren’t good enough to keep playing Or something happened where it was taken away. So you can put me in that.

[00:10:51] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I mean, that’s definitely true. I mean, I think there’s two camps of there’s the person that. At some point you’re playing and your playing career comes to an end for whatever reason. It could be injury. It could be maybe you’re just not good enough. Could be, well, Hey, I played four years of college basketball.

I’m not able to play professionally, whatever it is when your career ends. And then you all of a sudden look around and you’re like, Hey, I’m not going to have basketball in my life anymore. What am I going to do? And somehow you get to coaching that way. And then you have the other people who are like seven years old and they’re drawing plays up on a napkin and they’re coaching their neighbors and all that stuff.

I think most people fall into some. Version of those two camps for sure, without question. So it’s interesting just to hear what the different backgrounds are that the coaches that we’ve had come on the pod, Joel have talked about in terms of those, those different things. So for you. When you start working there as a student assistant, what’s one or two things when you think about that first year that stood out to you that made you think, Hey, this is something that I want to do for a career.

What grabbed you about coaching right off the bat?

[00:11:51] Joel Wallace: Yeah, I think Brad Bigler would be the answer to that.  he is a tremendous human being. He’s extremely good at what he does. He’s very methodical. I’ve actually met with Shaka Smart and been able to sit down with him in kind of a small group setting.

It was only about three of us outside of him. And Bigler reminds me so much of Shaka Smart. Or Shaka reminds me of Bigler, whichever way you want to put it. His ability to just have a standard. and love on guys and build a culture and a true culture. You just, when you’re around something that special, you realize you really want to be a part of it.

And then when you’re a part of it for the four years, I think that I was a part of it, you want to replicate it. And so I learned so much about how to build a team culture that can stand and that is bigger than yourself. And it’s not built on wins and losses, but on the love and relationship you can have with the best friends that you go into a recruiting class with.

 the guys that you go through two days with and you’re running lines and you don’t make the time and you got to run it again, like those type of relationships that you build I don’t, I, people outside of athletics will never understand. The love you have to have for somebody when they don’t make a time and you have to run that sprint again.

The amount of love that you have to have for that person is, is something else. And so you have great life lesson though. Like you want to be in a serious relationship. You want to get married. Like my wife, Mallory is super special to me.  it’s, it’s not always easy and sports, sport can build those relationships and build that toughness to persevere through those things and really find a deeper level of love.

And so. Going back to why do I want to get into coaching? Brad Bigler and the way that he loved his guys and built a culture. That’s where I was in the chess game that he was always playing.  how can we if I had to say like the three things I learned from him, it was one, how to score in spacing and create space to get scores.

It’d be the team culture. And then the third would be how to build a roster. And so with those three things, it is always a chess match. Like how can we get guys in different spots? How can we manipulate tag men? How can we bring on this kid that may not be the best player? He is a culture king where he’s just gonna come in in our locker rooms instantly gonna be better because he’s in our locker room.

And he’s just a positive voice that we can rely on. Those types of chess matches, from the X’s and O’s to the Rostler construction, are all because of him. And when I watch that chess game, like, Just like any other athlete, like I wanted to play that game and I wanted to be involved and just start moving pieces around and see if I could be any good.

[00:14:34] Mike Klinzing: Talk about that culture piece and the balance between having high standards and accountability and coaching guys hard. And yet also the ability to then, as you said, love on your guys and have those relationships. What did you see from coach Bigler that you carried on forward in terms of those two things?

I think that’s something that. Especially for young coaches. When you talk about how do I strike that balance between getting the most out of my guys, motivating them, making sure that they understand what our standards are, and yet at the same time, making them feel loved and appreciated. How do you walk that line?

What’d you learn?

[00:15:11] Joel Wallace: Time and place. I mean, when you’re in practice, like the standard should be there and it should be known. And it should be held. And you can’t, you can’t lower that standard at any point, because again, if you give them an inch, you’re going to take three feet and then you’re fighting the rest of the semester or even season to try and get those, those feedback and so.

I watched I would always, I challenge coaches and especially assistants because that’s who normally I’m talking to is assistant coaches is you got to put the time in and it’s like, you, if you’re going to be in the office all day, which is great, you can’t all be in the office with X’s and O’s or film breakdowns or stats or whatever.

 I put candy in my office and I find what candy guys like and put them in the office and it’s not, Hey, come up and I’m not trying to be weird with it, but it’s just like, they know. I have breakfast bars up there too. So they know, like, if they need a quick snack or they need some sugar, they can come up to my office.

And you wouldn’t believe the amount of times that guys would come up and like, Oh, I’m just coming up to grab a snack real quick. And then two hours later, we’re talking about the Cavs and Thunder Game that just happened last night. Or, .  what’s going on at home and start to realize like they’re dealing with a lot.

And so time and place is super important. And then just being willing,   both with your finances and maybe having a home cooked meal and paying for that out of your own pocket, even though you don’t make a lot, if you’re really, really counting for them  they’re not sometimes, and this may be inappropriate, but I always say like, they may be idiots, but they’re not dumb.

Yeah. Like, kids may not understand a lot, but they know who’s riding with them and they know who loves them. Right. So they can see if you’re going to make a home cooked meal after a long day, like they, they know that and they can appreciate that. And so  you walk that line by being able to not tell the line all the time.

I think being able to step back and realizing that basketball is a, a very important thing. Don’t get me wrong. And it’s, it’s what our job is and we’re paid to be really good at that. But it’s also being able to step back and say,  what? For the next two hours, I don’t need to worry about this guy can’t save his life to be in help.

Like he can never like let’s just not talk about that for two hours and let’s just see.  how our class is going and how’s the girlfriend, how’s mom and dad or whatever it may be. And so take a step back and just, it’s bigger than basketball. So we need to make sure that stays bigger than basketball.

[00:17:42] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that’s a really good point. It’s one that I’ll have that hit me even now as a parent of a couple of basketball players where I’ll be sitting in the stands and as a coach, as someone who. I was growing up in the game that those games are really, really important and you care about them tremendously.

I don’t care what your role is, whether you’re a player, you’re a coach, you’re a parent watching your kid play, that those games are really, really important. But I’ll oftentimes have a moment. I love the line that you used of sometimes you, you don’t always have to walk that line of everything being life and death on a basketball court.

And I’ll be sitting in the stand sometimes and watch my kid and I’ll think, man, like this is just a silly game that. We’re playing to, again, hopefully have fun, learn some life lessons. And yeah, it’s important, obviously, the, at the college level in order to be able to keep your job, you got to win some games.

But sometimes I’m just struck by the fact of maybe we all need to dial it back for whether it’s an hour or two hours, or like you said, that there, there’s a time and a place for Putting your arm around somebody and just knowing them and loving them as a human being as opposed to always trying to get the most outta somebody as a basketball player.

And I know I had those moments as a coach, but I definitely have ’em as a parent where I’ll sit in the stands and just a moment will wash over me. I’ll be like, man, I Sometimes we just gotta step back and remember that it’s a, it’s human beings all playing this, all play this game. .

[00:19:07] Joel Wallace: Yeah. And, and this season especially  we’re having a, we’re having a good year.

I think we’re 11 and three or 12 and three, one of the two. And I’ve, I’ve really said this to myself a lot. Cause  I, I can get intense. And if you were to ask any of our guys, they would say the same thing. I can, I can be loud and I can kind of get after some guys. But I, it’s always in my head and I tell myself this, I’m a tactician, not an authoritarian.

So I need to act like a tactician and not authoritarian. And what I mean by that is like, if I’m going to be a tactician, I need to communicate with these guys and get these guys in the right spots and communicate thoroughly what they need to do, like, that’s what I need to do. That’s my job.

They don’t need somebody screaming and yelling at them because it doesn’t help. It really doesn’t and some guys are motivated by that. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that, Hey, I’m not one of those guys. Like you can’t yell at athletes, like you can yell and they can take it. Especially at the collision.

Now there’s a line, don’t get me wrong, but. But sometimes they just need to explain to them in a different way. Sometimes in a, in a heated moment where they’ve made a mistake three times and their head is spinning, they need to just hear a calm voice of this is what you need to fix. And so that’s where I just, I’m a tactician.

I’m a tactician. I’m a tactician. And it kind of talks me down a little bit. But also it just helps me be a better coach. So you got to find. What is going to help you be a better coach and better explain things and kind of keep you from crossing that line or always being on that line? Yeah, that makes

[00:20:35] Mike Klinzing: sense.

I mean, I think from a playing standpoint, so often I’ve heard coaches talk about that you have to be very specific in the type of directions that you give, right? If you want a kid to do something, there’s a lot of, sometimes you hear coaches say things and there’s, there’s not explicit instruction where the kid can’t take anything.

Like if somebody’s yelling and. okay, you’re yelling, you’re upset about this or that. And then the player’s like, well, you didn’t give me anything that I can act upon to, to perform better. And I think that’s a really, really good point. When you start talking about being authoritarian versus being a tactician, I think that’s a good distinction to make.

I never heard a phrase quite that way, but I like that particular language that you use there. Cause I think it does a great job of illustrating kind of the difference and what players in all honesty, what I think players need is they need that sort of specificity to be able to understand, okay, I was.

Did this, or I saw this and thought I saw that. And instead I should have been here or whatever. And just to be able to have players think through and be able to understand that for sure, I think that’s a good way to look at things when you graduated. Let’s go back to your first job search. Tell me what that was like.

I’m assuming that coach Bigler helped you in terms of connections and networking. And I know you worked a bunch of camps in the summertime, which is always for any young coach. Obviously not, not probably quite as probably not quite as. I don’t want to say important, but just not, it’s not as easy to do as it used to be because the camp circuit just isn’t what it used to be in the past where almost again, you go back 15, 20 years and there’s, you can barely find a coach that didn’t somehow connect with people through the summer camp circuit.

But just tell me about that first job search and what it was like and what the process went for you, how it went for you.

[00:22:24] Joel Wallace: Yeah. So with the, with the job search, I mean, Bigler did a great job.  like I said, I owe a lot to him. But the connections that he was able to bridge, but then also just kind of like, he didn’t sound like he just did it all for me by any stretch of the imagination, but he just kind of like, okay, well, if you want to do this, you need to go do that.

You

[00:22:44] Mike Klinzing: need to

[00:22:45] Joel Wallace: go have this conversation with him. I’ll follow up and I’ll give my best recommendation, but you got to do the work. And I really appreciate it. Like I a hundred percent did. Cause there’s a lot of guys that will look at their boss and be like, man, he just doesn’t help me get a job. And it’s like, well, I understand what you’re saying, kind of.

But are you having the conversation? No, I need him to reach out first. That’s not always how it works, man. So Bigler, yeah, Bigler was with, with Nate Tough. Ridgewater’s an hour and a half down the road from Southwest Minnesota State. So when I worked at Ridgewater, which is the job I ended up taking after SMSU, I drove an hour and a half to work and an hour and a half back.

Every day. And if I didn’t, I slept in my office. At one point in the preseason, we would practice late. late. So if it was Monday, late on Monday and then early on Tuesday. And so we would do, we’d sleep in our offices. To, so I didn’t have to make the hour and a half trip back and I could kind of have some time at home.

But to get to that point Bigler just, Hey, like these are the openings and, and Nate is coach Tufts is looking for somebody and have the conversation. And obviously we had a really good relationship with Ridgewater cause it’s right there. So the kind of that coaching synergy with people around you.

And, but then it was like camps, like you gotta work camps. So I, I drove 107 hours one summer working camps. I just drove just to get to the place and the money that I made from those camps paid for the gas. Right. Exactly. And I’m pretty, I’m pretty confident that I came out negative in that, in like, I mean, let’s not get twisted.

I’m like a college kid, so it’s not like I had a lot of money. Right. I didn’t have a job or an extra side gig because there was no time to do any of those. And so I just, yeah, I, I did the AAU stuff and, but it’s really important, like the networking to, to go to those camps and COVID kind of killed some of the college camps, which is really, really sad.

Cause it was a great opportunity to really grow with other people and get to know. And  I know we keep talking about relationships, but you build those relationships And I think some of the new coaches coming in have skipped that part.

[00:24:51] Mike Klinzing: Yeah.

[00:24:52] Joel Wallace: And you can tell, and this isn’t to knock the big boys, but it’s like sometimes you’ll talk to those D1 guys and it’s like, you can tell that they missed the relationship piece.

And so when you talk to them, it’s just, they’re looking at your, your shirts and seeing that you, they’re at a school, you’re at a school that they don’t know, so they don’t care. Right. And that’s, that’s really sad. And it’s no fault to them. They just didn’t go through kind of the gauntlet that some of us, others had to do.

Right. Yeah.  driving 107 hours in a month. This is a month span, so I shouldn’t even say summer, it was in a month.  with that coaching search, like it was, it was, it wasn’t overly long either. I mean, it happens like that. It’s a blink of an eye and people are at 20 different places. And so, but I was blessed with a guy that was going to look out for me and make me do the work.

But then reinforce on the back end  my resume and what I brought to the table. And so I just, I mean, I, I grew from every stop because the person that I worked for just helped me tremendously in my growth trajectory as a coach.

[00:25:52] Mike Klinzing: As you think about it, I want to get into the relationship with your brother and how you get the opportunity at Leterno, but just as you’ve been going through your career, And thinking about where you are now, where you may want to eventually end up, are you putting together a, and again, this goes back to the different coaches that you work under, are you putting together a, a folder, a digital drive of things that you’d like, things that you don’t like as, as you think about the possibility that at some point in the future, you may be able to, to become a head coach.

[00:26:24] Joel Wallace: Yeah. I mean, if you’re not, you’re crazy. You’re going to forget. And even if it’s just like, like I’m a huge X’s and O’s guy. So I love, I love, I mean, my Twitter is like, if you were to look at my likes, like you used to be able to, it’d be all sets. If you look at my bookmarks, it’s like all sets.

I don’t really care about the other stuff. And so like I when I was at Southwest our offense that we run at, at Letourneau is. a beautiful blend of Brad Bigler and Matt Merkin. So we’ve got kind of the spacing dribble I want to say dribble drive, but it’s ball screen heavy, a lot of spacing, manipulating spacing.

And then we kind of did that at Ridgewater too, and that’s what we did. And then when I went to Minot State with Matt Merkin, Matt Merkin is not a huge ball screen guy. Obviously ball screens are part of the game, so everybody’s going to do it, but he’s a more traditional one through five screen  read your screen.

You’ve got five different things that you can do off the screen. And then everybody else is going to react off of what that one guy does off the screen. And so I grew so much of my X’s and O’s at, at Minot with that, because I felt like I got pretty good at the ball screen spacing.  we call it Phoenix and Brad Bigler calls it Phoenix as well.

Kind of the D’Antoni type stuff when he was with the Suns. And so when I got to Minot, it was a total shift in offensive philosophy going from ball screen spacing to a lot of just actions, wheel actions, whatever it may be.  we’re going to cross screen, down screen, diagonal screen your butt until you give up a layup.

Like that was basically with Matt Merkin’s philosophy and it’s working. I mean, he’s fourth in the country right now at Minot State, which is not an easy place to win, but the guy does it all the time. And so I, I’m always taking that stuff. Like I have we have, we have fast scouts and fast recruit and fast draw and all that.

And so I have my catalog of all of my offensive stuff and then philosophy stuff with every set or with every kind of concept. I’m putting that in there and then  I just, I’ll have that forever so I can always go back and look and I’ve done that. I mean, last year we ran a lot of box sets that we, I took from Matt Coach Merkin at Minot and we were really successful with him.

Different type of team this year so we haven’t run as much of that but I actually stole some stuff from my, my friend and, and co worker Randall Herbst who was with me at Minot and he’s at UND North Dakota. And Coach Saver there used to be at Northern State and he used to kick our fricking butt with some midline screens.

Oh my gosh, the midline screen with the four and the five and just the the curls and the pops that you can do off of that and then the other actions. So we’ve been running a little bit of that this year. And so again, like the people that you meet, the good people that you meet and you usually good people win.

And so I, I like to surround myself with really good people. And basketball is a game of stealing stuff from others and making it your own. Like nothing that I run is anything that I necessarily could came up. It is to be took from somebody else. I’m not that guy. I’m not going to take any, I was smart enough to listen to when somebody, or look, when someone drew a play down and said, I’m going to use that at some point.

So that’s what I did. And so, yeah, I have a digital library, but then I also have like my coaching philosophy and just different things I’ve taken away from. Each people and  like Bigler did some things that I I don’t want to say disagreed with, but I’m like, man, I think I would do this differently.

And oh, and same with coach Tuft and coach Merkin. And  I’m sure at some point, if  I get the opportunity to be a head coach, there’s going to be somebody that goes, I am never doing what coach Paul is just, but that’s okay. So your personality and find the stuff that works and doesn’t work and then create your own culture.

But I’m always taking things and writing them down and then just having a coaching philosophy. And little like pillars that I’m going to use when I have my own place, but also what we’re using right now at Laterno.

[00:30:19] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It makes sense. I mean, again, you want to be prepared if that opportunity does ever come across your desk and just have what you need and start to be thinking about it prior to that opportunity coming to you.

So tell me a little bit about the opportunity to coach with your brother at Laterno. First of all, how does that opportunity arise? And then we can get into what it’s been like coaching with your brother positives. And yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know if there, I don’t know if there’s any negatives or not between the sibling rivalry, but just first of all, how did it happen?

And then secondly, just what, what’s, what’s been, what’s been the best part about

[00:30:51] Joel Wallace: it? So I was at Minot State, worked for Merkin and my brother was, my brother James was down here at Letourneau as an assistant. They had just had the D3 player of the year in Nate West. They had like back to back years of 20 some wins.

And the head coach his kids had graduated and were out of the house and he was kind of ready to settle down. And take a step back from the college game and he was formerly a high school coach. So we went back to high school and my brother ended up getting promoted to the head. And we’d had a conversation as he was going through the process of potentially being the head coach and finally getting it.

And it was like, well if you do get it, what are you, who are you going to hire? It just never, for whatever reason it sounds dumb now, but for whatever reason just wasn’t on my radar of what I could go down there and be his assistant. Just wasn’t. It wasn’t like, I don’t want to work with this guy.

I wouldn’t. It just didn’t cross my mind. It is kind of, we were having the conversation and I just, well, who do you think you’re going to bring in? Do you have a list of assistants that you can reach out to? And he’s like, you idiot. I was like, Oh, I was like, Hey, and I got approved from the, the administration and brought me in and it’s been so much fun.

Like it’s been a huge blessing and I can’t, I can’t say that enough. Like my brother, I don’t think I do, I’ve done a good enough job of like letting people know how fantastic my brother is as a, as a person, especially I’m his brother. And he, we butt heads all the time, but that guy, I know that guy loves me and I know that that guy loves each of our players just as much that he, as he loves me.

And I’d say that like with all honesty. And he has such a deep relationship, not only with just the players, but with every faculty member and staff member at Letourneau. Everybody knows who James is, not because he’s the head coach, but he’s the guy that’s always willing to do something for somebody else.

And so when you get an opportunity to work for somebody like that, and it’s especially your brother, you just, you like, you take it. And now it was a plus. I was going from Minot, North Dakota, where it was a high of like 25 degrees when I left to Texas where it was now it was a high of like a hundred when I got here.

So that was a shock. I wasn’t, wasn’t ready for that. But  he, my brother’s held like a gazillion different titles. He, when he came here, he was the assistant coach. For men’s basketball, he was the head cross country coach. Then he was the sports information director for a year, which is a crazy task to be for like 17 different sports.

While hosting a conference tournament as an assistant, like you just, wow, what do you got to do? And so he did that and then now he’s the associate AD for external,  fundraisers, that’s what he does. No, but, but he’s hadn’t that many times, so he’s, he’s brushed up alongside so many people across campus and he’s a special person.

So when you got an opportunity to go work for your brother and do that, like you just, you jump at it. And I haven’t, I’ve loved it. It’s been really stressful. Like, this has been the most stressful job for a couple of different reasons. One, like you’re going into a situation where like you’ve won in the past, but he’s looking at you saying like, okay, well those were his guys.

What are you going to do? And so we, we, we really worked at it and we followed, no, we followed nobody’s advice. So when we got it coach Bigler actually was trying to help us out of transitioning. And he was like, keep as much the same as you can, which. is a really good idea. Like, you should, I think.

But we did not. We changed the offense, we changed the defense, we changed our transition principles, I mean we changed everything. And our offense is, it’s not funky, it’s not like the Grinnell system, or anything just super wonky or different. But just the way that we cut through, the way that we space and just kind of manipulate guys and positionless basketball, for sure, it just was different for a lot of the, the people had been here.

And so they’re kind of looking at James like, well, we’re just blowing this up. We just won we just went 22 and five or 23 and five. We’re blowing this up and we did, but then we went 22 and five and had a really good year. And  James got coach of the year that year and he’s just a really good, James is a really good basketball coach.

Letourneau’s blessed to have him. I’m blessed to work for him. He drives me nuts sometimes. I drive him absolutely insane. So  I’m getting the better end of the deal cause I’d much rather work for him than, or work alongside him than myself, I think.  people, I say this a lot, but people ask all the time, what’s it like working with your brother?

And I say, well, it’s exactly like working with your brother.  the pros are, if you love the guy, you’ll do anything for him and you will, you’ll put the hours in. Yeah. You care deeply about his success. But at the same time, like, it’s just like, I mean, when a brother gets mad, there’s just, that’s a different type of irritation.

And Christmas, Christmas break and Thanksgiving break are just staff meetings. So, I mean, we go home, our other brother is, would probably be the best coach of the, of the three of us boys. He, he played at Northwest Missouri State under Ben McCollum, who’s now at Drake and Kellen. And one went to back to back Sweet Sixteens, I think while he was there.

So we’ll go home and James and I will be talking stuff. And he, and our brother Matt watches all of our games and he’ll just be like, Why the heck are you guys doing that? That was dumb. It’s like, all right. And then our dad chimes in, well, you need to put this guy in this position. And it’s like, okay, like Christmas now just turned into a staff meeting.

Like, let’s just talk and figure out how we’re going to be better on this, this side of the floor, that side of the floor. So, but that’s a positive, man. Like I said, basketball is synonymous with Wallace and it’s, it’s a lot of fun. So there’s really no negatives outside of. You can get frustrated, but I can get frustrated with anybody.

And I’d rather it be my brother.

[00:36:44] Mike Klinzing: You could probably be more blunt with your brother. Maybe then you could be with a previous assistant coach. I’m sure. Our,

[00:36:49] Joel Wallace: our offices are right next to the women’s staffs. And sometimes their assistant will look at me like, did you just say that? Like, did you just, and it’s like, and we have a graduate assistant too.

And I talk graduate assistant. I’m like Coach Rip, like, you do not talk to coach the way that I talk to you. It’s like, it’s a hundred percent like and our guys laugh and it’s like, Oh, you guys are talking to each other like brothers, right? I see it all the time or it’s anything inappropriate, but every once in a while there’ll be a quick response back.

And it’s like, yeah, that’s a brother response, not an assistant coach’s response. So sometimes I got to figure that line out a little bit and check myself.

[00:37:26] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. It’s funny. Like I grew up and I had only a sister and that in my family I have two girls and a boy. So I’ve never, I’ve never had a brother relationship in any house that I’ve lived in.

So I’ve only seen it vicariously through other people. And every brother relationship that I know of is, they’re just like, Again, they love each other, but then when things, when things get, when things spiral, it gets, it gets crazy. It gets crazy fast and my, my, my limited experience on the brother’s side of things.

So I can only imagine when you guys are talking out and going through things that yeah, you can, you can definitely, I’m sure get after it a little bit.

[00:38:02] Joel Wallace: Yeah. We get to, we get to talk to our guys about that a lot too, though, is.  we talk about iron sharpens iron, well if iron sharpens iron, there’s going to be sparks, like there’s going to be sparks, like there has to be friction and so  they, and we just tell our guys like you hear us get after each other and you hear us like hold each other to a high standard and it’s like, that’s cause that’s what brothers do.

Like we just do that. And so when you guys are on the floor, like it’s okay to yell at each other. It’s okay to be irritated and demand something from each other. Like that’s just part of being. College basketball players, but that’s also part of being a brotherhood and having a culture of success and a culture of just servanthood is like, we’re going to we’re going to let each other know when we’re not reaching that standard and we’re falling short.

So, yeah, it’s a great point.

[00:38:50] Mike Klinzing: Great point. All right. Final two part question. Part one, when you look ahead over the next year, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then part two, when you think about what you get to do every day, what What brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy?

[00:39:08] Joel Wallace: Oh man, my biggest challenge, I mean, over the next year, well, I mean, if you include this year, like we need to get to the NCAA tournament. We’re right there. We’ll be probably a bubble team, maybe even not. So we probably have to win the commerce tournament to get in. So, I mean, that’s a lot of stress in and of itself and we have a roster to do it.

 there’s going to be some opportunities for me as well. Hopefully God willing that I’ll look and entertain and it’s just having the discernment there.  when you get to this level and you’ve been in it as long as I have, which isn’t crazy long, but it’s long enough, there’s just a lot of things that you have to manage and a lot of tables that you have to balance.

 so I think recruiting will be another one, getting the right guys on the ship. We’re going to lose a lot of talent. We’re going to lose an All American and an All Conference guy. So that’ll be just kind of a multitude of things of having the discernment to look through opportunities, but not get caught up in that because a lot of coaches get caught up in the next spot and not embraced where they’re at now.

You’ve got roster construction, replacing some really good players, and then like balancing family life, like,  and then my, my greatest joy. And the most crazy thing, like, I, so I have a nine month old now, and I now get to be that dad for somebody. Yes. Which is pretty special. And that’s pretty cool.

And  so I have a daughter named Jovi. And so my greatest joy is the fact that win or lose, I get to walk through the door and I get to see my daughter and it’s always just,

[00:40:31] Mike Klinzing: and

[00:40:33] Joel Wallace: so again, like to kind of reiterate the theme, like this is all about relationships. And so I get to impact a human being for the rest of her life.

And that starts right now. And so I get the joy of coming home and giving her hugs. And even though I could probably sit down and watch 10 hours of film on the last game, what we could do better, I’m going to get on the floor and I’m going to play with blocks and all that. So that’s, that’s my greatest joys is my daughter and my wife, and just the support system I have at home.

And being able to lean on that and that’s what keeps me going cause it’s all about the relationship piece.

[00:41:11] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. That’s good stuff. All right, Joel, before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how can people connect with you, find out more about what you guys are doing, whether you want to share social media, email, website, whatever you feel comfortable with.

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

[00:41:25] Joel Wallace: Okay yeah, I mean if you want to reach out, like I think my Twitter and Instagram are @CoachWallace30. Nothing crazy. My email LeTurneauAthletics.com has just go to the men’s basketball site and you can find all my information.

Email me for whatever reason you need to contact me. If  I spoke something out there that you need more on. I’d be happy to just email me and, and I’ll show you my phone number. Like my phone number is easily accessible. So happy to talk with anybody I want to give back in any, any way that I can.  So that’s really how you can reach me.

[00:41:55] Mike Klinzing: Awesome. Joel, cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule this morning to jump out with us, really appreciate it and to everyone out there. Thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.