MATT ELKIN – STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 1264

Website – https://gostanford.com/sports/mens-basketball  https://jewishcoaches.com/

Email – mattelkin91@gmail.com

Twitter/X – @CoachElkin

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Matt Elkin is in his second season with the Stanford men’s basketball program and his first as assistant coach.  Elkin spent 2024-25 as assistant recruiting coordinator at Stanford before spending one season at Columbia in 2025-26 as an assistant coach to Kevin Hovde.

Elkin arrived at Stanford in 2024 after spending the previous four seasons at Yale as director of basketball operations.  Concurrent with his role at Yale, Elkin has served as an assistant coach with Team USA with the under-18 team. He helped lead the American delegation to a gold medal at the 2022 World Maccabiah Games.  Matt is also the Executive Director of the Jewish Coaches Association.

Prior to his time in New Haven, Elkin served as an assistant coach at the Windward School in Los Angeles, where he helped the program to a 53-15 record over two seasons.  He also spent two seasons at Vermont Academy as a varsity assistant coach from 2016-18.

Elkin began his coaching career as a student manager at the University of Wisconsin and later served as head manager and student assistant for two seasons at Division III Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin.  While earning a Master’s degree in Sports Leadership from Northeastern in 2016, Elkin served as the graduate manager for the men’s basketball team for two seasons.

On this episode Mike & Matt discuss his remarkable journey from coaching youth basketball to achieving his dream role at a prestigious institution like Stanford. Throughout our conversation, Matt emphasizes the importance of fostering enjoyment and passion in the game, a principle instilled in him by his early coaches. We delve into his experiences at Yale, where he contributed to three Ivy League championships, and how those formative years shaped his coaching philosophy. Elkin discusses the challenges and opportunities presented by the evolving landscape of college basketball, particularly with respect to the recruitment process amidst the pressures of the NIL era. Matt shares his commitment to nurturing student-athletes, ensuring they thrive both on the court and in their academic pursuits, all while upholding the values that define Stanford’s storied legacy in athletics and education.

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Be sure to have pen and paper handy before you listen to this episode with Matt Elkin, Men’s Basketball Assistant Coach at Stanford University.

What We Discuss with Matt Elkin

• His commitment to helping players succeed both on and off the court
• The importance of maintaining joy in coaching and fostering a love for the game among players
• The unique challenges and opportunities of recruiting at an academically prestigious institution like Stanford
• How his experiences at Vermont Academy and Windward School provided invaluable lessons on youth development and coaching fundamentals
• His involvement in the Jewish Coaches Association reflects his commitment to community building and mentorship within the coaching profession
• Keys to networking and building relationships within the basketball community
• Developing well-rounded individuals prepared for their futures beyond basketball
• Coaching at high academic institutions, where student-athletes balance rigorous academic demands with competitive sports
• The dedication and passion required to stay on his coaching career path
• Why building genuine relationships with players and coaches has been critical for his success
• The thorough research required in recruiting high academic athletes

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THANKS, MATT ELKIN

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TRANSCRIPT FOR MATT ELKIN – STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSISTANT COACH – EPISODE 1264

[00:00:00] Narrator: The Hoop Heads Podcast is brought to you by Head Start Basketball

[00:00:20] Matt Elkin: I still can’t believe that I’m an assistant coach at Stanford. It doesn’t seem real. It’s a dream come true. It’s something that, again, I never imagined that I would be when I was coaching youth basketball or coaching eighth grade team at Windward. And the fact that I’m here now, again, I put a lot of responsibility on myself to make sure that I do my best to honor this position and this opportunity that I have.

[00:00:44] Mike Klinzing: Matt Elkin is in his second season with the Stanford men’s basketball program and his first as an assistant coach. Elkin spent the twenty twenty-four twenty-five season as assistant recruiting coordinator at Stanford before spending one season at Columbia in two thousand twenty-five twenty-six as an assistant coach.

Elkin arrived at Stanford in twenty twenty-four after spending the previous four seasons at Yale as director of basketball operations. Concurrent with his role at Yale, Elkin has served as an assistant coach with Team USA with the under eighteen team. He helped lead the American delegation to a gold medal at the twenty twenty-two World Maccabiah Games.

Matt is also the executive director of the Jewish Coaches Association. Prior to his time at Yale, Elkin served as an assistant coach at the Windward School in Los Angeles, where he helped the program to a fifty-three and fifteen record over two seasons. He also spent two seasons at Vermont Academy as a varsity assistant coach from two thousand sixteen to two thousand eighteen.

Elkin began his coaching career as a student manager at the University of Wisconsin and later served as head manager and student assistant for two seasons at Division III Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin. While earning a master’s degree in sports leadership from Northeastern in two thousand sixteen, Elkin served as the graduate manager for the men’s basketball team for two seasons.

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[00:02:48] Devrinn Paul: Hey, this is Devrin Paul, author of Coaching the Winner Within, and you’re listening to the Hoop Heads podcast

[00:03:00] Mike Klinzing: Are you or an athlete you know planning to go D3? Check out the D3 Recruiting Playbook from D3 Direct. Their playbook gives you a clear step-by-step roadmap to the recruiting process, what coaches value, key milestones from early high school through application season, and how to build a targeted list of schools that fit your needs.

The playbook demystifies researching D3 programs and how to stand out without chasing every camp or showcase. The modules cover things like writing emails to coaches, building an effective highlight tape, using social media well, planning camps and visits, and navigating application strategy. You’ll get templates, checklists, and an outreach plan to communicate confidently, learn how to compare financial packages, and avoid common missteps.

By the end, you’ll have a prioritized school list and a decision framework you can use to land your best fit opportunity. Click on the link in the show notes to get your D3 Recruiting Playbook from D3 Direct.

Be sure to have pen and paper handy before you listen to this episode with Matt Elkin, men’s basketball assistant coach at Stanford University Hello, and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here tonight without my co-host, Jason Sunkel. But I am pleased to j- be joined by Matt Elkin, men’s basketball assistant coach at Stanford University.

Matt, welcome to the Hoop Heads pod.

[00:04:24] Matt Elkin: Great to be here, Mike. Thanks for having me.

[00:04:26] Mike Klinzing: Thrilled to have you coming off a trip to Mexico in an airport lounge. This is a first, Matt. I don’t think we’ve had anybody do it out of the airport lounge, so appreciate the dedication to your craft. Matt, let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid.

Tell me how you got in the game of basketball. What do you remember? What were some of your first experiences with the game?

[00:04:46] Matt Elkin: Yeah, like a lot of kids I grew up in Boston and I played a bunch of different sports. Tried baseball, tried soccer. The one sport I never really got into is football. I think that was probably from a standpoint of my parents not wanting me to get injured, but grew up playing, loving playing the game, travel ball, local teams.

And I had an older brother too, so we grew up playing each other in the backyard. And grew up in West Roxbury, which is a neighborhood of Boston, and, very middle class. Had a nice home but had a nice little driveway, and we had about this much space in the driveway. And so when my brother and I used to play you couldn’t really go around people.

You had to go through them, and most of the time it was him bu- bulldozing through me, and so I had to learn quickly to be able to get stronger and quicker and figure out how to shoot. But yeah, just growing up, loved playing the game, and then played travel ball, like I said, played some AU, and then got into playing in high school and just really fell in love.

As a Boston fan, Celtics was really lucky that coming up the team when I first grew up was not very good, and then they got better as time went on. But, being in a, also a college town, there’s a lot of college hoops, BC, BU, Harvard. So my dad, my brother, and my mom, we all used to go see games and just fell in love.

[00:05:54] Mike Klinzing: When you think about some of those early coaches that you had, and it might not even necessarily be basketball, but the people that had an influence on you when you were a young kid, a young athlete, what are some of the things that maybe you carry with you from those experiences with your youth coaches that you still feel like are a part of who you are as a coach today?

[00:06:20] Matt Elkin: Yeah, definitely. It was actually cool experience for me. When I was in high school, I was able to help as an assistant back for my old youth coach, coaching some of the young guys that I used to play on that team. And it was really cool to be able to give back. And, my, my coach, one of the big things that he instilled in me, again, being in a place like Boston where kids are playing so many other different sports in different parts of the season, and it was just have fun with it.

It was… I don’t know. I never got exposed to like specialization at an early age. So it was like my friends were playing baseball or hockey or doing a bunch of other things. And so we were all kinda coming together in this one time to, to play ball. And we knew that the only way that we were going to have any success or enjoy it was to have fun.

And we had a variety of different levels of guys. I was not really trending towards being a high-level Division I basketball player, so I was just trying to have fun with it. And I think the coach was able to coach us and help us get better, but really teach us to have fun improving, h- have fun through practice, have fun through games, the wins, the losses.

And, I think that was something, again, for me early on that really helped carry through to me in my coaching career, was a love for the game, but through in the enjoyment of it, not just the wins and the losses, the ups and the downs, but everything that comes with that. And that’s what propelled me to really want to stick through with it, even through some difficult ch- times myself playing and then getting into coaching it’s what I wanted to instill and keep that fun and that excitement through me to the players that I was going to be coaching one day.

[00:07:45] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I think one of the things that, again, when we look at the culture of youth sports today, and I think about the experience that you just described, and it’s similar to the one that I had. Now I’m a lot older than you, but I go back and, again, I played in my driveway, in my backyard. Pretty much every sport that you could imagine, I, at some point, probably picked up a ball or a bat or a racket or a paddle or whatever to play all those games.

And we all did it because it was fun, and I think that’s something that sometimes in today’s youth culture where everybody’s just focused on, “Hey, what’s the next thing that I can get,” or, “What’s the next thing that I have to achieve?” And we forget that the reason why we all picked up a ball and why you and your brother played in your tiny little driveway is not because you thought about, “Hey, we’re going to be able to get a scholarship,” or, “Hey, we’re going to be able to get money,” or, “We’re going to be able to do this.”

You picked it up and did it because it was fun, and you loved to compete. And I think that’s something that, again, as coaches and certainly players and parents and people who are involved in the basketball landscape to, to keep in mind that there has to be some enjoyment in the game and what you’re doing.

There has to be joy in what transpires in order for you to, I think, achieve at the highest level. And that’s maybe different from the way it used to be in terms of the way coaches might have approached things. I don’t know if joy was necessarily 30 years ago something that a lot of coaches were thinking about in terms of their players’ experience.

Whereas now, I think it’s probably much more prevalent that coaches are thinking about, “Hey, how can I make our experience a great one?” Especially when you start thinking about the portal and all that stuff, which I’m sure we’ll get into, but recruiting your own guys and keeping your own guys engaged and having fun and enjoying being a part of that experience, I think is a big part of being a successful head coach.

Let me go back to ask you about, as you said, you go and work with your youth coach, right? And you get your first experience doing some coaching. So was that something that you kinda always knew that was where you were going to end up? Did you immediately love that coaching experience to the point where you were starting to think, “Hey, maybe there’s an opportunity for me to do this moving forward”?

Or was it just more of, “Hey, this is what I’m doing in the moment and I enjoy it,” but y- you weren’t really thinking about it as a career. Where was your mindset as a, again, as a high school kid thinking about wh- where you might end up?

[00:10:05] Matt Elkin: Yeah, just to backtrack a little bit, I don’t come from a sports background as far as no-nobody in my family, my parents, grandparents or anybody that was like basketball players, athletes, anything like that.

But they come from a people background. My mom is a therapist and a social worker, and my dad works in human resource, and so I came from a household, a family of helping people. And again, that joy for basketball kind of coincided with my enjoyment for wanting to help other people. So as a young kid, it wasn’t like, oh I want to have a career in coaching necessarily.

It’s more just I love hoops and this could be fun. I love being around kids, and this could be a great opportunity for me to marry those two things together. And then as I got into college and was a student manager and things like that, it was the same thing. I had this passion for basketball.

I loved being around the game. I loved playing it. I loved just being around the team and loved everything that went into preparing for a game, preparing for practice, all that stuff. And then I liked the aspect of being able to try to help people. So I think as in my coaching journey, my… as I’ve continued to grow and evolve, not only age-wise but career-wise, confidence in how I teach, how I coach, the differences between being a fifteen, sixteen-year-old coaching eight or nine-year-olds to now being a thirty-four-year-old coaching college-age kids, like that gap has always been there.

And so wherever I’ve found the opportunity to be able to help, whether it was younger kids, older kids, whatever that was what kinda got me going. And then always basketball’s been the common thread throughout. So I’ve really just always ha- approached it from that mindset. Where can I help as many people as I can because I enjoy doing that, and through basketball, I’ve been able to help a lot of people.

[00:11:40] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I think that ability to be able to use the game of basketball as your vehicle to have an impact on people, I say that’s always one of the most valuable things to me in what I’ve done in my career, whether I was coaching at the high school level or doing camp or whatever, this podcast.

It’s always like the game has given me so much. I can never give back what it’s given to me. But in whatever way I do that, to be able to use the game of basketball to be able to have an impact on people, I think that’s a powerful thing. Not everybody gets to be able to have an impact on people through something that they love to do, which is what you get to do, which is what I get to do, which is what a lot of people in the game of basketball get to do, and I think it’s unique in that way, just that we can use the game as a way to impact people, and it sounds like that’s kinda how you’ve approached your career.

So let me go back to you as a student manager at the college level. When you go and you decide, “Hey I want to be a manager,” is that something where you’re thinking about it as a track into becoming a college basketball coach, or is that you thinking about, “Hey, I just want to be around the team, around the coaching staff, around the games”?

Was there a greater plan than just, “Hey, I want to do this,” or was it part of the idea that, “Hey, I’m eventually building towards a potential college coaching career”?

[00:13:00] Matt Elkin: Yeah, it’s a great question. And growing up in Boston, obviously there’s a ton of incredible colleges and universities, and I went to University of Wisconsin in Madison.

A big part of that is because my dad and my older brother had both went there. And so growing up in Boston in a pro sports town, college sports town, it was kinda strange, especially coming from a public school in Boston to leave the area to go to college in another part of the country, let alone Wisconsin.

Some of my friends– I went to a really great high school, some of them couldn’t even point to Wisconsin on a map, truthfully. Like for me it was, I grew up being a fan of the university, of the sports teams, and so for me it was, is what opportunity could I have to be more involved than just being a fan necessarily?

And again, I loved hooping I loved being around the game, but I knew I wasn’t going to play basketball at the University of Wisconsin. I was barely scratching a Division III level player outta high school. So I said, “Let me invest in going to this dream school of mine and let me figure out if there’s a way that I can be more deeply connected to the game that I love besides just, playing pickup ball and, intramurals and stuff like that.”

And so really I kinda came into it from just being kinda open, wide-eyed to what this experience could be like. I had got connected to a couple th- people through family friends that had done a similar track of being a student manager, and some of them got into coaching, some of them had just done it as a, an extracurricular activity during school.

And so I said, “Let me explore this option.” And I actually applied when I– before I got into school, I applied, reached out to the manager at the time and said, “Hey, I’m coming in from Boston, and I don’t really know how this whole works, but I would love to be a student manager.” And I was so naive.

I had no idea, especially at a place like Wisconsin. I’m like, “Oh, cool.” They’ll be like, “Yeah, come on in,” like They’ll, and it’s, I didn’t realize they, they s- emailed me back and they were like, “Yeah, we’d love to have you. We actually are gathering interest from other people like yourself.

Come on by, we’re going to have a meeting.” And I showed up first couple weeks of school for this meeting, and there was, like, 80 people there. And I was like, “Oh my God,” this is maybe a little bit different than I was thinking it was going to be. And we had a legit tryout my first year. They had us take a written test, name all the players on the team, name all the coaches, basketball rules, like basic stuff like shot clock and different things like that.

And then we actually had to go out and do a mock practice. They timed us, how long it would take us to go wipe up sweat. Could we do some drills in case, somebody went down and they needed somebody to run in. So I quickly learned this is a legitimate operation. This is not just, like I was coaching the little kids’ peewee before.

This is a big deal. And so actually, my freshman year I didn’t get accepted as a student manager. I applied, I went through the whole process, I didn’t get it. And that kind of fueled me a little bit. I was like, “No, I’m… I can do this.” And so I, I kept in touch, i, throughout my freshman year, had an incredible experience.

Was in the stands watching the team play, was supporting the team and everything, and I would see these players around campus, and I was like, “Man, I really want to get involved.” It just motivated me that much more. So my sophomore year, I ended up going through the process again, had a little more familiarity, and ended up getting hired.

And again, that, that first year, my sophomore year as a student manager with the Badgers was, get to work for Bo Ryan. He had an incredible coaching staff at the time, and I learned everything. I learned just about as much as what goes into running a program as to what you shouldn’t be doing if you’re trying to be a part of it, a behind-the-scenes guy, a student manager.

And I take a lot of those lessons with me today in my coaching as I work with other student managers who are aspiring coaches or people that just, like myself, are coming into it unsure of what they want, but they know they want to be around the team. And and so I really took that experience to try to help me add value to those people that I now work with that are, were in my position to say, “Hey, you don’t necessarily need to be a coach.

You could be interested in the social media side of things or the analytics or the player development or whatever you want to get into. This is a great opportunity because it’s fun. You’re going to enjoy doing it, and you’re going to learn how to work hard, like a full-time job for,” getting to do something that most people will watch on TV and be like, “That’s so cool.

Matt’s out there. He’s wiping up sweat. That’s my boy.” And it- Yeah. So it was a really awesome experience, and it definitely shaped a lot of kinda my journey from that point forward throughout the rest of college and then into my coaching career.

[00:17:05] Mike Klinzing: Was there one guy on the staff in particular that you connected with or that maybe kinda took you under their wing and gave you maybe a little bit more behind-the-scenes access, so to speak, just because you had built a relationship with that person?

[00:17:18] Matt Elkin: Yeah, I did a I did a project at one point in my career, I forget which year it was where I had to interview one of the coaches, and it ended up being Lamont Paris, who was an assistant at the time, who’s now the head coach at South Carolina. They actually just hired Sam Dekker, who was a player on the team when I was there.

So the Wisconsin basketball family is very tight. There’s actually a few people that were student managers with me or were around the program that are still with the program. And getting to just talk to him, that was my first time. Again, I hadn’t been playing at a high level or really coached at a high level.

It was my first time kind of being around a high level Division I assistant coach and just asking him like, “What goes into what you do? Why do you do what you do? And also what does it take?” And then we had a student manager at the time who was the head manager, Graham Bousley, who has had an incredible coaching journey himself.

He just got recently hired at Pepperdine, but he’d been at VCU, he’s been at Rice, Mount St. Mary’s, he’s been a high school coach. And again, he was just like me. He was a student manager trying to figure this whole thing out, and he and I have been able to keep in touch for many years. The Wisconsin basketball, the Wisconsin alumni network in general, but specifically for the basketball team, is very tight, and there’s actually a decent amount of guys that have gotten into coaching from it.

Those guys are eye-opening for me to just learn from them, be around them, and learn how to work, but also learn about the game and just learn how to navigate being at the same age of the people that I’m coaching now, trying to figure out it’s okay to make some mistakes.

It’s okay to not be sure what you really want to do, and just use this as an opportunity to figure that out as you go out.

[00:18:42] Mike Klinzing: How much time did you spend in the coach’s office and around the basketball program versus how much time you spent on your academics while you were there?

[00:18:51] Matt Elkin: I, I did a– had a good balance.

I’ve always been somebody that again as I got deeper into college in my career and I thought basketball and coaching could be something more of a reality, I tried to invest more time into that. But when I first started, again, I was like, “I’m a student.” School came relatively easy for me but I knew I had to work at it.

And being a student manager, again, you have to learn the balance of, you’re not getting paid. It… There’s a lot of times when the team might go on the road, and you might, especially early on, you might not go with them on the trip what are you doing? Are you watching the game at home?

Are you taking notes or are at a party with your friends or are you studying? Being a student at a place like Wisconsin, especially when there’s 40,000 undergrad and there’s a lot going on, for me, it was a really good, again, learning experience because I had to learn how to balance my time efficiently.

I was getting to do something that was so exciting to me, and all I wanted to do was just be around the team. But I realized the only opportunity for me to be involved with the program was if I’m in the school. In the school, I needed to maintain grades. I held myself to a very high standard. My parents always supported me to pursue whatever I wanted to do, and I knew that if I wanted to have a career someday, whether it was in basketball or outside I needed to do well in school.

I needed to perform. I needed to build my network. I was in the business school there, so I was, still trying to figure out, do I want to get into coaching or something in sports management? I knew it was in sports, but I wasn’t exactly sure it was going to be on the sidelines and I kinda real- wanted to make sure I wasn’t limiting myself by any means because I was doing a poor student or something like that.

And I think a lot of that too has helped shape the direction that I’ve gone in as far as my coaching career working in the high academic world.

[00:20:22] Mike Klinzing: By the time you got to your final year there at Wisconsin as a manager, what were some of the things and roles that you were taking on that you feel like helped you as you continued on in your career?

What were some of the things that you got to do or got to participate in?

[00:20:37] Matt Elkin: Yeah so actually, interestingly enough, my m- my sophomore year was my first year as a student manager for the team, and it was actually my f- last year. I only spent one season as a student manager with the Badgers, but my junior and senior year I worked at a school called Edgewood College, which is a Division III school, also in Madison.

And I went from being, like, one of fifteen or sixteen student managers with the Badgers to one of one at Edgewood. And it was a really unique opportunity for me. Again, that first year I learned a ton. I learned a lot about what goes into running a program. I also learned about, a lot about what not to do if you’re going to be a part of a big organization like this.

And so I it was really i- impactful for me to then have the opportunity to go. There was a new head coach at Edgewood. It was, about 10 minutes from Madison. So I, again, was learning how to multitask between being a student. I went back to being a fan of the team and still being supportive of the players and the coaches that I had been around, but now I was much more involved in my role at Edgewood.

I was a student manager. I was a student coach. I got to be at every practice. I was involved in every drill. I was even involved in some recruiting, some scouting, some video exchange back when, you were, I guess it wasn’t that long ago, but we were s- we were sending DVDs to people, right?

So maybe not VHS, so again, I was learning a lot more about what went into coaching, more so than into program development as a student manager. And I think marrying those two things together, by the time I got to my senior year, I had a really unique perspective as far as this is what it looks like at the highest level, how to do things the right way, how to do things the wrong way.

This is how it looks like at a lower level, how involved you have to be how dedicated you have to be to doing a little bit of everything. And those three years of experience, both at UW-Madison and also at Edgewood, helped me, I think, really prepare for the next step, which was becoming a grad assistant and again, wearing multiple hats and whatnot.

I loved being, a small fish in a big pond to then going to be a big fish in a small pond. I think that really helped add to my perspective a lot.

[00:22:31] Mike Klinzing: So tell me about the mindset when you graduate. What are you looking for? Have you pretty much, at that point, decided, “Hey, coaching is where I want to be”?

A- as you said, you’re in the business school. You had some thoughts of, “Hey, maybe I want to stay in sports management. Maybe I don’t want to be on the sidelines. Maybe I do.” So tell me a little bit about, at the moment that you graduate, what’s the thought process? What does the job search look like for you?

[00:22:52] Matt Elkin: Yeah, so I had a really cool opportunity for one of my professors in the business school for a senior project, a senior thesis, wrote a huge article or a huge essay about just the world of recruiting. And I used some of my connections back from the Northeast with some prep school coaches, some other coaches that I had gotten connected to.

I was lucky enough my sophomore going– Yeah, my sophomore year, I was able to go to the Final Four for the first time, so I got to really open my eyes to the experience of this is what the college basketball coaching world is like. And so I got to meet a few people, network that way. So I got a really cool opportunity to just Pick brains of a lot of different people.

And one of the things that most people were saying it was, hey, if you want to continue working your way up, especially at the highest level you need to be academically qualified. And that means not just getting your undergraduate degree, but getting a master’s degree, because every… most people will get their undergrad degree, but not everybody’s getting their master’s degree.

Now, I think most people would say that just about everybody understands the importance of continuing their education. But for me, I said, listen, again, I’m a five foot nine, white Jewish kid from Boston that never played basketball at the highest level, like, how am I going to try to separate myself from everybody else that’s applying for these jobs?

I want to continue my education. I still had a desire for learning and desire to continue to grow in that area. And I was really lucky to be able to have an opportunity to become a graduate assistant at Northeastern, which was back home in Boston for me. And so it was something like, hey, again, let me see what this is like.

And I’ll never forget again, me, me not having any sense of how things work. I showed up on the first day at Northeastern, and I remember vividly because Northeastern at the time was a Nike school, and I had Adidas. They were red and black, the right colors. But then I walked up and I was…

They were like, “Yo you can’t wear Adidas here.” And I was like, “What do you mean?” I didn’t… Again, I just didn’t understand. My time at Wisconsin, my time at Edgewood, these were little things, and I was like, great. I never made that mistake ever again for the rest of my life. And, I just really…

I got a chance to pursue my master’s degree in sports leadership, which is amazing at Northeastern, they had an incredible program. And then I got to work with the team. And again, for me, it was still in this direction of, I know I love basketball, I know I love helping people, I know I love being around the team.

What can this do for me in my future? What realistically is my path? What is my ceiling in this? How far can I take this? And, for me in my career, one of the things I think that’s helped me a lot is being very dynamic, very flexible. I’ve… we’ll talk about, but I’ve moved across the country.

I’ve worked all different levels because I want, I want to expose myself to as much things that I might like and also things that I don’t like, so I know how to stay in this direction. And also, I think it’s really important for me to get myself out there because again, no people don’t know I don’t have a famous last name.

Nobody will recognize me from seeing me play or recruiting me. So how can I not only put myself out there, but get more people to know me and my work ethic and what I’m about, what my values are, so that I can try to help as many people? And that was kinda my mentality going into that next stage of my career after my undergrad into graduate school.

[00:25:52] Mike Klinzing: So how do you start building those relationships once you get to Northeastern? Talk to me about the process that you used. How did you think about it? How did you approach that? Obviously, from everybody that I’ve talked to, Matt, one of the things that comes across clearly is you’ve have to build genuine relationships, right?

It has to be something that is not me just trying to network so that I can meet you to be able to get to my next job and just utilize that to, to move on in my career. So how have you gone about starting at Northeastern? How have you gone about building those kinds of genuine relationships in your career starting there at Northeastern?

[00:26:29] Matt Elkin: Yeah, definitely. I think the big thing that most people probably would admit is true is being available, being around. I knew that I needed to be the first guy into the office every morning, and that’s when I started drinking coffee because Dave McLaughlin, who was our associate head coach at the time used to come in at six in the morning.

And I was like, “Shit, if I’m going to be the first guy in the office, I have to get there early.” So that’s when I started to trying coffee, and the rest is history. But no, I just f- I, I wanted to be around. And for me, again, at Northeastern, it was unique because my GA position was a volunteer.

They didn’t have a GA. I was… It was something that I had met Coach McLaughlin at the Final Four and basically was like, “Hey, I know there’s a great sports leadership program. I know I can live at home in Boston. I’ll do whatever I have to do. I’ll show up every single day.” And I think they kinda just expected I was going to be, like, a part-time guy that would come into the office every now…

And I wanted to show them, no, I want to… I’m all about this. So it was being available. It was being there every day. It was, if the coaches were in a meeting but somebody wanted to shoot, it was I’ll go rebound for him. I’ll go work out with this guy. It was running errands. It was doing all the dirty work, all the things that I had observed during my time at Wisconsin as a student manager that I had seen this is what goes into running a high-level program that maybe I wasn’t prepared to do at 19 or 20, that now at 22, 23 I had a better sense of what it was going to take for me to make it in this business.

And so I decided that’s… I’m just going to go all in on those things. And so for me, it was, just again, being available. The opportunity to be in a city like Boston where you have a lot of pro sports, you have a lot of college sports. Again, you have people wanting to come watch practice. It was networking with high school coaches, AU coaches.

We, we would run camps. It was meeting people that would come to work our camps. It was interacting with other GAs when we would play games, ex- whether it was video exchange or, what restaurants they can get food from t- to go for their post-game meal. And, I really made sure that, again, my responsibility was to help other people, and through that, I was able to build relationships, meaningful relationships with others that were both my peers and other people that I aspired to be similar to and just wanted to create value for myself in those environments and had a really unique opportunity to do that.

And it never hurts when you have a little success. My… Luckily, my first year at Northeastern, we made the NCAA tournament, and it was the first time since truthfully before I was born when Reggie Lewis was playing for the Huskies. And so again, it’s a historic time to, to be with the team. You’re successful.

It’s amazing, and then the more you have success, the more other people gravitate towards your program, and I just happened to, again, be around this great program, and so I had to be able to be a byproduct of the relationships that were coming all around me.

[00:29:11] Mike Klinzing: What advice would you have for somebody who’s young in their career who takes a job like this one that you took where you’re not making any money, and yet you’re doing all these things, right?

You’re taking on as much responsibility as you possibly can, but You’re making no money. How do you make that work? How do you figure it out? You s- one of the things you said is, “I’m living at home.” But what advice would you have for somebody who’s young in their career and has an opportunity to take a job where maybe they’re making $3,000 for the year, or maybe they’re making nothing, and they have to volunteer in order to be able to get themselves an opportunity?

What advice do you have for somebody who’s in that o- in that position in their career?

[00:29:51] Matt Elkin: Yeah, no. And I don’t… don’t get it twisted, Mike. I know I’m very lucky and I’m very blessed that I had an opportunity to be able to have saved up money to have the forward thinking to know, hey, at some point in my life, I may need to have some money saved to do something like this.

I had, again, parents that were supportive that said, “Yeah, come back and live with us again while you’re, pursuing your dreams,” things like that. So I’m very lucky that, that was a situation that I could be in, and I realize it’s not for everybody. But again, for me, it’s this is my chance.

This is my opportunity. And you need to have… You need to take these opportunities and these chances when you have them to see what you’re made of and what you’re capable of. And I knew that, hey, I might be volunteering, but the experience that I’m going to get, the network that I’m going to develop if I, especially if I do a good job, this is going to pay me back in, in the future.

And I think it’s very similar to the pitch that we, that I’ve learned to give through my time in the Ivy League and now at Stanford, and the pitch that I give to players we’re recruiting is that you have to be unique, you have to be different, you have to be a little weird, you have to be not embarrassed to do things that other people aren’t doing, and so for me, I’ll tell you what, it was not great being back living in my parents’ house as a, a graduate student in Boston when a lot of my friends w- had finished graduating, and they were getting apartments, and they were going out on the weekend. They were making a shit ton more money than I was, and they were having fun and working a nine-to-five and not bringing work home.

I was learning to be okay with being a little different, and I was okay with waking up super early in the morning to go in the office. I was okay with having to make sacrifices for fun activities that my other friends were doing or fun experiences. And again that is what you have to be willing to do.

It doesn’t mean that’s, it’s never going to be fun because going to the NCAA tournament is a boatload of fun, and getting to have these experiences that are a byproduct of the hard work that you put in. But it’s an investment in yourself, and I knew early on that if I wanted to be successful I had all the support in place from my family, my friends, the resources that it’s time, now it’s on me.

Do I want to invest in myself? And I made that decision to do that, and it’s paid dividends for me more than I could have ever imagined

[00:32:04] Mike Klinzing: Then the next two opportunities, you’re on two different coasts in the prep school, high school world. Tell me about those two experiences, how you feel like those played into what you were eventually able to do at Yale and now at Stanford.

[00:32:19] Matt Elkin: Yeah. So I graduated with my degree from Northeastern, had an incredible experience, and then Coach McLaughlin ended up getting hired as the head coach at Dartmouth at that time. And again my na-naiveté about how the game worked, I was like, “Great, this is the dude. I shared the corner of his office.

I helped him with all the defense. Perfect. I’ll be his ops guy at Dartmouth.” I quickly found out that’s not how it works, and he hired a guy who’s now a close friend of mine, Scott Waterman, who had 10 years of Division I coaching experience and was connected on the West Coast, and I was like, “Yep, that guy’s way better than me at this time, so this is how it works.”

But what he did do was say, “Hey, Matt, I know I don’t have a spot for you right now on my staff, but here is something that I think would be beneficial for you, knowing a little bit about me and my desire to build my network and experience. Go be a prep school coach. Go be an assistant,” especially one from a financial standpoint, being at a place I worked at, Vermont Academy, which is a boarding school, high level NEPSAC.

They just won a NEPSAC championship the year before. Bruce Brown, who plays in the NBA now, Tyrique Jones, had several players that were high-level recruits. And he said, “Listen, Matt, you’re going to go there. You’re going to get a chance to actually coach. You’ll be on the floor coaching. You’ll get a chance to recruit a little bit.

You’ll get a chance to do everything that a Division I coach does at the lower level. But the really important thing is that you’re going to be able to lay a foundation for yourself financially, where you’re not going to have a great deal of expenses.” Again, it was a sacrifice moving to small town Vermont when all my friends were, doing their thing and having fun, but it…

I didn’t spend money. I didn’t… I wasn’t going out. I was eating in the dining halls. I was living on campus in the dorms. I was making barely any money, but I wasn’t spending any money. So again my mindset was big picture thinking. If one day I do have to be in a position again where I want to be an assistant coach at the college level, but I’m making nothing, or I have to volunteer again, what do I need to do to put myself in a position to feel okay doing that?

It’s start saving. And so I started saving up, and I started investing again in myself and these experiences. And man the two years that I spent at Vermont Academy were some of the most essential and pivotal times of my coaching career, primarily from my network. And networking, I think, is one of the things that I do best, and my network now, fast-forward, that was, more than 10 years ago it’s just grown exponentially.

But it was having 15 Division I players in my two years that were getting recruited at every level Division II, Division III. It was seeing the coaches that would come in the gym, 6:00 a.m. open gyms in Saxtons River, Vermont. We would have coaches from California flying in, and it was just like, “Wow, these dudes grind.

This is what they do, and this is their profession, and this is their career.” And so I learned so much from those coaches. I got a chance to pick their brains on things and, But most importantly, again, back to what we were talking about before- I, as a younger guy, had a chance to have just enough of an age difference with these high school kids where I had some coaching experience that they respected, but also I was young enough where we we could relate a little bit, and I was living in the dorms with them.

I was teaching some of them in geometry. I was coaching them in… I tell you what, we had the big– We m- had to have had the biggest JV lacrosse team in the country. We had 6’9″, 6’7″, 6’6″. It was crazy. But again you build, again, my coaching voice with those guys, and that just gave me so much confidence.

And so that was an incredible experience I had there at a very high-level prep school competing against NBA, future NBA players, Donovan Mitchell, you name it, all these guys across the NEPSAC. And then the opportunity came to go to the West Coast for me, which was, again, let me put myself in an environment where I’m forced to expand and grow and challenge myself.

I had already had that experience at Wisconsin being in a new environment, so let me try it now in a different part of the country. And I hit the ground running. And those four years, my two years at Vermont Academy coaching, my two years at the Windward School coaching, Again, were just incredible for me as a young coach to learn not only about myself, but to learn about the landscape of college basketball, to expand my network tremendously was really cool because when I moved to California, there was a lot of coaches from the New England area that would come recruit, and they would call me, and they knew I was an East Coast guy, and they’d say, “Hey, Matt, I’m thinking about going to see you guys work out, and then I was going to go down to San Diego for, the…

You guys are working out at 1:00. I’m going to go to San Diego at 4:00.” And I’m like, “No, you’re not, because you’re going to hit traffic, and this is not, it’s not how it works.” And so a- again, having some value to add to those people. And the other cool thing was that there was some coaches that had recruited guys that I had been with at Vermont that then fast-forward to Windward were the same coaches that had seen me, and they’re like, “Wait, weren’t you just in Vermont?

Now you’re in Los Angeles. What’s up with you, dude?” I was like, “I don’t know, man. I’m just trying to figure it out.” And and so the al- also really cool thing about my time at Windward was that in addition to being a varsity assistant, I was a eighth grade head coach, so it was a, it’s…

Windward is a 7 through 12 private school, and so the seventh grade coach, the eighth grade coach were assistants on the varsity team. And so again, just for me, m- maybe it’s not what most people envision as their first head coaching opportunity, but to be an eighth grade head coach, I was like, “Yo, I’m going to practice plan.

I’m going to spend hours putting together this plan,” and everybody else is like, “Dude, what are you doing? It’s the eighth grade team. It’s not that big of a deal.” Like to me it is. It is a very big deal. And so again, that, that helped me so much to just learn about myself and how I want to approach my coaching career in the future and have that impact and be able to help, and I got to see it firsthand from the high school perspective of working with young people to get to college, which to me is, I’ve been building my career in the student athlete world with high school and college, and whether it’s high school players getting to college or whether it’s college players becoming young men and going off into the world of whether they’re players or in the real world that to me is what’s really got me so excited and so passionate about coaching, and it’s what’s kept me going this long.

[00:38:13] Mike Klinzing: How important do you think eventually those head coaching reps for you at the eighth grade level are going to be if and when you get an opportunity to be a head coach at the college level? ‘Cause one of the things that I always think about is how different it is to be an assistant coach versus being a head coach.

And I’ll just give you a quick example from my own life. For a long time, I was a varsity assistant basketball coach at the high school level. And then one year, right before the season started, our JV coach left, and so I ended up being the varsity assistant still, but also taking over and being the head coach of the JV team.

And I hadn’t been a head coach at any level. It probably was, like, 10 years into my assistant career. And I remember it took me probably six, seven, eight games to figure out “Hey, I have to make decisions about who I’m subbing in the game,” and, “Hey, I have to call a timeout, and when I do, I can’t just make a suggestion.

I have to have something to say to these guys when I bring ’em over for a timeout.” And I found myself, in that short period of time, whatever, 20 games of a JV season, I think I probably got better as a coach more quickly in those 20 games because I realized all the things that my head coach had to do that I kinda took for granted when I was sitting next to him as an assistant.

And I really felt like those reps that I got as a JV coach made me a better coach any time I ever had an opportunity to coach my own team moving forward. A-and I have to believe that you feel that same way. Like you said, the amount of time that you put into prep, practice plans, a-and do all the things that you did as a head coach in that environment, regardless of whether it’s eighth grade, it’s varsity, it’s college, th- just the opportunity to have those reps, I’m sure you looked at ’em as val-valuable then, and I’m sure that eventually, if you do become a head coach, that you’ll look back on those times and be like, “Hey, th-those reps They were valuable to me

[00:40:16] Matt Elkin: Yeah, and I think one of the really cool things for me, and especially in that space with the eighth grade team, was those kids were at the age that I was at when I first started to really fall in love with basketball.

And to understand that you have some kids that are loving playing and want to, y- are trying to make the varsity team, and my job is to help get them ready to be JV and then varsity in the future. The same way you have kids that are, it’s just their winter sport, right? And so again, how can you have…

help them have fun? It helps you to be a better teacher and I think there’s so many carryover in things b- that are similar between teaching and coaching, right? And so what I need to be able to explain to people why are they doing this. I could’ve been the best coach in the whole world and drop all these X and O’s, but if Dilly is running the wrong way and Timmy’s going this way, and they’re both screening for each other and they’re bumping it I’m not doing my job.

And then we’re not having fun. And so it was a really good, especially having been at the high level prep school and then, being at a high level with our varsity program and having come from college, like, where you take for granted how much experience these players have. Some of the kids came to me for tryouts and they couldn’t make a lay- or they couldn’t dribble or, and they’re still on your team no matter what.

And so you have to be able to make sure that they don’t go home and tell mom and dad that they had a bad day at school because basketball practice, their coach was annoying or s- or something happened today that really ruined their day, in the same way you want them to go home and say what a great day they had because they made a shot in the game and it was their first time scoring ever, and maybe their last time scoring.

For me, it just really helped me to have a a great appreciation for the foundational elements of basketball, and it really, it kinda brought me back to, again, my kind of love where it started and having fun and it was, something like just having a team huddle and being able to talk to those guys and see them develop during the course of the season to where, maybe before the season started, none of them really liked playing basketball or were interested in pursuing it, to by the end of the season, there was a couple guys that were like, “Coach we had such a great season.

I can’t wait for next year when we get to high school and we’re going to go to tryouts and try to be on the JV team or the varsity team or whatever.” That was probably some of the most rewarding time that I had spent in coaching, even to this day in my career

[00:42:34] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s awesome to be able to hear you, somebody who’s obviously achieved what you achieved to this point in your career, and to look back on that experience with a bunch of eighth graders as fondly as you do, and just to know that y- you had an impact on those kids.

And regardless of whether they’re in eighth grade or whether they’re guys who are aspiring to play in the NBA or play overseas, like the guys that you’re working with now, the impact that you’re having using the game of basketball, whether you’re having that on a bunch of eighth graders or whether you’re having that on a bunch of college guys, you’re still having an impact on human beings.

And I think that clearly is a theme that’s coming through in our conversation, that you’re, again, using the game of basketball to be able to have an impact on people. And when I think about coaching, to me, that- that’s what coaching is all about. We all love to win. We all love to compete at the highest level.

And ultimately, we’re also developing people, and we’re trying to put good people out into the world and using the game of basketball as the vehicle to be able to do that. So I just love the fact that, again you’re thinking about, “Hey, how can I pour into these guys in front of me?” It’s not “Hey, these are a bunch of eighth graders, whatever.

I’m just going to kinda go through, and I’m coaching it.” And the fact that you put your heart and soul into it and gave those kids everything that you had, to me, that again, that’s just… That’s what it’s all about. And that’s also how… Another thing that I’ve learned over the course of the podcast, Matt, from talking to so many coaches is that’s really how your next opportunity comes to you is, right?

You do a tremendous job in the role that you’re in, whatever that role is. It could be coaching eighth grade basketball. It could be sweeping the floors before practice. It could be doing the laundry. It could be whatever. But if you’re doing the best job in whatever role you’ve been given, that’s where you get your next opportunity.

And if you’re already looking out the door and only going at 75% of your current role, you’re probably never going to get out the door to that next job that you want unless you’re doing everything that you need to do and pouring your heart and soul into the job that’s in front of you. So kudos to you for that.

Talk to me about the opportunity at Yale. So you’re at Vermont Academy. You go out to the Windward School. You’re traveling, going acro- going cross country. You’ve been all over the place. You’ve been in the Midwest. Now the opportunity comes at Yale. How does that cross your desk?

[00:44:48] Matt Elkin: Yeah. So again, just extremely fortunate that I really invested in the relationships of people that I had got to meet along the way.

And one of the coaches who was a D3 coach at the time at Skidmore who had come to our gym when I was at Vermont, he had gotten hired at Yale as a director of ops. Fast-forward, it was towards the end of my time at Windward. COVID was just starting. This was 2019. And he called me. We had been kept in touch, and he called me and said, “Hey, Matt, I’m thinking I want to pivot into a different direction within my coaching and player development outside of Yale.

But I know that you and I have spoken over time about your aspirations of getting into college coaching. Do you think this would be something you’d be interested in? Because if so, I’m planning on going into our head coach’s office later today and letting him know that this is the direction I’m going, and I would love to have a great person that I could say, ‘Hey, I think this guy will be suited for this position.'”

So again, I, like most people probably understand, when jobs get posted or when they’re out there, it’s probably too late. And so the best thing you can do is have some sort of in or s- or some sort of inside scoop to know when something is going to become available. And so what ended up happening is because my connections to the East Coast, because I actually growing up in Boston, had spent time at Boston University, which was the head coach was Joe Jones, who was the brother of James Jones at Yale.

Because of some of the connections between players that Yale had r- recruited on the West Coast and then just because some of the people that, again, I’d had the privilege to begin to get to build relationships with the opportunity was presented to me. I had a phone call with Coach Jones.

He said basically, “Hey, listen, Matt, this thing COVID, we don’t really know what’s going to happen, but they just shut down the Ivy League tournament. They just stopped the NCAA tournament. We have no idea what this is going to look like. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to pay you or anything, but we have this opening.

I don’t know how much operating there will need to be going on if we don’t have a season, but is this something you’d be interested in?” And I said I’m ready, man. Let’s go.” This is my dream. I have no idea what director of ops does. I think I know, but I would soon find out. And this is just something I would love to do.

Again, I would… had spent that time the last couple years in elite boarding school, elite private school, different parts of the country, being surrounded by what I viewed to be Ivy League type people. And so now having a chance to be at one of the prominent basketball programs in the Ivy League, for me was something that was a very incredible and logical and amazing next step.

So I remember vividly, I got off the phone call with Coach Jones. I told, I did what I thought I was supposed to do was like, “Hey, I need some time to think about this. Let me gather my thoughts.” That’s what kind of I had been advised by people in your career to not jump things. So I called my head coach from Windward And I called Ryan Silver, who runs West Coast Elite, now All In Elite, their program who I was working for when I was in LA, and they both said, “Matt, if you don’t call him back in the next five minutes, not only are you not getting that job, but I’m firing your ass and you’re going to be on the street.

So you better call him back and tell him you’re taking it.” And so I called coach back like 10 minutes later. I was like, “Hey, Coach this might be a little weird, and I know I told you I needed some time, but I want to do it. Let’s go.” And he was like, “Great. Perfect.” It… for me, again, just to have the opportunity.

The team was coming off winning an Ivy League championship before COVID stopped their tournament. And so again, it just, the chance to be that closer to home, be in New Haven, not too far from Boston and to make that jump into college, I w- was… Our s- season at Windward had ended with a CIF championship in the southern section, which was incredible.

I had coached two players there that were both freshmen and sophomores that were five stars, that one went to UCLA, one went to USC. So I was like, “Man, I’ve done an incredible job in these four years coaching. I’ve got the experience. My network is starting to really grow, and now the only thing that I really need to do is be a full-time coach or full-time staff person at a Division I level.”

I had got a great taste of it at Wisconsin, a great taste at Northeastern, and I thought I was ready for that opportunity. And I made the trip back to the East Coast and only to find out that our season was not going to be played. We’re on alternating schedules.

You can only come in this, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It was a lot of time off, honestly. I spent… I was able to spend a lot of time back in Boston. But just being around the coaches, just same way when I was at Northeastern again, like at Northeast, I didn’t touch on this, but Dave McLaughlin, who ended up being the head coach at Dartmouth, who’s now the coach at Colby, Chris Markwood, who is now the head coach at Maine Bill Cohen, who’s still the head coach at Northeastern, and Tom Murphy, who had been a legendary head coach at Hamilton College, those guys were all in that office.

And I was sitting, like taking stray bullets of knowledge from these guys. So the same thing happened at Yale. We weren’t playing, but I’m sitting in the office, they’re talking about recruiting. We’re doing Zoom calls. I’m sitting in, just listening and observing and really just soaking in as much information as I could from, in my opinion, one of the greatest coaches of all time, James Jones, one of the most successful in Ivy League history, let alone Yale history.

And so again, to have that opportunity to be a part of a successful program, I never would have expected then fast-forward the next year, we would’ve got right back to our winning ways. And, in my four years at Yale given one year we didn’t have a season we won three Ivy League championships in my three seasons there.

So just really incredible. Again, lucky, fortunate. Right time, right place, whatever you want to say. But as I’ve gone more into my career, I’ve started to believe more and more that things are not just by chance. You work for them. You work to earn opportunities to put yourself, and then you obviously need to pursue those opportunities and do the best you can.

But at the time, I thought I was just extremely lucky to fall into this opportunity. But when I got there, I knew I was going to try to do whatever I could to add as much value to the program as possible.

[00:50:29] Mike Klinzing: What are the characteristics that you think have made Coach Jones so successful?

I had the opportunity to have him on the podcast and back a couple years ago. I think we probably passed each other at the Yale camp. My son was there in the summer of… Let’s see, what’s he… He’s going to be a junior next year, so that would’ve been after the ’22 maybe the summer of ’22.

But so I got the opportunity to introduce myself to Coach Jones, and then he was gracious enough to come on the podcast with me. And what do you think? What, what makes him so successful?

[00:51:05] Matt Elkin: Yeah, and I haven’t been around that many head coaches in my career yet. I haven’t, i’ve been very lucky that I, even though I have bounced a little bit, I’ve worked only for a couple of really successful head coaches. But for him, one of the things that really stood out to me was he was so steadfast in what he knew worked and he was sticking to it. He stick to his game plan of how he’s approaching a practice daily, weekly, monthly throughout the course of a season.

He stuck to what he believed was important things for players to learn, both basketball-wise and being a part of a team, like with the culture. And he was very calm, like super calm dude, super chill, hilarious, great boss to work for, great person to be around, but in the course of a game, was never yelling, was never getting on the refs.

I don’t know if I ever saw him get a technical foul in my time coaching with him or against him. And I think that the players, they absorbed the energy and the mindset and the vibe of their coach. And so the fact that whether you’re, we were going to play Kansas or Kentucky or whether we were in a close game against Cornell or Princeton, it didn’t matter.

He was very just confident, “Hey, this is what we’re going to do. This is my approach.” And the players resonated with that. And so I thought it was really cool just to be around somebody like that who was so confident in his approach. And a lot of that probably, came because of the time that he was in his career of “Hey, I’ve, I’ve been doing this for 20-plus years.

I know what works. I know what doesn’t work. I know how I am as a coach.” And so he just exuded that confidence and that steadfast mentality to our players, and I thought that was really successful because he had built a winning program. I was not coming in to change the way that Yale men’s basketball was operating.

The w- the wheel was already turning. I was just helping push it, right? And maybe clearing out a few sticks or twigs in the way. But like my thing was like, let me just observe how this guy operates. And again the great thing about our staff too is that we had two assistant coaches that had been around him for 10 and 15 years as well.

One had been a former player of his. And so those three guys were just like- masterful at working together and feeding off of each other and really knowing how each other liked things done. And so for me, being the new kid on the block, I got to see that and figure out where can I fit in, still be myself, but also learn and see how he operated and the players the same thing.

Every time a new freshman came in, it was those seniors, those juniors that knew what coach wanted and knew what the program was about, and they would teach the younger guys. And I got to see, one class of kids coming from being a freshman all the way through to senior year, and that kind of consistency was one of the things that, I hope that one day when I become a head coach that I can be as consistent and as successful as he’s been.

[00:53:55] Mike Klinzing: Tell me about your role day-to-day. What were some of the things that you were responsible for?

[00:54:00] Matt Elkin: Everything. Little bit of everything. Everything from obviously setting up for practice organizing. We didn’t, at a place like Yale, we didn’t have a ton of student managers.

We had a lot of people that there’s so much pressure and stress for school that you don’t have a lot of people that can really support. So you might only have two or three student managers, and maybe one day they all have an exam, and so I’m running clock, and then I’m going to rebound, and then the clock’s about to go off, so I have to go run back and stop it and, so doing a ton of stuff. I used to take stats after practice every day, so I’d re-watch practice and take stats to share with our coaching staff. I did a lot of our, a lot of organization for our recruiting, trying to make sure that I was on top of, players getting transcripts, doing things like that.

I ran all of our camps, our kids’ camps and our elite camps. I did stuff with social media, trying to get our presence up on Instagram and Twitter and things like that. I helped with aspects of our budget, obviously planning travel, where we would stay. And again, the nice thing about working for Coach Jones is it, like when you’ve been doing it for so long he…

it’s not “Hey Coach, where do you want to stay when we play Dartmouth?” He’s “We’re staying at this hotel. Your job is to make sure that we have enough rooms when the game comes.” And I’m like, “Okay.” There was a blueprint already in place for me. And but again, at a place like Yale where there’s only five people on staff, your head coach, your three assistants and me, and maybe a manager or two, but we don’t have a, the amount of staff that we have now at Stanford where you can kinda delegate to other people.

Things were delegated to me, and I loved it because I wanted to do the best that I could at ordering our post-game meal. I wanted to do the best that I could at running an elite camp because then I knew that would lead to hopefully one day him, “Hey, Matt can you help me with this scout?” Or, “Hey, Matt, can you rebound or work out with this guy on the side?”

Something like that, so really just tried to do the best job that I could at everything. I know that you can’t be an expert in everything, and sometimes if you try to be an expert in everything, you’re good at nothing. But my, my big thing has always really been my organization and my attention to detail, and I think that was something that in the operations role, especially as a young guy, I was really hungry and eager to be successful.

So I wasn’t one of those guys that was coming in, especially having already coached, even at the high school level. I wasn’t that guy saying, “Oh, I’m just going to do this, be one foot in, one foot out,” like you said, so that I could get the next job coaching because I knew that wasn’t going to make me be successful and it wasn’t going to reflect good on me.

So I’m going to crush organizing. I’m going to crush doing whatever you need me to do so that I can make sure that you guys can do your job. And then my hope is that through that, I’ll do a good job at my job. It’ll help your, you, your lives be easier, the players’ lives will be easier. And then through that, I’ll learn what goes into doing your job.

And then when the opportunity comes, I’ll be a little bit better at doing it

[00:56:47] Mike Klinzing: I think that’s a tremendous lesson to learn for anybody as an assistant coach. What I heard you say there consistently is, “I tried to make sure that the other guys on the staff, that their job was made easier by your presence,” right?

You looked for things that you could take off their plate. You looked for ways to make their day-to-day easier, and that’s how you add value to a program. So again, anybody who’s listening, young coach, add value to your program. Take things off of your head coach’s plate. Take things off the plate of the assistant coaches who are on your staff so that you make their job easier, and that’s how, again, you improve your own standing, but also how you improve the program and improve the working conditions for the guys who are a part of your staff.

I think that’s a huge piece of what it means to be a great assistant coach. Obviously, there at Yale, and we’ll get into the Stanford piece of it in a minute, but what did you learn about working with high-level academic student athletes while you were at Yale? What made the experience of working with the guys that were on the teams while you were there, what was special about them as people, as players, as students, your relationship with them?

Just talk to me a little bit about, again, working with high academic student athletes.

[00:58:05] Matt Elkin: Yeah, the first thing is they’re extremely organized like myself. They have to be able to manage their academics basketball, training, and a- again, it’s not I think maybe prior to my time in the league, but 20 years ago, whatever, in the Ivy League, the level was much less than it is now.

It wasn’t that, oh, these guys are just smart kids that like to play basketball. No, these… They had pro aspirations. My f- my senior or my final year at Yale, we had three NBA players on that team. It’s incredible. And so people just think, oh yeah, high academic kids, whatever. But no, the- these guys were in the gym before practice, after practice, in the weekend, at night.

They were getting it in to try to be the best they could be as basketball players. And then also, they were doing everything they needed to do as students. They w- you know, sometimes we’d come into the locker room, and there’d be like math equations up on the whiteboard like next to a scout, and you’re like, “Dude, what are we doing here?”

But you, again, you have an appreciation for the organization, the maturity. I think one of the things that I’ve really enjoyed about working with these types of student athletes is the way that they approach things is, again, like myself, forward-thinking, future-thinking, big picture.

In the Ivy League, we had time off in the summer, and so a lot of these players would take time to go get internships or jobs. They’d be doing things to advance their career beyond basketball, understanding that at some point, hopefully they would have a chance to play in the NBA or professionally overseas or whatever, but at some point, they would need to come back to their education, their network, their experiences.

And so when you’re surrounded by people that are all like that- it really helps you to really elevate yourself. And so again I think that being in a locker room full of guys like that, it’s a lot different than if you have one or two guys that are like that and they are diamonds or, a little bit unique in that space.

Everybody was unique in that way. And so I just really loved, like even there, there was a couple years ago, I had a tweet that went like viral and it was a joke and it was like, “This is what everybody thinks I do.” And it was a picture of me coaching one of our players or talking to one of our players.

And then it was like, “This is what I actually do.” And it was a series of texts from one of our players saying, “Hey Coach, can I get this chicken parm? Thanks. Appreciate it. Hey Coach, I’ll do the number six from Jimmy John’s. Thanks, Coach. Appreciate it.” And part of it I think was funny because people are like, “Oh yeah, it’s so true.

People think you coach, but really you’re doing food orders.” But it was more so no, it’s these dudes, they say please and thank you. These guys introduce you to their girlfriends, to their parents, to they want you to be part of their lives because they understand that what an experience this is in a time in their life and especially in my role, all the things that I did that nobody told me I needed to do, but I did because I knew, again, would make their lives a little bit easier, make our coaches’ lives easier and, it’s at this point, Mike, it’s really all I know.

And so I don’t envy a lot of my fellow coaches and friends that work in places where they don’t get that experience. And I hear from them and I think, wow that’s so different than what I’ve experienced. And again, it makes me appreciate so much more the young adults that I’ve been able to work with and the families that I’ve been able to be surrounded by because it makes you appreciate that really not everybody is like that.

And that really re-emphasizes for me that the uniqueness and the, how special it is to be around these types of people

[01:01:17] Mike Klinzing: I think it’s the right people in the right place, right? No matter what coach you talk to they always talk about you want to have the right fit. There might be a guy who has a certain level of talent, but that guy isn’t a fit for either the institution or the head coach or whatever it may be.

You have to find the right people, the right fit, and obviously, when you have an Ivy League school or you have a Stanford, that there’s a level of academics and things that go along with that typically you can trace back to the kid’s upbringing, their family. Somebody in that lineage has put an emphasis on not just athletics, but also academics.

And then when you get the opportunity to interact with kids who are on that level, again, it makes for a special experience. It’s a special experience for them to be at one of those schools at that level, and it’s a special opportunity for you as a coach and the coaching staffs at those schools to be able to interact with those types of kids who are bringing that work et- work ethic, not only on the floor but also- Yeah

in the classroom, where as I’m sure you’re thinking about other people that you know in the profession, where they have to hound guys to get to class, and they have to keep- … on top of making sure that this kid’s passing and doing it, and those are the things that you’re there to support your guys, but your guys are doing a lot of that, right?

They’re probably doing it at a higher level even than what the coaching staff sometimes even expects. Their expectations for themselves are probably sometimes just as high. I think that certainly makes it unique. And then for you, now you’re on another double cross-country move, Stanford, Columbia, back to Stanford.

So just walk me through that timeline, how that kinda comes to pass, and then we’ll eventually get to the role that you’re in now. But talk to me about the first stint at Stanford, the trip back to Columbia, and then we’ll get to, we’ll get to what you’re doing now at Stanford.

[01:03:13] Matt Elkin: Yeah, so throughout my journey a little bit when I was still at Vermont Academy in Windward and then also at Yale, I had been also interviewing at other places for jobs.

And a s- a story I tell people all the time is two particular jobs that I interviewed for. One was at Cleveland State for Coach Dennis Felton, and one was at University of Denver for Coach Rodney Billups. Both of those were in support staff roles before I made it to Yale and one when I was already there, as far as things that I thought would help me continue to get new experiences, whatever.

Both of those jobs, I got flown out, went through the whole process, great experience preparing for the interview, thought I was going to get it, didn’t get it, thought I was never going to make it in the business. And a year later, both of those coaches unfortunately were let go from their jobs. And I oft- often tell that story to young coaches because at the time, I had no perspective or idea that this thing that I thought I was never going to be successful in actually was probably the best thing that never happened to me, because who knows where I would’ve been a year later if I had been on a staff and got fired and let go and been, in limbo.

All that time I had been applying for jobs, was starting to continue to really grow my network. And I also interviewed for a job during that time at WashU Division III to be an assistant coach, which again, was, in my opinion, one of the top five to 10 high academic Division III programs with a lot of success, but also great, institution academically.

And so I was slowly exploring other opportunities outside of high school coaching outside of Yale But really after that season that we had where we went to the NCAA tournament, we beat Auburn in the first round we had an incredible season. My, again, my goal had always been high academics at the highest level, and it just so happened that year after 2024 three jobs that I had always had my eye on opened up.

One was Stanford, one was Michigan, and one was Vanderbilt. And those in my mind were three of the top academic universities and also high level. Talk about Pac-12, now ACC, Big Ten, and SEC. And so I was doing everything I could to try to make connections at those three places. Just so happened that because of my time spent on the West Coast the head coach I worked for when I was at Windward used to be an assistant coach at the University of Portland for a guy named Eric Reveneaux, who was the head coach, who was now the assistant newly hired at Stanford for Kyle Smith, who had just got the job.

Kyle had played basketball at Hamilton College for Tom Murphy, who I had worked with at Northeastern. Wayne Hunter, who was also on the staff, had coached West Coast League, which was an organization that I worked for when I was in LA. So I had these random touch points and basically reached out to them and said, “Hey, I’ll…”

Again, back to five years, “I’ll do whatever. Literally, I don’t care. I’ll be a manager. I don’t think I’m allowed to be, but I’ll be a manager. I’ll be a, the office assistant. I don’t care. I want to be at Stanford.” And They said, “Hey, we have this position. I don’t know what it’s going to pay.

I don’t know kinda what your role will be, but it’ll be something around organizing our recruiting and running camps.” And I was like, “Are you shitting me? That’s what I do best. You– This– You need to hire me.” And so I, I did my thing like I do, and I kept pursuing and I pursued and they said, “Hey, okay we’ll give it a shot.”

We don’t– None of them had worked with me before, but they had heard great things from people I’d worked with, s- again, in those specific areas. So again, fortunate, lucky, right time, right place, whatever. But I ended up there. So I got hired as the assistant recruiting coordinator in a support staff role at Stanford which again, was involved getting transcripts organizing our recruiting efforts.

Now the unique thing besides what I had been doing previously at Yale and even before that, was that now I’m on a staff where it’s a heavy West Coast focus and I’m the East Coast guy. Pri-prior to that, at Yale, I’d had some ties to the West Coast, but we had guys, Matt Kingsley, who was the associate, he recruited the West Coast.

They had players from So I wasn’t adding as much value in that area now as I was with being extremely organized and also being able to have connections back to the East Coast where there’s a lot of players and families that would be really interested in Stanford. I had that opportunity, and it was my first time working for a coach.

It wasn’t Kyle Smith’s first year as a head coach. He had been very successful at Columbia, San Francisco, Washington State, but it was year one for him at Stanford, and it was my first time working for a head coach who was in year one running a new program. And so I learned so much from them, being a, again, being a part of a bigger staff.

We had eight or nine coaches on staff, and that opportunity for me was something that I didn’t imagine that I could ever say I was working at Stanford. I’d always looked up to some of the coaches and some of my friends or mentors that had been there and said, “Yeah, maybe one day I’ll get that.”

Sure, and maybe pigs will fly and, whatever. But I was there and I couldn’t believe it. And just as quick as it came, the opportunity came to, to go to Columbia. And the Columbia opportunity came again through the network. Kyle Smith, his coaching tree, Kevin Hovde, who had been the assistant coach at Florida, they were just coming off winning a national championship, and he got hired back at Columbia, where Kyle Smith first was the head coach.

And I told Coach Smith that Stanford is a dream spot for me. This is, in my mind the mountaintop of high academics and high-level athletics. And I told him I want to do whatever I can to be here as long as possible. And the next step for me would be to be an assistant coach. And he said, for us now being in the ACC, it’s hard for me to hire a guy that’s never been an assistant coach before.

So if you can go to Columbia, a place that you know well, the Ivy League to work for my mentor or my mentee, who is in his first year ever as a head coach and you can be successful there. You can get your feet wet in recruiting, you can do some coaching, you can do scouting, player development, whatever, and do all the same things you’ve been doing for us, but bring it to them at a high level.

Then in the future, maybe if something opens up here, we’d love to hire you back.” So that was my mentality again is I… This guy took a chance on me, brought me in. He’s guiding me in this direction, and I didn’t know if this, that would be my last time ever stepping foot on Stanford’s campus.

It was a big risk for me, and it took a lot of trust in myself, but also in him and Coach Hovde to be able to say, “Hey, I’m, I got to where I want to be.” And it was a really, Mike, it was a really tough decision for me, honestly. Most people would say, oh yeah, to go from being a support staff guy to get a raise to go be an assistant coach, D1 millions of people would do that.

But for me it was tough because again the place that I’m in and the people that I’m around matter to me Just as much, if not more than what I’m actually doing because I know I’ll have an impact. And so I just trusted and then lo and behold, got to Columbia and we had a great season, and Brett McConnell, who had replaced me on our staff at Stanford, was able to get the head coaching opportunity at Dartmouth, and a spot opened up, and I got a call from Coach Smith basically saying “Are you in?”

And I said, “I’m– Adam when’s the next flight to SFO? I’m, I’ll be right there.”

[01:10:18] Mike Klinzing: You didn’t hang up and tell him you needed to think about it and take take your te- take your 10 minutes? You just immed- it was an immediate, it was an immediate yes?

[01:10:25] Matt Elkin: No, but the funny thing is that the…

Basically, he gave me a heads up “Hey, I think Brett is going to potentially be getting the job but we don’t know for sure. If he doesn’t get the job, obviously there’s no spot.” So I didn’t want to put myself in a position where I was already thinking ahead of, “Oh, I’m going to go to Stanford and, have to then go back to Columbia and be like disappointed or whatever and refocus myself.”

So I’m like, “All right, cool.” Like it’s chill. Like I’m… If it happens, great, but I’m not thinking that it’s necessarily going to happen. I’m trying to get my mindset around I’m coming back to Columbia. I get a ca- I actually, I don’t even get a call from him. I see it on Twitter from Pete Thamel or whatever, Brett McConnell hired at Dartmouth and I’m like, “Oh, this is happening.”

This might… Like I’m checking my phone. Did I miss a text? Or, do I got service? What’s… Is he going to call me? Whatever. And he calls me and he says, “Hey Matt, I want to, we talked about this, the job is yours if you want it, and you have two hours to tell me because I don’t want people blowing up my phone.

I don’t… I want to be able to tell people it’s over, and you have two hours and do what you need to do.” And I said Coach, I have to tell Coach Huggy. I want to tell my parents. I have to talk to the players.” He’s “All right. You have two hours, so make sure you do all whatever shit you need to do, and then make sure that you’re good because I’m going to start telling people that you’re going to get hired as a new assistant.”

So it was a crazy day, and this was right before the Final Four this past year. So it was almost a year to the date that I had left Stanford to go to Columbia. And so again for me, the Final Four has become a great opportunity kind of the end of the season, see a lot of people that I talk to year-round and it was where I first got that job at Northeastern when I met Coach McLoughlin back in 2014.

It’s, it was a time that I get very excited about and I’m like, “Oh, crap,” “I have to do all this stuff. All this crazy stuff is happening, and then I have to go to the Final Four. I have to pretend like nothing is happening. I have to talk to all these people.” Some people might know, some people might… It was just, it was a wild 48 hours for me.

But again I would do it over again a million times. It’s just, I still can’t believe that I’m an assistant coach at Stanford. It doesn’t seem real. It’s a dream come true. It’s something that, again, I never imagined that I would be when I was coaching youth basketball or coaching eighth grade team at Windward.

And the fact that I’m here now, again I put a lot of responsibility on myself to make sure that I do my best to honor this position, this opportunity that I have.

[01:12:44] Mike Klinzing: So talk to me about the difference between your role the first time, for people who don’t understand, as the assistant in charge of the recruiting operations to being a full-time assistant coach for somebody maybe who doesn’t necessarily understand.

Maybe you got a high school coach listening who doesn’t necessarily know what the difference is between the role you were in before versus the role you’re in now. Just explain the differences in layman’s terms.

[01:13:09] Matt Elkin: Yeah. So essentially I handled pretty much everything off of the court, similar to when I was in ops with regards to specifically with recruiting.

And so it was getting the transcripts, it was organizing, especially like when coaches would go to the East Coast, I would help put together itineraries so they could, know, hey, I’m going to go to New Hampshire and then Boston and then New York, and understand how that would work. I would do a lot of the legwork of, going through scouting services to pull out the names of the guys that I thought were academics.

It was doing a lot of texting and calling, it was running the elite camps, it was getting ideas of early on names to go, and then having to then pass that information off to somebody else and trust that they were going to execute with the same diligence and organization and personality that I would approach it.

And so it’s really difficult for somebody to invest so much of your time and effort and energy to doing something and then not being able to see it through, right? And so now the big difference is I still do all a lot of the same things, but now I actually get a chance to go execute them and try to close on these players that I want to recruit.

So I actually get to go out on the road and go recruiting. I get to go to these events. I get to have the phone calls and the Zoom calls. I get to talk to the coaches. I get to sell Stanford in a position where not only am I, now I’m not a behind the scenes guy, but I’m a guy that can come in, hopefully to your home and talk to your mom and dad and to you and tell you why Stanford is the place to go, shake your hand and then get it done, and then be able to go tell my boss, “Hey, we got one.”

And so I think that for me, again, is just the next step in, in my kind of development. And, I’ve been on the job a little over a month. We haven’t played a single game yet, so I don’t even know what my job is going to necessarily look like once games start what, if any, coaching responsibilities I have.

And if I don’t, that’s fine, because I’m going to do, again, just like I’ve done up until this point, the best possible job at my job. And right now my job at this time of year is recruit the best players that we can get for Stanford, identify who is a great fit, who has the grades, who wants to be here, and then be able to execute our camps.

And that might mean being around two hundred nine and ten-year-olds and serving them pizza. But if that’s my job, I’m going to crush it and I’m going to be a star in my job, and that’s one of the things that I learned early on, and one of the things that I think is a main reason that’s helped me get here

[01:15:28] Mike Klinzing: Obviously, one of the biggest topics in college basketball and college sports is the portal and NIL.

So just give me the one-minute version of the conversation that you guys are having in your coaches meetings about how that impacts what you guys do with your roster at Stanford

[01:15:50] Matt Elkin: Yeah, it’s borderline impossible to summarize it in one minute, but essentially the same way we recruit players out of high school, understanding who…

Are they a right fit? Are– Do they understand what Stanford is? Are they Stanford people? Are they going to be all in on Stanford even though we might not have the highest level NIL, even though we might not have all the national championships? Now it’s a little bit unique for us because at least at the Ivy League, everybody’s somewhat on the even playing field.

Nobody has scholarships. Nobody really does NIL. So you’re competing with a little bit more transparency than you are with us. There’s a big difference between teams in our league that are closer to the bottom than the ones that are closer to the top. And so again, some people view that as a difficulty or a challenge.

I view it as an opportunity because I don’t need to be caught up with all the noise and the craziness of, “Oh, yeah, I’m going here because I want this or I want that, or I was promised this,” and it’s no, this– You know what Stanford is. It’s consistent. You know it’s going to be difficult to get in.

I’m sorry to say it, but you’re going to have to take the SAT. If you don’t want to take the SAT, you’re not going to be able to get in. We can’t do anything about that. I’m sorry to say that when you graduate here, you’re going to be one of the most successful people out of your whole friend group. Are you ready for that?

Because it’s really awesome, but you’re going to have to work for it. And so again, it’s having those conversations, the same exact conversations I’m having with parents and players when I was at Yale or when I was at Columbia, I’m having them at Stanford. Now, the only thing is that they feel it’s more attainable to really pursue their career goals of playing in the NBA because going into our third year, we’ve had two seasons, we’ve had two players go get drafted.

One of them was a four-year player out of Paris, France, seven-footer. Maxime Raynaud was three years before we got the job, decided to pass up on transferring. He wanted to see out what he started, was getting his Stanford degree, and he passed up truthfully a lot of NIL opportunity and playing at a high level, and we didn’t go to an NCAA tournament, unfortunately.

But what happened was he went from being the most improved player in the Pac-12 to a first team All-ACC player to a second round NBA draft pick to the second team All NBA rookie with the Sacramento Kings. Fast forward last year, which was when I was at Columbia, but we had a young man, Ebuka Okike, who was from Nashua, New Hampshire was committed to Harvard decided to come to Stanford, took a chance on himself.

We took a chance on him as well. Ended up being one of the best decisions we’ve ever made, he’s ever made. Ended up being a leading scorer, first team All-ACC, first team All-Rookie, and hopefully here in a few days or weeks, we’ll hear his name called in the NBA draft. So you have a six-foot point guard from New Hampshire, one and done, a four-year seven-footer from Paris, France.

Both of those guys came to Stanford for the same reasons, and both of them are leaving with the same results, which is pursuing their dreams of playing in the NBA. So It just further shows you can do it. You can do it at the highest possible level. You don’t have to sacrifice one for the other.

And when you surround yourself with people that have the same mindset, the same goals, the same focus on being great in whatever that is you can achieve anything you want. And so to me, whether it’s in the portal, whether it’s recruiting high school players, you’re trying to identify who are the people that understand what this is all about.

It’s not for everybody and not everybody can make it here. That’s why some people do end up transferring out of Stanford. It’s okay. It’s not for everybody, but it might be one person that can be successful, and we want that one person because I don’t want to see somebody who’s a Stanford kid from a Stanford family that can really achieve great things go somewhere else where they’re not maximizing their potential.

And so my job, the hours that I spend sitting up late at night on the phone or doing research on my computer is to find those players that I think can be successful here because I know that if they get here, we will help them be successful

[01:19:48] Mike Klinzing: Tell me about that research process. You and I talked about it briefly in our call before the podcast, just about, hey, before we go and look at a kid, there are things that obviously have to be in place academically i-in order for you to even consider a kid to be able to be recruited at Stanford.

So what does that research process look like for you and the staff? How do you narrow down? Where does the list initiate? How do you narrow it down into, okay, this kid’s a Stanford kid, this kid’s not? What does that research process look like?

[01:20:22] Matt Elkin: Yeah, it’s multifaceted. It– Obviously we get the transcript.

We look over the transcript. I have a lot of experience now in seeing not just the letters or the numbers, but what they’re actually taking. Are they taking honors and AP classes? Are they taking core classes? It’s not just getting good grades in the electives, but it’s the core, things like that.

It’s, what schools are you coming from? Are you coming from a prestigious or a very successful high school program, a prep school program, or whatever from a basketball and academic standpoint? So it’s looking at all those things. It’s the conversations with the parents. Are the agents, the trainers, the high school coaches, the AAU coaches, are these young men in an environment where they’re supported to make this decision?

Because a lot of times there can be things that are pulling them in different directions, and at seventeen, eighteen years old, you might not be equipped to be able to necessarily handle a big life decision, such as, being able to go to Stanford and passing up other opportunities for a variety of reasons.

I think the important thing is being able to have identify who are these people that are surrounding themselves with the right people. A lot of times that comes from the home that they grew up in the environments that they’re in. And then, it’s a lot of help from people.

It’s getting calls from scouts that are in different parts of the country that know about Stanford that say, “Hey, I know you guys are looking for this position or this type of player or whatever. I have a guy that is– I think would be a perfect fit.” And again, nine times out of ten, that might not be the right fit for us, but people are thinking about us, and they’re thinking about what types of people are Stanford people.

And my job is to help, again, educate them and spread the love to them so that they know this is what we’re looking for, so that it might be a relationship that I’ve known somebody for ten years, and they haven’t sent me a player yet, but maybe it’s just that one kid that came up in their gym or, is at their high school, or they know their parents really love Stanford, things like that.

So it’s a lot of phone calls and a lot of research. I can’t just walk into a gym like a lot of our ACC counterparts or other power conference counterparts and just pick the best players that are out on the floor and be able to circle those names and Get that kid. I do a lot of research. We have a lot of conversations at our office, not only about what a Stanford person looks like, but also who do we want to go for?

Because there might be 10 or 15 players out there that we can recruit. We’re not going to get all of them. We don’t have even have enough space for all of them. So it’s, let’s invest in the two or three or four guys that we all as a staff think check all the boxes of what is going to be successful here. Because the last thing we want to do is bring somebody into this high pressure, high stress environment and they’re going to fail.

We can’t always control how that works, but we can do our homework to make sure that we’re investing in the relationships, in the research and in the development of people to identify when this person gets here, they’re going to come in with a runway to, to hopefully be successful and do incredible things for their future

[01:23:27] Mike Klinzing: Right person, right player, right fit, right?

I think that no matter what the level is, no matter what school you’re at, obviously that’s what you’re looking for, and clearly the standards in order to get there at Stanford are much higher than they are at most institutions around the country. And fortunately, you’ve been in a position where you’ve been at three extremely high academic environments where you’re getting a chance to work with student athletes who are not just great athletes, but they’re also great students.

And so your experience in that, I’m sure, is going to continue to pay dividends for you as you continue to move on at, i-in this at Stanford and in your career, as you think about just, again, the experience of working with that type of student athlete and being able to have an impact on them, as we’ve talked about throughout the conversation.

All right, Matt, final two-part question.

Part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every single day, what brings you the most joy? So first, your biggest challenge, second, your biggest joy.

[01:24:29] Matt Elkin: Yeah, I think my biggest challenge will be, this is the first time in my career and in my life where I feel like I’m at a position where I can really plant myself and try to grow. And there was times as I was continuing to learn, I was always trying to figure out, how can I get here?

Again never looking too far ahead, but now I’m in a position where this is where I want to be. I’m an assistant coach at Stanford University. A-as long as Kyle Smith is the head coach here, as long as I have the opportunity to be in this position, I want to be here. And so I think the challenge is going to be, how can I continue to add value?

If this turns into a five-year, a 10-year thing in my future that I’m here, how can I continue to not get comfortable, stagnant, continue to push myself to be better, to continue to bring in the right people to Stanford and be successful? And, I’ve been a part of very successful programs in the past.

I’ve won championships at just about every place that I’ve been. So what happens if we go through a season where we don’t win a championship? What if we don’t make a tournament? Am I still going to have the same passion, joy, excitement for this position as I do today? And I think that’s going to be a challenge for myself, and it’s a challenge that I’m super excited to face head-on.

Because again, I believe in Stanford so much, and I really, I believe in myself. I believe in the people that I’ve surrounded myself with, the experiences I’ve had up to this point. That’s something that a challenge that I’m really excited for. What, sorry, what was the second one?

[01:25:56] Mike Klinzing: Part two, joy. Biggest joy

[01:25:58] Matt Elkin: Oh, yeah. Biggest joy I definitely think is going to be proving people wrong. I think there’s a lot of people that think that Stanford can’t be successful in this current climate, in this current landscape. I think there’s a lot of players that we recruit that are going to decide to go elsewhere for a variety of reasons.

And I want… I’m excited to continue to show people why Stanford is the top. Why, Coach Smith says it all the time, it’s a lot easier to repeat history than to create history, and a lot of people might not know that Stanford was the number one ranked team in the country about 20 years or so ago.

It’s the premier institution for high academics, Olympic sports. It’s won more national championships than any university in the history of college athletics. It’s greatness through and through. And so I’m excited to show people why I chose to be here and why this is my dream job, why my dream job is not some school where I can make a ton of money or win a ton of national championships, why I want to bring that here and take what all the other places that people think are their success or their goals and take all that and bring it here to Stanford because I believe in it so much.

So it’s going to bring me so much joy when we do make that NCAA tournament, when we do beat oth- other schools in recruiting battles and then truthfully, when the people that trust in us, trust in me, trust in our head coach and our program, trust in Stanford, when they see it through to the end and look back and they say, “I’m so happy that I made this decision.

It’s changed my life.” And that’s, my goal is, again, going back to what we first started talking about, help people as much as I possibly can, and sometimes you might need a little kick in the butt to convince yourself why this is the right decision. But my goal and what will bring me the most joy is when people realize that they made the right decision

[01:27:49] Mike Klinzing: Great stuff, Matt.

It’s well said, and I think it accurately summarizes the entire conversation that you and I had tonight just about your career journey and the impact that you’ve been able to have on the student athletes that have been fortunate enough to be coached by you. And a- again, I think that just the career path that you’ve chosen to walk and the place that you’ve ended up seem like they are completely meshed in a way that makes sense to anybody who listened to this conversation.

So I wish you nothing but the best on that. 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’re doing in Stanford? Give me social media, email, whatever you feel comfortable with. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:28:36] Matt Elkin: Yeah, for sure. My email, feel free to shoot me an email if you’re interested. Would love to hear from you. It’s melkin@stanford.edu. And on social media, I’m on X or Twitter, it’s @CoachElkin. I’m on Instagram When I was a kid, I had a nickname that I was a DJ ’cause I used to, be a little on the ones and twos, but that’s kinda stuck with me.

So it’s @djElkin123. That’s my Instagram. And then one other thing, I know you didn’t ask about it, Mike, but I did just want to throw it in because it’s really important for me and it’s something that I’ve also based a lot of my career and also something that’s been passionate is I’m also the executive director of the Jewish Coaches Association.

I’m proud to be Jewish and proud to build a network of coaches throughout, from the NBA all the way down to youth. And we’re expanding into other sports, but that would be a whole another conversation for a whole another pod. But if anybody out there is interested in, finding ways to connect Through other areas of themselves outside of just their profession, outside of just who they are but in a deeper, meaningful way with others that share similar things, whether you’re a Black coach, Asian coach, whether it’s the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, whatever it may be.

I encourage so many young people to find other ways to engage and find value in themselves. And the Jewish Coaches Association is not something that I started, but something I’ve took the baton and ran with. So if anybody’s interested in learning more about that or asking me more about it, the website is www.jewishcoaches.com, and then we’re on Instagram and X @jewishcoaches.

We love promoting other coaches that are out there at all levels. We’re trying to grow into other sports as well. We do events at the Final Four for men’s and women. We do an event at the NACDA Conference for athletic directors. We do an event at the NBA Summer League, and we’re trying to continue to offer more opportunities for people to be proud of who they are and to connect with others that are really passionate about not only coaching and sports, but also what makes them who they are, and it’s a big part of who I am, and so I love to pay it forward to everybody else.

So I just wanted to make sure to give a quick shout-out for that as well.

[01:30:39] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. That’s a great way to end it. Please, if you have any need to connect with Matt on any of that, please do and Matt, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule, especially, again, coming off a trip to Mexico and setting yourself up in an airport lounge to be able to have the, an opportunity to have this conversation.

Again, really, truly appreciative of your time, so thank you for that. This was a lot of fun. Hopefully, you enjoyed it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening, and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

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[01:32:03] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast presented by Head Start Basketball