MIKE LARKIN – RUTGERS UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL DIRECTOR OF BASKETBALL OPERATIONS – EPISODE 1146

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

Email – mlarkin@scarletknights.com

Twitter/X – @Mike__Larkin

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Mike Larkin is the Director of Basketball Operations at Rutgers University.  He has been with the Scarlet Knights since 2019. He initially was hired as the Special Assistant to Head Coach Steve Pikiell, before earning a promotion to the Director of Basketball Operations role. 

Larkin previously served at Saint Michael’s College where he spent seven seasons on staff, including the last four as associate head coach.  Before that Larkin served as a graduate intern for two seasons at Rutgers-Newark and was an assistant coach at Bard (NY) College.
 
Larkin was a Jacob Albright Scholar and a member of the Spanish Honor Society at Albright College, where he helped the Lions to 17-9 records as a junior and senior before earning a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and a Bachelor of Science in math in 2009.

On this episode Mike and Mike discuss the dynamics of collegiate basketball management, the trust and hard work required in today’s college basketball environment. Larkin shares that his foremost duty involves alleviating the burdens of the head coach and the entire coaching staff to facilitate their success. Having transitioned through various roles, Larkin reflects on the invaluable lessons gleaned from his experiences at multiple institutions, culminating in his current position, where he navigates the complexities of a high-profile program. He candidly discusses the challenges of maintaining organizational efficiency amidst the heightened scrutiny that accompanies talented players like Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey, who have garnered national attention. Ultimately, Larkin’s journey underscores the profound impact of mentorship and the collaborative spirit essential to fostering a thriving basketball environment.

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Jot down some notes as you listen to this episode with Mike Larkin, Director of Basketball Operations at Rutgers University.

What We Discuss with Mike Larkin

• His Middle School and High School Coaches played a significant role in Larkin’s decision to pursue coaching
• Building trust through hard work and support for colleagues
• An administrative role in basketball necessitates making the lives of coaches easier on a daily basis
• Coaching is not solely about the game; it encompasses significant behind-the-scenes work and preparation
• Recruiting requires a keen eye for talent and understanding how players fit into a program’s vision
• Intangible qualities like toughness are essential in player recruitment
• The joy derived from coaching stems from the relationships built with players and the impact made on their lives
• Coaches need the ability to adapt to player needs
• Success in basketball hinges on teamwork and the willingness of players to make sacrifices for each other
• Navigating the complexities of college basketball requires adaptability and a willingness to learn continuously
• The opportunity to coach Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey at Rutgers

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THANKS, MIKE LARKIN

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TRANSCRIPT FOR MIKE LARKIN – RUTGERS UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL DIRECTOR OF BASKETBALL OPERATIONS – EPISODE 1146

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

[00:00:20] Mike Larkin: You gain people’s trust by keeping your head down and working and trying to help people out as much as possible. And administrative jobs at this level, in my opinion, are your job is to just try and make, especially the head coach, but all the other guys on staff, just make their job a little bit easier every day.

[00:00:38] Mike Klinzing: Mike Larkin is the Director of Basketball operations at Rutgers University. He has been with the Scarlet Knights since 2019 when he was initially hired as the special assistant to the head coach before earning a promotion to the director of basketball operations role. Larkin previously served at St. Michael’s College where he spent seven seasons on staff, including the last four as associate head coach. Before that, Larkin served as a graduate intern for two seasons at Rutgers-Newark, and was an assistant coach at Bard College. Larkin was a Jacob Albright scholar and a member of the Spanish Honor Society at Albright College, where he helped the Alliance to 17 and nine records as a junior and senior before earning a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and a Bachelor of Science and Math in 2009

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[00:02:09] Kyle Jurgens: Hi, this is Kyle Jurgens, head boys basketball coach at Skutt Catholic High School in Omaha, Nebraska, and you’re listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

[00:02:20] Mike Klinzing: Coaches, you’ve got a game plan for your team, but do you have one for your money? That’s where Wealth 4 Coaches comes in. Each week, we’ll deliver simple, no fluff financial tips made just for coaches. Whether you’re getting paid for camps, training sessions, or a full season, Wealth 4 Coaches helps you track it, save it, and grow it.

It’s time to stop guessing and start building. Subscribe now at Wealth 4 Coaches.beehive.com/subscribe and follow us on Twitter at Wealth 4 Coaches for daily money wins. Your money needs a coach. Start with Wealth 4 Coaches. Jot down some notes as you listen to this episode with Mike Larkin, director of Basketball Operations at Rutgers University.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here tonight without my co-host Jason Sunkle. But I am pleased to be joined by Mike Larkin, director of basketball operations at Rutgers University. Mike, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod man.

[00:03:19] Mike Larkin: Hey Mike. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you having me on, and happy to be here.

[00:03:23] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely excited to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all the interesting things that you’ve been able to do in your career. Want to start by going back in time to when you were a kid? Tell me about how you first fell in love with the game. What were some of your first experiences?

[00:03:39] Mike Larkin: Yeah, so I grew up on Long Island kind of in the bubble that kind of in is in the shadow of New York City.

So not exactly a, a hoops hotbed, but there there is some good hoops out there and good hoops, tradition. And I didn’t know about that when I was a little kid, but, I kind of grew up actually playing baseball a lot.  I was a, I was more of a baseball player, but once I got into middle school and high school, I was taller than I had a girl spurt early, so I was taller than everybody else.

So I kind of got kind of recruited, I guess it wouldn’t really say recruited, but the the gym coach was like, you should play basketball. So, right. There you go. I tried out for the seventh and eighth grade team and I made it, and it was like the the, like, the biggest story of my life was making seeing my name on the, on the list and not completely cut off the list.

So, then I just had, I had some, some really good coaches. I I actually had my middle school coach, his son is going into ninth grade now, out on Long Island still. And I had him, he, he brought his son to our elite camp this summer. And he really helped me kind of develop my love for basketball.

He took me under his wing and kind of obviously coached me during, during the season. But then let me play in like the old man pickups that he would play with the teachers every time they needed a 10th. I was kind of like the scrawny guy that would stand in the corner and be told to, to shut my mouth whenever, whenever I was calling for the ball.

But and then I had a, a high school coach that really, helped me like developed a love for basketball and then I really fell in love with basketball. When I got to college. I was an average player in high school and all division three walk-on, if that’s even considered a thing.

I wasn’t really recruited and I kind of got into ALB Break college on the academic scholarship and reached out to the coaches and tried out and then when I was really only focusing on basketball, that was when I kind of fell in love with it and in the summers and playing at the park and playing summer leagues and driving all over Long Island, trying to figure out where I could find a good game.

That’s where I really developed the love for just playing and getting better and just, it, it, it turned into kind of like a sanctuary for me, where when I was stressed with other things or when I didn’t want to hang out with my friends, I just went and found f either found a game or went and played played pickup or worked on my game one on one on.

Typically

[00:06:02] Mike Klinzing: what I’ve found, Mike, is that coaches usually come to the profession in one of two ways. You have the kid that’s in third grade drawing plays on the napkin while they’re playing. They’re coaching everybody while they’re on the court. They kind of know whether it’s in their conscious mind or just because of the way that they interact, that they kind of know they want to be a coach.

And then you have other people who, they’re focused on being a player, they like playing. Maybe they like their coaches, but they don’t necessarily think of themselves as a coach in training. They’re just kind of focused on being the best player that they can be. And then all of a sudden they’re playing career ends and they look around and they’re like, what?

Basketball’s over? How can I stay involved in the game? Okay, coaching’s over here. Let me try that. So, I dunno. When you were a kid and you’re talking about your middle school coach, your high school coach, the influence that they had on you as a player, did they have any influence on you of thinking about potentially coaching?

As a career at that point in your life, in middle school, high school, are you at all thinking coaching at that point?

[00:07:04] Mike Larkin: Absolutely.  I think the the first option that you said is usually the players like myself who aren’t exactly the best players on the team, but  they like it and they are either drawn to the team aspect of it or figuring out the strategy aspect of it.

And that was kind of my role. Like you said I wasn’t drawing any plays up, but I was, I was definitely like trying to be a coach on the court and I like to my wife always says I’m a, I’m a habitual rule follower. That’s kind of like,  how I am by nature. So what the coaches wanted, I wanted to kind of do that.

So it, it, it, it kind of came somewhat natural for me to think like, okay, I’m not the best, I’m not even the best on my high school team.  I’m probably not even the second best, but I love it. I’ve been rewarded by doing the right thing and listening to my coaches. So yeah, my, my, especially my middle school coach, he was when I was in high school and I was thinking about going to college and there you have, you feel all these pressures of what are you going to major in?

And I felt the pressure of am I going to make the team when I go and try out? And he kind of talked to me about his path of you can make a career out of coaching, whether it’s high school coaching or like, he, he’s, he was a middle school coach up all the way up until I was a senior in high school.

And then he took over actually the women’s program at our high school and he talked to me about how rewarding it was to be a teacher and be a coach and so I thought going into, . There’s a chance that I want to be a coach. So I went the education model when I was picking my major and I ended up doing a co concentration in math and Spanish and dropping education.

But always with that thought in the back of my mind of I might want to come back and coach, I might want to come back to the game and figure it out. And those, those two coaches, my high school coach, John Bau Marler, my middle school coach, Jeff Hanson, they were big influences when it came to that.

And then when I got to college, I  I, like I said, I was in this bubble of Long Island where I thought the only real basketball was in New York City. And I went to a division three school in Pennsylvania that no one had ever heard of. And I was like, okay I was okay in high school, let me see.

And then I was like, wow, there’s some really good players at this division three level. And I was like, oh my gosh. Like, I better become a coach, otherwise, I’m never going to get any satisfaction outta this game because I scored like.  I played JV as my freshman and sophomore year in college and I scrapped and fight to, to get a varsity jersey my junior and senior year at Albright.

And everyone’s got their own journey. And that was my journey.  I wasn’t going to be the guy that averages 20 points or it was all conference so it was I had to try and find ways that I thought were, one, would add value to the team and two would potentially help us win.

And whether that was. Talking to the coaches about what I saw on the court or  and my college coach was all of my college coaches. I had five different, I had one head coach, Rick Ferry, but then I had a bunch of different assistants, division three guys are moving around and, .

Coach Britt Moore, who’s the head coach at eTown now, he was one of my assistants. He was the head JV coach at Albright, and he was he’s like a super tactician and he would always talk to me about stuff and talk to what me about what I saw during practice, during the games, and  what I could bring to, to the, to the table that way.

And then Kevin Driscoll, who’s now running his own thing down in Florida, he was a division one coach for a while. And, but he was one of my assistants. He’s the one that really essentially dragged me into coaching when I was done playing. He was like, you’d be a really good coach because you work hard.

And he got me involved with the hoop group and he helped me get my first job at, at Bard College. So, so yeah, I think just a long answer to your short question, but yeah, I think the whole time I’m playing, I’m really thinking I want to be a coach. I didn’t, I didn’t know for sure, but I felt like being a coach on the court was my best attribute in terms of I wasn’t super athletic and I wasn’t a really good player.

So I needed to kind of make sure I was doing my thing when it came to coaching.

[00:11:14] Mike Klinzing: Let me ask you about the influence of your middle school coach, your high school coach, and clearly from what you just said, those guys had a big impact on you both as a basketball player, but also just as a person and in your life.

When you think about those two guys and what they were like as coaches, what are one or two things that when you look at them and then you think about yourself as a coach, something that rubbed off from them that you still carry with you today in your coaching style methodology? Just the way you go about doing things.

[00:11:51] Mike Larkin: Yeah. I think I was thinking about, I’ve been thinking about that a lot this summer because I had my middle school coach at the. At their league camp this summer. And it’s, it’s interesting because you, you, you, when you’re a kid and they’re, they’re, they’re an adult. Like you don’t think about all these things, but then you meet them when you’re an adult and they’re an adult and they’re different people.

So  they’re he’s got the same he’s got a mortgage to pay, I’ve got a mortgage to pay, like he’s got a wife, I’ve got a like there’s these things that you never think of when you’re a kid playing for this coach. And  thinking back, like he was the first one that like, I really thought, like, saw something in me but knew I wasn’t the best player, if that makes sense.

But saw potential or saw the fact that I was, like you said, a coach on the court. Like that was something that I really kind of took with me when I felt like I was getting into coaching of like.  seeing things in people that they might not see in themselves. Like, I didn’t I didn’t think I was a great basketball player.

Like I liked playing basketball in rec leagues when I was little. And then when he was like, come try out for the team, it, it kind of sparked this thing in me of like, oh, like someone, like they want me it feels good to be wanted. Like he wants you on the team. So that, and he, he was, he was the first one that was not my dad that was super like, into being competitive while also having a good time with it.

He really taught us a good balance of you have to do what the coaches are asking and execute and you, you want to compete and you want to win every game.  in seventh grade you got 11 games, you want to the only thing you’re really playing for in terms of competition is that banner that says undefeated season.

So like, that was what we were going for. And so, like that was a really kind of something that I took with me of like it’s good, it’s okay to be competitive. It’s okay to want to win every single game, but it’s also it’s supposed to be fun. My high school coach was, my high school coach, was great.

He was kind of at the tail end of his career, and he had had success before I was born at the same high school that I was at. And he really bought, like, brought like a, like a laid back kind of energy. And I try to do that.  I’m, I’m probably a little more fiery than he ever was when I was around him, but he was super knowledgeable and old school and just, I just felt like he knew everything about everything like, and.

It’s, it’s hard coaching has changed a little bit now, I think, where like, it’s okay to not know everything about everything. But that was kind of how what I took from him was like, he always had an answer.  we ran the flex and there was always an answer to the way the defense was playing you.

And we had all these changing defenses and he was always about trying to trick the other team and trying to like have a strategy. And that to me seemed really cool because I I always felt like it was everyone roots for the under, everyone watches Hoosiers and wants the underdog to win.

Everyone watches the NCA tournament and they want Vermont to beat Syracuse. Like because they’re going against his own. Like, so it was really cool to me that he always had these like strategies and that was that’s something that I probably do a little bit too much when I when I was coaching in division two and division three overthinking a little bit.

But, but, but definitely that, that kind of approach to like.  always trying to have an answer to something and not just hey, we’re going to try and go to go into a game and hopefully we play good.  it was always like, Hey, what can we do to take, if they’ve got one really good shooter, like how are we taking them out if they’ve got a big guy, like what are we doing?

Are we playing zone, are we double teaming? Like that was something I took from my high school coach that really kind of carried on to when I got into coaching

[00:15:29] Mike Klinzing: preparation. Right? I mean, you can argue with the strategy, the, whether it’s too much, whether it’s overkill, whether it’s this, whether it’s coaching with style, personality, but ultimately what I take away from what you just said is he was always prepared.

And no matter what the other team was going to throw at you, there was always going to be a counter to be able to have that. And there’s a great lesson there for young coaches especially, right? That I think we come in a lot of times thinking that we know everything. And very quickly you realize that you don’t know very much at all.

And the way that you help to build your knowledge base is by. Preparing. And I think what I take from that, that little story that you told there is you have to prepare. And the more prepared you can be, the better you’re going to be able to prepare your team. And the more likely it is you’re going to have success when you step on the floor.

And there’s all different ways, obviously, to win basketball games and you could dissect that for years and years and years and years and it’s really hard to do that X’s and O’s on a podcast. But clearly the idea of you better prep and you better understand what your team’s doing, you better understand what the other team’s doing.

There’s definitely a great lesson to be learned there without question. So it sounds like you had those two guys really provided some tremendous mentorship. Even if you didn’t necessarily know it at the time or thinking that you were internalizing it to become a coach, you still were able to take those lessons and learn them.

And so projecting forward as a college player, as you’re going through your career. And you’re trying to work your way up from the JV team to get onto the varsity team to earn that uniform. As you’re doing that, you mentioned a couple of the guys or your assistant coaches, you’re having those conversations with them, right?

About, Hey, I, this is what I’m seeing, this is some of the things that I’m doing. At that point, are you, are you having those conversations? Would you say more from a player’s mentality or more from a coach’s mentality as you were having those conversations in your junior and senior year with your coaching staff?

[00:17:27] Mike Larkin: Yeah, that’s a good question. I would, and it’s it’s, it’s catching me not a little, a little off guard. because I’m trying to think back, but like, right. Yeah.  off the top of my head, I definitely think I was coming from a coach’s perspective because that was kind of my role. I was, I was sitting on the bench watching now obviously I was a player, so I, as you said, like coach, young coaches think they know everything and  nothing.

And when you’re a player even less you just know your own stuff, but, right. Like, yeah, I was definitely thinking from a coach’s perspective of like. What if If I was the coach, what adjust adjustment would I make rather than like, oh if I was out there, this is what I was doing as a player.

Because if I was out there, I would just be hoping to not turn the ball over and hoping that I would, didn’t have to go, didn’t have to get switched on to the best player that’s, I would just be doing that. But but yeah, like I, there’s a couple instances that I can specifically remember of watching practice or in a game, and I’m saying, I’m thinking, and okay, how would I guard this?

If I was the coach? What would I tell the defense? Or if I was the coach and I’m saying I’m trying to get a bucket, what would I tell the offensive a way to steal a bucket. So it was definitely  of the mindset of a coach rather than a player. Just because I feel like that was, that’s probably just how my mind works, ?

I, and it’s probably what has helped me as a coach. And it might’ve even, it might’ve hurt me as a player, but  it definitely helps me as a coach. So

[00:18:50] Mike Klinzing: as you start heading towards graduation day, what are you thinking about in terms of. Your coaching career? Are you thinking high school coach and teacher?

Are you thinking college coach? Are you thinking wherever I can grab a coaching job? Are you not necessarily even thinking I’m going to find a coaching job, maybe I’m going to get a quote unquote real job. What’s the thought process as you’re heading towards graduation?

[00:19:16] Mike Larkin: I mean, as I’m heading towards graduation, I’m thinking, what, what am I going to do?

 it was, I graduated in 2009, so right after like the stock market crash, it was we’re in a recession and  everyone’s saying it’s impossible to get jobs and  my parents, because I went to Vision three, I got an academic scholarship. It didn’t cover everything, but my parents invested all this money in my education.

 how am I going to tell my mom and dad like, yeah, I want to go. Coach basketball and make no money and get zero return on investment for, for your, for your for what you pay for college. But I really, I really was in a, in a weird place when I was about to graduate. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

I had a, a couple of different options.  I had my one assistant coach, Kevin Driscoll, telling me that I should get into coaching and telling me he would hook me up with the camps and he would try and get, set something up. And then I had a, my Spanish professor, her, my advisor, she was advising me that I should go and try and teach math to Spanish kids, the kids in Spain in English.

So like, I’m essentially teaching them second language and math at the same time. And that sounded awesome.  like, I’m like, yeah, I’ll go to Spain. That sounds great. So I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I wanted to get into coaching, but when it, when push came to shove.

Things started to kinda line up and I went I went to Kev, Kevin Driscoll and was like okay, how do I, how do I do this? And he was like, oh, well a couple things seem like they might happen here. So stick around get a place in Redding, which is where Albright is, and try and find something.

And I lined up a, a real job, as you said. I lined up a job at an insurance company like these, one of these big corporate insurance companies. And I did that for nine days and my plan was to do that and then be a volunteer assistant at Albright until somebody moved on, whether it was Kevin or Brit.

And they, they had kind of said that the summer was when they were, were trying to find jobs and I. I took the insurance job and I was going to, I was doing it all summer and then I had worked camps during the summer because Kevin hooked me up with the hoop group. I went up and worked in the Poconos and a guy named Adam Turner was running the Poconos at that time.

He was like the director of the Poconos skills camp for the hoop group. And he got the Bard College job in early August. And I had started my job at CNA was the insurance company. And he called me and was like, I’ve got a job for you. It doesn’t pay anything, but you can stay on my couch. I’m, I’m, I’m about to buy a house.

 you can stay on my couch and we can get you a job at Starbucks or any somewhere and if you can figure it out, like come and work for me. And  I kind of. Reach out to my mom. My mom was the one that really helped me. I was because I was like is Dad going to lose his mind if I go, go and take this job and work at Dunking Donuts?

Like, ? And she was like, no we want, we want you to, to do what you want to do, and we want you to, to chase your dream if that’s what your dream is.  and  I have to give a ton of credit to her because I don’t have any kids now, but if my kid had if I did have a kid and they came up and said to me, oh, I want to go and work at Dunking Donuts after you just paid for me to go to four years of college.

I might have had a different response. But she was awesome. And my mindset was I knew, I knew what Albright was. I had been there, I had played there, I had played for Coach Ferry, and I would kick my, I would be kicking myself if I didn’t go to Bard and at least learn from Adam and try and try something new.

So, I guess I took the, took the risk and I quit my job at CNA and they were not happy because they, they obviously interviewed like 200 people and I was one of like 10 people they hired and they did, I did all the training and they were like, they were not happy when I said, I’m, yeah, I’m, I’m leaving.

I’m going to go work at Dunkin Donuts. They were like so confused.  at that point when you’re in a recession and

[00:23:11] Narrator: people are

[00:23:11] Mike Larkin: just lucky to get jobs, like, people were looking at me like, what’s wrong with this? Like, there’s something seriously wrong with this guy. But yeah, I went up and I took the job at Bard and I slept on a spare in a spare room in Coach Turner’s house for a year, and I worked at Dunking Donuts.

I worked the morning shift 5:30 AM to 11:30 AM and I was like, I guess, I guess I’m going for it because I’m going to swing for it.

[00:23:33] Mike Klinzing: Did  right away when you were there that even though clearly it was difficult just in terms of the decision to not make any money, but sleeping on somebody’s couch working at Dunking Donuts.

Getting to coach basketball, did  right away, or how long did it take you before you realized like, I’d like to make some more money, but I honestly don’t really care because I’m getting to do something that I could tell I’m going to love it.

[00:23:58] Mike Larkin: Yeah, I, I knew right away once I moved up there, and it was, it was difficult the social aspect of it and the uncertainty of it was difficult, especially for someone like myself.

Like I said, I’m, I’m kind of like an analytical thinker, so I want things to be lined up, but it was difficult. But the first day I was in the office and like. Me and Adam were talking basketball and we were talking recruiting, which I had never experienced because I was had just coming from playing.

And we were talking about the cores that we wanted to instill in the team. And as we were, he was 26 and I was 22, so neither of us knew anything. And he’s, he was an unbelievable coach and he was a really good player too. But like, we had like 35 things that were non-negotiable for like we had all these things, but just sitting in a diner and hashing those out with him and then going home.

And he, he was a huge, he was a huge basketball nerd as that term gets thrown a lot. But he was a huge ba he had a four TV setup and we would go home and we, he would have four two NBA games on and a, a throwback college game on ESPN Classic. And then he’d have his bared highlights on on, in another tv.

It was like I was in heaven and I had gone from the nine days that I worked in the insurance company and. If that’s what you like to do, that’s great. But it would just, I was like, that was just not for me. Like, it just, I couldn’t, I knew I couldn’t do that and I knew I had made the right decision, like within a week of, of doing it.

And there were still like hills that I had to get over. But like I knew right away that, okay, like I made the right decision. Like this is what I want to do. It’s like, it doesn’t feel like work when I’m able to just talk about basketball or when we’re prepping for practice or when we’re prepping for a recruiting trip.

[00:25:36] Mike Klinzing: Much growth was there in that first year going from you’re a player. Right. And I think as players, nobody has really any idea what goes on with their coaching staff, unless you are the son or the daughter of a coach and you’ve kind of seen what goes on at home and behind the curtain, so to speak. I think as players, there’s such a perception of practices from.

Three to six and coach rolls in at two 30. I roll in at 2 45 and I’m taking a shower and back in my dorm at six 30, getting ready for dinner. And the coaches are probably on their way home too. And so I think there’s just this misperception amongst players as to, and it’s probably not as prevalent as it was back.

I’m an old guy, so I played from 88 to 92. So pre-internet, there’s the, the information, the lack of information back in that era was clearly much more than it’s today. But still, I still think players don’t really understand what goes on as far as the amount of time that coaches put in and just the learning.

So what was the learning process like for you that first year of jumping in and just kind of getting a feel for, hey, it’s not just the two hours of practice, that coaching is so much more than that. So just talk a little bit about some of those first experiences that year that really accelerated your growth in your career.

[00:26:55] Mike Larkin: Yeah, it was, it was significant. The. I feel like not everyone is going to if you have the opportunity to be come out of college and be the director of basketball ops or the video coordinator at Duke, you’re going to take that. But I feel like, especially because it was just me and Adam that first year it, the growth was, was, was huge because I went from, like you said, not knowing anything thinking my, my coach was going home and hanging out with his family to being in the office, making phone calls.

 we were, Bard is like a super high academic school. It’s, it’s a very niche, niche school. So like, we were calling kids from California, so we’re in the office till 11 12, 1 at night making calls for cross country just to see if anyone had ever heard of Bar, just to see if anyone would be interested in, in taking our phone call and then.

There’s no, there’s no plane trips. There’s no, like, if you need to want to recruit a kid in Maryland, like you have to drive down to Maryland from upstate New York and see him, and then you have to find a place to sit on sleep on someone’s couch. And you have to miss Thanksgiving Eve usually,  kids when you first get outta college.

Yeah. Thanksgiving E used, you go home and you see all your friends and you’re partying, and then you’re getting Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving Eve, I was at three different games on my way back to Long Island then I’m I slept till noon on Thanksgiving. My parents were like, what’s going on with you?

I’m like, I went recruiting all night, all night. But yeah, you, you learn so much about and you said it, it, it’s more publicized now. The grind I’m, I’m air quoting now for the podcast listeners, but people post about the coaching grind and staying up late and it’s more, it’s more kind of mainstream now.

But yeah, you learn about that. You learn about. Just the extra hours that, that you don’t see as a player. And again, we were, the growth for me, a lot of it was like you said, like figuring out that you don’t know everything. That was a huge growth point for me because I had all the answers from the bottom, from the back of the bench when our team was losing at Albright or our team was struggling against a team.

We should be, be like, I’m like, yeah, I would just be doing this. And then I went and coached at Bard and we were two and 23 my first year coaching and I was like, maybe I’m the worst coach in the history of basketball. What am I doing? But showing up to practice and continuing to do things the way that you, you believe in that, that was a huge thing.

And Adam was great with that because he was a first time coach, so he was learning as he was going. And he was also so conscious of the fact that I was four years younger than him and.  just as fired up as him and just as clueless as him. So he was still teaching me lessons while he was learning them himself, which was, which I’m forever grateful for because it it could have, it was very, it could have been very easy for me to be like, man, like this ain’t for me.

And it, it wasn’t he was super encouraging and at the end of the year, like, he was so excited about the following year and about the recruiting class and about continuing to build it. And he, he went to Bard, so he obviously was, had vested interest in it. But it was great. It was really cool to see like we were as low as you get, we were on the mat and people always say fall down and get back up.

And that was, you have to do that essentially after every game when you’re, when you’re not winning any games. And he was, he was kind of into very important in my coaching career of like. You have to show up to practice the next day because the players are all looking at you. And that’s a huge kind of lesson that I learned.

 you’re talking about learning curves. Your first year I had to learn it my first year of like, it’s me and this other young guy and the players. I’m the same age as the, some of the players are older than me because they took red shirt years or gap years. And they’re looking at me of like, do we just pack it in?

And I kind of have to be like, no, even though I don’t even know if we should or not because I’ve never coached before. So, but yeah, that learning curve is, is steep for your first year, especially when you’re at a place where it’s just you and one of the people or you or two other people where you’re you’re, you’re leaned on for a lot.

[00:30:58] Mike Klinzing: Well, I think it’s always interesting whenever we talk to guys who break into the coaching profession at different levels, right? Because when you break in at a lower level like you did, you’re kind of thrown into the fire of everything. You’ve have to have a hand in recruiting. You’re coaching on the floor, you’re doing the administrative stuff, you’re working on fundraising, you’re community liaison.

There’s just a million things besides just coaching, right, that you have to do. And then there’s other guys who, as you said, the person who’s lucky enough to get the operations job at Duke. Or you break in on a division one staff where you have a much bigger staff and your responsibilities are much more concentrated, where maybe you don’t get the hands on of, Hey, I can do X, Y, or Z.

Now you do have many more resources and people that you can tap as mentors and networking and all those things when you break in at a bigger school or at a higher level. But it’s interesting, there’s obviously pluses and minuses to both situations in terms of how you break in and what, how you are and part of the staff.

And it’s always just interesting to hear perspectives of where you start. because I think it kind of colors sort of the direction and how you look at. Your career as you go forward. So the next stop is Rutgers Newark. Talk a little bit about how you get there.

[00:32:19] Mike Larkin: Yeah. So another just a, a lot of it’s luck.

 coaches I’m sure have been on this podcast talking about timing and luck when it comes to their careers and their next ops and at the end of that year.  Adam brought me in and another thing that I’m forever grateful for him was he came, he brought me in and was like, I love your enthusiasm.

I love that you’re excited about next year, but you need to look for jobs. Like you need to you shouldn’t be, your goal should not to be working at Dunking Donuts next year, and you should try and find whether it’s a ga or a full-time job. And so I started applying at first I’m like, I’m like, he doesn’t want me here.

 you, you’re, this guy doesn’t want me here anymore. You go back to that seventh grade where you’re like, oh, my name’s not on the list anymore. Like, this guy doesn’t want me here. But, but no like, he was great and he was encouraging me to do that. And  I started applying for jobs, not on hoop dirt applying for jobs that have been already been hired for two weeks ago and, right.

Like everybody does, not knowing anything about anything. And  I have two people that are helping me. It’s Adam and Kevin Driscoll, or again, he, he was my assistant and he was now work, he had now taken over for Adam at the hoop group, and he was super helpful in mentoring me and just being like, Hey, .

When you’re done at Dunking Donuts and you don’t have a recruit and you don’t have any phone calls, like you have to go online and just like look at all the college staffs and just, okay, this guy went to Lebanon Valley that played against Albright or this guy is from your hometown or the hometown over.

Like, you have to find things that are, that connect you to people. And then he, he had known Joe Lockin, who’s the head coach at Rutgers Newark for a while, again from hoop group camps. Joe ran their elite the west, the West Division was like the division for small college guys at Hoop Group Elite for a while.

And he knew Joe and he was like, he’s, his GA just opened up and it’s a really good opportunity. They pay for your school. You’re going to learn New Jersey. Which when I got to New Jersey I was thrown for a complete loop of like, like I said, I thought the basketball world ended in New York City and it doesn’t even start till you get to New Jersey.

For some people like like New Jersey, that’s New Jersey High School, that’s like. Up and down the state. That’s real high school basketball. And like the coaching profession is like the high school co, like high school coaching is a profession in New Jersey. But he told me how valuable the spot was and he told me to apply and he said he would help me get, like get in the mix.

And I got lucky the guy who he, he offered it to, to a guy and then the guy took it, and then three days later that guy got a GA opportunity at VCU. So he took it I believe it was Shock, was with Shaka. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but he took it and then Joe was like, Hey the spot’s back open.

I don’t want to open it up to interviews again. Like, I want to hire you. So I was like, yeah, I’ll take it. Adam was like, you have to go, like they’re going to pay for your school. And so that’s how I kind of, again, I say lucked into it. Backed into it, but  you I like to think I did a pretty good job on the interview if I was a second choice, ?

And again, I, I took the job and was able to, to, to work with Joe for two years and he was, he was. He was awesome and he, he taught me how to work, is what I, what I like to tell, tell people like all these other coaches got me excited about coaching and got me into it, and I learned valuable lessons for them.

But when I worked for Joe, when you work in that ga spot at Rutgers Newark that’s, you, you learn one if you want to be a coach, because he’s going to, he’s going to grind you. And two, you learn how to be a coach because he is going to put he’s at Rutgers Newark. There’s not a ton of resources there.

There’s not, it’s got the name Rutgers, but they treat it like Division iii and he’s got a GA and you’ve have to recruit the entire state and you’ve have to miss practice to be at recruiting events. And then you have to get back and you’ve have to wash the jerseys and you’ve have to make sure the buses are going to be on time and you’ve have to do all those things.

So he, he really taught me how to work and how to how to just put my head down and get things done when I need to get them done.

[00:36:17] Mike Klinzing: Talk to me about your recruiting eye and how long it takes when you’re at a particular place to figure out. What kind of kid is going to fit with the program?

What kind of kid has the ability to play, obviously whatever level you’re at, right? You always want to recruit a kid that’s one level above where you’re coaching at. So how long does it take you before you get a really good feel for this is a kid that is going to fit, this is a kid that I think we can get.

What’s that process look like for you in terms of thinking about trying to be able to effectively evaluate a player and whether or not they fit with your program?

[00:36:55] Mike Larkin: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think, and depending on where you’re, you’re at or where I was at, it, it, it kind of was there was, there was different approaches at Rutgers, Newark you’re trying to just find anyone that’s good enough and that would be interested in coming to Rutgers Newark.

So you’re, you’re doing it on a massive scale like I was recruiting. Over a hundred kids. And when we knew we only had like eight spots, because kids are going to get, if you’re recruiting the right kids, those kids, some of those kids are going to get division two scholarships, like you’re saying.

Or some of those kids are going to want to go to prep school or they’re going to go to junior college, or they’re going to go to those places. So I think when you’re watching high school, when you’re watching high school games, and that’s where I did most of my high school recruiting in, in Rutgers Newark we didn’t do a ton of a a u events just because we were only recruiting kids from the state of New Jersey because those are the kids that could afford to go to Rutgers Newark.

 you get the in-state tuition. So when you’re watching a high school game, especially public school, it’s, I think it’s fairly easy to see who the kids are that can play college basketball because there are so few that can play college basketball. I do think it’s, it’s a little more difficult when you’re watching a a u because it’s obviously the collection of the best guys in that certain area.

So I think you, you probably need to watch a game, a game, and for me, a game, a game and a half of a a u to say, okay these guys are obviously players that are above us. These guys are obviously players that are not quite good enough, and then this is the guy that find out what his situation is and go attack it.

So I would say in a weekend, if you’re watching games for a weekend it takes you a game or game and a half to really, okay, this is a guy I want to come back and see, or this is a guy that I want my head coach to watch. Or this is a guy I at least want to okay, I know this guy’s.

A, a high school coach that coaches against him, let me call him. Oh now you just whip out your phone and look on Twitter, see if he’s got a hundred offers. Right. It’s like for sure you could be way off.  like you could be a hundred percent, like, like you can say, oh, this kid’s like could be a good division two player.

And then you look up and he’s got Memphis and Texas a m and you’re like, oh, this guy must have been dogging it all game. But, right. Yeah. He’s but yeah, I think it, it, it takes when, when there’s really, when there’s a lot of good players on the floor, it takes a while. But when I was at Rutgers Newark I was going, I was doing mostly high school recruit recruiting.

So it was either, unless I was watching St. Anthony’s and St. Patrick’s and St. Ben’s, it was the either the best or the second and third or third best players that I was like, okay, one, does he look like a player that’s going to be at Rutgers Newark? Like, is he good enough? Is he if he was in our practice right now, would he be able to compete physically?

Or is he a projection guy? And then. It everywhere you are. It’s situational analysis really. That’s I learned that from my, my, my, my coaches, my head coaches at St. Mike’s is, I didn’t know the word for it at Rutgers Newark. And I was just recruiting everybody and getting every transcript and calling every guidance counselor, just priding myself.

And when Coach Locker said, what do you got on this kid? I just had a whole folder of like, I got his transfer. My guy, his mom’s name, I got his favorite food.  like I was just collecting data really. Yeah, you have to figure out what kids fit your program. And at Rutgers Newark, it was really we were trying to get kids coach had made the n NCAA tournament the year before I got there, and he wanted to get back and he wanted to try and build a roster around a couple guys that we had in the program.

And you can always, there’s always target needs. You’re always, if you need a big you, you have to go find the big outfit your system. And if you need, if you need shooting you, you shouldn’t bring to the table somebody that is a nons shooter, unless he is a can’t miss player that nobody else is recruiting.

So again, another long answer to a short question, but I think it if you’re watching high school, I think it’s probably, it takes, it’s, it takes a little shorter, but when you’re watching AAU and you’re watching some of these camps that you go to where there’s good players all over the place, like you, you kind of have to really watch.

And I I like to take my time. Some people will say, oh, I knew right away.  I, I like to take my time and make sure that I’m figuring out. Because you watch, you watch a half and you, you don’t really know who the kid is.  like, yeah, he made a couple shots and he is obviously talented, but like, is he is he, does he make the right pass?

Is he is he playing to win or is he playing to do, to show the coaches what you just saw of him?  like, I think those are the things that you’re, you really have to like hone in the second second half, second game that you go back and watch.

[00:41:18] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. That goes to my next question, and I guess you sort of answered it, but maybe expound on a little bit more.

What are, what are the intangible things, and clearly when you’re an assistant coach, the intangible things that you’re looking for reflect the intangible things that your head coach wants. But when you think about just the totality of your career and the different places you’ve been and the different head coaches that you work for, what are things that when you’re sitting there as a recruiter watching a kid play, whether it’s in high school or whether it’s in aau, or whether you’re thinking about if this kid can be a good fit, what are the intangible things that.

You look at that you think are important for a kid to be able to have success at the college level, whether you’re talking about high level division one like you’re at now, or whether you’re going back to Bard and you’re two and 23 at division three, there’s have to be, what are the intangibles that are important to you?

[00:42:06] Mike Larkin: Yeah. I think for me, having done this for a while, and I’ve been kind of off of the road at, at Rutgers, so I haven’t been out there recruiting. But when I was at St. Mike’s I really was able to kind of hone my craft and try and work towards the Gladwell 10,000 hours of recruiting and watching people.

And what we were really looking for at St. Mike’s and the second head coach that I worked for at St. Mike’s, Josh Meyer, me and him, we were actually talking a couple days ago. He’s unbelievable basketball mind. And he’s, he’s probably the best I’ve been around at, at, at this. And it’s finding the guys that like you’re.

 this is, might sound weird, but you’re like, you’re in love with their game.  like you’re in love with the way that they play. And a lot for me I noticed a lot for me was the toughness. That that’s something that, that has carried over now to Rutgers. Like we coach Piel, you have to, you have to be tough if you’re going to play for Coach Piel because we’re playing in the Big 10.

Like, you’re, you have to be tough to go and play at Mackey Arena against Purdue and the P Center against Michigan State. So when you’re watching, I feel like you can, if you’re really watching, you can, you can see like the toughness of a guy. And I’m not just talking about if he’s pumping his chest and trying to fight guys, but if he gets hit by a screen, does he stop?

If he if he, if he’s guarding the best player, . Is he looking for screens and trying to like look for switches or is he picking up full court? Is he trying to, trying to accept the challenge?  even if he’s not stopping the best player on the other team, is he willing to try and keep going and have the toughness of a guy that isn’t going to give up when it’s, when it’s difficult?

So that, and then also for, for us at, at St. Mike’s when I was with Josh, he was huge on like being a good teammate. And there’s that famous article about the Mav, the Mavs, when they won the championship about that somebody staed them like they had like. 2,800 or whatever the number was, high fives during the game, or touches during the game.

And that’s a, that’s a skill now because it’s, it’s it’s not I’ve heard coaches on a number of podcasts and a number of interviews say the, the skills that were developed back when you were a kid and I was a kid are just different. Coaching is just different now because of the way that the game has changed and guys are super skilled and they, and they guys can do things that people like in our day could never do.

And now, but making the extra pass or drip taking a dribble and instead of taking two dribble, just taking one and throwing it to the guy because he is open, is like a lost art. Like, like one of our assistants, TJ Thompsons talk, talks about that all the time. Like, that’s all he ever says in the film.

And everyone’s like, you got anything else? And he’s like, well, if you just do this, we won’t need anything.  like, take the dribble, the guys in your space, throw it to him.  like, so those things are things where it’s like, and Josh always talked about it like. Look, making the game come easy.

That was like one of the intangibles of like, you’re just making the right play and it, it makes it, and the game just looks easier when you’re out there. And that was, that was a little bit harder for me to hone in on I was I could hone in on is he athletic enough? Is he the right size?

Is he do the right thing?  what does his jump shot look like? Is he tough? But when Josh was like is the game look easy when he is in? I was like, okay, I have to go back and watch again. Because, because I I always watch him, but I those are the intangibles that I, and I took that from Josh and I feel like that’s something that I really want, if I do ever become a head coach or what I get back on the road, that’s something that I want people to say about the guys that I recruit is like it just, the game becomes easier for him.

Everybody when he is out there.

[00:45:44] Mike Klinzing: It’s just almost the next step beyond simple basketball iq, right? When you start thinking about makes the game easier for himself, makes the game easier for his teammates, and that is a very intangible quality. It’s something that it’s hard to quantify. Exactly what that is, but yet I think when you see it, you kind of understand that, hey, this kid does just, things seem to work better everywhere that kid is.

And I’ll give you a story that sort of encapsulates kind of for me what, what I love about the game of basketball. And I’m sitting with my daughter, this was last year. We were watching a game and something’s happening during the game and a guy just makes a nice pass and not a great, like no look, threaten the needle between six guys, but just whatever, got an outlet, pass it.

Three quarter court kicked the ball ahead to a guy for a layup where very easily could have taken the ball and pounded it three dribbles and dribbled the ball up into the front court themselves. But instead just made a good pass, put a, put a relatively simple pass. I’m like, oh, that’s a great pass. And my daughter just turns and looks at me.

She’s like. She’s like, the only thing you ever get excited about is when somebody throws a good pass. And I’m like, I’m like, you’re a hundred percent. You’re a hundred percent right. Because the honest truth is that if you could get five players on the floor who all played that way and just went that extra little step where they didn’t care who scored, they moved the ball in a simple pass to the next guy who was open.

Nobody was trying to thread the needle with no looks and behind the backs and all this stuff. If everybody just made the next simple play, the amount of success that any team could have, if you could capture that with the eight guys in your rotation, it will be amazing. But I I was struck by her saying that to me, that, dad, the only thing you ever get excited about is, is a pass.

I’m like, and I started thinking about it. I’m like, no, you’re right. Like you can see all kinds of whatever crazy circus shots or dunks or this or that and something great. But ultimately to me, winning basketball comes down to. Are five guys willing to sacrifice something of themselves to be able to have the hole be successful.

And so much of that comes down to are you willing to give up the ball? Because the ball is the one thing that’s more valuable to a player than anything else. Right? If I got the ball in my hands, I get to do stuff, I get to decide. I ultimately get to shoot, I get to score. That’s where the glory is. But if I’m willing to give of the ball, then I’m probably willing to give a little bit on defense and help my teammate out, or I’m probably will.

There’s just other areas of the game that if I’m willing to give up the most important thing, which is the ball, right, I’m probably willing to be unselfish in other areas. And I just think passing it, it’s to me, and this is one of the things that I’ve always was frustrated during the time when I’ve, when I’ve coached teams, is in so many ways, that aspect of basketball to me just seems super simple.

Like I have a hard time like watching. Players who don’t do that.

[00:48:55] Narrator: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:56] Mike Klinzing: And not just going, what don’t you understand about winning basketball? Like if you just would pass the ball right there, your teammates got an open shot or they have an advantage and now they create another advantage and you get the dominoes falling.

And everything that we talk about is coaches. Yep. And it’s just amazing to me that the percentage of players who actually understand and do that is incredibly low compared to what in my mind it should be. Because the answer of what makes success in basketball is so easy. And I don’t know if what I’m saying resonates with you at all.

I’m guessing it does, but hundred percent. It’s just, to me it seems simple.

[00:49:35] Mike Larkin: Yeah. And it’s, it’s. A hundred percent resonates with me. And it’s it would’ve made if, if what you were in your perfect world, it would’ve made life for me who wasn’t a great player. A lot easier because if everyone was passing the ball it would be easier for me because I could barely dribble.

So it was it was, it definitely resonates. And the cool thing about passing is the guys that are good at passing, they comb in all different shapes and sizes.  like, like Boris DL on the Spurs. It like, it’s like every, it’s so simple and you watch Braden Smith with Purdue, he is like this, this guy that looks.

He’s small and he is feisty and, but he’s in charge of everything and just, it’s his passing. And Cassius Winston is he doesn’t some of these guys don’t look like, they don’t look like LeBron James, but like they’re in, they’re amazing. What Jo is like this unbelievable like all these guys, magic Johnson, like, they just look, they’re, you can be, you can look like however you want to look if you have that skill and you can, and you, and you’re playing that that way.

And like you said, it’s, it is something that’s like, it’s the reason that there’s still coaches, because if everyone could figure it out, if everyone just did it, you wouldn’t really need any coaches. You just you’d just be able to say, all right, you five guys,  what you’re,  what you’re supposed to do, go out and do it.

[00:50:47] Mike Klinzing: Right. You talked a little bit about St. Mike’s and just the experience that you had there, and obviously as you moved through your time there, you eventually ended up as the associate head coach. And so getting an opportunity to have that title next to your name and just talk a little bit about. What you learned during your time there.

We already talked a little bit about the recruiting piece of it, but just when you think about the lessons that you took with you, when you eventually move on to Rutgers, what are the things that stand out in your mind that, that you learned during your experience at St. Mike’s?

[00:51:17] Mike Larkin: Yeah. I feel like I learned a ton because of what Coach Meyer, Josh Meyer.

So I worked for Mike Harding for a year, and then he had to, he had to step down for, for family issues. And then they promoted Josh and Josh promoted me to, to assistant and then eventually to associate head coach. And learning under Josh for six years, it was great. He, he’s, he’s got an education background, so his philosophy is very holistic and he wanted a, a player led program and he wanted to empower me.

He wanted to empower any coaches that worked for him. So it was, it was super helpful in helping me learn a lot about who I was as a coach, how I wanted to. Be on the court, like how I want, like he let me run drills, he let me run full practices, he let me plan practices. He let me I was obviously doing a, a, a, a big portion of the scouts, so I ran scouting report  film.

I ran the scouting report for the games.  I was doing game strategy. I was essentially like  people associate head coaches thrown around a lot. But I was actually like learn like it felt like I was in a class to be a head coach, which was, which was really really cool.

So I feel like I learned what I thought I wanted to do when I was a, when I was a head coach, and again, when you’re a player, you got all the answers about coaching. When you’re a ga you got all the answers about being an assistant coach. When you’re an assistant coach, you got all the answers about being a head coach.

And when you’re a first time head coach, you got all the answers just in general. So yeah, the, I learned a lot about what I don’t want to do when I do become a head coach, just by making the mistakes, but, right. I, I definitely feel like I learned. I also learned that I really wanted to coach like when I was at Rutgers Newark, I was just trying to keep my head above water and make sure Coach Larin wasn’t going to scream at me, or wasn’t going to be disappointed in me or going to be, have to make up, have to do something to make up for the work that I didn’t do, or what I messed up.

And then when I got to St. Mike’s, it was like, okay, now you’re I learned how to work, I learned how to put my head down to work, and now I’m learning about the craft of coaching.  that’s kind of a corny statement, but it, but it’s true.  you’re, you’re learning about yourself as a coach.

Like are, are you okay being the craziest guy in the room or do you want to be laid back or do you want to do you feel like you need to have all the answers or do you feel like it’s okay to say, I don’t know, but we’ll talk about it and we’ll have an answer for you tomorrow in practice.

So I learned a lot about myself and how I wanted to be as a coach and how I wanted to hopefully eventually be as a head coach by. Essentially doing it. And  like I said, running a couple times he was sick. I ran practice because it was just us and  you have to practice and  he, he, he allowed me to start making the practice plan again.

When you’re, when your assistant or ga you don’t even think about the practice plan, you don’t think how hard it is. You don’t think how much time and energy goes into it. because you show up and it’s on the practice plan and then the coach skips the drill you’re supposed to help out in and you’re like, what’s this guy doing?

He doesn’t know what he’s practice plan. And then then you’re, when you’re writing the practice plan yourself and you’re, you’ve got all this pressure on you to, okay, you have to plan a really good practice. because you have a game in two days and you, you have to cut things and you have to make decisions like those, that’s the rocket science.

I think behind practice planning and coaching is making those decisions and being okay with skipping whatever you skipped or including whatever you included. And knowing that it was on you, you made that choice. And  it may impact the team negatively, but you have to make the choice that you think is best for the team.

[00:54:52] Mike Klinzing: Science, right? The science is, I have to know the drills, I have to know the teaching points, I have to know what I’m trying to do. And then the art is, okay, today, what does my team need? They might need 20 things in my mind, but guess what? We can only get to three of them. And so what are the three most important things that we need for today?

And that’s sort of the art. And I think the best coaches have both of those things. They have the abil, the technical ability, right? To be able to teach the game, to be able to construct drills and construct situations in practice that prepare their team for actual competition. But then you also have the art and the feel of, Hey, this is what my team needs today.

Technically they might need this, but guess what? They’re not really ready for that technically today because of their mindset or just they’re tired or whatever. You have a feel for it. And so today we’re just going to do something else and. Great coaches have that feel in addition to that technical knowledge and the ability to put together a great practice plan.

And then, like you said, here you are as an assistant coach and you got, Hey, I got this whole section of defense. I’m ready to work on it. And all of a sudden your head coach turns and goes, Hey, we’re scrapping that today. We’re going to go play some Frisbee golf or whatever whatever it is on a given day.

And you’re looking and going, what’s like, what, like where did this, where did this, where did this come from? And again, I think that’s where you have the art of coaching and the science of coaching kind of come together. And so when I think about lessons learned as an assistant coach and all the conversations that I’ve had over the years with coaches, somebody who’s kind of in your position, who’s been an assistant for a while, and you’ve talked a couple times here about eventually at some point maybe you’d like to be a head coach and you’re learning and you’re taking bits and pieces.

What’s your methodology? Methodology? What’s your process for. Collecting coaching ideas, concepts. Are you a three ring binder guy? Are you a Google Drive guy? Are you the spiral notebook writing down things after every practice? Just what’s your process for keeping track of the lessons and the things that you’ve learned?

[00:57:04] Mike Larkin: Yeah, I I, you, you learn the hard way sometimes when you’re an analytical thinker. because you think you can remember everything and then you, you start to get old and you’re like, I can’t remember any of the, I can’t remember what I learned. Like, so, so I’m, I’m a, like a removable hard drive put it on Microsoft work like.

Put thoughts down on Microsoft Word or scan it into a PDF and get it into some kind of folder where it, the method may the organization, it may look disorganized to everybody else, but I know exactly, I know exactly where the 1 3 1 PDF is that I stole from Coach Lara’s office when he was teaching 1, 3, 1.

I know where it is. I can’t tell you the name of the folder, but when I see it pop up in my room of the hard job, I’ll be able to click it and find it. Right. And then I can look it and be like, oh yeah I, I remember we really need to teach this. Or YII, oh, I forgot about that. Like, you can’t you can’t allow this to happen.

 all those kind of things. So yeah, I’m, I’m kind of  I’m learning by fire on how to do that stuff because I thought I was going to be able to remember everything when I was a young coach. And I, I had this, this brain that was only 22 years young and it was fresh. And I was going to remember every single idea.

I was going to remember all the things that Yui Brown said at that, that coaches clinic at St. Benedict’s. And I should have taken a of it with my phone and saved it on my computer. And now, but yeah, hard drive. Try and be organized with my folders of, okay, this is the basketball stuff. This is, I say basketball, this is the tactician stuff, this is the workouts, this is recruiting things that I like.

This is a list of YouTube videos that I like to watch when I’m, I need motivation or when I want to when Steve Nash a hundred shots drill or J Wright, 50 shots, warmup drill. I just try, and anything I see that I like, I try and copy it, put it on a Word document, and then save it somewhere.

This way I can reference it in the future.

[00:58:59] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. I think it’s really easy to get yourself caught in the idea of, oh yeah, I’ll remember that. And I know that it took me a long time. Like I’m 55 and I probably didn’t really start taking notes on books or videos or things. It just, and again, not necessarily all basketball, but I like to read a lot of leadership stuff and that kind of thing.

And there’s so much that I think about, like, I’ll go to a talk. I go to a talk and I would sit and listening. I’m like, oh yeah, I’m going to internalize all this. And then three months later, you’re. Like, I know that guy had some really great saying, or just there, there was some little organizational tip that he said, and now I can’t, now I can’t remember it.

And I honestly remember the time, the exact moment when I thought I have to become a better note taker. So I was at this conference and a guy that I knew, he had come with me and he’s probably, I would bet he’s maybe 10 years older than me. So this is probably seven or eight years ago. And he and I had driven to this conference together, right.

And we were listening to a guy talk, and I’m sitting so I’m sitting and I’m, I’m, I’m listening and I’m paying attention. And we’re right there. And as soon as the guy starts speaking, my friend pulls out, pulls out a notebook, and he’s got I see it’s this big thick notebook.

And he is got he’s like halfway through it and the whole other part is filled with notes. And the whole time while the guy, while the speaker’s talking, he’s just, he’s just taking notes, taking notes, taking notes. And I’m kind of. I’m listening to the speaker, but I’m kind of really looking outta the corner of my eye going, what’s Dan doing?

Like, like, holy cow. Like what? What’s he possibly writing down? And so when the talk was over, like my learning was not even from the talk, it was like I, I’m like, I’m just talking to my friend right next to me. I, Dan, what are you doing? Like what are you doing? Like when did you start taking these notes?

And how many of these notebooks do you have? And he just started explaining to me that he just goes and he writes it down and he’s got one notebook that is just sort of his brain dump and he just puts everything that the guy’s talking about. And then later he goes back and he reads that. And then he transfers the most important things from that notebook to a notebook of, Hey, these are the key points that the summers, I’m like, that is like, that’s really good.

And I started doing that with, anytime I listen to someone speak, and then also when I’m reading a book, like I’ll read the book. And then I’ll go back and take notes a second time as I go through it. And if there’s things that I remember  you’re marking the pages and that kind of thing. And so I think it’s, it’s something that until you become smart enough to realize that you’re forgetting everything, right?

Yeah. That you’re like, yeah, my brain doesn’t quite work the way that I think it should be in terms of the ability to recall. Right. And if you write things down, it, it, it is really a tremendous, tremendous benefit. And we talked earlier about just the lack of information back 20 years ago or 30 years ago.

Yeah. I don’t remember anybody when I was growing up talking about how important it was to take notes or to journal or to get your thoughts down or to, none of that stuff was, none of that stuff was around. And now of course you see it all the time. But to me, and it sounds like for you the same way, like we all have our own way of doing things and organizing and putting stuff together, but ultimately.

You have to have some way to organize your thoughts and the things that you collect from other people so that it’s in a way that works for you. So that when you want to go back and find that 1 3 1 PDF, you’re like, oh yeah, I know exactly where that is. And now I can pull out the important things that I remember from that, and I don’t have to just waste all that brain power trying to keep it up there all the time.

And so it’s I always like hearing how people, how people go about attacking that because everybody does it differently.

[01:02:40] Mike Larkin: Unless you’re a savant. I mean, I’ve, yeah, I’ve like Coach Piel, who I, who I work for now at Rutgers. Like, he was born to be a college basketball coach.  like he played for Jim Calhoun and like he can go into a practice.

It’s, I’ve never seen anything like it. because I’m, I was kind of his right hand man for a couple years at Rutgers as his special assistant. So I was in charge of his schedule and I was always like trying to give him time before practice to like get in the right mindset. And he was always like giving me things, oh, I’m going to meet with this guy right before practice.

And then he’d, he’d be like, meeting with the donor or meeting with our SID and fired up about one thing and then he’d walk into practice and boom, like the drill. Like he, like he had, and he’s been coaching for 30 years, so he is, he’s a different, in a different place in his life than I am, but. It’s like you just are like, like some guys are just born to do, like a guy I worked for at Scott Scher, his dad, his dad, Dave Scher was the head coach at Dartmouth.

So he grew up around the game. He’s now the head coach at Assumption. He was the same way, right outta college as a, as an assistant at St. Mike’s. And he was like, he like first game, we’re playing against UVM in exhibition and  what should we do? And I’m like trying to reference my notes from what I wrote down.

And he’s just like, no, we have to. And I’m like, wow. Like like some people are just, some people just have it, I think. Yeah. They’re like there’s levels to it obviously, but for sure there are some people that just have it and can show up. But for a lay person like myself, I I need to hone my skills of collecting my thoughts and being, yeah.

Being organized with it.

[01:04:06] Mike Klinzing: It’s amazing the talents that some people have, like, I don’t know about you, but. For me, there are some things that I can remember, like as a player, as a coach, there’s some games or some plays or like I might re remember something about them. But then there are other people that you could talk to that they’re like, yeah, with three minutes to go.

And this game in 1979, we were down two and then we ran this out of bounds play and Joe Smith came off the screen and got the ball. And if they, if the ref would’ve called the foul there he would’ve scored and we would’ve won the game. And I’m like, right, I don’t even remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

And you’re remembering, you’re remembering things like that. And then I’ll tell you another great story. So I have a guy that I worked for, I was his assistant when I was a high school coach at the beginning of my teaching career and coaching career. And he, to this day, one of the best coaches that I’ve ever been around, Phil Schmuck.

And he’s coaching a girls high school team here in Ohio right now. But Phil was amazing in that he was one of those guys that could turn off and on. His emotions in terms of he could be super fiery with the team and mm-hmm. Get angry about a drill and be woo this, and then two seconds later be completely normal.

And all that emotion was gone. And I, and I’ve told this story before, but what I remember this one time so distinctly we’re standing at practice and he’s maybe at like the free throw line, looking down at the play that was at the other end of the floor. And I’m standing like on the baseline away from the team, and something happened in the drill and he just went crazy.

He’s yelling, he’s screaming at the kids and  his face is red and whatever. And he, he goes, he’s yelling out for like 45 seconds at the top of his lungs, just again, old school. And he finishes that and he turns around to me and he just goes. And gets this like big smile on his face, like completely like right.

The whole thing, like all the anger and like it was all, it was all, it was all fabricated. It was all just for show. because he felt like, again, going back to the art of coaching, like he felt like that was what the team needed at that given moment. And for me as a coach, like I could never in a million years could I summon that kind of like fake outrage at my team because it would sound completely fake, right?

Coming from me. I just couldn’t do that. And it’s just amazing how different coaches have different abilities in certain areas that allow them to have successful. And I think what I always take from what you talked about in terms of Coach Piel or guys that can do those kinds of things, it’s like everybody has, everybody has their talent.

You have to coach to your personality and who you are. If you try to be something you’re not, it’s just never going to work.

[01:06:59] Mike Larkin: The players will sniff it. The players will sniff it out absolutely. Right away. That’s something that Mike Harding and Josh Meyer at St. Mike’s, they taught me, right. They said, don’t, don’t lie to them, and don’t pretend, because players are way smarter than you think.

They can sniff it out in a heartbeat.

[01:07:16] Mike Klinzing: Tell me about getting the job at Rudkers and then sort of how your role has changed over the years that you’ve been there. I know you started out as a special assistant, which you talked about briefly there, but just kind of go through what your varying roles have been and kind of what you’ve done in your time there.

[01:07:32] Mike Larkin: Yeah, so I got, I got another instance where I got lucky and,  It’s, it’s, it’s a cliche to say timing and luck, like I said before, but I got lucky.  we were. We had had a couple down years at St. Mike’s and Josh was ready to get out of coaching for a couple different reasons.

So he was going to resign and I was not going to be hired as the head coach at St. Mike’s. And I just got lucky that at that exact, that time when he decided to resign that same off season coaching carousel, whenever you want to call it, Jay Young got the job at Fairfield and he took Brian Dewer with him off of Coach Michael’s staff.

So two spots opened up on the, on the Rutger staff, and I had been, . Doing my thing.  I’m not a natural networker. Like, I’m not like a natural, like the Final four like freaks me out. Like it just not in a bad way, but just I, where’s where I’m comfortable I’m comfortable hanging with my buddies and watching the games the guys with the business cards and the resumes and the networking things.

Like, that’s just not me. But I had been doing my version of networking and whenever I would recruit in New Jersey, I would go and watch Rutgers practice. And before that, when they were at Stony Brook, I would watch Stony Brook practice. because I was from Long Island and I would go home for the holidays and they had practice.

And I had been Josh Meyer, to his credit, had been essentially spamming Coach PI’s phone of after every off season, Hey, if you ever have an opening, Mike would be great for whatever you need. He can do everything. Jay and Brian left, and I was obviously more, a little more aggressive because I was looking for a job.

I was, I was going to be out of a job. And  coach Pike brought me in, interviewed me, and hired me. He, all, he knew me was from Josh and from going to his practices, he took a chance on me. And he I was, I wasn’t in his network. I didn’t play for him and he doesn’t historically doesn’t really hire people out of his network.

And he took a chance on me because Josh vouched for me, and Josh told him that I can do. I was division two, division three coach. So I can do everything like you said, like you’re whatever. I can do accounting, I can do the budget, I can do academics if you need me to, I can wash the jerseys, I can but make a calendar.

I can do whatever. I can recruit. If you want me to recruit, if you need me to coach, I can do all those things. But I can do everything else. I can be cordial with the housing people if you need me to. So he hired me for that and he put, brought me on as a special assistant to the head coach where I was essentially I was in charge of his schedule.

I was in charge of the daily schedule for the team. And then I had my, like, other duties, like I was in charge of tickets and I was in which was, which turned out to be a big ask because I I didn’t realize that tickets were going to be so crazy because

[01:10:09] Narrator: .

[01:10:10] Mike Larkin: I didn’t know I was up in Vermont, so I knew Rutgers they were up and coming, but we had like that breakout year my first year  right.

They did all the hard work and I came and just got to enjoy it. But I had to give ticket.  players, parents need tickets and high school coaches need tickets. And when you’re good and when, when you’re playing Indiana at home, like everybody wants a ticket. So you, you have to for sure find, you have to find a ticket for everyone.

And so that became a big part of my job. But getting to essentially see Coach Pike’s day to day and see all the things that he does and him eventually trusting me to make decisions for him of like, okay, this meeting, I need to move this meeting. How important is it? When do we need to have it?

 what’s more important going recruiting or meeting with this person or going recruiting or hitting this academic meeting on campus or and then when he wasn’t able to make those things on campus, okay, I’m now going in his place. So I’m essentially, . In the place of the head coach learning about things that I now have to relay to the head coach.

So that was super valuable for me coming from a place where there was two people on staff to now a place where we had eight people on staff. Like talk about not knowing about anything, about anything is you come to this I skipped all the division one levels and got, I was in the Big 10 right away and I hadn’t  I knew what to do because I had coached before, but I had no idea what to do in terms of a Big 10 program and getting to learn the day-to-day through that was, was, was was awesome.

And really eye-opening to me just how busy coach Pike’s schedule would get with. Things that you wouldn’t even imagine. Like just non basketball things and  donors and we didn’t have donors that same, like we had donors, but like there was one of them and everyone knew their name and they, he lived down the street.

So you just go and say hi to them. Like, these donors are flying in from California. They’re flying in from Chicago. They want to they want you to stop at their house when you go and play Northwestern. And now, okay, what are the logistics of that? Is the whole team going? Is it just pikes? Do we have a bus?

Do we have all that stuff? So I got a hands kind of had, we got thrown into the fire with that and I actually got thrown into the fire my second week on the job. They, we went to Spain, like as a team we did a foreign tour and the guy who was in my position planning the tour.

Got promoted into Jay Young spot, Steve Hayne got promoted into Jay Young spot. So I always give Steve Hane a hard time of like, yeah, you got promoted into the assistant and then you drop the foreign tour on my desk. And I essentially didn’t know, I didn’t, I barely knew the people’s names and I had to, I was like in charge of the passports.

I was in charge of the per diem. I was in charge of the food order. I don’t know anyone food. And then there’s parents and there’s there’s just so much going on. And I was thrust into this in week two of my, of, of my, of my job and just trying to do a good job and trying to figure out if I’m doing a good job and still learning everybody’s name at the same time.

So you learn all that stuff and  you, you try and prove yourself through that and you gain people’s trust by keeping your head down and working and trying to help people out as much as possible. And the administrative jobs at this level, in my opinion, are your job is to just try and make, especially the head coach, but all the other guys on staff, like, just make their job a little bit easier every day.

Whether it’s just making it easier by being more organized than than they were in the past. Or make it easier by saying, Hey, I’m I know that this guy needs a ride here. Like, we’re going to make sure he gets a ride. Like, you don’t have to worry about it. Or, Hey, coach, like, I’m going to go to that meeting so you can stay back and watch the film that you need to watch.

Or, I already watched the film. Here’s the breakdown so you don’t have to watch like just making guys’ lives easier and you gain trust and you, and you develop relationships with guys that way. And then after I, so then COVID hits and now Pikes is right Hand Man with. All the COVID stuff and everything that was going on during COVID and then after the COVID season I’m wiped, I was like the primary contact for all the co, for all the testing, for all that.

And like, I know nothing about anything. My wife’s a doctor, she’s a physical therapist, she has her doctor in physical therapy and I know nothing about anything. And they’re just talking to me about PCR and swabs and I’m just like, yeah, I think everyone needs to line up in this line and get, stick something up their nose the most way to explain it.

But we had some more movement on our staff. Two guys left  our director of basketball ops left for an assistant job at Youngstown State. He’s now at Utah State, Ben Asher, and he was, he’s a Long Island guy, so me and him speak the same disgruntled language. And  he really helped me when I, when I was there for my first two years and when he left, coach Michael promoted me to director of basketball ops and, .

He, he kept my, my, my, my, my duties kind of similar because we hired someone that was good at the other stuff. Like so I’ve actually gone six or seven years where I actually haven’t been in charge of travel as a, as a director of basketball ops. because we had other people that had done it before.

So I help and I I obviously help and I manage the budget, so I see everything that happens. But but yeah, my duties kind of stayed similar some of the the calendar, his calendar got taken off my plate went to somebody else. And I, and I kind of became more of like the, now as director of basketball ops, I’ve been able to have more exposure to the administrative side of.

Athletics I have, I’m the direct contact for our sport liaison. I was the direct contact for anyone in the athletic director’s office. I’m the director liaison for anyone across campus, whether it’s our alumni, Scarlet Knights for Life or our academics.  those people when, when they need something done, they text or call me or they email me or they re-mail me.

because I didn’t read the email from five days ago. So so, so that’s more, that’s I’ve been able to kind of see the bo both ends of it.  I’ve been able to see people that are coach, Pike’s boss and then I’ve been able to obviously oversee our student managers and everyone that kind of coach Pike overseas.

And it’s been, it’s been definitely eye-opening. And you, you, you don’t real, when you’re working at St. Mike’s or you’re working at Bard and it’s you and the head coach, you, you, you think like, yeah, we’re handling everything. Then you get to this place and you’re like. I’m only in charge of four things, but, and I have no handle of of them.

 there, it’s, there’s so much work that is, that there is at, at, at this level when it, when there’s so many more eyes on you and there’s so many more just people around the program that you have to account for and  you’ve got dietician, you’ve got your own sports nutritionist, you’ve got your own athletic trainer, you’ve got your own strength and conditioning, you’ve got your own academic advisor.

And they all need to know the schedule. They all need to know everything. Where at St. Mike’s, it was the 14 players and the coaches that need to know, and we scheduled around everybody because that’s how division two and division three works. But here at this level you’re making your schedule and then the academic advisor needs to know, okay, when can I fit tutoring in?

When can I fit this in? Dietician needs to get DEXA scans and the strength coach wants to steal. Two hours in the weight room and the athletic trainer wants, and then the alumni people want the players to write letters. And it’s like there’s so many things that you’re just trying to wrap your head around and then you’re like, oh yeah, we have practice later on.

 we got two hours of practice too. So so just learning like the ins and outs of this has been really eye-opening and  we have a great staff here, so it’s, it’s been, it’s been great to work with them and great to work for Coach Michael. Like, he’s, he’s awesome to work for.

And he’s like I said, he’s if you’re into basketball, like, I always say this to any recruit that when I’m, when I get some time with them on the visit or when I’m on the Zoom with them or when I’m calling them if you’re a basketball guy, like if you’re a person that’s into basketball that like, he’s a really good guy to be around, whether you’re a coach or you’re a player because he’s into basketball like he’s he’s not going to take you to the Kentucky Derby and know anything about horses because he’s whole life.

He’s just been. Coaching and talking about basketball and thinking about basketball. So  it’s, I’m, I’m super lucky to just have, have the opportunity to stick around and he’s kept me around for, this will be my seventh season, so I think he likes me. So but it, it’s definitely cool to, to, to see it from this side of it because I had no, I had no idea what it was like as a, when I was a assistant coach at Bard or at Rutgers Newark or at St.

Mike’s.

[01:18:20] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. No way. You could have saw that when you’re sleeping on the couch. Right. To, to be able to, and I think it’s cool. It goes back to what we talked about a half hour ago in terms of the experiences that you get at both levels are extremely valuable and yet again, very different. Like you said, when you’re on a staff of two, it feels like you’re doing everything.

And yet, because the program is just on a smaller scale. There’s a reason why at the Division one level, you have the size of the staff that you have because there’s just so many more things that are coming at you that you have to handle. And so it is interesting when you think about just the skillset and the comfort level and the fit right for you, you have to think about like, which one of those environments is a better fit for what I’m doing and how I do it?

And you have to think about where you want your career to go and how you want it to be able to advance and all those things. And  as you were talking about the craziness of just trying to keep your head above water with all the things that are coming at you, and then obviously you and I talked a little bit about this in the pre-call.

You guys had a very interesting year this season because you have two very, very high profile guys. It’s not very often that a college team has two guys that get drafted in the top five of the NBA draft and clearly both before the season, during the season, and then even after the season. The notoriety that Dylan and Ace brought to your program, clearly put a whole spotlight on what you guys were doing.

So just talk a little bit about, I guess, first the experience for you as a part of the program and just how their presence elevated everybody and just bringing that spotlight to it. And then just talk a little bit about each of those guys, just as, as human beings and as the people that you got to know throughout the year that you got an opportunity to work with them.

[01:20:17] Mike Larkin: Yeah, it, it definitely a unique experience and definitely something, I don’t think I ever when when you get into coaching, you, you, you try and picture, okay, I’m going to be coaching at Cameron Indoor, or I’m going to be coaching in the national championship game, but you, you, like, I never thought I’d be.

Coaching or on the staff, whatever you want to call it  on the staff of a, of a team that has two guys that are projected lottery picks and then they end up going number two and number five. And the, what ramped up for me the most in, in terms of, again, I’m dealing with a lot of off court stuff, was just the number of eyes and ears and people that are now involved with the program and involved with their path while they’re in the program.

 they’re you we had those, those guys were both on the cover of Slam Magazine and Sports Illustrated. So the only time we were really mentioned that Sports Illustrated was when we would get ranked or like when we would make the tournament. And we, we did that my first couple years and it’s great, but now, like they’re doing cover stories about Rutgers and they’re, they want to know what the best they’re asking me and the SID like, what’s the best place to take pictures?

And like, I’m like. Like, I know this is part of my job, but like it’s sports illustrated it’s not like it’s not like a kid and we have a recruit, I’m like, we have a recruit wall, but you don’t want to take a, a Sports Illustrated photo shoot from the recruit wall. And the, the amount of like, pressure and the amount of people that just want to be now involved and, and, and in, in a good way, like people that want now to that get joy from seeing those guys, just seeing them like just getting an autograph from them or seeing them at a football game or we have camp and I run the camp here and we set it up where like those guys work camp.

So like, there’s 10 kids who, they left camp and their coach for the week was Ace Bailey and 12 kids who their coach was Dylan Harper. Like, and who knows who those kids become, who knows what those kids think now about basketball and like, just the, . The energy that it brought around the program.

It, it’s, it, you, you want to say oh everything was the same, but it’s just not true. Like, like those guys, because of their reputation, because of the following, they brought a different energy into the gym every day. They brought a different energy into the office about this conversations we’re having now, like everything is, is ramped up.

because there’s obviously a lot high stakes for the team. There’s high stakes for them. Like these guys are now they’re making a lot of money. So like any trade secrets or any rumors or innuendos about them become useful for. People that either want to draft them or want to find reasons to not draft them.

Like, so all those things now become ramped up and you have to be conscious of it. And it’s, it’s not, it’s less of like paranoia and secrecy and more of like these are kids, like they’re still in college and they’re still doing this, these things for the first time, like everybody else, like me and you did when we went to college as a freshman.

And you lost your keen, you got locked outta your room or you wanted to go get ice cream, but you didn’t have any money. And  where, where do I how do I get back to campus?  all these things like kids that kids get into these things they lose their id.

 like Ace Bailey lost his ID and now it’s it’s, you don’t want to. You want to, like if you tell NBA scout Yeah. He lost his ID last week. Is that now like our, our straight A student lost his ID too. That just happened. Like you’re, they’re 18 years old. Right. So and then there was other things that like I had never experienced, like that like at the football game, like, these guys can’t even get into the football game because people are trying to get their auto just trying to get autographed or trying to take a picture or trying to ask them a question.

And it’s like they just want to go and watch the football game, ? And. How do I, how do I, as the adult in the situation handle that? Do I do I treat them differently and say, Hey, like, let’s get a security, like we have security that follows Coach Pike around, or like takes us to the plane and like, do I get him involved?

Do I get them involved, or will they, will they feel a certain way about that if If they’re not having the normal experience? So like every decision you make is now amplified. And the good thing about it is those guys to hit on the second point, those guys are great. They’re, they’re like awesome dudes and they were really cool to be around and they, for good reason picked Rutgers because they liked basketball and they liked being in the gym.

And they like, like Ace Bailey like 10 at night. Like, you find him in the gym just getting shots up. He might be on a FaceTime call with somebody, but he is getting shots up. He’s throwing the ball off the wall and dunking it. Like, just like he loves being in the gym. Dylan Harper is .

Same way, a little bit different than Ace. Ace is in the gym, just like doing whatever, where Dylan’s very calculated and he his dad obviously played in the NBA, his brother has played in the NBA, his mom has worked for the NBA, so he’s got more of a structure to his, to his workouts. But both really good kids.

 ACE is, came to us as a 17-year-old, like he turned 18 in August which I think has helped his draft stock.  the, the potential that you could see in him is, is obviously through the roof. And he’s from Chattanooga, Tennessee.  like he’s, he’s a, what, a 17-year-old from Chattanooga, you would think he is.

He’s simple. He wants to play basketball, he wants to hang out with his friends. He wants to ride his scooter around campus. He wants to eat Uncrustables.  like he’s a, he’s a kid and he’s like, the best thing about Ace was he’s always a smile on his face. Like we had losing streaks, we had winning streaks.

We had games where he played. Games where he played good and he comes in the gym, big smile on his face full of energy, like nonstop, just like trying to make you, trying to get a giggle outta you. Trying to laugh, trying to say something funny. And like smart, as smart as attack. Like some people will say like, oh, like, because he is got the country accent that maybe he’s like, but like, knew everything about me and my wife and like like, like could, like, could, could knew what would make me laugh.

And it was different than what would make somebody else laugh like, just like, yeah, he could be, he could be a not a standup comic, but he could be a, an mc of a show because he just knows like all the beats to hit. And Dylan was, Dylan was, was very similar. He’s a little, he wasn’t as jovial and outwardly smile like ace, but.

A really good kid from a really good family and,   a kid that was super appreciative of every opportunity that he got and everything that we did.  obviously we coached his, we had his brother on the team, his older brother on the team for four years and.  I feel like that was a big reason why he chose Rutgers, was because it was family.

He’s from New Jersey his brother went here and we like to think we took good care of his brother and helped him achieve his goals. And just a, a super appreciative guy and a a thank you and a please all the time. And from a kid who went number two in, in the NBA like, and I’m not saying that it’s, it’s an excuse to not be please and thank you, right.

And be a good kid. But there’s all the reason in the world for him to not have, like, especially for I’m not the associate head coach at Rutgers. I’m not the head coach.  I’m the guy that helps him with his tickets and  when he needed a ride somewhere, he got it.

 when he needed to pick up medicine, I helped. And like, it was, he was always appreciative and he is really good kid and good to be around and very similar to his brother of like, just  just a cool, cool kid to be around. I

[01:28:09] Mike Klinzing: think one of the things that is so refreshing about.

Guys like Ace and Dylan, and you look at the way that players come into the NBA now compared to the era late nineties, early two thousands, where again, the information that was available to those guys versus the information that’s available today to players coming into the NBA OUTTA college. There’s so many more educational opportunities and you’re also able to sort of watch other people’s journeys.

And then I’m sure that those guys are communicating with guys that are a class above them, a class below them that have been through similar things. They’re friends with guys from other draft classes and they have conversations, and obviously in Dylan’s case, he’s got his family and just the experience that.

They all have. And so I think guys come into situations far more prepared for the stardom and the being surrounded at a football game, being asked for autographs just because that stuff starts earlier. Yeah. And I think that players just are more aware of the fact that they are being, they are being looked at, right?

They are being watched, they’re being judged, especially guys who are on an NBA trajectory, but from the time they’re on, they’re on scouts radar when they’re 14 years old and they kind of know. Right. It’s, it’s like you said, like, if I lose my keys, is somebody now going to be like, well, this guy’s, this guy’s forgetful.

How does that affect, how does that, right. How does that affect his draft status? And so just the fact that you’re aware of those things. I, I would have to think, just make you think twice about some of the knuckleheaded things that maybe in the past. You wouldn’t have to think about. And that has nothing to do about phones and just the ever presence of cameras.

I can’t even imagine like going to school Oh, and trying to play division one basketball in the era of phones where anywhere you go, no matter what you do, people that you don’t even know are lifting up their phone and taking video of you. Yeah. And whatever. And you have obviously no control over that.

I can’t even imagine just the complications that that brings to the player, but also you guys as a coaching staff, just trying to manage and navigate all that. And then with these two guys and the fame that they have coming in and going out and just everything that goes along with it. And I’m always amazed by how well somebody at 18, 19 years old can handle that stuff.

And I look, I always say with, and obviously LeBron is an extreme case of this, right? But you look at LeBron. Age, whatever, 15. He’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated and he’s the king and he’s projected to be one of the greatest of all time. And then he actually does it. I know. And then he’s in press conferences and he is dealing with people.

And you think about how would you or I handle anytime we step out. And if every time you went to a Rutgers football game, you had to be surrounded by 30 or 40 people as you’re walking and that group is just walking right along with you and you’re trying to sign and you can’t really go any I and to handle all that stuff and have it, and still be able to do it in such a way that you’re able to maintain your calm, your cool, your reputation, all those things.

I can only imagine what that feels like as an 18, 19-year-old kid trying to deal with that. And then obviously you guys as a coaching staff, trying to help them to be able to navigate those situations. Obviously you wouldn’t trade it for the world, right? The opportunity to coach players with that kind of ability not many people get an opportunity to do that.

And so for you guys to have that year with them again, they’re always going to be a part of your journey and you’re always going to be a part of theirs. And I think that’s really a cool thing as you start thinking about, well, hey, obviously you see all your players, right? And what, what they can do, whether it’s in the business world or whether it’s athletics or whatever, but there’s a whole nother level when a guy is able to have an NBA career and do that, and you and his life is playing out publicly.

Very cool as a coach to be able to have, not many people get a chance to coach guys with that, with that kind of talent.

[01:32:36] Mike Larkin: A hundred percent. And it’s, it’s, it’s definitely a blessing and it’s it’s cool and when you’re in it, you’re, you’re just trying to do your best to help them. And it didn’t really hit me until like draft night when I’m like, these, these dudes just got picked, like two and five, like, okay.

And I like, and like if they saw me, they would like, got me up like, .

[01:32:57] Mike Klinzing: Exactly. You’re like, I know these guys. These guys, yeah. This,

[01:33:01] Mike Larkin: this is, yeah. So like we went that, like we went to the draft obviously, and then like we were leaving and, . We got someone saw us walking out, but they were like taking pictures and they’re like, oh, like, and like they’re like, they got their hats on and they’re whatever, super expensive suits and they’ve got their basketball and they’re taking these pictures and they’re like, what’s up to me?

And I’m just like, like, wow. Like this is wild. Like, these guys literally just got drafted and they’re saying hi to me. I minutes later, I’m like, I talk about this downward trajectory of being drafted and saying hi to Mike Mark in the green room.

[01:33:35] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. How many years, how many years have you watched the draft?

Right. And seen the, seen the fancy suits or the guys up on the stage and say, that’s cool. And then all of a sudden, here you are boom, dapping this guy up and you, and like there’s a guy that, again, if his life play, if their lives play out the way that everybody projects, they’re going to be pretty cool for you.

That you’ll be able to have a connection to those guys and what that means to your career, what that means to Rutgers as a program. And then forget about all that. Just the personal relationship. Right. The fact that. Just like you would have with any player.  that’s always, I think one of the things that’s the most special about coaching is the relationships that you’re able to build with your guys.

And I always say that not many people get the opportunity to use something that they love to be able to better other human beings. And the fact that you get to use the game of basketball as the conduit to be able to pour into and have an impact on not just Dylan and Ace, but your entire roster and everybody that you’ve had a chance to coach at all the levels that you’ve coached at.

And I just think that’s something that sometimes you have to take a deep breath and kind of look around and just, that’s when you realize sort of how lucky you are to be involved in the game when you think about. The people and the fact that you get to use basketball to connect with those people. It’s part of this podcast for me is, is about that.

Like here we are talking and honestly like I just looked a second ago and I’m like, oh God, we’re at a minute. We’re at an hour and 32 minutes. I told Mike we were going to be done at between 1120 and 1130. It’s now 1155 and I wasn’t even paying any attention. because here we are, just two guys talking basketball and I’m totally falling asleep as the host and not paying attention to the clock.

But anyway, just, you just think about, again, being able to use the game of basketball and connect with people, whether it’s player to coach, whether it’s coach to coach, whether it’s in a forum like this, it’s what it’s all about. because we all love the game of basketball. And to be able to use that to be able to connect with people.

To me that’s, that’s the best part. As I’ve gotten older, that’s become more, it’s just become more and more important to me. And I realize how precious and valuable that is.

[01:35:42] Mike Larkin: Yeah, it’s, it’s something that you can’t quantify and you can’t, like you, you, whether you make a lot of money in coaching or you, you, you’re doing it and you’re not making a ton of money.

Like that’s something that you, you’re, you get out of it that, that’s not really quantifiable. And  it’s, it’s, it, you do sometimes have to take the step back because you do get caught up in what’s my next job? Or what’s that’s right. What’s our team going to be like this year? Or mm-hmm.

I should have said this to this recruiter that recruit. And like, then you have moments like, like you’re saying, where you get to step back and say  I got to be around these such, so many good, awesome, so many awesome people because of basketball. And I tell our, our campers every day, basketball’s the greatest game in the world.

And it, it, it it takes you to places that you’ll never, you’ll never really. Never really thought you could go take you all around the world and introduce you to people that you you never thought you would meet. So, yeah, it’s I got lucky this summer. We had like a, my, one of my, one of the guys that I coached at St.

Mike’s, he plays over in Japan and he, he was home for the summer and he wanted to, just wanted to connect. And we got some of the other guys that worked at St. Mike’s that played at St. Mike’s. In this area. We got them together for like to come and play pickup here at Rutgers. And it was just so cool. Like they, they got fam, they got wives and families and  they’re doing these cool things and they, they they want to look back and laugh at the time that I yelled at them when it wasn’t really their fault.

They’re like I changed the play when I shouldn’t have changed the play.  like they want to talk about all that stuff. Like, it’s like, it’s funny and like, all I could think back to was like, oh, like we should have won that game. And they’re like, no. Like, it, like it was really funny. Like we were joking about it in the dorms later and I’m like, yeah, you’re joking at my expense.

But perfect. Exactly. Cool.

[01:37:22] Narrator: Because

[01:37:23] Mike Larkin: they’re able now as adults to say that to you and, and then you get and  the guys can say they say thank you they say thank you for no reason and  and you’re like, okay, like these guys kind of understood that we were all just looking out for the best for their best and trying to do what we could to help them.

[01:37:39] Mike Klinzing: Did anybody have a good, any of them Have a good coach Larkin impression?

[01:37:43] Mike Larkin: Not yet. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think I haven’t gotten that yet. I, there’s, there’s two guys that I, that I feel like could have a good impression, but I, they, they were, they were not they were not attendees at this at this reunion.

Okay. I got I gotcha. That’s always, that’s always

[01:37:55] Mike Klinzing: one of the most, it’s always one of the most fun things when I think about my time as a player, just the number of, because again, we all have idiosyncrasies, right? And the way we do things and mannerisms and things we say. And so I think about the coaches that I played for, and just the different little mannerisms or sayings that I could talk to a teammate today and just say like one word or make one little gesture, and immediately everybody would be laughing and cracking up and doing the same thing.

And there’s some people who do them really well, and then other people who just kind of play along. But yeah, the impressions are always fun. All right. We are well past an hour and a half, so I want to ask you one final two part question and then get this thing done. So, two part question, part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge?

Then the second part of the question is, when you think about what you get to do every day, what brings you the most joy? So your biggest challenge and your biggest joy?

[01:38:47] Mike Larkin: Yeah. So my biggest challenge I feel like right now is, and this is, it’s going to be, I’m going to kind of go a little internal usually I go external, but my biggest challenge right now is I’m trying to figure out, obviously I need to try and help Rutgers win.

And we we’re, we’re trying to we had two tough years where we didn’t make the NCA tournament and we want to make the NCA tournament, and I want to try and do everything we can to do that. And that’s a challenge in enough itself. But for, for my career I’m now on year seven at Rutgers where I’m not, I haven’t really been able to coach and been able to recruit.

So I’m I’m just, to be honest, I’m, I’m concerned about I need, I need to. Do I want to try and find another job that I’m, where I’m coaching, like how aggressive do I want to be with that? Like what, what’s my, what’s my next step, I guess is my biggest challenge is like figuring out yep.

What my next step is. And whether it’s, I get lucky enough for to have an opportunity here at Rutgers to get on the court and on the road. Or if I have to take a job have to, if I get to take a job at a, a smaller college or a back to division three, or a lower major assistant, or a mid-major assistant.

Like that for me has been really on my mind because I’ve reached a point here at Rutgers where I love what I do. I love being at Rutgers. I love it that I have a job. I love that  the direction the program’s going. I love the people I work with. But as I’ve, we’ve been talking about here as you feel yourself growing, you sometimes you need to lift up your roots and move a little bit and you need to get into a bigger pot, or you need to find a different pot to, to kind of allow yourself to grow.

So finding that, and . Hopefully making the right decision.  like that’s as, like I said, as an analytical guy, the decisions are the hardest things for me. So trying to make the the right decision for my career moving forward, we will, will, will, will, I think, be a big challenge for me. Along with all the other stuff I said of trying to help Coach Piel and the staff get back to the NCA tournament and get this program back to where we, we, we feel it should be.

We’re, we’re making the NCA tournament every year. And then the biggest joy I think is  going to steal what we just talked about being around the people I get a lot of my joy. You now obviously the players and getting to be impactful in their li lives and helping them with things and I always talk to our administrative staff here we’ve had young guys come through it that were our video coordinators or other administrative spot special assistants to the head coach and.

I’ve always talked to them about how I feel like the stuff that we do as administrators is coaching.  like, because I came up from a place where you had to do those things if you, even if your title was assistant coach, you had to do those things. So taking pride in the fact that the players feel like the program’s organized, like the schedule is sent out on time.

The jerseys are where they’re supposed to be. The managers know what they’re supposed to do. The, . The tickets are, are, are, are sent out correctly to the parents.  like I like that. To me I try to find the joy in that because I’m not getting the encore stuff and I do view that as coaching and as an all encompassing part of this.

And if the players and the other coaches can feel like I’m providing value there, like that’s where I get my joy and I, and being around those people and forming those relationships with these guys that are doing the same things I’m doing and trying to fight the same fight I’m fighting to, to, whether it’s they want to get to an assistant coaching job or they want to, they want to take my job when I leave, or they want to be, take Coach Michael’s job when he retires.

Like whatever it is, like helping people, young coaches, old coaches because I learned from young coaches, young coaches learn from me and on.

Those lessons and those relationships and building that, that kind of bond between players and the staff, the players and the staff and everybody that you come in contact with. That’s where I get my joy from is hopefully continuing to do that and continuing to provide value for people in the role that I’m in.

[01:42:58] Mike Klinzing: Well said. And both of those points I think are, again, fair and again, you start looking at where you are in your career and making the right decision, as you said, and trying to go back and forth and figure out what’s the best, what’s the best move to be able to, to be able to make, to, to do what’s right for, for you and your career.

And while at the same time still pouring 110% into what it is that you’re doing in the given moment and finding joy in that. Yeah. And so I think that’s really well said. Before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance to share how can people reach out to you, get in touch with you, share email, social media, whatever you feel comfortable with.

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

[01:43:38] Mike Larkin: Yeah, so you can, I mean, I’m on Twitter, you can follow me at Twitter. I think it’s @Mike__Larkin. Pretty simple. You can just search Mike Larkin, and I’m the first guy that probably shows up. And you can reach out to my email on the website, you mlarkin@scarletknights.com. Knights with a K, and yeah, you can feel free.

Like I said, I’ve got a million emails, so you might have to double email me. But definitely feel free to reach out and I’m, I’m very, very happy to connect and to, to, to share stories and to just kind of network as, again, like I said, I’m not super, I’m not, I’m not the networking king, but if I can help anyone in any way, I’m happy to do so.

Mike, I cannot thank you enough for thank, I really appreciate it. Oh yeah, absolutely. I appreciate, appreciate what you doing with this.  the Head Start basketball, I read, I read through your bio like what you’re doing is really cool stuff. And I really, really appreciate that there’s people  around doing stuff like this.

because there’s not a lot of people that are thinking about basketball this way. And, and I really appreciate the stuff that you do.

[01:44:40] Mike Klinzing: Well, thank you and we appreciate your time. Again, just, I don’t take it lightly. I know how busy people are and like I said, I promise you we were going to be done between 1120 and 1130 and it’s now 1205.

So this was a lot of fun. Really enjoyed the conversation and it speaks to the fact that, like I said, I looked up at the clock and I was like, man, we’re at an hour and 32 minutes for the first, the first time I looked at the clock. So I know we’re doing something right. It was a fun conversation, learned a lot from you and hopefully our audience did as well.

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

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[01:46:07] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.