RYAN GLENNEY – DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1138

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

Email – ryan@dbu.edu

Twitter/X – @coachglenney

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Ryan Glenney is in his ninth season with the Dallas Baptist University Men’s Basketball team and serves as the team’s Associate Head Coach. During his eight seasons with the Patriots, DBU has advanced to the NCAA Tournament six times, won two Lone Star Conference Division titles, a pair of Heartland Conference regular-season titles, clinched the Heartland Conference Tournament Championship in 2018, and posted a 107-75 record. In 2019, Glenney was named the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches Small College Assistant Coach of the Year.

Before arriving at DBU, Glenney was the top assistant coach at North Platte Community College in North Platte, Nebraska, and also had coaching stints at Jacksonville College and Western Texas College.

Glenney began his coaching career at Iowa State University, serving as a student assistant under current Creighton University Coach Greg McDermott. After graduating from Iowa State, he joined the Dallas Baptist University staff as a Graduate Assistant Coach.

On this episode Mike and Ryan discuss why selflessness and camaraderie are paramount for sustained success. Throughout this discussion, we delve into Coach Glenney’s journey from a humble upbringing in Iowa to his current role, exploring the challenges and triumphs he encountered along the way. We reflect on the unique dynamics of coaching in junior college versus a Division II setting, where the emphasis on character and shared values plays a pivotal role in team cohesion. Additionally, we examine the rigorous preparation process for each game, highlighting the importance of film analysis and the meticulous attention to detail that underpins the DBU training regimen. Ultimately, Coach Glenney’s commitment to nurturing both players and staff fosters an environment where everyone can thrive, reinforcing the notion that happiness in the profession transcends mere wins and losses.

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Grab a notebook and pen before you listen to this episode with Ryan Glenney, Men’s Basketball Associate Head Coach at Dallas Baptist University.

What We Discuss with Ryan Glenney

• The coaching profession requires a balance between personal fulfillment and professional ambition, which can be challenging
• Finding a supportive environment for family and career is essential for long-term happiness
• Attracting selfless athletes who contribute positively to the team culture
• Building a cohesive team of players who prioritize collective success over individual accolades
• The significance of establishing roots in a coaching career cannot be overstated, as it fosters stability and personal growth
• Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is crucial for coaches, especially in managing family commitments alongside professional responsibilities
• The culture within a basketball program relies heavily on the character and values of its players
• Keys to utilizing film for player development and game preparation
• Coaching junior college basketball provides invaluable experiences that contribute to a coach’s development and understanding of diverse player backgrounds
• Developing player accountability
• How personal values influence coaching philosophy and team culture
• Why coaches should prioritize building strong relationships with players and their families for lasting impact

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THANKS, RYAN GLENNEY

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TRANSCRIPT FOR RYAN GLENNEY – DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY MEN’S BASKETBALL ASSOCIATE HEAD COACH – EPISODE 1138

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

[00:00:20] Ryan Glenney: There are so many people in our profession that don’t have peace about where they’re at. They’re constantly looking for their next job. They aren’t able to put roots down, and that was me the five years in junior college. Like they were good spots, but they weren’t places we wanted to be. Long term, we have found a place that we love, and I don’t want to leave just out of curiosity, because my family’s thriving, our program’s thriving, so I’m just very fortunate to be where I’m at.

[00:00:46] Mike Klinzing: Ryan Glenny is in his ninth season with the Dallas Baptist University men’s basketball team, and he serves as the team’s associate head coach. His eight seasons with the Patriots DBU has advanced the NCAA tournament six times, won two Lone Star conference division titles, a pair of Heartland Conference regular season titles, and clinched the Heartland Conference Tournament Championship in 2018 while posting a 1 0 7 and 75 overall record.

In 2019, Glenny was named the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches Small College Assistant Coach of the Year before arriving at DBU Glenny was the top assistant coach at North Platte Community College in North Platte, Nebraska, and also had coaching stints at Jacksonville College and Western Texas College.

Glenny began his coaching career at Iowa State University, serving as a student assistant under current Creighton University coach Greg McDermott. After graduating from Iowa State, he joined the Dallas Baptist University staff as a graduate assistant coach.

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[00:02:31] JP Clark: Hi, this is JP Clark, former NBA assistant coach with the Celtics and Clippers, and you’re listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

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Grab a notebook and pen before you listen to this episode with Ryan Glenny, men’s basketball associate head coach at Dallas Baptist University.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads podcast, it’s Mike Klinzing here without my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight. But I am pleased to be joined by Ryan Glenney, Associate Men’s Head Basketball Coach at Dallas Baptist University.

[00:03:38] Mike Klinzing: Ryan, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:03:42] Ryan Glenney: Thanks a lot, Mike.

Thrilled to have you on. Looking forward to diving into all the interesting things that you’ve been able to do in your career. Let’s start by going back in time to when you were a kid. Tell me a little bit about your first experiences with the game of basketball.

What made you fall in love with it?

[00:04:02] Ryan Glenney: Yeah. Didn’t grow up in a particularly athletic family. I grew up on a stereotypical corn and soybean farm in eastern Iowa, and there was a hoop in a big red barn  plywood backboard, and so there was always that to do. And so I would just be in the barn shooting for hours and it’s just this not from really anyone really introducing me to it.

My dad played a little bit and was a Celtics fan with Bill Russell and things back in the day. But we’d, we’d play one-on-one growing up, you know in the winter in between planting and harvest. And so those are a lot of really good memories for me and my dad growing up. And so from there I just, yeah, just.

Middle school, high school played. And I would say that I loved the game a lot more than it loved me in terms of, I didn’t have a whole lot of natural athletic ability. But I took it as far as I could through high school and then found ways into coaching from there

[00:05:00] Mike Klinzing: Who was the first coach that had an influence on you?

[00:05:04] Ryan Glenney: Boy, there wasn’t a I went to a really small school.  the town was two 3000 people. And so some of the coaches I had from middle school up through high school in different capacities. And there was a man by the name of Ron Hedrick, he was the high school math instructor. And he’d just kind of coached all the sports.

He’d be an assistant for, for all of ’em. And for, for whatever reason like I get, I wasn’t particularly gifted. I was never a star of a team or anything. But he just really invested in me believed in me. He encouraged me when I was coming off the bench and I dunno, he’s just a really good man who gave me a lot more than I was able to give him on the court.

So he was probably the first one just through middle, through middle school and through high school, having him as a math instructor who, yeah, it was just helped me feel valued even though I wasn’t out there being all conference.

[00:05:56] Mike Klinzing: A small school. Did you play other sports besides basketball?

[00:05:59] Ryan Glenney: I did.  I did a little football and track. And then got to high school. The hurdles got higher. I did not get taller, so I started doing golf. But basketball was my main sport. I is  wrestling capital of America. We were a wrestling powerhouse, so basketball wasn’t taken very seriously. And so I tried to find guys to play, go around the neighborhood, hey, want to play some threes outside and things.

But didn’t come from a particularly strong program. I just really loved it.

[00:06:30] Mike Klinzing: How do you think that playing all those different sports as a kid, when you think about the specialization that so many kids get involved in today, for whatever reason, whether it’s just the youth basketball environment itself, whether it’s parents kind of pushing kids to specialize coaches or programs, pushing kids to.

Be able to specialize. When you think about your childhood growing up and shooting in the barn with your dad and playing multiple sports and just having those experiences, how do you value those in your life when you think back to that time of your childhood?

[00:07:03] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, it just, it provided a lot of different experiences through sport successes, failures.

Being at a small school, I was always with the same teammates. ’cause my, the guys on the football team were also the guys on the basketball team and the track team. And so you’re, you’re with a lot of the same people, 365 days a year through different sport. And it, there’s benefits of specialization, specialization, but there’s also absolutely benefits of of, of doing other things.

I think of guys that I’ve coached in college, like some of the better players I’ve had were Allstate football players or one of the. Guards I’ve had with the best footwork, grew up in the Netherlands playing soccer like that. Those experiences that they had allowed them to do special things in basketball that they, I don’t think they would’ve been as special at, had they not had multiple sports had they not experienced those.

Growing

[00:07:59] Mike Klinzing: up with your background as a player and thinking about the coaches that influenced you, was coaching something that you thought about from an early age or when you went to college? Was it not really something that was on your radar as a potential career? Where were you in the process of when you made a college decision?

Were you thinking at all that, hey, maybe at some point coaching is where I wanted up? Obviously, I know that you got an opportunity to work under Coach McDermott. We’ll talk about that here in a second, but where was your mindset as you were leaving high school, going into college in terms of. Career wise.

[00:08:37] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, it’s, it’s remarkable. It should have been on my radar much earlier, given how much I love the game and how clearly obvious it was, I wasn’t going to be playing college basketball. But it didn’t occur to me. Upon graduation I went to a local community college for a year and a half. Dabbled in education, journalism different majors.

I tried, I finally landed on physical education ’cause I wanted to be around athletics and things. And, but again, for some reason, coaching hadn’t really occurred to me. And then I transferred to Iowa State. My dad was an Iowa State alum. I just grew up rooting for the cyclones my whole life.

And so I, that’s just, that’s just where I was going to go. And when co the thought of coaching finally occurred to me, it was a, it was kind of a surreal experience that I haven’t had very often, but I had a. Homework assignment took, they gave us two or three choices of people in our field in kinesiology to go listen to.

And one of ’em was a former Iowa State player that I had grown up watching Jake Sullivan. And to go talk about the a a u organization. He ran out of Ames. Back then, 20 some years ago, all I knew coming from a small country town is a, a u is just playing summer league with your high school team in the summer.

I didn’t know what it was. And so I went, I listened to Jake talk and he was telling me about this a, a u program, all Iowa Tech that he had started there in Ames and they were getting a lot of the best players from Iowa. And they were traveling around the country playing in tournaments. And it was, they were just getting started and it was growing and it was just really bizarre.

Like it was, just a moment where it was like, this is what I’m going to do. And I went up and I was like, can I help? Can I, can I volunteer with the program? I remember calling my mom like with goosebumps on the, like, walking home. It was so bizarre. But it was like I just found out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life.

And I couldn’t really explain it, but that’s kind of where it started.

[00:10:32] Mike Klinzing: So from there, obviously that’s an instantaneous dream, but then there are things obviously that have to take place in order to get you from this light bulb aha moment to, Hey, I’m actually going to start to move myself in the direction where I can consider coaching as a career.

So after that light bulb moment, what are the next steps? What are the next couple things that happen in the progression towards becoming a coach?

[00:10:58] Ryan Glenney: Yeah. Well, I had to beg Jake to allow me to coach with him. He didn’t know anything about me. And but he, he allowed me to get on board. And the program was growing from just having high school boys teams and they were adding middle school and elementary school, and he just needed willing helpers.

And so for the three years, my final three years of my undergrad I was coaching for basically volunteering, but helping coach all the teams. And I was just really a sponge. I was willing, I don’t know how able I was at the time, but  it, it was an opportunity and it was a foot in the door to coach somebody and to be taught.

The very first team I ever had that was my own, was our sixth grade C team. And one of the most influential moments in my coaching career it was our C team, but we’re still playing and playing in all these big national tournaments that our top teams are playing in. We’re going to Milwaukee, Chicago, top teams winning all these games, and we’re getting beat by 30 every game.

Like we just need to be in the local rec league. And so it was frustrating and I’m like, why am I coaching the C team? And I got an email from Jake telling me, Hey don’t expect you to win all your games, but these players are investing a lot of their time. Their parents are investing a lot of money, and they need to be getting better.

And if they’re not getting better, then maybe this isn’t, this won’t be a very good fit. It was a gut punch because we had talked about, Hey, when you graduate hopefully we’ll be growing at a rate where we can hire you on full time. And it was something that I loved. I was in the gym constantly training kids, developing relationships, and it was, it was a huge gut punch and it, it taught me, man, like players can, players will rise to the level that you hold them accountable to.

They may not be the most gifted players, but I could, I could get a lot more out of them. And from then on they started getting better. And it was a better experience. I got a lot better as a coach. But that was really a kick in the pants that I needed to kind of, yeah, drive me forward. Yeah, while I was coaching, coaching those guys,

[00:13:05] Mike Klinzing: what did you do differently?

What was it that, after you get that email, what is it that you change about your approach? When you think back to that time, what did you do differently?

[00:13:16] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, it was, I think just because it’s like, well, I’m coaching the C team. There’s no expectations for them to win, show up, get through practice, and then go help with the top teams, the high school teams, you know?

But I wasn’t giving those boys the the fullness of myself that they deserved and their families just deserved. And after that, I just, it’s like the attention to detail, the accountability, no, that’s not right, let’s do it again. And then watching how they responded in really good ways. Like they wanted the challenge, their parents wanted the challenge, the accountability.

That’s what they were there for. And watching them get better. And then all of a sudden, shockingly, you start winning a couple games and the boys are having more fun. And but again, like I’d never coached anyone before. I just, I really didn’t know. And I just learned so much about human psychology and just through a bunch of nice 12-year-old boys.

And that really, yeah. And that fit a fire in me to realize, man, I can do, I can do a lot more, I can be a lot more as a coach as well.

[00:14:12] Mike Klinzing: When you think about those reps from that first au experience, and then obviously you continue on and as you said, you did that for three years and had an opportunity to coach different teams and work both as a head coach and as an assistant coach, how important, when you look back now at the point you are in your career, how important were those early reps in terms of helping you to understand what it takes to be a coach at whatever level?

Not, I mean, whether you’re coaching sixth grade or whether you’re coaching at the level that you’re coaching now, what did you learn from those early reps that not everybody gets those? ’cause not everybody starts out coaching their own team and a a UA lot of guys are obviously jumping in at the college level where you’re an assistant or you’re on a division one staff.

If you’re lucky and you’re you’re the ops guy or you’re the video or you’re whatever and may, maybe you don’t get all the opportunities to do as many things. On the floor as you did. So how, what was the value of those reps for you?

[00:15:09] Ryan Glenney: Man, it, it was really invaluable. There are things about being a head coach, even if it’s to a sixth grade team, that you can’t get being an assistant coach at any level.

The implication substitution patterns, the implications of those, how, how that impacts a player’s confidence handling with parents navigating those situations. Being the one that creates the practice plans figuring out time management. How do, how do you make a practice flow?

Being the person who’s in charge of getting the logistics of travel to one tournament or, or another. Yeah, there, there’s, there’s just so many. In a 12-year-old game with five seconds left down too, you’re the one having to draw something up don’t have to do that much as an assistant.

 that’s what the head coach is doing. And so in college and so, yeah, just really invaluable experiences. And again, it’s not on a big state, so if I fail, like we all learn and we laugh it off and you survive. There’s six a a u games every weekend go, go play another one. So I really got to grow.

I learned a lot about myself through that.

[00:16:21] Mike Klinzing: What’s one lesson, if you had to take one thing that you took away from your time in AAU basketball that you’re still carrying with you today, what’s the one most important lesson you learned?

[00:16:32] Ryan Glenney: Boy, that’s a great question. Yeah, I just think that, that everyone has value.

The big lesson when I told you when I got that email, I wasn’t giving those boys. It wasn’t, it was subconscious and immature from a 20-year-old college student. But I wasn’t giving those boys I wasn’t giving them the value that, that they inherently have. Like, you’re the C team, I’m going to get through practice.

Like that’s, that’s not, that’s not how the world works. Like everyone’s created in, in the image of God. They have an innate value and should be treated as such. And when I started treating them with the value that they deserved, they started becoming better versions of themselves.

[00:17:11] Mike Klinzing: Tell me about how attending Iowa State gets you the opportunity to work with Coach McDermott.

Are you going in and banging on the office door multiple times? Are you sending multiple emails? Are you begging the secretary to get a chance to be able to get his ear a, what was, what was the process like?

[00:17:31] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. It’s, it’s, again, a lot of, and this is similar to with my, my, my sixth grade team is I, this kind of happened for me, like realizing that I’m capable of, of, of more than what I thought.

So like, I just thought, man, I’m, I’m going to coach for this AU program. This, this is going to be my career. I’ll get hired full-time after I graduate. That was the plan. But then going into my senior year the, my boss with the AAU program called me in that summer going into my senior year and he goes, Hey, we’re not quite going to be where we thought we were in terms of hiring someone full-time after you graduate.

Like, we’re, we’re not going to be able to hire someone. And  that was like a, I was, I was distraught. I was like, this is what I want to do. And he goes, have you thought about coaching in college? I go never, not, not once because I mean, as I’ve described come from a very humble basketball background.

And he goes, you should really go on and see if you can get on as a manager at Iowa State. Just he had played for, for USTA a couple head coaches ago, but  he was still in, still involved and around. And so he goes, just go to the basketball office, mentioned that I sent you and just ask if you want to be a manager.

Well, I did that, but that did not get me to the job. I met with and there were people that ended up being very influential for me. But Ron Smith, who was the director of operations Jeff Rudder, who was the associate head coach at the time, he’s at Western Michigan now. And I kind of met with them and they were like, Hey, like, appreciate you having interest.

We already have 10 managers. We it’s the big 12. Everyone wants to be a manager. And. They’re like, I just don’t think we’re going to have a spot for you. But I was able to, I managed to somehow get Coach Rudder’s number, and that’s where I started wearing them out. And I just said, look, like I don’t care about hanging out with your players on the weekends.

I don’t care about free gear. Like if you want me to scrub the floor with a toothbrush every morning, I have one year to be a manager for you so that I can prove to you that you’ll be a reference for me to be a ga  in a, a year from now. I’m like, I’m, I’m burning the bridge. And so they let me on.

And so that for nine months, 10 months yeah, I was a manager for the team and it was, it was a really incredible experience. And looking back now, it’s remarkable to see the staff I was on, we, we were on the bottom half of the big 12 that year. I think it was two years before Coach Mack left for Creighton.

But guys that were on that staff now. Berger head coach at Iowa State Danielle Robinson, head coach at North Texas. Eric Henderson, head coach at Drake. Eric Crawford’s, an assistant at Northern Iowa now. And then Brian Peterson, our point guard who I’m still really good friends with, is the head coach of South Dakota State now.

 I was surrounded by greatness, but, but we’re, they’re all assistants and players at the time, and I got to be around that every day. And I was just a, a sponge. I was burning coaching champ championship coaching DVDs and taking ’em home, and that’s what I did on the weekends. I would put in coaching DVDs and write down notes on a legal pad and just trying to maximize the short time that I had with them.

Learn as much as I could be a servant hearted and be there as much as I could. So that hopefully would turn into something after I graduated.

[00:20:53] Mike Klinzing: How much time on a day-to-day basis were you spending in and around the basketball team? In the basketball

[00:20:58] Ryan Glenney: office? More than I was in class or on homework.

I don’t know if I recommend that, but yeah, it was, if I wasn’t in class, I was in the basketball office morning until the last coach left. I wasn’t going to go home. I was until either, they all told me, Ryan, we really have nothing left for you. We mean at this time. Or until they went home. And so as, as with a lot of jobs and I was with the, the group of managers were great guys, but not all of them wanted to be college coaches.

Two or three of us did. So, which was great for me. That mean I got a lot more work ’cause it needed to get done and I was, I was willing. And so yeah, Jeff Rudder, who was the associate head coach, really invested a lot of time in me. And now that I’ve been around college coaching a lot and seeing how things are, you know.

In the Big 12, the associate head coach, investing in a manager doesn’t happen a whole lot. Know our Ron Smith, who was a was later in his career at that time and just was just a great ops guy helping McDermott, but like he invested in me, our, our GA’s. And I just was invested in, on an uncommon level as a manager and I was just so fortunate to be with really good people that were willing to do that because looking back the, some of the things they were having me do wasn’t actually helping them.

Like, I remember Rutt giving me, Hey, take these DVDs home of Oklahoma State and bring back some place they’re running. I was like, oh man, I’m helping with the scout. In hindsight, no, he, he had all that, but I was learning a lot. Right. For sure. So, yeah.

[00:22:30] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it’s very cool. And it’s funny when you kind of look back and sort of pull back the curtain, right, of what you thought your experience maybe was versus what it actually was.

And I think it, it is amazing. When you start talking about at the division one level, obviously you have a big staff, number one. Then most schools, just like you described, have 8, 10, 12 managers that all have different responsibilities and whatever. So the opportunity for any manager to get one-on-one time or get that kind of investment from a member of the coaching staff, it’s obvious that for whatever reason, you made some type of impression on them that they felt like they saw some potential in you.

They obviously liked you, you obviously worked hard and did the things that you needed them or they needed you to do and probably went above and beyond. Which again, if we’re talking about lessons for young coaches out there, right, it’s, there’s a huge lesson to be learned there is just do, do a great job at whatever it is that you’re being asked to do.

Look for ways that you can go above and beyond what you’re being asked to do and just be there to help. Right? And I think then when somebody sees you doing a great job. A maybe, maybe not everybody will be as lucky as you to be invested in the same way. But certainly if you’re working hard and you’re doing the extra things, somebody’s going to notice you.

And when somebody else comes and asks and says, Hey, how’s Ryan doing over here? And we’re thinking about, we got an opening, is he a good fit? Somebody who sees you doing a good job day in and day out, they’re much more likely to be able to recommend you than if you think of, oh, this job.  I don’t, I don’t want to clean floors with a toothbrush like you described, right?

That’s, that’s below me. But again, everybody knows that there’s jobs that in any job, I don’t care what, I don’t care what job you have in the game of basketball, there’s always aspects of your job that you might love. And there might be some aspects of your job that you don’t love, but they’re all things that are part of your job description that you need to make sure that you do.

And I think if you’re doing them and you’re doing ’em well at the place where you are, that’s how the next opportunity materializes. Because again, you’re doing what you’re supposed to do. You’ve impressed somebody. They’re much more likely to reach out or to be able to give you a good recommendations when somebody reaches out to them.

And I think that’s a great lesson to be learned, that that obviously helped you as you as you moved on from Iowa State. And we’ll talk about that in a second.

[00:24:52] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, absolutely. It was, I just recognized, I, there has, I need to do something that’s going to separate me because I, I wasn’t, I didn’t play college.

I’m not connected to a staff. I have no family in the business. But the one thing I could control and stuff I learned from my, my dad and my grandpa was you show up every day and you work hard. Like I can control my effort and I can work circles around people if my attitude’s right. And so I went with that and I was, and yeah, like I said, it was a perfect storm of, of, of my willingness and people that were, did not have to invest in me being willing to spend time with me.

[00:25:33] Mike Klinzing: Did you know when you graduated that. College basketball was where you wanted to be. Obviously you started out in PE where you could have been a PE teacher and a high school coach, but having that experience at the college level, did you know that, hey, college is where I want to be? When, when the time came to graduate?

[00:25:51] Ryan Glenney: Yeah. Once I got a month or two in I was only a manager my, for my senior year, just for that final year. Once I got a month or two in, it became very evident to me, this, this is what I want to do. And I was actually on pace. I was going to need one more additional semester. The next fall I needed a student teach, which meant I was going to graduate in December.

Well, no one’s looking for a grad assistant in December. And so I went to my advisor, who I actually, her son was on that sixth grade team. And so she’s seen me coach and I told her, I said, Hey, i’m going to be a college coach. I need to change my major to something. I can graduate a semester early.

And just basically my major is, is not going to be a factor, but I’m going to graduate in the spring and she goes, do you have any idea how hard it is to be a college coach? She goes, you’re not changing your major, which reflects on what she thought of me as a coach for her son. There you go. Fair enough.

And I said, okay, well I’m going to go talk to another counselor. And I had, I had one previous counselor and she was, let’s do it. She goes, let, ’cause I was going to need a bunch, I was going to need to find a different major that allowed ’em to graduate early. I needed several professors to give independent studies and she went to bat for me and got me all of those things so I could graduate in the spring.

So I totally burnt the bridge and was like, I’m, I’m going to be a college coach. So yeah, I absolutely towards the beginning of my senior year, knew like, this is what I want to pursue. Tell

[00:27:15] Mike Klinzing: me about the job search.

[00:27:18] Ryan Glenney: It, it takes one person to believe in you. Throughout that year, I would spend, most nights, I got really good going to college athletics websites, and I could find the faculty directory really quick and about 20 emails a night to head coaches, division one and division two.

So by the end of the year, I’d email or send a letter to every D one or D two head coach in the country. Would get a few emails back, Hey, send your resume, or, well, we don’t need a ga or we’ll be looking for a GA later in the spring.  follow up, but nothing serious. But the one that did kind of have some interest was Dallas Baptist back in oh nine.

Coach Flicker, who I work for now, he I. There’s only one division two program in Iowa, upper Iowa where Coach Casper Bauer is at now. And but I didn’t grow up around it. I didn’t know D two basketball. I wasn’t familiar with it. But it was someone that was responding to my emails and it was really neat because he said his email on this DBU is a very unique place.

But he said, are you a Christian? And if you are, what’s your story? You didn’t, you didn’t ask me any basketball things. Well, I am, and that, and that’s a big part of my life. And so we emailed back and forth a little bit about that. Then I found out I was a Big 12 manager, well, he’d been a manager for Roy Williams at Kansas.

So we kinda had the big 12 manager thing going. And so I just continued to stay in contact with him just random emails, just trying to keep him warm just in case. And he had started the program, the programs only existed for 20 years. He started it from scratch. So this was maybe year three or four of the program.

And they had made, for the first time, they, they made the NCAA regional and they were going to be playing in Missouri. So I asked him, Hey, could If I drove down to Missouri, could I just get five minutes after the game to shake your hand? ’cause again, it’s like I’ve have to figure out some way to separate myself from whoever else he’s talking to.

I’ve got nothing else going. So he did, thankfully they won the first round game. So he first NCAA tournament, win in school history. He’s in a great mood. We, I shake his hand, I’ve got my suit on.  we talk for five minutes. Hey, good luck. The next game I drive back to Iowa. And then I remember it’s finals week.

I get out of a finals. It’s end of my senior year. I get a call from Coach Flicker and he offers me the GA job. And. I accepted it without ever having visited campus anything, knowing anything about Dallas, never been to Texas. Because it was, it was a job and it was the one guy that believed in me out of six, 700 head coaches.

And so just needed one and that’s, that’s how I ended up, I mean, I’m back but got moved to Texas in oh nine, was a G Division two GA at Dallas Baptist from oh nine to 11.

[00:30:00] Mike Klinzing: You balance the academics of the getting your graduate degree with your responsibilities on the basketball court. I know whenever I talk to somebody who’s been a GA I always talk about the challenges of trying to balance their classwork with the amount of time that ’cause clearly guys who are GA’s, they want to, not that you aren’t interested in getting your master’s degree and it’s important in your career, but at the same time.

We understand how important the basketball side of it is in spending time with the team and in the office and with the coaching staff. So how did you balance out the academics for yourself and the basketball responsibilities that you had during, during that time?

[00:30:36] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, I mean, I did both. I did well in grad school.

I did what I needed to do in grad school to get through and have good relationships with my professors and communicate, Hey, we’re going to be on the road.  kinda have a little leniency getting this in and things and the professors were, were great. I learned a lot. But I also knew like.

My future is going to be based on what I do for this coaching staff in this program the next two years. And so just like when I was a manager that seemed to work well, working really hard and asking questions and being serving hearted. So I did that for two years. And again  at, at DBU, similar to a lot of division twos, the head coach and there’s the head coach and there’s one full-time assistant, and then you have one or two GA’s.

So I was one of two grad assistants and the, the assistant at the time, Brandon Kern again, I was very fortunate, just really mentored and invested in me. And I learned so much in two years. And then getting to be in, in division two as a grad assistant, you get to recruit which was incredible.

One piece of advice that coach Rudder, the associate head coach at Iowa State, gave me when I said, Hey, should I take this job? Yes. Who else has offered you a job? But he goes, Hey, Ryan, it’s in, in college basketball and recruiting. It’s way better to be a Texas guy than an Iowa guy. So and I found that to be true.

There was just so much talent in our backyard in Dallas and the state of Texas where college staffs are flying their staff five, six hours from multiple states away to come recruit Texas kids. And we had ’em in our backyard. So I just really learned to evaluate because there’s so many good players from high major down to division three.

You get to see all of it in, in masses and you network as so many other colleges are coming through Dallas. And then yeah, we, we, we had a good program and I learned from two great coaches. And so yeah, like moving to Dallas was a, just a remarkable opportunity for me in hindsight, how

[00:32:32] Mike Klinzing: long did it take you to get a feel for.

The type of player, the level of player that you guys could recruit that would fit at Dallas Baptist. I’m almost kind of amazed that, I mean, clearly you can walk into a gym and be like, okay, that kid can play that kid, eh, not so much. But trying to figure out what kid fits with what level, how long did it take you to kind of get a grasp on, well, this kid is maybe too good, it’s a, it’s cl he’s clearly a division one kid.

Maybe this kid is into division two, maybe he’s division three. How long did it take you to get a feel for that?

[00:33:05] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, I think the summer in between my first and second year, because going in the first year, a lot of the summer recruiting was done. I didn’t really get to take part in it much and I went to some fall leagues and things.

But I remember coming back the first time, they sent me to a local event with some high schools and I came back and said, Hey. Coach Kern, I found a big, I think we should really recruit. And I told him who he was. He goes, yeah, he’s, he’s got high major offers. Congrats. You can identify high major talent.

Find someone that can play for us. But that next summer I was just on the road constantly, everywhere Brandon Kern went, I was his shadow. And I thought he was a really good talent evaluator, and I’d ask him questions. He expressed to me the importance of not only being able to identify who can play for Dallas Baptist and help us win, but how important it was to be able to also identify talent at levels that higher and, and lower than you.

And so he would kind of quiz me, what do you think about this?  and just through a lot of Socratic questioning back and forth and things that, that summer is when I really probably grew the most. I I still don’t have it down perfect. It, it’s constantly an evolving process, but, that summer going into my second year as a gratis is when I really started really at least grasp a, a, a good idea. I I could find someone in the ballpark.

[00:34:22] Mike Klinzing: You have a side of the ball that you liked coaching better when you first started. Did you like offense or defense

[00:34:27] Ryan Glenney: better when you started? I’ve always been a defensive guy and I think a lot of it just comes a lot of us are shaped by who we were as players and things, and the only way I got on the court was if I could outrun everyone in sprints and dive on the floor.

Like that was the value I brought. I could play really hard. That’s kind of a, a theme. I, I keeps popping up. I can do stuff hard. And so yeah, I’ve always leaned a little bit towards the defensive side of the ball. You have to outscore teams to beat ’em. So thankfully Coach Flicker, our head coach is really good on the offensive side and I, and I cover our defense.

But yeah, I lean a little bit more towards the on the defensive scheming of things.

[00:35:06] Mike Klinzing: When you think about the learning process during those first two years at Dallas Baptist where you come in after your year as a manager, after your experience in a a u, what do you think was your biggest area of growth as a coach during those first two years at Dallas Baptist?

As a ga

[00:35:26] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, I was, I just had a lot more ownership because you need your grad assistants to be assistant coaches ’cause there’s only one. And so you get thrown in the fire and they’re like, we need you to do this. And I may not be quite ready. I wasn’t maybe quite ready to do it, but the best way to learn is just to start doing it and figure it out.

And so yeah, I just got to do more. There’s ownership over recruiting like Brandon told me. Like, look, you need to know the state of Texas better than anyone. You need to know. Every single kid ranked 100 through 150. And I took ’em very seriously on that. And so I had a list and I took notes, just copious notes on all these kids.

That, that really helped me a lot. And then, and then the networking piece. As a manager, you don’t really have a lot of networking opportunities. Like I wasn’t a senior manager. I didn’t get to go on the road very much. Just a couple trips. You’re in the shadows, you’re, you’re upstairs filming practice, so you know your coaches, but outside of that program, you just don’t meet people.

But as a grad assistant, you’re on the road constantly. I met so many wonderful people at all different levels. Those were things that I really grew in immediately

[00:36:39] Mike Klinzing: done. With your time at Dallas Baptist, who the person that helps you the most in getting that next opportunity?

[00:36:48] Ryan Glenney: A, after I was a grad assistant.

[00:36:51] Mike Klinzing: Yeah.

[00:36:52] Ryan Glenney: Yeah. Yeah, it was definitely, it was Brandon Curran. Coach Flicker, our head coach did to an extent, but again, Brandon and I at that point were kind of joined at the hip. And he was, I guess as the assistant, he was the one on the phone with people all the time, recruiting and thanks talking to people.

So he was constantly putting words in, Hey, do you need a grad or do you need an assistant coach? And he was directly, he, he knew the head coach at Western Texas and put in a, a really good word for me. And that’s again, I interviewed and was fortunate enough to get offered the job, and that’s how I ended up with my first full-time assistant job coaching junior college in West Texas.

[00:37:29] Mike Klinzing: What’d

[00:37:29] Ryan Glenney: you do with all your money? All my money, boy. Nothing ’cause I didn’t have any I went from having nothing to just slightly more than nothing. My the GA job was, was three grand and tuition, which I was very grateful for. This job, I quadrupled my pay. I got 12,000 in a dormant.

 not many people get to quadruple their salary, so I was very fortunate. So I spent two years out there and junior college was completely different than Dallas Baptist. And so again, just another outside of my comfort zone. Had to learn a lot new things. And that started my five year junior college trek.

[00:38:05] Mike Klinzing: What’s the best part about junior college? I have guys that I’ve had on that have coached or continue to coach Juco that just love. Everything about it, just simply because again, you’re helping these guys to be able to make that transition both academically, hopefully athletically get ’em the opportunity to play at the next level.

They just talk about giving kids who maybe are under the radar, who have something in their background or, and they’re able to just kind of help these kids to be able to get to where they want to go. So when you think about your time, your different stints at the JUCO level, what, what stands out to you?

What’s the most special thing about being a JUCO coach?

[00:38:42] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, I mean, the number of players that you have an opportunity to try and help because the turnover is, is such a high rate. You’re recruiting 10 or more guys every year. And so and you get to experience so many different cultures.

Like in, in division two, we recruited a lot of high schoolers at Dallas Baptist. We were kind of set up for that. So it was a lot of Texas regional guys. But in region five junior college at, at that time when I was in the league, I mean, Mark Adams was a head coach in the league. Steve Green, and there’s multiple NJCA Hall of Fame coaches.

The national Championship was coming out of that league most years at that time. And so it was a league that you recruited nationally and internationally. So I was, we had players from all over the world, different states. I met so many people from so many different backgrounds. Both just regionally how they were raised, obviously.

And then I learned so much. And then you literally do everything. You, you, I wasn’t just the assistant coach, I was unofficially financial aid registrar study hall liaison it’s  I was an intramural mural director for a year. I was an assistant housing director for a year.

You’re everything to these guys because you just don’t have the resources that universities do. And so because you wear so many hats, like, I mean, the hours are, are ridiculous in a, in a good way for, for a young guy who’s doesn’t have kids yet and everything, and you’re trying to learn, I learned so much.

I am not half the coach I am today without, without junior college. And then again, just from a networking piece, as a, as a young coach you are meeting coaches because and on the recruiting side, like high school coaches, a a u coaches because you’re recruiting around the entire world your Rolodex is growing and then if you’re doing a good job and you have good players, you’re also networking with college coaches because you’ve got coaches at different levels wanting to recruit your players and so on.

Both ends of it. You’re meeting so many awesome people that. You just never know how that’s going to end up aiding you down the road with your career. There’s just a lot of really special memories I have from junior college and experiences that I, that I had.

[00:40:56] Mike Klinzing: What do you think are the most important characteristics of a successful assistant coach?

You’ve obviously worked for a number of different head coaches, you’ve seen lots of assistant coaches that you’ve worked beside. What makes a great assistant coach?

[00:41:15] Ryan Glenney: I think first and foremost is humility to just to be really servant hearted. How can I make the head coach look good? How can I make our program look good?

How can I make our players better? Like, it’s not about you. It, it, it should never be about you. And if you couple humility with, with an incredible work ethic and, a growth mindset to constantly be learning and the ability, ability to think critically  solve problems, be a problem solver.

I think those are the character traits that allow an assistant to keep the job that he has, to earn more opportunities to, to help a program win. But as soon as you start making it about yourself not being willing to put in the time that it, it deserves it, it’s not you’re going to, you’re not going to impact winning in the culture the way that you, you positively could be.

[00:42:11] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think that when you start talking about a loyalty to your head coach and to your program and doing whatever it takes, kind of goes back to. The original lesson that you learned right back when you’re a manager, that you do a great job in the spot that you’re in. You do what you’re asked to do, but then you go above and beyond to be able to help your coach and your program get to where they want to go.

Then that’s when you’re really, I think, having having success. So let’s talk a little bit about the transition from JUCO back to Dallas Baptist. So you have three stops along the way, junior college. You talked about the value in those experiences and just how getting a chance to be able to have your hands in so many aspects of a program that not everybody gets an opportunity to do.

It’s always interesting to me, Ryan, to talk to guys that start out at different levels. So you have somebody who starts at a lower level and frequently they give me the same sort of idea as an answer that you gave where I got to do so many different things that had helped me to grow. As a coach. And then there’s other guys where they start.

Maybe they’re fortunate enough to start at the division one level where you have such a big staff and maybe you’re much more specialized in what you can do and you kind of almost have to learn by osmosis and watching and taking notes as opposed to actually getting your hands in and doing just because there’s so many people on the staff.

So tell me about the opportunity to go back to Dallas Baptist. Obviously you had been there before. What made that opportunity enticing? What was it about the university, the environment, obviously your relationship there, what made it so special that made you want to come back? And obviously now you’ve been there for nine seasons, it’s clearly a place that yeah, you love and are comfortable and enjoy being there.

So what was it at the time that made you want to come back?

[00:44:07] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, man, there, there’s so many things. It’s one, and I touched on it. One person believed in me after being a manager, and it was Blake Flicker, a Dallas Baptist. It was a dream job for me to eventually try and work my way back to the assistant that left.

I’m the second, I’m the only, he’s only had two assistants in 20 years. He, job doesn’t open up very often. And so when it did open I talked to my wife and we’d actually really started enjoying Nebraska the community college and the community we were in. But we met in grad school at DBU.

She’s a DBU grad. She’s from Texas. She’s got family in the area. We had just had our first child or our daughter, Harper, who’s a fourth grader now. But being able to get to a place where maybe there’s a little, some family support starting a family. But I just. Debut is so special to me.

The mission of the university as a Christian university very much fed, met my wife and I as values at a place where we could be who we are. And it’s expected out of us.  she’s like, Hey, talk with the players about Jesus. Like, oh, I can do that. And it’s where it’s, it’s a little different at a state school.

Mm-hmm. It, it’s not as encouraged, obviously. And so it really fit who we are. And yeah. So all of those things. On my interview I told Coach Flicker, I said, Hey. I, because I wasn’t as close with him as I was with the assistant. So it, it wasn’t a done deal automatically that he was just going to bring me back.

I had to go up against some, I’m sure other really good candidates and do the full formal interview process. But I just told him, I said, Hey, if I get an opportunity to come here, we’re going to be here for a while. And he goes, I don’t, I don’t want to hold you back if you get opportunities to do something else.

I said, no, I don’t, I don’t think you understand how special this place is to Amanda and I. And in hindsight, hopefully he realizes what I meant. Now  we’re, we’re going on year 10. Yeah, it’s just a, and there there’s some things that have really shaped how I view pursuing jobs in my career.

One of ’em was when Brad Stevens was at Butler on that crazy run for several years. I saw an interview, you know. Power five for calling and offering him. He just kept staying at Butler and he said, well, the grass might be greener on the other side, but I know it’s green here. And I just like, man, I know there, there’s so many people in our profession that are constantly don’t have peace about where they’re at.

They’re, they’re constantly looking for their next job. They, they don’t, they aren’t able to put roots down. And that was me the five years in junior college. Like, they were good spots, but they weren’t places we wanted to be long term. I was like, but, but I knew this was a place that we loved. And there’s another one where a coach I knew that I’d come across and a, a high division, one level was very successful at a young age.

And but he was just miserable. And I said, Hey, why are you coaching? Like, you, you don’t enjoy your life at all. And he goes, I’ve done too many things for too many people to be one of the youngest high major coaches in the country to give it all up. I was like, man, like I don’t. I don’t know if I want that for me to say, well, I’m at this level, but I, but life is not filled with joy.

Like, that doesn’t sound appealing. And so we have found a place that we love and I don’t want to leave just out of curiosity. Because our, my family’s thriving, our program’s thriving. I coach Flicker and I balance each other out so well. I mean, I can’t ask for a better boss. So I’m just very fortunate to be where I’m at.

[00:47:28] Mike Klinzing: It’s a really healthy perspective, Ryan, and it’s not one that you hear all that frequently. I think there are guys that have taken the track that you have, that have found a job that they’re comfortable with, at a level that they’re comfortable with, and a place that they’re comfortable with and have realized that, hey, I’m already in.

A job in a place with a group of people that I love that are a perfect fit for me. And yet we both know that there are a lot of people that are, again, as you just spoke about, are always on the lookout for the next job. That opportunity to advance, whether it’s to advance up a level, whether it’s to advance from an assistant coach to a head coach.

And I think that there’s always, it’s always no matter where you are, that you can always right, you can always chase more. I mean, you can be at University of Kentucky, you can be at North Carolina, and you can be suddenly Mike Krzyzewski being pursued by the Los Angeles Lakers and Right. Does it make, does that make, does that make sense?

I mean, there’s, there’s obviously a piece of you I think, that obviously says, Hey, maybe I should give it a try. But then I think if you look at not just the coaching piece of it, but what I heard you say as you were talking about it was not just about, it wasn’t just a perfect fit for you. As a basketball coach, but it was also a perfect fit for your wife, for your family, for your lifestyle, for your values, for all those things that sometimes in the pursuit of careers, those things sometimes take a backseat, unfortunately.

And I think when you do that, then you get in the situation like you described with your friend that you knew that gets to that position where all of a sudden they’re like, yeah, I’ve done all these things, but I’m not really, I’m not really happy. I think I’m with you. Where

[00:49:24] Ryan Glenney: Yeah.  

[00:49:24] Mike Klinzing: like a, at, at a certain point, like my happiness, my happiness means more than, than chasing the next job that could make me happy.

’cause chances are, if you’re chasing something that could make you happy, the odds of it actually doing that are probably, are probably pretty low. So I can relate to all the sentiments that you said make a lot of sense. They’re ones that, I think in the coaching profession, a lot of times it’s hard to make the decisions.

It sounds like you and your wife have made, in terms of all those other surrounding things, not only the coaching basketball is great, but all the other things are great. I don’t know if I’m paraphrasing what you said accurately, but that’s kind of what I took from your answer.

[00:50:06] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, no, you are. That, that’s spot on how I feel.

And, but I also recognize not everyone gets an opportunity to be at a place where they ever feel like this. So they, they do continue to search and there’s, there’s an element of right, financial stability. Like, I mean, some, like I was, I moved three times, four times in six years just trying to get to a point where we could have some financial stability.

And so I recognize it. It’s not a criticism of, of how people go about it, but It’s just a, a recognition of knowing who we are as a family and knowing where I’m at and that it fits really well.

[00:50:41] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let’s start with the high level overview, and then we can dive into some details. What.

Makes you guys at Dallas Baptist successful, and when I say successful, I don’t just mean wins and losses, but what, when you look at the program that you and Coach Flicker have built over time, what makes you guys successful? What is it about what you guys do? What’s the overarching, most important thing or two that you feel like leads to your success?

[00:51:11] Ryan Glenney: Yeah. I think the things that are, yeah, big picture outside of X’s and o’s and things, it, it, it really comes down to identifying the people that we identify that we want to be in the program. Like I said, DBU is a pretty unique place. It’s students go to chapel. We do team bible study once a week.

That’s not for everybody and that’s okay. And so we really try to identify young men that would really enjoy being at Dallas Baptist. If they were just a traditional student. And we want them to come to Dallas Baptist for, because of basketball and a lot of other reasons, rather than basketball.

But we want basketball and guys. And so we’ve got a really good mixture of guys that that that Christian faith component was a big part of them or their family’s lives and they, they wanted that. And other guys, well that’s, that’s new to them, but they, they were open to it and having discussions and things.

But like we just, we were fortunate enough because of what Coach Flicker has built over 20 years to, to be a I think a pretty desirable spot that we can have a, have a higher standard than some places that maybe I couldn’t have in junior college. But like we just, selfish people don’t exist in our program.

People that yeah, selfish. I just say we don’t do selfish and we don’t do knucklehead. It doesn’t mean that they’re perfect, but I think compared to things that I have experienced coaching in other places, like I sleep really, really well on the weekends. I, they’re, they’re men that still need invested in just like the guys in junior college.

But  they’re they’re responsible. They care about other people. They’re really talented people who yeah, care more about other people than themselves. And I think our unwillingness to bend on that has allowed us to have some sustainability. It’s like we have, so one of the things I’m most proud of, and this won’t last forever, but I, like, we haven’t had a single player enter the transfer portal in four Seasons.

That’s unheard of now. I don’t know, I haven’t done any research. I don’t know of anyone else. Can say that. And  and typically when people are transferring, it’s, it’s your best players. They’re trying to transfer up and it’s walk-ons or guys that aren’t going to play as much and they’re trying to find a place where they can play more.

Those guys have all come back for us for four years. Our all Americans have come back and we’re not begging them to, but I think a lot of it comes down to one, we’ve been fortunate but two, they chose DBU for basketball and things. There are other things that hold them there. They’re treat, they’re loved and treated with value.

They’re getting better. They’re around other like-minded, high caliber men. So the locker room, we’ve been very fortunate to be, they’re, they’re having fun. Like it’s not well. Got some guys that are on making good decisions over here and other talented guys over here that have a completely different agenda like.

You got 15, 16 guys that are all on the same page for the most part. And that’s, it’s fun. College should be the four most fun years of your life. We’ve had a few transfers that have come here and they’re like like, I didn’t know I was going to love basketball again. And so those are the overarching things that I think have allowed us to have a level of sustained success because of the people.

[00:54:31] Mike Klinzing: Alright. So how do you vet, when you say basketball and obviously the basketball piece, there’s a level of skill and talent that a player has to be able to have in order to play at your level. How do you vet the, and part of that during the recruiting process, what are some things that you’re looking for?

Who are you talking to? What kind of questions are you asking to be able to determine whether or not that kid’s going to be a good fit in your environment? Because obviously with the Christianity piece adds something that’s not a part of. Every single program. And then obviously there are certain intangibles that you guys look for, that you want, for guys that are going to be a part of your program.

So how do you vet that during the recruiting process?

[00:55:13] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, we’re, we’re first off, like we’re very transparent with who we are. We’re not trying to pull the wool over someone’s eyes and they get here and they’re like, what? Coach Chapel? What? We try to be as transparent as we can in the process that, that developing trust both ways from them to us and us to them I think is really important.

We talk to as many people around them as we can. High school coaches, au coaches. We spend a lot of time getting to know the parents because a lot of times an 18-year-old maybe isn’t quite ready to articulate what they mean or what they really want but their parents can and you can learn a lot talking with parents about yeah.

Who their son is, what, what their family values. ’cause a lot of, usually parents, especially not, not as much with transfers all the time, but with high school kids, which is majority of our program, those parents have, have, still have a ton of influence on in shaping how their sons view things. And so if, if their people that have most of our guys, almost all of ’em only went to one high school.

Down here in Dallas, in and in Texas. The transfer portal in high school is rampant. And so  we, we find guys that stay we’re, our players are stairs, coach, flicker Hass been here 20 years, I’ve been here 10. Like we we’re people who stay. So we find people that are wired like that. Most of our guys come from programs that have won state championships or gone to state.

They’re from winning programs. And so you hope in that they understand the greater scope of that the program is bigger than you. There’s those things I’ll, I’ll straight up ask their high school coaches, do their teammates like them? I think that’s huge. With a high school coach, if I ask them, tell me about Jimmy.

And they go, oh, he’s, he’s a pretty good kid. They just don’t have much to say. Well, we’re not into like an average kid like every other kid in the high school. Like, they need to rave about the person, man. He’s, he is the best teammate. I can coach him harder than anyone. He’s selfless. He’s the first one in.

Like, if I can’t get him to shut up about a kid, those are the guys we want. Tho those are high caliber people that aren’t into being average. And then sometimes what we’ve had the wool pulled over our eyes a couple times where we think this kid’s going to be a good fit, and we get to the point where they come on the official visit and then they hang out with our guys at night, which our guys.

Don’t take ’em out. Like they can come back to the apartments and they play Madden and work on homework, and then they might take ’em to Andy’s custards. It’s a very tame visit. And the guys don’t commit. And at the time we’re, we’re kind of upset and disappointed, whatcha talking about? And then we kind of follow their career and maybe hear some things that they were into or, or our guys will tell us during the visit, Hey coach, he’s not a good fit based on what he’s telling us away from the coaches.

And so because we’re so open with who we are, the players that aren’t great fits a lot of times pull themselves out of the equation. They, they, even if we’ve, we’ve been fooled or we’ve incorrectly them, they choose not to be a part of it, which is fine. That’s, that’s great. Like, that’s, that’s all part of the process.

So those are all things that go into identifying the person that we’re trying to have as in, in our locker room.

[00:58:35] Mike Klinzing: Tell me about the responsibilities of. Your staff? How do you guys delegate? Who does what? Has that evolved in your time there? Obviously now you’re have the title of associate head coach, so how do you guys parse out who does what on the staff?

[00:58:54] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, I, I’ll credit Coach Flicker he is really good at trusting his staff and being willing to delegate. That is something in my first few years, what’s really hard for me with our grad assistants was trusting someone else to get a job done because in junior college, I’m the only guy. Like, I know how it’s going to get done, it’s going to be the done the way I want.

That’s an area that I’ve grown over the years, but Coach Flicker has been really good at allowing people to grow in the positions they’re in and giving them responsibility. So I. Being with him 10 years now, we, we can read each other’s minds at this point. And our personalities and our giftedness and things that we like to do and don’t like to do perfectly balance each other, which is, is, is so freeing.

And so he’s obviously, he’s the head of the program. I mean, he’s, he’s the face on campus, he is organizing practice and all the big picture stuff. He’s also he’s over our offense. Right now for, for me I’m, I’m our recruiting coordinator. I run our camps in the summers. I’m over our defense.

I coach Flicker and I now both kind of split the scheduling we work on the schedule together. Those are things that I’ve grown into that he’s. It’s like, okay, well I don’t want you to get bored. We need to keep growing you. What, what else can I give you?  so that you feel challenged and you’re growing and he’s really continued to invest in me in that way.

And then it, it’s similar with our grad assistants. Obviously there’s like the menial tasks that we, we need laundry done. I need you in the gym rebounding or, or working out the guys help with travel plans and logistics. But from there those are the things that we just need to run a program, just need to get done.

But then it’s what are, what are the areas you’re gifted in? Like, and then we’ll throw you, some guys are off awesome at graphic design. Awesome. Let’s create a bunch of stuff. Some guys absolutely know they want to be college coaches. Man, take me recruiting with you everywhere. Like, I, when you’re watching film, I want to watch film.

 and so from there we, we just really find out what are they passionate about. Throw them into those areas, help them grow in areas that they need to grow into, because it’s, I was kind of, the way I was invested in, when I was a grad assistant, I very much because of the impact it had on me.

I very much feel the responsibility to do that for our grad assistants and prepare them. Because after this, it’s like you’re the guy that has to go get players. Like you’re the guy that has to put out fires for the head coach. I mean, you’re the guy next year. So preparing them for those opportunities.

And so they get to do a lot of full-time assistant things based on what is their how competent are they at it, and then how, how growth minded are they going to be and if their heart’s right and their work ethic is right. They’ll be doing a lot of the stuff I’m doing and they, and they can make help me and help.

I mean, they, this brings so much value and we’ve been very fortunate to have a lot of great GA’s that have gone on and to careers in, in college coaching. So that in general is, is kind of how the duties have been assigned as of recently.

[01:02:11] Mike Klinzing: What does the practice planning process look like for you guys as a staff?

How do you put together a practice plan? Is that coach Flicker coming up with it and then bouncing ideas off of you guys as he’s putting it together? Is it him putting it together on his own and then coming back to you for feedback? What’s the process for you guys for putting together a daily practice plan?

[01:02:31] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, so, so I’ve been, I’ve completed nine years now. The first eight years was mostly him. I mean, he, he very much, a big part of his job is planning a really efficient. Effective practice  where every single minute is, is accounted for, and he wants to stay on time. And it’s WW it’s a well-oiled machine.

And he would, we’d have staff meetings most days, talk about practice plan. He’d want our feedback, but ultimately he was going to decide what we’re going to do. Last year he gave the defense over to me, so this is where things changed, where like he goes, Hey, you have from this time to this time in practice.

And then on the shared drive he’s putting in his offensive stuff and I’m completely pri the defensive portion of practice. And again, he’s, he’s not afraid to allow people to grow, to invest in he, again, finding new ways to help me feel challenged and grow. And so now it’s, it’s very much a split between me and him.

Just throughout the day he and I are working on, he’s putting on the, working on the offensive side. I’m working on the defensive side.

[01:03:36] Mike Klinzing: You guys typically. Run a practice with the same format every day. In other words, do you start out with offense first, then defense? Do you start with shooting and then you go to special situations or or does it vary day to day, or do as your, does your normal practice have a certain rhythm to it?

[01:03:54] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, there’s, there’s a good, there’s a rhythm to it. I mean, for 20 years we’ve had from two o’clock to five o’clock in the gym, it hasn’t changed. We’re very fortunate. So just, I mean, just that, it, just knowing every day, I know there’s a lot of places where it practice changes day to day. I’m so grateful that our staff and players knows this is what you have.

You go home to dinner with your family. So there’s that. But then, yeah, the rhythm is pretty similar. It’s, you know. Come in, kind of dynamic stretch, get some skill work in to get loose on your own. And then we’ll start with usually either like a footwork or a passing drill, just as, as a, just as a warmup trying to get their, their blood going.

And then it’s been defense first, and then it’s been offense, and then we end with any special situations or kind of unique things. The end changes a little bit day to day based on what we want to do, but skill work, defense offense is generally the rhythm of our practices.

[01:04:55] Mike Klinzing: What’s the day before a game look like in terms of, in terms of prepping for a specific opponent versus let’s say a preseason practice?

[01:05:04] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, so we play a, a really unique style. We press and trap the entire game up. On makes and misses. And so that, we just started doing that a couple years ago and that’s really changed our, our preparation. Because how, if we’re doing it right, it’s so disruptive. We’re not seeing as many of the opposing teams sets and things right.

And it becomes a lot of managing bodies, making sure our guys are fresh just because of the rigor of that style is, is a little different than traditional basketball that we used to play. So the day before is like just a quick review of, hey, these are the press breaks that we’ve seen from these guys.

We might go down and back once, Hey, you feel good about it? Great moving on. No one’s hurt. Good. Two or three common actions. You know that the other team we feel like we might see, but we’re not, I mean, we used to. We used to cover everything before we went back playing a more traditional style.

And then it’s, well, we just get to focus on us a lot more. Just defensive principles when we’re, we’ll go some, some shell drill. Just make sure, the biggest thing as we’re going through the season, day before a game is just making sure we’re sharp bodies feel good. Our motors are, are revving. But it’s this style of play.

We focus more on us than any other style of play. I’ve, I’ve, we’ve coached in anywhere I’ve been, which is, is is nice. Yeah. To, yeah. It simplifies the Scott A. Little bit. I wouldn’t say it’s simple, but it simplifies it.

[01:06:39] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, again, that’s, you’re, you’re dictating, you’re dictating the tempo and style of play with the way that you’re trying to play.

It’s hard for teams to not get caught up in that style of play. ’cause obviously, right, if you’re trying to break the press, you’re trying to go down and score. You’re trying to score quickly by, by beating the press, and that negates a team that wants to just run down and just run, set after set in a half court.

It’s a little bit hard to do that when a team’s forced a timbo. Exactly the way you guys are, the way you guys are doing that. How much film do you guys share with your players on a, whether it’s prep for an opponent or in a given week, how, how much are, how much film are you, are you having your players watch with you, whether it’s team or you’re sitting down with position groups or individuals, however you guys do it.

How much film are you guys watching in a, during, in a given week?

[01:07:27] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, I guess, I mean, every day before we, we do 15 to 30 minutes of film every single day before we step on the court for practice. A lot of it is is us from the day before in practice or  the game the day before. What can we learn about us and fix, leading up to a game. Generally two days, depends. Thursday games it’s usually Tuesday and Saturday is Fri. So two days or one day before a game. Based on how the schedule works we’re watching personnel of the opposing team personnel for how our style of play is, is really important. Just knowing player tendencies ’cause it’s not as about as much about the plays, it’s going to be more about the players.

And so we, we dig in pretty deep and detailed with, with personnel and then we’ll watch a and then I’ll show ’em a little bit of, Hey, here’s the press breaks that we’ve seen. And again, just a couple common actions, but film is huge for us. It, it is a daily occurrence. It’s it’s a great, again, as we go through the season maintaining our guys’ bodies becomes so much more important than it ever had, playing different styles, but we can really teach from film.

And so we really try to leverage that time to get as much as we can out of it.

[01:08:39] Mike Klinzing: You guys film practice and then go back and watch your practice as a staff?

[01:08:44] Ryan Glenney: Yeah, especially in the fall. Like be before we start full on practice. That’s, we, we play a lot in the fall trying to figure out what do we have, let the guys kind of figure out our pressing system on, on the fly a little bit.

We film it and then we’ll watch it as a staff. And then the next day we’ll watch 10 or 15 minutes just show ’em a couple things of just different concepts. We want them to try and start picking up. We’re not doing a ton of drill work in the first month or two. It’s we’re just trying to get their motors revving and then teach a little bit from film and then I let them apply that the next time they play.

But yeah, we’re, we’re filming all of our practices and then during the season especially.  the first few weeks before games we’re, we’re filming all of that, but once we get into late in the season, it’s, it’s slowed down and it’s scouts and things. We’re probably not watching as much film from that.

[01:09:36] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I gotcha. It makes sense. It’s amazing, again, just the way that the technology has evolved and the ability to be able to watch film and be efficient in what you do. Not only watching your own team, but the ability to watch other teams. And I think one of the things too that when I talk to young coaches, and I’m sure you see this with your GA’s, is just the ability for them to be a, to get in the film room and just to have access to all of the video that they can watch and, and learn not just from their own coaching staff, but to be able to watch the other coaching staffs of your opponents and when you’re putting together a scout and all those things, to be able to grow and learn from that.

I can only imagine the value in that as. A young coach compared to you go back 15 or 20 years ago and  way, way back when I was playing in the era of VHS tapes and guys driving to drop stuff off and meet and put stuff in the FedEx box and coaches hit coaches hitting the rewind button and going two minutes past the play that they wanted to watch and the lack of, the lack of efficiency in that era compared to what we have today.

To be able to utilize film, not just to help your your own team, but to help your staff to learn and to grow and to become better at the value of film is just, I mean, it’s, it’s truly, I think, unbelievable. Anybody that I talk to, especially the, especially the young guys who were in their first 2, 3, 4, 5 years of their career, almost everybody just says how valuable film is not only for them as a tool to be able to help their team and their players, but just a tool for them to be able to learn and grow.

[01:11:11] Ryan Glenney: Yeah. There, there’s no longer an excuse to not get. Better.  it’s through YouTube, these podcasts synergy for players and coaches. There is an infinite, infinite amount of, of resources that can allow you to grow. And then it’s just part, it’s having the mindset of, of I’m willing to utilize it, but then also like, yeah, there, there can be too much.

Just what, what is useful for what we’re trying to do and what is fun, but maybe not, doesn’t apply to us as much and trying to set out the most important things. But yeah, it’s, it’s remarkable what is happened in technology and how it’s an impacted sport,

[01:11:55] Mike Klinzing: the ability to curate and not be overwhelmed by every single thing.

When you’re, when you’re scrolling through Twitter, you’re like, oh, I love that. That’s cool. Let’s try, let’s think about the, yeah, you can, you can do that and go down rabbit holes. Nonstop. I’m sure we’ve all been there where you go and you’re like, oh, let me take a look at this. And then all of a sudden you realize, I just spent 30 minutes looking at stuff that is never, ever going to apply to anything that we do with our Exactly.

With our current team. We’ve all been there. All, all right. Final two part question, part one, Ryan, when you look ahead over the next year or two, what do you see as being your biggest challenge? And then the second part of your question, when you think about what you get to do day in and day out as a college basketball coach, what brings you the most joy?

So your biggest challenge and then your biggest joy.

[01:12:45] Ryan Glenney: Yeah. Challenge, I guess I’ll speak personally and then, and program wise. I’ll, if that’s okay. Personally, I would say I’m, I’m constantly trying to find better ways where I can give the program everything that it needs. But give my family everything that it needs first.

 how, how can I continue to become more present as a father, as a husband?  that, that’s a constant evolution that I think I get a little better at each year. But my wife and kids deserve, deserve all of me. And so that, that is always going to be the challenge as a, as a college coach because of how much you’re on the road and everything.

As a program, I would say  we, we’ve been very fortunate to win a lot over the years. This last year we had an, just a really special season and we lost in overtime in the final four.  we’re seconds away from the national championship game. We’ve got 13 returners back.  and that’s I’m really curious to see.

I know what they’re saying. I’m curious to see when we, once we step foot on the court  there’s the whole, there’s Pat Riley’s got the book, the Disease of More type of situation. Last year we had some freshmen that were playing, but they’re like, oh, we’re freshmen. And they’re, they’re good with the roles.

And we we make a or a game from the national championship best year in school history and all these things, well, all these guys come back. Can we continue to be as selfless and program oriented and caring about each other rather than individual success? ’cause we had, obviously, when you have a team like that, it’s a really talented, special deep group.

Everyone sacrificed to a degree, can they continue to do that for the greater good. Now, those are things that I’m really curious to see this year with as many returners as we have. And then I’m sorry, what was your second question? Biggest joy. Biggest joy, man. Yeah. It goes back to all these things that we, we talked to.

I’m going into year 10 at a place that I love and my family loves. I’m around the staff we have are incredible people. The players. Like I look for, I haven’t worked a day in my life at Dallas Baptist. And then I get to do it again. I am so grateful.  we, we’ve shared my whole coaching journey and like I, I make sure to continue to remind myself where I’m from because it’s just that I never lose the gratefulness for where I’m at.

I get to do it again. That is, that’s my biggest joy. The people I get to be around. My kids get to come and practice and run around and no one cares. I, I just, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I’m, I’m, I’m just very thankful.

[01:15:28] Mike Klinzing: Well said. Before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share how people can get in touch with you, find out more about your program, so share email, social media, website, whatever you feel comfortable with.

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

[01:15:44] Ryan Glenney: Yeah. Would love to be a resource and connect with anyone that has questions or just any curiosity. My email is Ryan@dbu.edu. My X/Twitter handle is @CoachGlenney. If you want to DM me or follow me @dbubasketball is our Twitter for the program, dbupatriots.com.

But email is probably the best way to get ahold of me. And I would love to Yeah, respond and connect with anyone that has questions.

[01:16:13] Mike Klinzing: Ryan cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule tonight to join us. Really appreciate it. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening.

And we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.

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[01:17:18] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Hoop Heads Podcast presented by Head Start Basketball.