November 5, 2024 • 31 mins
Jared here. In the final episode of Season 1, I’ll walk you through the ten most important themes we uncovered over our interviews with college coaches and former college athletes—valuable insights that every recruit and family can use to approach the journey with a clear purpose.
We’ll discuss why showcasing talent is only the beginning of your recruiting journey and how attitudes, relationships, and decision-making skills ultimately make the difference in the end. I’ll also touch on why grades, personal work ethic, and even your role as a ‘glue’ player can play critical roles in where you end up. Plus, you’ll get advice on navigating the AAU circuit, selecting the right competitive level, and the ideal role parents should play in the process.
Whether you’re just starting your recruiting journey or deep in the process, this episode brings together insights that will prepare you to make smart, confident choices.
Thanks so much for being a part of Season 1!!!
I’ll see you in early 2025 for the start of season 2.
__________
Have a question that you’d like answered by me or a guest? Have an idea for an episode topic? Have no suggestions but just want to say hello? Email me at RecruitingGEAR@gmail.com
To obtain more information about my coaching services or to check out the book, visit www.nailtherecruitingprocess.com
Follow me on social media!
Instagram - @NailTheRecruitingProcess
X (Twitter) / TikTok - @JaredTheCoach
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Greetings information superhighway and welcome to the final episode of season one of thenail the recruiting process podcast If you are joining me on the day of this release it is
election day Here in the states and college basketball season is officially underway.
This is an exciting time for a million different reasons I hope you voted I certainly didmy I voted sticker is currently on my child who is asleep in the other
(00:33):
but it's also time for me to focus on what I will call my day job, consulting with collegebasketball programs, working on scouts, doing my college basketball commentary.
And that's where my focus needs to be, especially with the limited bandwidth that I stillam dealing with post COVID.
So here is the game plan.
(00:53):
We just dropped 17 awesome episodes.
This one is going to be sort of a big theme oriented.
episode you will get into that theme in a moment.
And then we're going to break for what will amount to my college basketball season andyour high school basketball season.
We will reconnect in the beginning of 2025 for season two of the Nail the Recruitingprocess.
(01:21):
You're going to look out for that in late March, early April 2025.
I already have some guests that I'm excited to have on the podcast and I have, I reallycan't share much of it, but an
awesome, awesome interview already planned that will be both looking into the future andretrospective with a new Division 1 head coach who is going to really walk you through
(01:46):
their thought process for putting a program together so you, the young recruit, and you,the family, could get an idea of how head coaches really think in these sorts of
equations.
This has been a blast.
I've been completely blown away by the positive feedback I've received from
strangers who have come across this podcast.
(02:06):
It's been extremely helpful to clients that I've been working with, was my original goalfor putting it together.
But it's also something that I've really found gratifying because it's reconnected withme.
It's reconnected me with the thing I originally was passionate about, runningtakeoverthegame.com, having podcasts, doing interviews.
This felt like riding a bike.
(02:28):
It was something I never forgot how to do and I'm thrilled.
that you got to meet some of my guests and get to know some of my guests better than youwould have.
And I sincerely hope that not only did it help shift some generalizations about therecruiting process, but I also think that my interviews will help shift the impression
(02:50):
that you have of coaches and the coaching profession itself.
For better or for worse, the X's and O's of the game is
a very, very small fraction of our jobs.
And unless we're coaching professionally, and even then it's more managing that you think,we are managing personnel first and foremost.
(03:12):
We are shaping people, we are building leaders, and that ethos is a part of the recruitingprocess.
So what I want to talk about today is almost like an index.
You get to the end of the book,
and then you think about certain subjects and what were the big themes of the book and ifI want to go reread them and find them quickly, where can I find those things?
(03:37):
So today's theme is truly about themes themselves.
Over the course of my interviews and keep in mind I'm a data-driven person, that's how Igot here in the first place was data that started with the book and having these
interviews to help make sense of it.
Over the course of these interviews, I found 10 really important themes that I want toshare over the course of this final podcast today.
(04:05):
This one's going to be a little quicker than my interview podcast, but they're, in myopinion, the most important themes for you to remember as a recruit, as a parent, as a
full family, as you navigate this recruiting process.
And we're to touch on each one of these themes specifically as we go through them.
While there is no true order of importance, I will say that the first one is veryintentionally first and the last one is very intentionally last.
(04:35):
So let's dive in and let's discuss these themes.
First, you proving that you are talented enough is just the beginning of the recruitingprocess.
One of the things we've learned from our research and from our interviews is that youshowcasing that you have the right
to fit into that coach's problem.
(04:59):
We're going to clip at 440.
Hold on.
So first one.
You're good at basketball, good for you.
You proving that you're talented enough to play the sport is just the very beginning ofthe recruiting process to make the college team of your dreams.
(05:25):
First, your attitude has to be a correct fit for the program that you want to play for.
You have to show that you have an ethos of growth, that you're going to continue growingand getting better.
You have to have a family fit.
where your guardians jive with the coaching staff.
You have to go on a visit where you illustrate that you're personality fit.
(05:50):
You have to build relationships with the coaching staff and you have to prove that you canmake the correct decisions both on and off the court.
People are not recruiting you just based on talent and athleticism.
They're recruiting you on decision making and that's bigger than just, if I'm a guard, canI hit my post?
Can I make the right decision on a ball screens?
It's also when I'm off the court, how am I managing my time?
(06:12):
What are my priorities?
And all of these things matter because your recruiting process is actually strikingly lessabout you than you realize it is.
When you are navigating the recruiting process, everything that you as an individual doesmatters.
(06:47):
The recruiting process is significantly less.
your recruiting process is significantly less about you than you realize.
And here's what I mean by that.
Obviously, you need to separate yourself from the competitive playing pool.
You need to differentiate yourself.
But the things that you do or don't do are being compared with everybody else in the pool.
(07:16):
So if you're not taking initiative via emails and demonstrating your interest, somebodyelse might be doing that.
So it's less about you making mistakes that are going to cost you, and it's more about youmaking sort of little blunders in your process that allow someone else that's doing all
the correct things to pass you on a coach's preferred list.
(07:39):
And if you want to get an idea about what some more of those things are, I will stronglyencourage you
to listen to my interview with Coach Sahar Nussebe of Eastern Michigan near the top of thepodcast season.
It was episode two.
She talks about the little actions between the actions that really help her differentiatein her recruiting process and explains it's less about you and it's more about the full
(08:00):
pool.
And when we put together our big boards, we are trying to find the people that check themost boxes correctly.
If you don't check as many of those boxes, it's nothing personal, but there might besomebody out there that's doing more.
and that's how coaches build teams.
So you get noticed by being talented, but your talent is your cover letter.
(08:22):
The rest of you and what you bring to the table is your resume and that is how recruitingreally works.
On the subject of talent, here's something else that is really important to me.
You can make up for a lack of talent in this recruiting process
by being a glue kid.
(08:43):
Not only have I seen it and experienced it myself personally, not only do I have data thatshows that coaches are willing to take on high attitude kids if they will definitively be
a cultured leader on their team and they'll be a little bit less talented.
Not only do I have both of those things, but now I also have interviews with coaches withpower five recruiting experience who came out here and said their favorite things to do
(09:11):
are recruit glue kids.
Now, you cannot have a whole team of the glue kid, but glue kids find their way intohigher offers than maybe their talent alone would afford them because every team needs
glue kids.
Now, what does a glue kid do?
Listen to the interview with Coach Aaron Kolhoff at Sacramento State who walks you throughexactly what glue kids do to find their way onto high level rosters.
(09:41):
but I'll give you one very big thing that glue kids always do.
Glue kids live the standard.
I heard a number of coaches with championship experience talk about their programs beingcoach fed and player led.
Glue kids lead.
That's the rule.
(10:01):
You cannot be a glue kid without being a leader that holds their teammates accountable.
Next one.
We talk about doing the work a lot.
We don't really quantify the work enough and that's on coaches to do a better job ofshowing recruits what this actually looks like.
(10:21):
So let me make this really clear.
The recruiting process takes a lot of work and the more shut...
the recruiting process takes a lot, actually, then I'm gonna do that one more time.
(10:45):
Let me be clear.
The recruiting process takes a ton of work.
And if you take shortcuts during the recruiting process, even if those shortcuts don'tcome back to bite you during the process, they will come back to bite you once you've
arrived in college.
There is no such thing as people who take shortcuts being consistently successful at thenext level.
(11:12):
And you need to embody that mentality now.
You are emailing coaches more than you think you should be.
You are reaching out to coaches more than you think you should be.
You are visiting campuses more than you think you should be.
And most important, you are lifting weights.
You are doing conditioning.
You're working out on your own and you're holding yourself to the standard a coach wouldhold you to in your workouts more than you think you should be.
(11:37):
Why?
Because that's how champions are built at the next level.
And the only way to truly get this process right is to start behaving like you're at thenext level now.
As your parents would say when it's job interview time later in your lives, dress for thejob you want, not the job you have.
Everything you do in the recruiting process gives you an opportunity to dress for the jobyou want.
(12:04):
Pick your clothes wisely.
If you want to listen specifically for what the work
actually is like I cannot recommend enough the three part series that I did in the secondhalf of this season.
We started with Chase Skin Kiss who is an incredible strength and conditioning coach basedout of Las Vegas that works with NBA athletes to this day.
(12:29):
Then we had Tony Watson and Rod Middleton the founder and owner of Pro Training Basketballwith more than a quarter million social media followers and one of the best
online teaching resources you will find for basketball players.
And they talked a ton about what the work actually looks like behind the scenes.
And then we rounded it out.
You want to talk about work?
(12:49):
We rounded it out with Cornell Thomas.
And Cornell Thomas' story is really important.
We'll get into a big other part of the why later.
But Cornell Thomas worked his way into a basketball scholarship without playing basketballuntil he was a junior in high school.
He will talk about habits and you should listen.
Because if he could do it with only what amounts to a year of real high school basketballexperience, you can do it too.
(13:19):
The next one, and this is a real important one for me because I am a gigantic dork.
Your grades matter way more than you think they do.
And your grades matter at every level.
Yes, there is such a thing as a qualifying floor.
at the D2 and D1 levels and their national requirements.
And yes, are there some programs that will take a chance on you as soon as you're aqualifier and all you have to do is be a qualifier?
(13:45):
Yes.
But there are also some coaches that disclosed to me both on this podcast and in myresearch that they review your transcript and judge your transcript as if they are judging
your ability to balance your time.
So your transcript isn't just your grades.
It's your ability to balance being both an athlete and a student.
(14:05):
And if you're not showing them you could do that in high school when it's easier by everymetric, how are they supposed to know and trust that you can do it in college?
Are there exceptions?
Of course, there's exceptions to everything.
But you have to prove that you can keep your grades up to earn a coach's trust.
(14:27):
Now that's just at the scholarship levels.
At D3, you
to your grades up to get into the school because there is no national requirement.
You have to meet the admissions qualification requirements at each individual institutionthat you're applying to.
This is why pre-reads are so important.
And on the subject of that, I think that Mo Green from Hamilton said something supervaluable in my interview with her.
(14:53):
I want you to listen to the first thing so you could hear everything about academicrequirements at the D3 level.
but specifically I'll call your attention to what she said about support.
I will obviously fight for a kid that applies early decision for me, but when I fight fora kid, that doesn't mean I'm guaranteeing them admission.
I don't have the power to call admissions and say, hey, this is a kid that's playingbasketball for me.
(15:16):
You should let her in.
And they say, yes, you have to prove that you could do it.
Your grades need to be on an upward trajectory.
You need to be in challenging courses.
You need to have a rigorous schedule.
And you need to prove that your MO academically is not filled with taking shortcuts.
Just like we talked about at the beginning of this podcast.
(15:36):
Everything you do is part of your profile and your grades are not exempt from that.
Now we're to take a moment to stop talking about you and start talking about us becausehere's something else that's really being hammered home to me between my interviews and my
research on the recruiting process.
(15:57):
Let's just say that we feel like 60 to 70 % of our profession is really good and reallywell-intentioned.
That populous of people is really worried about the bad coaches.
Let me say it more simple.
Good college basketball coaches worry about bad college basketball coaches constantly.
(16:20):
And something bad college coaches do better than good college coaches, if you want to evencall it that, they make promises that they know they can't keep because they're shameless
about doing it.
Those are the types of coaches that are promising you playing time, promising youaccolades, promising you a feature role, a promise that no one in their right mind knows
(16:43):
they can keep.
because you have to show up on campus and prove that you mesh with the system and growinto a new role.
That just is what it is.
It is mission critical that you the recruit and you the family don't navigate this likethe car salesman is selling you a car and everything they're telling you is gonna come
true.
You have to treat this as an unknown once you take the next step.
(17:07):
And instead of saying, who's the coach that's making me the most promises, you should beasking yourself,
Who is the coach and program that I want to navigate the unknown with most?
For further insight on what that process can look like, listen to my interview withCortland head coach Colleen Ames, who specifically talks about red flags during the
(17:28):
recruiting process and unkept promises.
Colleen herself, by the way, is a recruit that started at the D2 level and finished at theD3 level.
And her insights on this are really, really important for any process.
On the subject of finishing at the D3 level, here is one of the biggest themes that hascome from my research.
(17:50):
There is a growing fear amongst high level Division 3 coaches that modern AAU programsde-emphasize D3 so much that they, that players and parents think D3 is club.
Division 3 basketball is not club basketball.
These are high level coaches
(18:11):
Oftentimes coming from scholarship experience and the ones that only have D3 experiencehave a ton of it.
Trust me, I was at the D3 level for 10 years.
This is also tremendous time commitment.
Tremendous, tremendous, tremendous.
If you are a Division 3 athlete, you should be expecting to put in 25 hours a week intoyour sport minimum if you want to crack the rotation.
(18:37):
Training room, practice, strength and conditioning, film with coaches.
individual workout sessions.
All of those things are part of a D3 experience.
A D3 program is only a D3 program because their travel is more regional.
The school has elected to budget less money for athletics across the board.
(18:59):
And that's kind of it.
A D3 school is a D3 school for three reasons.
Smaller coaching staff, less financial incentive in athletics across the department, andregional travel.
That's what makes D3 D3.
And you need to be prepared to play college basketball if you play D3 basketball.
(19:24):
Everything you know about college basketball applies.
It's not club.
(19:51):
Next, and parents, this one is really important for you.
Many, not all, but many college coaches would consider ending the recruiting process of atop-tier recruit if their parents were over-involved.
Now, how do we define over-involved?
Coaches intentionally directing questions at the recruit, parents answering the question,coaches trying to reach out to the recruit to engage in like phone calls or catch up and
(20:20):
hear how everything's going.
recruit doesn't pick up, parents call back, parents speak for the recruit constantly,parents are asking the questions, parents are driving the car.
We have to understand and meet in the middle about what most coaches goals actually are.
Most basketball coaches like teaching and developing leadership skills and they have foundthat their favorite place to do that is the basketball court and that's why they coach.
(20:48):
So you have to have a kid
that's ready to develop those skills.
If the parent is front and center, the message that's being sent is my kid is not ready todevelop those skills.
I would strongly encourage anyone that hears this and kind of feels some type of way tolisten to my interview with Amy Reed, who not only currently specializes in building
(21:11):
better parenting skills for recruitable athletes, but also
is a proven winner at the Division III level as a head coach and was a former Division Iathlete.
Other things to specifically look out for in this category, parents, follow context clues.
Let's say we're having a conversation on a campus visit and you're talking to the coachand the coach is talking back to you and it's been a while since the coach has heard
(21:38):
anything from the kid.
You can trust that like 90 % of the time the coach is going to redirect the conversation.
and ask a very pointed, open-ended question to the kid.
You need to take that as a cue and internalize it and let your kid answer the questionbecause that's one of those moments where the coach did that on purpose and they want to
see how you handle it as a parent.
(21:59):
Are you going to enable your kid to act or are you going to act for your kid?
Because whether you want to believe it or not, those type of behaviors transform a coupleyears down the road.
to your sophomore and college kid missing a jump shot and looking to you in the bleachersbefore they look at their coach for instruction.
We enable our kids to act and we encourage them to act for themselves so that they'reready to grow as leaders when they arrive on college campuses.
(22:24):
It's as simple as that.
kids, if you're nervous about what it takes to develop as a leader on your own, let metell you this.
You get rewarded every step of the way by taking more initiative as a kid.
I've heard that.
universally from coaches, but I also have recruited players who I maybe wouldn't havegiven as much attention to if they didn't advocate for themselves.
(22:48):
Vanessa Geralt is not a professor of this, but she may as well should be because shemodeled the way as a recruit, was a tremendous leader as a player, and she walks you
through every step of why she did what she did as a player in an early season oneinterview with me.
Now, we're hitting the home stretch.
This is really, really interesting.
I want to address some of the biggest myths here about personal play.
(23:12):
The big one.
In my opinion, the biggest misunderstanding that young athletes have about modernbasketball is that they think they need to be elite at everything when they only have to
be solid and consistent in their specific role.
Forwards, can you set solid screens?
(23:34):
Can you duck in?
Can you have great hands?
Can you finish with both hands around the basket?
If you're a four, can you pick and pop for a three?
Guards, can you push the pace in transition?
Can you lock corners in transition?
Can you get out of traffic with good ball handling?
Can you hit open shots in rhythm?
And can you make the correct passes with the correct hand to the correct person with thebasketball?
(24:00):
That's not complicated.
Didn't say anything about a goofy foot finish.
Didn't say anything about
crazy English on the ball, 360 in the air layups, didn't say anything about 11 movedribble packages.
Can your game be solid?
I don't want to say that everyone prioritizes the wrong stuff.
I just want to say I was once a teenager and I looked at the wrong stuff.
(24:24):
It's as simple as that.
Make the decisions that I wasn't mature enough to make and focus on being solid andconsistent to learn exact
what it takes to be solid and consistent.
You have to listen to the podcast that I mentioned previously with Tony and Rob, the protraining guys.
They walk through exactly what it takes to be solid, both as a guard and as a forward,what the work should look like, what standards you should hold yourself to, and what a
(24:52):
typical growth trajectory could be.
Now I want to myth bust AAU.
I think AAU is becoming a more and more popular vehicle.
because everybody knows that's when college coaches are most out on the road.
We aspire to be on the road all the time during season and we do our best, but it's alsoour playing season.
(25:14):
So everyone focuses on AAU to try to get on the right college coaches radar.
But I don't think enough people make the right choices for what AAU team they actuallyneed to be on.
So let me start here.
When I asked 50 college coaches how important it was to them that their recruit played foran elite AAU team.
on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being most important, the average response was a 4.25 out of 10.
(25:41):
Statistically, these coaches do not care if you play for an elite AAU team.
So if that doesn't matter to coaches, first of all, why?
And second of all, what do we do about it?
Let's address the why first.
If you're trying to go to UConn or Texas or Arkansas or
(26:03):
Bama.
Then you need to play for the top tier AAU team.
But not just because it's the top tier AAU team, but because that's where the coaches aregoing to be watching.
They're going to be watching the top tier AAU tournaments.
If you want to play high academic D3, then you need to be showcased at the the eventswhere the most D3 coaches are going to be.
(26:26):
Similarly, everybody else tends to fall in the middle and coaches jobs are to find
talented players that are quote-unquote flying under the radar.
You always as a coach recruit higher.
You aim bigger.
That's how you grow your programs.
You want to bring in someone that is more talented than the person you are replacing.
(26:47):
That's not just how basketball works.
That's how business works.
Greetings information superhighway and welcome to the final episode of season one of thenail the recruiting process podcast If you are joining me on the day of this release it is
election day Here in the states and college basketball season is officially underway.
This is an exciting time for a million different reasons I hope you voted I certainly didmy I voted sticker is currently on my child who is asleep in the other
(00:33):
but it's also time for me to focus on what I will call my day job, consulting with collegebasketball programs, working on scouts, doing my college basketball commentary.
And that's where my focus needs to be, especially with the limited bandwidth that I stillam dealing with post COVID.
So here is the game plan.
(00:53):
We just dropped 17 awesome episodes.
This one is going to be sort of a big theme oriented.
episode you will get into that theme in a moment.
And then we're going to break for what will amount to my college basketball season andyour high school basketball season.
We will reconnect in the beginning of 2025 for season two of the Nail the Recruitingprocess.
(01:21):
You're going to look out for that in late March, early April 2025.
I already have some guests that I'm excited to have on the podcast and I have, I reallycan't share much of it, but an
awesome, awesome interview already planned that will be both looking into the future andretrospective with a new Division 1 head coach who is going to really walk you through
(01:46):
their thought process for putting a program together so you, the young recruit, and you,the family, could get an idea of how head coaches really think in these sorts of
equations.
This has been a blast.
I've been completely blown away by the positive feedback I've received from
strangers who have come across this podcast.
(02:06):
It's been extremely helpful to clients that I've been working with, was my original goalfor putting it together.
But it's also something that I've really found gratifying because it's reconnected withme.
It's reconnected me with the thing I originally was passionate about, runningtakeoverthegame.com, having podcasts, doing interviews.
This felt like riding a bike.
(02:28):
It was something I never forgot how to do and I'm thrilled.
that you got to meet some of my guests and get to know some of my guests better than youwould have.
And I sincerely hope that not only did it help shift some generalizations about therecruiting process, but I also think that my interviews will help shift the impression
(02:50):
that you have of coaches and the coaching profession itself.
For better or for worse, the X's and O's of the game is
a very, very small fraction of our jobs.
And unless we're coaching professionally, and even then it's more managing that you think,we are managing personnel first and foremost.
(03:12):
We are shaping people, we are building leaders, and that ethos is a part of the recruitingprocess.
So what I want to talk about today is almost like an index.
You get to the end of the book,
and then you think about certain subjects and what were the big themes of the book and ifI want to go reread them and find them quickly, where can I find those things?
(03:37):
So today's theme is truly about themes themselves.
Over the course of my interviews and keep in mind I'm a data-driven person, that's how Igot here in the first place was data that started with the book and having these
interviews to help make sense of it.
Over the course of these interviews, I found 10 really important themes that I want toshare over the course of this final podcast today.
(04:05):
This one's going to be a little quicker than my interview podcast, but they're, in myopinion, the most important themes for you to remember as a recruit, as a parent, as a
full family, as you navigate this recruiting process.
And we're to touch on each one of these themes specifically as we go through them.
While there is no true order of importance, I will say that the first one is veryintentionally first and the last one is very intentionally last.
(04:35):
So let's dive in and let's discuss these themes.
First, you proving that you are talented enough is just the beginning of the recruitingprocess.
One of the things we've learned from our research and from our interviews is that youshowcasing that you have the right
to fit into that coach's problem.
(04:59):
We're going to clip at 440.
Hold on.
So first one.
You're good at basketball, good for you.
You proving that you're talented enough to play the sport is just the very beginning ofthe recruiting process to make the college team of your dreams.
(05:25):
First, your attitude has to be a correct fit for the program that you want to play for.
You have to show that you have an ethos of growth, that you're going to continue growingand getting better.
You have to have a family fit.
where your guardians jive with the coaching staff.
You have to go on a visit where you illustrate that you're personality fit.
(05:50):
You have to build relationships with the coaching staff and you have to prove that you canmake the correct decisions both on and off the court.
People are not recruiting you just based on talent and athleticism.
They're recruiting you on decision making and that's bigger than just, if I'm a guard, canI hit my post?
Can I make the right decision on a ball screens?
It's also when I'm off the court, how am I managing my time?
(06:12):
What are my priorities?
And all of these things matter because your recruiting process is actually strikingly lessabout you than you realize it is.
When you are navigating the recruiting process, everything that you as an individual doesmatters.
(06:47):
The recruiting process is significantly less.
your recruiting process is significantly less about you than you realize.
And here's what I mean by that.
Obviously, you need to separate yourself from the competitive playing pool.
You need to differentiate yourself.
But the things that you do or don't do are being compared with everybody else in the pool.
(07:16):
So if you're not taking initiative via emails and demonstrating your interest, somebodyelse might be doing that.
So it's less about you making mistakes that are going to cost you, and it's more about youmaking sort of little blunders in your process that allow someone else that's doing all
the correct things to pass you on a coach's preferred list.
(07:39):
And if you want to get an idea about what some more of those things are, I will stronglyencourage you
to listen to my interview with Coach Sahar Nussebe of Eastern Michigan near the top of thepodcast season.
It was episode two.
She talks about the little actions between the actions that really help her differentiatein her recruiting process and explains it's less about you and it's more about the full
(08:00):
pool.
And when we put together our big boards, we are trying to find the people that check themost boxes correctly.
If you don't check as many of those boxes, it's nothing personal, but there might besomebody out there that's doing more.
and that's how coaches build teams.
So you get noticed by being talented, but your talent is your cover letter.
(08:22):
The rest of you and what you bring to the table is your resume and that is how recruitingreally works.
On the subject of talent, here's something else that is really important to me.
You can make up for a lack of talent in this recruiting process
by being a glue kid.
(08:43):
Not only have I seen it and experienced it myself personally, not only do I have data thatshows that coaches are willing to take on high attitude kids if they will definitively be
a cultured leader on their team and they'll be a little bit less talented.
Not only do I have both of those things, but now I also have interviews with coaches withpower five recruiting experience who came out here and said their favorite things to do
(09:11):
are recruit glue kids.
Now, you cannot have a whole team of the glue kid, but glue kids find their way intohigher offers than maybe their talent alone would afford them because every team needs
glue kids.
Now, what does a glue kid do?
Listen to the interview with Coach Aaron Kolhoff at Sacramento State who walks you throughexactly what glue kids do to find their way onto high level rosters.
(09:41):
but I'll give you one very big thing that glue kids always do.
Glue kids live the standard.
I heard a number of coaches with championship experience talk about their programs beingcoach fed and player led.
Glue kids lead.
That's the rule.
(10:01):
You cannot be a glue kid without being a leader that holds their teammates accountable.
Next one.
We talk about doing the work a lot.
We don't really quantify the work enough and that's on coaches to do a better job ofshowing recruits what this actually looks like.
(10:21):
So let me make this really clear.
The recruiting process takes a lot of work and the more shut...
the recruiting process takes a lot, actually, then I'm gonna do that one more time.
(10:45):
Let me be clear.
The recruiting process takes a ton of work.
And if you take shortcuts during the recruiting process, even if those shortcuts don'tcome back to bite you during the process, they will come back to bite you once you've
arrived in college.
There is no such thing as people who take shortcuts being consistently successful at thenext level.
(11:12):
And you need to embody that mentality now.
You are emailing coaches more than you think you should be.
You are reaching out to coaches more than you think you should be.
You are visiting campuses more than you think you should be.
And most important, you are lifting weights.
You are doing conditioning.
You're working out on your own and you're holding yourself to the standard a coach wouldhold you to in your workouts more than you think you should be.
(11:37):
Why?
Because that's how champions are built at the next level.
And the only way to truly get this process right is to start behaving like you're at thenext level now.
As your parents would say when it's job interview time later in your lives, dress for thejob you want, not the job you have.
Everything you do in the recruiting process gives you an opportunity to dress for the jobyou want.
(12:04):
Pick your clothes wisely.
If you want to listen specifically for what the work
actually is like I cannot recommend enough the three part series that I did in the secondhalf of this season.
We started with Chase Skin Kiss who is an incredible strength and conditioning coach basedout of Las Vegas that works with NBA athletes to this day.
(12:29):
Then we had Tony Watson and Rod Middleton the founder and owner of Pro Training Basketballwith more than a quarter million social media followers and one of the best
online teaching resources you will find for basketball players.
And they talked a ton about what the work actually looks like behind the scenes.
And then we rounded it out.
You want to talk about work?
(12:49):
We rounded it out with Cornell Thomas.
And Cornell Thomas' story is really important.
We'll get into a big other part of the why later.
But Cornell Thomas worked his way into a basketball scholarship without playing basketballuntil he was a junior in high school.
He will talk about habits and you should listen.
Because if he could do it with only what amounts to a year of real high school basketballexperience, you can do it too.
(13:19):
The next one, and this is a real important one for me because I am a gigantic dork.
Your grades matter way more than you think they do.
And your grades matter at every level.
Yes, there is such a thing as a qualifying floor.
at the D2 and D1 levels and their national requirements.
And yes, are there some programs that will take a chance on you as soon as you're aqualifier and all you have to do is be a qualifier?
(13:45):
Yes.
But there are also some coaches that disclosed to me both on this podcast and in myresearch that they review your transcript and judge your transcript as if they are judging
your ability to balance your time.
So your transcript isn't just your grades.
It's your ability to balance being both an athlete and a student.
(14:05):
And if you're not showing them you could do that in high school when it's easier by everymetric, how are they supposed to know and trust that you can do it in college?
Are there exceptions?
Of course, there's exceptions to everything.
But you have to prove that you can keep your grades up to earn a coach's trust.
(14:27):
Now that's just at the scholarship levels.
At D3, you
to your grades up to get into the school because there is no national requirement.
You have to meet the admissions qualification requirements at each individual institutionthat you're applying to.
This is why pre-reads are so important.
And on the subject of that, I think that Mo Green from Hamilton said something supervaluable in my interview with her.
(14:53):
I want you to listen to the first thing so you could hear everything about academicrequirements at the D3 level.
but specifically I'll call your attention to what she said about support.
I will obviously fight for a kid that applies early decision for me, but when I fight fora kid, that doesn't mean I'm guaranteeing them admission.
I don't have the power to call admissions and say, hey, this is a kid that's playingbasketball for me.
(15:16):
You should let her in.
And they say, yes, you have to prove that you could do it.
Your grades need to be on an upward trajectory.
You need to be in challenging courses.
You need to have a rigorous schedule.
And you need to prove that your MO academically is not filled with taking shortcuts.
Just like we talked about at the beginning of this podcast.
(15:36):
Everything you do is part of your profile and your grades are not exempt from that.
Now we're to take a moment to stop talking about you and start talking about us becausehere's something else that's really being hammered home to me between my interviews and my
research on the recruiting process.
(15:57):
Let's just say that we feel like 60 to 70 % of our profession is really good and reallywell-intentioned.
That populous of people is really worried about the bad coaches.
Let me say it more simple.
Good college basketball coaches worry about bad college basketball coaches constantly.
(16:20):
And something bad college coaches do better than good college coaches, if you want to evencall it that, they make promises that they know they can't keep because they're shameless
about doing it.
Those are the types of coaches that are promising you playing time, promising youaccolades, promising you a feature role, a promise that no one in their right mind knows
(16:43):
they can keep.
because you have to show up on campus and prove that you mesh with the system and growinto a new role.
That just is what it is.
It is mission critical that you the recruit and you the family don't navigate this likethe car salesman is selling you a car and everything they're telling you is gonna come
true.
You have to treat this as an unknown once you take the next step.
(17:07):
And instead of saying, who's the coach that's making me the most promises, you should beasking yourself,
Who is the coach and program that I want to navigate the unknown with most?
For further insight on what that process can look like, listen to my interview withCortland head coach Colleen Ames, who specifically talks about red flags during the
(17:28):
recruiting process and unkept promises.
Colleen herself, by the way, is a recruit that started at the D2 level and finished at theD3 level.
And her insights on this are really, really important for any process.
On the subject of finishing at the D3 level, here is one of the biggest themes that hascome from my research.
(17:50):
There is a growing fear amongst high level Division 3 coaches that modern AAU programsde-emphasize D3 so much that they, that players and parents think D3 is club.
Division 3 basketball is not club basketball.
These are high level coaches
(18:11):
Oftentimes coming from scholarship experience and the ones that only have D3 experiencehave a ton of it.
Trust me, I was at the D3 level for 10 years.
This is also tremendous time commitment.
Tremendous, tremendous, tremendous.
If you are a Division 3 athlete, you should be expecting to put in 25 hours a week intoyour sport minimum if you want to crack the rotation.
(18:37):
Training room, practice, strength and conditioning, film with coaches.
individual workout sessions.
All of those things are part of a D3 experience.
A D3 program is only a D3 program because their travel is more regional.
The school has elected to budget less money for athletics across the board.
(18:59):
And that's kind of it.
A D3 school is a D3 school for three reasons.
Smaller coaching staff, less financial incentive in athletics across the department, andregional travel.
That's what makes D3 D3.
And you need to be prepared to play college basketball if you play D3 basketball.
(19:24):
Everything you know about college basketball applies.
It's not club.
(19:51):
Next, and parents, this one is really important for you.
Many, not all, but many college coaches would consider ending the recruiting process of atop-tier recruit if their parents were over-involved.
Now, how do we define over-involved?
Coaches intentionally directing questions at the recruit, parents answering the question,coaches trying to reach out to the recruit to engage in like phone calls or catch up and
(20:20):
hear how everything's going.
recruit doesn't pick up, parents call back, parents speak for the recruit constantly,parents are asking the questions, parents are driving the car.
We have to understand and meet in the middle about what most coaches goals actually are.
Most basketball coaches like teaching and developing leadership skills and they have foundthat their favorite place to do that is the basketball court and that's why they coach.
(20:48):
So you have to have a kid
that's ready to develop those skills.
If the parent is front and center, the message that's being sent is my kid is not ready todevelop those skills.
I would strongly encourage anyone that hears this and kind of feels some type of way tolisten to my interview with Amy Reed, who not only currently specializes in building
(21:11):
better parenting skills for recruitable athletes, but also
is a proven winner at the Division III level as a head coach and was a former Division Iathlete.
Other things to specifically look out for in this category, parents, follow context clues.
Let's say we're having a conversation on a campus visit and you're talking to the coachand the coach is talking back to you and it's been a while since the coach has heard
(21:38):
anything from the kid.
You can trust that like 90 % of the time the coach is going to redirect the conversation.
and ask a very pointed, open-ended question to the kid.
You need to take that as a cue and internalize it and let your kid answer the questionbecause that's one of those moments where the coach did that on purpose and they want to
see how you handle it as a parent.
(21:59):
Are you going to enable your kid to act or are you going to act for your kid?
Because whether you want to believe it or not, those type of behaviors transform a coupleyears down the road.
to your sophomore and college kid missing a jump shot and looking to you in the bleachersbefore they look at their coach for instruction.
We enable our kids to act and we encourage them to act for themselves so that they'reready to grow as leaders when they arrive on college campuses.
(22:24):
It's as simple as that.
kids, if you're nervous about what it takes to develop as a leader on your own, let metell you this.
You get rewarded every step of the way by taking more initiative as a kid.
I've heard that.
universally from coaches, but I also have recruited players who I maybe wouldn't havegiven as much attention to if they didn't advocate for themselves.
(22:48):
Vanessa Geralt is not a professor of this, but she may as well should be because shemodeled the way as a recruit, was a tremendous leader as a player, and she walks you
through every step of why she did what she did as a player in an early season oneinterview with me.
Now, we're hitting the home stretch.
This is really, really interesting.
I want to address some of the biggest myths here about personal play.
(23:12):
The big one.
In my opinion, the biggest misunderstanding that young athletes have about modernbasketball is that they think they need to be elite at everything when they only have to
be solid and consistent in their specific role.
Forwards, can you set solid screens?
(23:34):
Can you duck in?
Can you have great hands?
Can you finish with both hands around the basket?
If you're a four, can you pick and pop for a three?
Guards, can you push the pace in transition?
Can you lock corners in transition?
Can you get out of traffic with good ball handling?
Can you hit open shots in rhythm?
And can you make the correct passes with the correct hand to the correct person with thebasketball?
(24:00):
That's not complicated.
Didn't say anything about a goofy foot finish.
Didn't say anything about
crazy English on the ball, 360 in the air layups, didn't say anything about 11 movedribble packages.
Can your game be solid?
I don't want to say that everyone prioritizes the wrong stuff.
I just want to say I was once a teenager and I looked at the wrong stuff.
(24:24):
It's as simple as that.
Make the decisions that I wasn't mature enough to make and focus on being solid andconsistent to learn exact
what it takes to be solid and consistent.
You have to listen to the podcast that I mentioned previously with Tony and Rob, the protraining guys.
They walk through exactly what it takes to be solid, both as a guard and as a forward,what the work should look like, what standards you should hold yourself to, and what a
(24:52):
typical growth trajectory could be.
Now I want to myth bust AAU.
I think AAU is becoming a more and more popular vehicle.
because everybody knows that's when college coaches are most out on the road.
We aspire to be on the road all the time during season and we do our best, but it's alsoour playing season.
(25:14):
So everyone focuses on AAU to try to get on the right college coaches radar.
But I don't think enough people make the right choices for what AAU team they actuallyneed to be on.
So let me start here.
When I asked 50 college coaches how important it was to them that their recruit played foran elite AAU team.
on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being most important, the average response was a 4.25 out of 10.
(25:41):
Statistically, these coaches do not care if you play for an elite AAU team.
So if that doesn't matter to coaches, first of all, why?
And second of all, what do we do about it?
Let's address the why first.
If you're trying to go to UConn or Texas or Arkansas or
(26:03):
Bama.
Then you need to play for the top tier AAU team.
But not just because it's the top tier AAU team, but because that's where the coaches aregoing to be watching.
They're going to be watching the top tier AAU tournaments.
If you want to play high academic D3, then you need to be showcased at the the eventswhere the most D3 coaches are going to be.
(26:26):
Similarly, everybody else tends to fall in the middle and coaches jobs are to find
talented players that are quote-unquote flying under the radar.
You always as a coach recruit higher.
You aim bigger.
That's how you grow your programs.
You want to bring in someone that is more talented than the person you are replacing.
(26:47):
That's not just how basketball works.
That's how business works.
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