May 13, 2026 • 9 mins
UC Men's Basketball Coach Jerrod Calhoun joined Mo as part of his 513 Day broadcast from UC.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is ESPN fifteen thirty Moegger broadcasting on five to one,
three day from the University of Cincinnati. Were in the
football practice facility, joined by a basketball coach, the head
coach of the UC men's basketball program, Jared Calhoun. You
were kind enough to join me the day you were introduced,
and then it was a whirlwind for you. But I
broadcast from Indy before the final four kind enough to
(00:23):
join me maybe nine days after you had officially taken
the job. So a little time has passed. Are you
a little bit more relaxed? Things calmed down just a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I think one thing you'll learn about me, mo is
I've kind of lived my life, never relaxed.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
So I no, it's it's good.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I feel really good.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
As we were talking off air, I feel really good
about our roster, you know, I think you know, obviously
your players are the most important piece to your program,
but there's a lot of other things that got to
be done.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Right. We've got to finish the roster.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
We have two spots left, we've got to finish our schedule,
and then we've got to start really locking in on
the details of how we're going to teach this particular group.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
You'll be better equipped to answer this in three months.
But what do you believe the strength of your team
will be as things stand today?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I think really probably after about a month and a
half mode. When you get kids on campus, you start
to you know, really understand kind of who they are,
what can they process as far as learning on the court.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
So yeah, I think right now, you know, we wanted
guys that won a lot of college basketball games.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
If you look at what we were able to accomplish
compared to the you know, the rest of the country.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
We're pretty old and our kids have won a lot
of games.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
If you look at all the winning percentages of this
entire roster, it's almost seventy percent of their games they've
won since playing college basketball. So we really study that,
look for that because we believe it's not just the game.
You don't win the games on game night, it's you know,
creating those habits and then those wins mount up.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Walk me through the timeline, like when can you get
him on campus? And then once you get him here,
what are you allowed to do?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, so it's all changed.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I mean, you know, we used to be really, really
gung ho the first week and really just get right
after it, right and talking to Mike Rayfeld, I think
we have the best strength coach in the country. You know,
every former player you talk to, you really get around him.
You understand. We kind of see it very similar. And
you know, I was going through the job process of
(02:31):
looking at the University of Cincinnati. One thing that really
stood out to me was Mike's plan. So the first
week it's really just about getting him back acclimated. We'll
do some testing, some different things in the weight room,
no basketball, and then we'll.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Train for the next three weeks.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
We always take off around July fourth for about nine days,
and then we'll come back at it again for another
three weeks, and then we're gonna go to Bahamas for
either four or five days. We're gonna play two games
and really see where we're at against some other competition.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Correct me, if i'm you're now allowed? Are you allowed
to do that every year?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Oh? I thought you're about the hours? Yeah, y, yes,
you're exactly right.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah, you can take a foreign trip every summer, which
I think in today's world is really good. Yeah, you know,
you can't abuse it. I think you know these universities
are really going above and beyond the call of duty.
So I think, you know, a Bahamas trip somewhere you know,
Europe maybe every four or five years. You know where
(03:30):
you're going to Italy and those sorts of places. So
I think the Bahamas is perfect. But as far as
the hours we get each week, it's eight hours total,
and that's basketball and that's also the weight room.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Eight hours combined with like team activities, how much individual.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Instruction, So you can break it up as much as
you want, right, So we do.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Monday's our position work.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Tuesday is our combo work, so we'll go point guard
winging a big Wednesday we're off. Thursday we'll go back
combo and Friday are team workouts. So if you want
to come down, you know, probably what you'd want to
see is maybe a team workout.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
But I think you know the I.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Thought for a second you were gonna make me work out.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
You want to.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I don't know. I don't know if that's gonna do
you or me any good.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, I don't know. I haven't seen you a place.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You're not You're not missing all that much relative to
like and you and I talked about this. You go
into the portal and you kind of had the benefit
of time where it wasn't you know, you got the
job and the portal opens the next day, you could
sort of map out how you wanted things to go.
How close to maybe best laid plans did things end
up being understanding? You have two more.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Sponsibleity, Yeah, I would say pretty almost. You know, you
never want to say perfect, but I think we batted
a pretty good percentage, so you know.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
We uh.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
The thing that I'm really proud of is we did
not waste time recruiting guys that we couldn't get.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
We identified we want to do a things.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
One of the group of young guys in our program
that we could really build this thing for the next
three years. If you look at the roster dynamic and
you really study it, all of those young guys have
played a lot of basketball, right, That was pretty cool
to see.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
They've won a lot of games.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
And then we got a lot of one year guys, right,
So that's kind of how we've done it over the
last couple of years. And then as you get into
year two, three and four, you're not so reliant on
the portal. Right, So this year, everybody in our program
is a portal guy. That's certainly something that we don't
want to do every year. So we got to do
an unbelievable job developing a relationship, developing the player, having
(05:38):
good relationships with the mom and the dads and whoever's
around that player, and keep them here and build this thing.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
I cannot even imagine what your daily to do list
has looked like since the middle of March. But has
there been something that has popped up in this capacity
that surprised you that you didn't expect? You thought, man,
that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I mean, I think every day just just meeting different people, right,
and it's it could be our our people, that our
custodians that you know, clean up our building and are
taking our trash or you know, cleaning our floors. I mean,
I think when you come into a program, you have
(06:19):
to do an unbelievable job of treating people the right way,
and then you have to create an organization that everybody
believes in what we're doing. And if you don't have
one buy in, it's so hard to win games. So yeah,
I think just driving to work every day knowing you're
the head coach at the university of Cincinnati, and you know,
pretty soon every every game is going to matter to
(06:42):
an entire city. That's a you know, that's a big responsibility.
So you can't just show up, you know, November and
think that's gonna happen, right, So we got to do
a lot of things here over to the next couple
of months.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
You're not sleeping in your office anymore, are you shows.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
No, not anymore.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Now we're still in an airbnb. That's been a you know,
it's been good because you know, we're all together. So
you know, like last night we were up till I
don't know whatever time. But we're watching high school players now, right,
So you went from the portal. Now you're transitioning into
high school. And I think one of the best things
about being the coach of the Bearcats is we have
(07:22):
some unbelievable talent right now in this area and we
got to go get it. You know, we got to
keep these kids here.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
You know, as a lifelong college basketball fan, I spent
so many years obsessing over high school recruiting, and now
I feel like it takes a back seat because we
focus on the portal. So kind of walk me through.
Has there been a shift in the overall like high
school coaching or high school recruiting philosophy.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Since yeah, I think there has I mean, I think
people are ignoring the high school players. You know, we
took five last year month we had you know, two
or three kids obviously have come with us two state
at Utah State, we played two. We red shirted three.
Those five kids were really good players, and we had
a plan for them and we're going to red shirt
them and develop them.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
And now it's five for five.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So I think you have to kind of reconfigure we
think some things, but I do think you could still
take two to three high school players probably every other
class maybe three to one class won the next. But
I think when you're in this area and you have
such great high school coaches and good players, you want
(08:27):
to make sure that you're treating the high school coaches right,
that you are active in this area. And Jim Tressell
used to say, we want Youngstown guys, and I'd say, trust,
what the heck does that mean?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
What is a Youngstown guy? Right? Is it like blue
collar toughness?
Speaker 3 (08:42):
He said, No, Jared, it's you put a map six
hours around the city of Youngstown and where our campus
is and we want to identify those guys that really
fit our culture and our style, and we want to
make them our players, and we want to make sure
that they're part of this.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
So that's what we got to do. I think, you
know around the state of Ohio.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Can't thank you enough. Three for three, You've given me
three interviews. Were Already's great, We're done, already, move quick.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
All right. I'll call you in a couple of weeks
to get you to practice.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
I'm in, let's go. Thank you and I you know
I can get up and down the floor once and
a half.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
You play with the staff, that'll be good.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
There you go. Thanks Garrett Calhoun, the men's basketball head
coach at the University of Cincinnati. It's four o'clock, five
to one, three day, ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports Station
This is ESPN fifteen thirty Moegger broadcasting on five to one,
three day from the University of Cincinnati. Were in the
football practice facility, joined by a basketball coach, the head
coach of the UC men's basketball program, Jared Calhoun. You
were kind enough to join me the day you were introduced,
and then it was a whirlwind for you. But I
broadcast from Indy before the final four kind enough to
(00:23):
join me maybe nine days after you had officially taken
the job. So a little time has passed. Are you
a little bit more relaxed? Things calmed down just a
little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I think one thing you'll learn about me, mo is
I've kind of lived my life, never relaxed.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
So I no, it's it's good.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I feel really good.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
As we were talking off air, I feel really good
about our roster, you know, I think you know, obviously
your players are the most important piece to your program,
but there's a lot of other things that got to
be done.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Right. We've got to finish the roster.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
We have two spots left, we've got to finish our schedule,
and then we've got to start really locking in on
the details of how we're going to teach this particular group.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
You'll be better equipped to answer this in three months.
But what do you believe the strength of your team
will be as things stand today?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:15):
I think really probably after about a month and a
half mode. When you get kids on campus, you start
to you know, really understand kind of who they are,
what can they process as far as learning on the court.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
So yeah, I think right now, you know, we wanted
guys that won a lot of college basketball games.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
If you look at what we were able to accomplish
compared to the you know, the rest of the country.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
We're pretty old and our kids have won a lot
of games.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
If you look at all the winning percentages of this
entire roster, it's almost seventy percent of their games they've
won since playing college basketball. So we really study that,
look for that because we believe it's not just the game.
You don't win the games on game night, it's you know,
creating those habits and then those wins mount up.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Walk me through the timeline, like when can you get
him on campus? And then once you get him here,
what are you allowed to do?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, so it's all changed.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I mean, you know, we used to be really, really
gung ho the first week and really just get right
after it, right and talking to Mike Rayfeld, I think
we have the best strength coach in the country. You know,
every former player you talk to, you really get around him.
You understand. We kind of see it very similar. And
you know, I was going through the job process of
(02:31):
looking at the University of Cincinnati. One thing that really
stood out to me was Mike's plan. So the first
week it's really just about getting him back acclimated. We'll
do some testing, some different things in the weight room,
no basketball, and then we'll.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Train for the next three weeks.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
We always take off around July fourth for about nine days,
and then we'll come back at it again for another
three weeks, and then we're gonna go to Bahamas for
either four or five days. We're gonna play two games
and really see where we're at against some other competition.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Correct me, if i'm you're now allowed? Are you allowed
to do that every year?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Oh? I thought you're about the hours? Yeah, y, yes,
you're exactly right.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah, you can take a foreign trip every summer, which
I think in today's world is really good. Yeah, you know,
you can't abuse it. I think you know these universities
are really going above and beyond the call of duty.
So I think, you know, a Bahamas trip somewhere you know,
Europe maybe every four or five years. You know where
(03:30):
you're going to Italy and those sorts of places. So
I think the Bahamas is perfect. But as far as
the hours we get each week, it's eight hours total,
and that's basketball and that's also the weight room.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Eight hours combined with like team activities, how much individual.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Instruction, So you can break it up as much as
you want, right, So we do.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Monday's our position work.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Tuesday is our combo work, so we'll go point guard
winging a big Wednesday we're off. Thursday we'll go back
combo and Friday are team workouts. So if you want
to come down, you know, probably what you'd want to
see is maybe a team workout.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
But I think you know the I.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Thought for a second you were gonna make me work out.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
You want to.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I don't know. I don't know if that's gonna do
you or me any good.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, I don't know. I haven't seen you a place.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You're not You're not missing all that much relative to
like and you and I talked about this. You go
into the portal and you kind of had the benefit
of time where it wasn't you know, you got the
job and the portal opens the next day, you could
sort of map out how you wanted things to go.
How close to maybe best laid plans did things end
up being understanding? You have two more.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Sponsibleity, Yeah, I would say pretty almost. You know, you
never want to say perfect, but I think we batted
a pretty good percentage, so you know.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
We uh.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
The thing that I'm really proud of is we did
not waste time recruiting guys that we couldn't get.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
We identified we want to do a things.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
One of the group of young guys in our program
that we could really build this thing for the next
three years. If you look at the roster dynamic and
you really study it, all of those young guys have
played a lot of basketball, right, That was pretty cool
to see.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
They've won a lot of games.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
And then we got a lot of one year guys, right,
So that's kind of how we've done it over the
last couple of years. And then as you get into
year two, three and four, you're not so reliant on
the portal. Right, So this year, everybody in our program
is a portal guy. That's certainly something that we don't
want to do every year. So we got to do
an unbelievable job developing a relationship, developing the player, having
(05:38):
good relationships with the mom and the dads and whoever's
around that player, and keep them here and build this thing.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
I cannot even imagine what your daily to do list
has looked like since the middle of March. But has
there been something that has popped up in this capacity
that surprised you that you didn't expect? You thought, man,
that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
I mean, I think every day just just meeting different people, right,
and it's it could be our our people, that our
custodians that you know, clean up our building and are
taking our trash or you know, cleaning our floors. I mean,
I think when you come into a program, you have
(06:19):
to do an unbelievable job of treating people the right way,
and then you have to create an organization that everybody
believes in what we're doing. And if you don't have
one buy in, it's so hard to win games. So yeah,
I think just driving to work every day knowing you're
the head coach at the university of Cincinnati, and you know,
pretty soon every every game is going to matter to
(06:42):
an entire city. That's a you know, that's a big responsibility.
So you can't just show up, you know, November and
think that's gonna happen, right, So we got to do
a lot of things here over to the next couple
of months.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
You're not sleeping in your office anymore, are you shows.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
No, not anymore.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Now we're still in an airbnb. That's been a you know,
it's been good because you know, we're all together. So
you know, like last night we were up till I
don't know whatever time. But we're watching high school players now, right,
So you went from the portal. Now you're transitioning into
high school. And I think one of the best things
about being the coach of the Bearcats is we have
(07:22):
some unbelievable talent right now in this area and we
got to go get it. You know, we got to
keep these kids here.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
You know, as a lifelong college basketball fan, I spent
so many years obsessing over high school recruiting, and now
I feel like it takes a back seat because we
focus on the portal. So kind of walk me through.
Has there been a shift in the overall like high
school coaching or high school recruiting philosophy.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Since yeah, I think there has I mean, I think
people are ignoring the high school players. You know, we
took five last year month we had you know, two
or three kids obviously have come with us two state
at Utah State, we played two. We red shirted three.
Those five kids were really good players, and we had
a plan for them and we're going to red shirt
them and develop them.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
And now it's five for five.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So I think you have to kind of reconfigure we
think some things, but I do think you could still
take two to three high school players probably every other
class maybe three to one class won the next. But
I think when you're in this area and you have
such great high school coaches and good players, you want
(08:27):
to make sure that you're treating the high school coaches right,
that you are active in this area. And Jim Tressell
used to say, we want Youngstown guys, and I'd say, trust,
what the heck does that mean?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
What is a Youngstown guy? Right? Is it like blue
collar toughness?
Speaker 3 (08:42):
He said, No, Jared, it's you put a map six
hours around the city of Youngstown and where our campus
is and we want to identify those guys that really
fit our culture and our style, and we want to
make them our players, and we want to make sure
that they're part of this.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
So that's what we got to do. I think, you
know around the state of Ohio.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Can't thank you enough. Three for three, You've given me
three interviews. Were Already's great, We're done, already, move quick.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
All right. I'll call you in a couple of weeks
to get you to practice.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
I'm in, let's go. Thank you and I you know
I can get up and down the floor once and
a half.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
You play with the staff, that'll be good.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
There you go. Thanks Garrett Calhoun, the men's basketball head
coach at the University of Cincinnati. It's four o'clock, five
to one, three day, ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports Station
Mo Egger News
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