Seg 4 - MBB Show Nov 6 w Mike Nardi

New Assistant Mike Nardi comes from a championship culture under Jay Wright at Villanova. How does that translate at UConn ??

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Yukon men's basketball coaches Shown one
of the staff, the assistant coach Mike Nardi, joins his
first year with Yukon. Longtime Villanova assistant had a little
interim duty there as a headman for three games as well.
But Mike, let's start with you as a player, because
I first ran into you as a player four year starter,

(00:20):
which is not something that's easy to do at Villanova
back mid two thousand's helped them get to the Sweet
sixteen and five and the Elite eight and six. Your
college career as a player, how do you think that
impacted you as a coach now that you're in the
other end of the thing you got to whistle on
all the time.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yep, yep. No, it's great to be on the show, Mike,
So thanks for having me. You know, I think for
myself as a player, I always had that underdog mentality,
you know, and kind of work ethic to prove myself
every day that I belonged, you know, and I was
going to compete for everything that I that I earned,

(01:03):
you know, on a daily basis. And I think in
the coaching world, you know, it's pretty similar, right, Like
you have to come in, you know. I thought that
was one of the greatest things that Coach Wright did
for me as a as a coach, was he put
me in a position to learn from the ground up,
you know. And when I became a part of the
staff at Villanova, I started in the you know, player

(01:25):
development role, which at that time you could not be
on the court instructing, so I had a chance to
kind of fine tune and learn new things behind the
scenes and and just what that looks like every day,
right class checks, spending time with the with the players,
you know, getting to build relationships, being in coaching meetings

(01:48):
and and understanding you know, the terminology and our schemes
and and what we were trying to do daily in practice.
And it just gave me a perspective on coaching, you know,
to to see that and then be able to get
promoted each year at Villanova because I was putting in
the work, you know. And Jay wasn't the type of
guy just to promote you just because right you know,

(02:11):
I played for him. He wanted you to go out
and earn it, and I felt like I did that,
you know, being on some great staff there and learning
from guys that were in front of me. So I
just think, you know, as a whole for myself being
able to just work hard every day, you know, be
a part of something that's bigger than myself and really

(02:34):
just try and strive to be great, you know, and
make other people better.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Mike Nardi with us you kind assistant first year at stores,
part of two national championships Villanova as a coach sixteen
and eighteen. Now you're in a championship place again. Let's
talk about that because you know, Yukon just played new
Haven and their opener the other day one by twenty four.
But Dan spent the last fifteen minutes talking about the

(02:59):
things that didn't go right. So I guess what I'm
asking is the championship mentality. When you have that, you're
not really ever satisfied, but you have to you have
to enjoy what you're doing at the same time. Correct.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, But you know, I think having a championship mentality
through the journey of a season is you're grinding every
day until hopefully you get a chance to then at
the end celebrate, you know, and be the best team
in the country. Right, So you're going through that journey

(03:35):
and you're and you're grinding and your expectations are extremely
high because you know where you need to be.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
They they've won back to back championships here under coach,
and he knows what those teams did every single day
in practice. He knows the focus, the concentration level, the
attention to detail, right, the competitive nature of each individual guy,
and then that as a collective group. So I think
early in the season, even though you do have a

(04:04):
bunch of guys that have returned and have had great
success here, right, you still want to treat this like
a new group because there are new players, right that
came in from the transfer portal. There are freshmen, you know,
players that haven't done it at this level yet. So
you're trying to get those guys a custom and really

(04:26):
just get them to understand what it takes to become
a championship team.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Well, Mike Nardi's with us will continue in just a moment.
This is the Yukon Men's Basketball Coaches Show on lear Field,