Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Former Iowa basketball player Jeff Horner joins the show to talk about the Hawks, Iowa United, and Truman State

Episode Date: June 12, 2019

Former Iowa Hawkeye men's basketball player and current head coach of Truman State University Jeff Horner joins the show to talk abou the Iowa United, his first year as a head coach for Truman State, and of course, Iowa basketball. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are listening to the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering the Iowa Hawkeyes for the Locked On Sports Network, hosted by Andrew Wade, editor at dearoldgold.com. Welcome to this beautiful Wednesday morning edition of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast. I am your host, Andrew Wade, editing an episode, a two-part series today with Jeff Horner, former Iowa basketball player, going to be the coach of the Iowa United, the team that is going to be playing in the basketball tournament, TBT, the $2 million winner-take-all tournament this summer with a couple of Iowa Hawkeyes, a couple of Drake Bulldogs, and a couple of Iowa State Cyclones, including National Player of the Year Megan Gufferson.

So Jeff Horner is going to be on the show today and tomorrow, and I'm excited to get you listening to that. Before we do that, though, I do have my very typical housekeeping items I need you to be aware of. Today's show is brought to you in part by Hotels.com. Don't hate like your friend's trip. Book your own with Hotels.com and get rewarded basically everywhere.

Hotels.com, be there, do that, get rewarded. All right, make sure to follow us on Twitter so you can get the latest updates about when we're gonna be posting shows. You can follow us on Twitter at LockedOnIowa and you can follow us on Facebook at LockedOnHawkeyes. Also, if you are tuning in for the first time or if you've tuned in before but you've been manually downloading these episodes,

just go and like, subscribe, and please actually review our podcast wherever you downloaded this podcast app, whether that is Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or the brand new podcasting app, Himalaya. If you haven't used Himalaya yet, please check it out. I love podcasts. I'm an avid podcast listener and I love the Himalaya podcast app because it allows you to actually curate personalized playlists of podcasts that you want to listen to based off your likes and dislikes. It also allows you to actually like and review specific episodes. So if you're listening to me and you got tired of me talking on yesterday's episode or you didn't agree with something I said, you can post that review on that

specific episode. And then if you loved this Jeff Horner interview, which you absolutely are, you can like and review this specific episode. So it gives you an opportunity to be a little bit more granular in your feedback and comments. And I absolutely love and appreciate when you do give me that feedback. So make sure to do that. If you haven't used the Himalaya podcast app, make sure to check that out now. And also, if you haven't listened to some of our past episodes, we've had some really great people on the show. We've had Ricky Stanzi. We've had Drew Tate, Nicholas Bayer, Marcus Fizer.

The list goes on and on. We've had some really great people coming on the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. Make sure to check out some of those previous episodes. You're not going to want to miss listening to some of your former favorite Iowa Hawkeyes talk about their career with the Iowa Hawkeyes and talk about their pro careers afterwards. That being said, though, let's jump right into it. We're going to jump into the Jeff Horner interview and start our conversation with him today, and then we'll be tuning in for part number two on tomorrow's episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast.

I am honored to be joined here by Jeff Horner, former Iowa basketball player and current coach of the Truman State Bulldogs, and Jeff is going to be coaching the Iowa United in the basketball tournament, the $2 million winner-take-all tournament this summer. Jeff, how are you doing, man? I'm doing all right. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Absolutely, man. And you're a pretty busy guy. Obviously, you're going through recruiting for Truman State. You're trying to work on getting this team together. Take me through a typical day. I mean, I'm assuming you're a pretty busy guy right now.

work on getting this team together. Take me through a typical day. I mean, I'm assuming you're a pretty busy guy right now. Yeah, the last couple weeks, we've just been trying to sure up our recruiting class, so I can't mention any names or anything like that. But we still had to sign two or three guys after the season. And some of those guys, everyone kind of wants to hold off for the D1 dream, which I completely understand.

But in the end, it hurts us D2 guys a little bit because they're waiting for those things. And so we were able to sure up and get two or three recruits. So pretty much we've kind of been going through that the last two to three weeks where we've had, you know, four recruits on campus and we got two commits. And so we're extremely happy about that. And so basically, you know, a day a guy comes in, he spends the night the night before in a hotel and go have breakfast with them. They go through admissions. Then we come back and give them a tour of campus. And, you know, lots of times we like to have them play with our guys.

But in D2, you know, you can't do anything during the summer with your guys. Our guys are all at home, you know, where they're from. So it's kind of interesting. It kind of gets when you get to the summertime, the school gets out. You do have a little bit of downtime in D2, but you're kind of always preparing for that next recruiting class or looking at your budget or trying to get scheduling done. So it's been a busy time, but, yeah, the days have kind of all been different. I have played a little bit of golf, which is kind of nice, to be honest with you.

Nice. You know, it's been a crazy couple weeks since school's been out, but I'm excited about year two. Absolutely. This was your first year at Truman State. As far as the recruiting cycle, this has probably been your first full recruiting cycle you've been a part of at Truman State. As far as your background, being a former D1 basketball player, you're pretty close to the state of Iowa and also having professional experience how does that help you with recruits? I think it helps out quite a bit especially with you know there's there's one there's one division two college in Iowa and that's Upper Iowa and so you know with us being 30 minutes from the Iowa border I think that really helps out and then

obviously you know I played at Iowa which Iowa City is about only two and a half hours away from Truman so I do feel like a lot of the guys that are in Iowa still kind of know who I am. And obviously when I was at the University of North Dakota, I recruited Iowa pretty hard while I was up there. So I feel like guys haven't forgotten about me. They probably know me more as a coach now than they remember when I played since that was so long ago, it feels like. But, you know, I think it's one of those things where I think, you know, I have good connections. And, you know, I think that they know that I was a good, hardworking player when I was at Iowa. So for, you know, maybe for me to be able to recruit them, you know, they feel like I know what talent is, that type of thing.

And, you know, obviously I still have some stuff, some things overseas that, you know, I know people overseas, those types of things. So we can definitely use that and be able to play, you know, after college, you know, at the D2 level. Because there are D2 kids that can play, you know, overseas and professionally and make money doing that. So that's definitely one of the recruiting pitches I think that you can make, you know, to some of these kids when they do come here. You know, but unfortunately a lot of them, you know, when you're at the D2 level, basketball is done after those four or five years depending on if you're redshirt or not but um you know the big thing with truman state is it's extremely high academic um it's almost like you know harvard in the division one so uh you know

we got to get high academic kids here sometimes that's that's not always easy but um it also kind of weeds out some sometimes some kids that you know may have other issues on the side to where we know we just get really good kids here. And that's something to be able to focus on. In saying that, obviously not all guys with not great grades are bad kids. So it's been a little bit difficult in that sense. But I think we've got a really good recruiting class coming in, and I'm thinking that my name in Iowa has helped with that.

All right, I'm going to interrupt the podcast briefly to give you a quick and very important message because I think it's that important. I love what I'm about to tell you about. Twiddlery.com makes some fantastic dress shirts. Today in the year 2019, your shirts shouldn't wrinkle, they shouldn't itch, and they shouldn't sweat. Thankfully, Twillery makes stocking up your closet as simple as restocking beer in your fridge. Easy, affordable, and the perfect fit, guaranteed. They have dress shirts for every occasion. They offer non-iron, untuckable, and performance dress shirts, and you can get them for as low as $55 each when you bundle four or more. It also comes with free shipping and returns, so literally,

these are risk-free. After all, feeling is believing, and I'm very much a guy who wants to try things on before I get it. But I got sent a Twillery t-shirt, or excuse me, a Twillery dress shirt, and I freaking love it. It is fantastic. I wear it all the time on site. It's comfortable. It fits me great. And like I said, it doesn't itch, sweat, or wrinkle. So literally, what are you missing out on? Only the opportunity to have one of the best dress shirts on the market. And we have a very special promotion for you today on the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. If you go to twillery.com, T-W-I-L-L-O-R-Y.com and enter the promo code LOCKDOWN, that gives you $25 off your next order.

And for a limited time, we have a Father's Day special where you can enjoy a free set of bottle opener collar stays until June 16th if you order today. So make sure to go check out twillery.com, enter the promo code LOCKEDON, and start wearing some awesome dress shirts today. Definitely. I mean, I remember watching you when I was a kid playing for the University of Iowa, and that was fantastic. So your name still rings a bell for me at least. I don't know how much weight that holds, but it was awesome watching you play for the Iowa Hawkeyes. And, you know, Truman State has a pretty good background in basketball.

They've experienced some success at the D2 level. How did you become interested in the Truman State job while you were at UND? Well, basically, actually my buddy Chris, was the coach here before I was, and Matt Woodley, who I know, too, as well, was the coach before him, and so the old coach, Jack Schrader, was here for a really long time, and Matt Woodley took over after him, so, you know, kind of started getting into more of an Iowa feel, I guess you could say, because, you know, Matt Woodley was from Iowa, Chris Foster played at UNI, so I think it was, Iowa feel, I guess you could say, because Matt Woodley was from Iowa. Chris Foster played at UNI.

So I think that they kind of kept on wanting to go in the Iowa connection way a little bit. So once I found out that Chris was leaving, I definitely wanted to check into the job and interview for him while I was up at North Dakota and fell in love with the city, though it's not that big um but but I really liked it here and I just I knew I needed to be a head coach at some point and get get a lot of experience and I just loved it my first year and we've had uh this first year was really interesting because we had a lot of injuries that weren't expected we had a couple guys that we thought were going to be very key pieces for us

who didn't play um which is always you know difficult and um you know when i came in you still had kind of eight games to schedule when i got the job so pretty much you know had to kind of sell myself for for money as far as um you know playing some teams that could pay us you know that type of money well when you do that, you play teams like Northwest Missouri State who go undefeated and, you know, but they're able to pay you a little bit of money for you to come play them. So we actually had the toughest schedule in Division II this last year, and that on top of the injuries was a little bit rough,

but it was a pleasure coming to work every single day with the guys that we had because they just worked their butts off and they were great kids. Definitely. And I definitely saw that in your record. And obviously I've heard of Northwest Missouri State. So as far as, you know, year two, are you pretty excited for what your team's going to be kind of pulling together in year two? Do you have pretty big and high expectations for year two?

Yeah, I do. You know, it's kind of one of those things where, you know, we'll probably end up signing, you know, all freshman kids this year. So you kind of get that class kind of implemented in with a really good group coming back. So, you know, our schedule is going to be extremely tough again next year. You know, I definitely haven't scheduled, you know, any cupcakes, that's for sure. But it's one of those things where, you know, if we want to be the best, we're going to play the best. And we're definitely playing the best next year again.

But we also have an older group coming back. We were pretty young last year, and a lot of guys got a lot of experience that maybe they weren't expecting if some guys hadn't gotten hurt, that type of thing. So it was good for a lot of the young guys who hadn't played a whole lot of college basketball to get that experience, and we bring back some guys that are going to be really good, and we bring back three core players that kind of led us last year

who will just get that much better next year, feel yeah I mean we saw that with Iowa just a couple years ago when Jordan Bohannon and Tyler Cook came in you know young guys that we weren't you know the Iowa Hawkeyes weren't really able to contend at that point but then we saw what they could do this past season and hopefully we'll see what they can do next year obviously Cook is gone but Bohannon might be out of an injury but. But we saw kind of that growth from freshmen to their junior years and how talented they were at that point. So hopefully that will happen with Truman State. And one quick question that I wanted to bring up, you mentioned, you know,

Kirksville is pretty small, but you like it there. Does it feel like home at all? I just looked up the quick census numbers, and Mason City is only about 10,000 people bigger than Kirksville. So does that help with that hometown vibe a little bit? Yeah, it definitely does. You can definitely tell that Kirksville is smaller here. But in the end, since I've lived in Mason City and Iowa City,

I have two little kids right now. So I don't do a whole lot other than chase them around. So they've kind of kept me grounded and that kind of thing. And so it's a 24-7 job with those two running around my house and wanting to go outside. And they definitely wear you out. And I definitely go to bed a lot earlier than I used to. I can only imagine.

And as far as being a head coach, man, so was that something you always dreamed of doing? Or is that something you kind of thought about later in your playing career when you're kind of graduating Iowa that you wanted to be a coach at some point? Yeah, you know, I think, well, my dad was a high school coach for, you know, 30 to 40 years. So, you know, obviously coaching and sports was in my blood. My three older sisters all played college basketball. So, you know, it's, it was one thing where I, you know, when I was getting done with overseas playing, I kind of thought about, well, you know, what should I do? And kind of the injuries just kind of started to mount up a little bit. And the not knowing where you're going to be next year kind of took a toll on

me a little bit too. And, you know, finding out, you know, two days before, you know, where you're going overseas, it's like, well, you know, you don't have time to prepare and be with your family and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, all that stuff kind of got difficult along with the injuries and not being able to go. So actually I was in the airport in Amsterdam on my way home after, you know, being overseas for a month for my last go around in Belgium.

And I talked to my mom and talked about getting into the medical sales industry. And, you know, she just said, she said, I think that, you know, you'd be really good coaching. And I said, yeah, I mean, obviously that's, you know, it's always been a passion of mine. And, you know, like I told her, I said, I didn't know if I could ever leave the game. I thought that was going to be difficult

just because I love it so much. So, you know, in the end, obviously I decided to go into the coaching world. And it's one of those things where, you know, I'm happy I did it and, you know, I'm happy I did it. And, you know, I have no regrets, for sure. Absolutely, man. And what is what is your coaching style like? I mean, I'm assuming you're still developing it, even, you know, as you continue to grow as a coach, but what is your coaching style like? Yeah, for sure. You know, I've had a lot of a lot of really good coaches over the past. And

I've had, you know, some coaches that maybe I don't agree with not saying that they're necessarily wrong. And I'm right. But, you know, it, but it's one of those things where that's their coaching philosophy and that's okay. So my coaching philosophy is we really like to get up and run and get out and run on offense. I mean, that's really important to me. We didn't so much do that last year as much as I would have liked to. I thought we had to slow it down a little bit more in order for us to win games.

But, you know, obviously getting your guys in there and being able to do that type of stuff, you'll be able to get to that a little bit more as far as recruiting goes. So that's one thing. But I'm definitely a defensive-minded coach, even though I didn't play a whole lot in college. But I'm a defensive-minded coach. And, you know, I look at last year, you know,

we gave up about four or five less points a game than they had the previous year, and that's something that I'm going to continue to keep on, you know, implementing, you know, with our style. And I think, you know, I think that, you know, hopefully when you, after you play our teams, you know, that you've been through a dogfight, and I think that's something that's, you know, that's most important is that we're always going to try to go out and be the tougher team on the floor, diving for loose balls, taking charges, and just playing harder than everyone else.

So, you know, we want to get out and run and transition on offense. We want to be extremely solid defensively, and we want to, you know, we want to be the tougher team. And so those are three things that we really hang our hat on. Sounds a lot like an Iowa Hawkeye mentality. The whole, you know, you're going to be in a dogfight all day with us. That sounds very much like what you would expect from an Iowa Hawkeye. I love it, man. As far as the Iowa United and that coaching style,

I feel like that really fits pretty well with the team that's being put together. A lot of three-point shooters, a lot of guys who work really hard on the defense side of the floor. Matt Tybee and Nick McGlynn are very high-energy guys on defense. Nicholas Bayer is a guy who's going to be putting his body out everywhere he can to make sure he makes a play. So are you excited to coach that team? Do you feel like they fit pretty well into your style?

Yeah, definitely. Obviously, when you go into something like this, I think we're going to have two days of practice before we go to play. So you can't be too complicated with things that you do. You can't have a whole lot of things that you're going to implement and put in there. And when you've got a guy, when you've got a group this talented, I think it's one of those things where you've got to just let them go out and play, too. So, you know, I don't want to, you know, you've got to kind of have that NBA mentality where, you know, you want to go out there and allow them to do what it is they do.

Because obviously they've gotten to this point in their career to begin with, you know, without me, you know, ever coaching them or anything like that. So, you know, I'm just hoping that I can give some advice here and there and help them out with it, you know, implement an offense that I think can really help us. And obviously, three-point shooting is going to be a big part of that. Yeah, and I'll touch on, I want to touch on Peter Jock here in a second. But outside of Peter Jock, is there any guys that you've been kind of watching that you're really excited to coach? And you can obviously decline to answer that question.

I don't know how it works with adults at this point if people get a little bit jealous or whatnot. But are you excited to coach any particular guy? Well, I'll say this. I've looked at every single guy on our roster, and it's kind of a small world. Because obviously I grew up watching Marcus Fizer play. It's kind of a small world, you know, because obviously I grew up watching Marcus Fizer play. You know, I came to one of their games when I was in, you know, middle school. And so I went to one of his games, you know, watched him growing up, loved the way he played.

And so then, you know, he obviously got that guy who's older than me. You know, he's older than the coach, so that doesn't happen a whole lot. But, you know, I coached Matt tybee when he was in high school and just watching him evolve now just how much of a different player he is than when he was in high school was awesome to see um you know i watched josh young you know playing college quite a bit and obviously i've gone back on this uh we have a recruiting or a scouting service called synergy so i went back on and watched a little bit of nick mcglenn and and you know obviously i i you know watch mcbear on TV all the time because I try to watch as many Iowa games as I possibly can. So I know a lot about those guys and I know Tyrus McGee can really

score it. And, you know, I go back and you watch a guy like Reed Timmer on the Synergy stuff too. So I'm excited to coach all of them. You know, I really am. And so I'm hoping that, you know, in the end we can, you know, they can gel and mesh together because to me that's the most important thing. that it's more team-based as opposed to individual-based. So I think that'll obviously help the transition to come back to America and play a team-based game with people you've never played basketball with before. So I think that'll obviously help the transition. As far as Peter Jock, you coached him at Valley. Did you expect the success that he had at Iowa? Did you expect him to be so dominant?

I mean, right now he's in the G League and he's tearing it up he's shooting he was shooting 44 percent from behind the arc for the Northern Arizona Sun so is that something you kind of saw and expected from him when you were coaching him um yeah definitely you know I'll be I'll be really honest when Pete transferred over to us from from Des Moines Roosevelt um you know it was a long process um he had hurt his knee uh I didn't you know when he was going through all that kind of stuff, you know, he kind of got cleared probably almost right as our season started his junior year. And, I mean, I'll tell you, he couldn't move.

And I felt extremely bad for him. And I could tell it was taking a toll on him. And, I mean, I was, you know, I was kind of the point where I was like, well, is he ever going to recover from this? I mean, because, you know, he had the surgery. He was doing rehab. He was still limping all over the place. And he pretty much went through his junior year not being able to move at all.

You know, and then, obviously, he took a couple months off in the summertime. And he came back in the fall. And he was really, you know, he had taken a big jump from where he was at the year before already. And, you know, so, obviously, you know, I talked to Fran McCaffrey quite a bit about him. And they came in and they offered him. And, you know, his final two were down to Drake and Iowa. And, you know, I told him, you know, everyone thinks I steered Pete towards Iowa and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, I kind of stayed out of it because obviously that was Pete's decision.

And I wanted him to make the best decision for him, you know, and obviously he did. You know, he went into Iowa and did all that. He finally got healthy and I think what Pete kind of did when he got to college too was he kind of finally realized how hard he had to work. You know, not that he didn't try to work hard in high school, but, you know, he needed to change his body and he did that. He needed to just get healthy in general and then, you know, obviously the one thing that, you know, I think that is huge with Pete is, and I talked to a ton of GMs,

actually, when I was at North Dakota because a lot of NBA teams called, you know, on him. They're trying to find as much background as they possibly can, all that type of stuff. And, you know, the one thing I told all of them, I said, he's the best shooter I've ever coached. So, you know, when you're 6'6 and you can shoot you can shoot like that, NBA teams are going to give you a look. Just because of the way Pete shot the ball, I knew that he was going to have a successful career.

Knowing now that he was torn between Drake or Iowa, I'm a Drake alum and an Iowa Hawkeye fan. I'm not sure how I feel about that now. Just thinking about the fact that he could have really propelled the Drake Bulldogs for about 10 years from 10 years of misery. So that would have been fun to see. But I'm glad he was an Iowa Hawkeye too. Just knowing that was a little bit making me torn. All right, and that concludes our Wednesday episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast and part one of our interview with Jeff Horner.

Great conversation with him. I really appreciate him taking the time. Incredible, energetic guy. We get into a little bit more personalized stuff tomorrow. If you are a person who is familiar with the town of Newton, my hometown, you're going to love the ending of tomorrow's episode. But we're also going to talk about some Iowa Hawkeyes stuff, talk about some of his high school accomplishments, that kind of thing. So getting more into Jeff Horner, the person before he was an Iowa Hawkeye tomorrow. If you loved what you listened to today, you're gonna love tomorrow's episode as well.

And make sure to just go to the Apple Podcast app, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or the Himalaya Podcast app and download, like, and subscribe this podcast. That way you can just get it automatically downloaded to your smart device tomorrow morning when you wake up. You don't need to go and manually find this part two of the Jeff Horner interview. And it also helps me out.

The more you like, review, and subscribe these episodes and these podcasts, it actually helps my podcast get reached to more Iowa Hawkeye fans that deserve to listen to my beautiful voice every morning talking about the Iowa Hawkeyes. Also, if you are on Twitter, make sure to follow us on Twitter at LockedOnIowa. Follow us on Facebook at LockedOnHawkeyes. Also, if you are on Twitter, make sure to follow us on Twitter at LockedOnIowa. Follow us on Facebook at LockedOnHawkeyes. And if you are one of those people who just like to email me, you can do that as well. You can email me at LockedOnHawkeyes at gmail.com. Give me any content suggestions, feedbacks, whatever it may be.

Feel free to send that over to my Gmail account, LockedOnHawkeyes at gmail.com. That is all, though, for our Wednesday morning episode of the Locked on Hawkeyes podcast. Make sure to tune into tomorrow's episode where we give you part two of our interview with Jeff Horner. Thank you again for listening, Hawkeye Nation, and go Hawks! We'll see you next time. you