The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Gottlieb - All Ball - AAU LeBron-troversy; Gottlieb and Oklahoma State Head Coach Mike Boynton Talk Hoops

Episode Date: August 1, 2019

Subscribe here to the All Ball with Doug Gottlieb Podcast https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/all-ball-with-doug-gottlieb/id1358843497?mt=2.  This week, Gottlieb looks at the LeBron AAU layup line controversy and talks hoop with Oklahoma State Head Basketball Coach Mike Boynton on his path from growing up playing ball in Brooklyn, to DI college player at South Carolina, to assistant, to getting the head job in Stillwater, and his plans to build upon and improve Gottlieb's alma mater program. Make sure you download, rate and subscribe here to get the latest All Ball Podcasts! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. And nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. In every episode, we're cutting through the noise,

breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headlines. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite.

Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel. Help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, guys? This is Clivert Taylor the Fourth. And on my podcast, The Cliverts show, I'm bringing you conversations about all kinds of stuff. Like being an internet famous referee. We're in the middle of a game. This linebacker, this linebacker walks up to me. He goes, hey, ref, my mom wants you to wave at her. What?

Time out. Quarterback on office blue with 42. Hey, Wreck, my mama want you to weigh better. What? Hey, Ms. Parker. Listen to the Clifford show on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, fam?

It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season, and I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was harmed. you just understood. That's how personal it got.

Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming to her. He's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball.

So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, all ball community. I'm about you make your holidays even happier. Get the Epson Eco Tank cartridge-free printer because you know it's not festive. Cartridge Connipions. Those panic freakouts that happen when those pricey ink cartridges run out at the worst possible time, like when you're halfway through printing your holiday cards.

With Epson Eco Tank, kiss expensive cartridges goodbye. This printer has big ink tanks and comes with a ridiculous amount of ink, so you can just fill and chill all season long. Now that's Mary. Epson Eco Tank. Learn more at Epson.com slash All Ball with Doug. There's a recipe for getting your car running just right. And eBay Motors.com has all the ingredients you need. They have over 122 million car parts and accessories in stock

all at the right prices. Now that's tasty. eBay motors.com. Let's ride. This clip is brought to you by State Farm. At State Farm, they know what it takes to ensure your home and ride with surprisingly great rates. That's why it's a good idea to consider State Farm.

Because with State Farm, you don't have to give up what you love for great insurance. For surprisingly great rates, like a good vecino. State Farm is there. I had a friend get me a magnet that says, it's not hoarding if it's cool stuff. And I hold that to be true. Yeah, Marie Kondo says differently. Everything brings me joy.

Sorry, but. Yeah, but that's what everyone says. Everyone says everything brings them joy. That's her whole thing. Okay, yeah, but when I stare at that limited edition box of cheese, it's in the corner of my room, that brings me joy. Or the, or the Pokemon Oreos that I keep, that brings me joy. That reminds me of my youth.

It wasn't that long ago Listen to the My Cultura Podcast Network Available on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts Hey welcome into this edition of All Ball I'm Doug Gottlieb and listen I could give you some my take on LeBron James Which I'll give you kind of in short order here

I don't think it's I don't think it's sinister what he did I don't think it makes him the devil I don't think it makes him a bad parent. I also don't think it makes him a good parent. There's a different discussion for if a guy's a good parent and if a guy is acting kind of appropriately. I just think it's weird.

And I give him a little bit of a pass because that's what happens with superstars. Have you ever been around a rock star, a rap star, a movie star, basketball player, football player? They're generally weird. They reach it like an artistic threshold to where they're, they get so right brain that they don't think like you and I do. And the best guy player, you know,

I mean, for me, the best player I've played with at Oklahoma State was Adrian Peterson, but the best talent who became the best NBA player who was an incredible athlete and hard workers designation. And like, I think if I use the word weird with him, it would be unfair.

But like he's an abstract artist. Right. And that kind of fits what stars do is they look at, the world differently. It can see things differently than the rest of us. But dude, I just, I don't, you don't get up and dunk in your kids lay up lines and you don't come on to the floor. It's not the N1 mixtape.

It's not, it's not, oh, baby, oh baby. Do I think it makes them a horrible human being? No. An attention hound, tad. But I also think, in all honesty, um, it's just, it's just weird. It's just weird. We got a great discussion for you. Mike Boyton is supposed to be my arch enemy, right?

He got the Oklahoma State job, the one that I wanted. And it turns out he's also actually a really good guy. And it sucks that he's such a good guy. And he's become a good friend of mine. And I thought we'd kind of tell his story a little bit or let him tell his story a little bit. Obviously, two years ago, they had an unbelievable run late in the season. They beat West Virginia. They beat Kansas on the road.

They swept Kansas. And they were America's darling and didn't get in the NCAA tournament. this year, not so much. Not so much. But his story, how he got to hear, is even more interesting than his team he has now. And the team he has now, I think, will be really, really good this year. Really good.

So, without further ado, here's my talk with Oklahoma State Head Coach Mike Boyden. So instead of getting to the job now and you're playing career at South Carolina, You're Brooklyn born, but like what, there's all different parts of Brooklyn. What part of Brooklyn? I'm from Bedstuy, which is a small section of, I guess it would be the central part of Brooklyn. And that's why I was born and raised. Bedstai is, that's, what was the, what was the, I read the book, Heaven is a Playground, right? That was, that was Bedstuy.

Did you ever read that? Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a lot of legend, legend. about Best Style Brooklyn, some of the best players you've ever, maybe never heard of,

actually, are from Bettsy. And then there's a famous rapper. Rotorius B.I.G. was also from Bestar. So, like, so,

okay, so paint the picture of your childhood. Oh, man, it was probably unique in some ways for a kid from Brooklyn

in fact that, unfortunately, saying this, especially at Metzah, Lebrontoe. I had both of my parents. I had four sisters, and that wasn't really

the norm. I grew up with a lot of guys. I started playing basketball organized when I was about eight years old and probably only play with, from the time I was eight to the time I was in high school, probably played with two other guys who actually had fathers that were active in their lives. So I grew up in an area where, you know, there was a lot of, you know, hustle and basketball was a way out for a lot of us. And, you know, my parents and my, you know, the older people in my neighborhood kind of protecting me from some of the pitfalls, whether it be, you know, getting into drug dealing or, you know, things of that nature. I was a pretty good student because my parents made it important.

Neither one of them went to college. So it was important that once I had an opportunity, especially to do it for free, that they wanted me to do the things I needed to do in a classroom to make that happen. So academics were always really important. And, you know, from there, you know, fast forward to high school basketball. Well, don't wait, wait, wait, don't fast forward just yet. Okay, so what did your, what'd your dad do? So my dad was a stop.

Basically, he was a runner for Charles Schwab on the New York Stock Exchange, at Wall Street, and, you know, in the middle of all that hustle. My mom worked in, and she worked for a merchandise, a sporting goods store, called Models. Sure. Of course. So you had all the good gear, I'm hoping. Man, you know, they, first of all, the gear was okay, right?

It wasn't like, like, now we get 15 different colorways of one shoe. But every now and then, my mom, if I got good enough grades, would surprise me when something came out on a Saturday morning, she'd keep a pair of side. So I remember vividly it was like 97 or maybe it was 98, being one of the first kids with the foam posits. Sure. The gray ones looked like a spaceship.

Sure. Terrible shoes to play in. Very cool, but terrible to play in. I felt like foam posits are so heavy. Okay, so the playground you grew up playing at was what? We played all over, man. We were probably young guys who went to every park. I played at Brownsville Recreational most of the time,

but she also went to Tellery Park. You went to show on the hole, was for both in Brooklyn. And you play at probably any number of parks between your home and your school where I went to PS308 for my first seven years of elementary. And then I actually was recruited for the first time at the seventh grader to another elementary school in Harlem, as a matter of fact. I went to a school called Mount Carmel for my eighth grade year. And we played on the team with seven other guys who played division one back.

basketball as an eighth grader. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. So, why did you go to Harlem? Like, like, for anybody who understands the, just logistics of it, do you get in a subway every day to go to Harlem? Walked to the train, took two trains and a bus to school, took a bus and two trains home every day for my eighth grade year school. But why?

I mean, was it because of hoops? Basketball. It was because of hoops. It was because of hoops. So who hooked you up? Like, how did you? Wait, who would come see me? kind of in the middle, like the youth leagues when I was in fifth and sixth grade.

I actually got recruited to go there in my seventh grade year. I wasn't really sure I wanted to leave Brooklyn and some of the friends I had. But once I decided that I knew what high school I wanted to go to, which was discipline. Pretty predominant basketball program in Brooklyn. I knew I wanted to start preparing myself to play against great competition every day. So at 12 years old, man, I started getting on the train and bus every day. day to go to school. I had a great experience. A couple of names you may remember, Tremaine

Singletary, Peter Mulligan, who actually went on to have a really good career. Andre Barrett, Peter Seton Hall, Kyle Coss, who played at St. John's. We were all on a great team together. We did not lose a game that year, which I'm still very proud of, and that kind of spread me on to the high school career. Okay, what AAU program? Played for Riverside Church. Sure. So it's really one of the original, you know, true, I guess, stacked A.U. Teams.

It was back in the day. Well, before there were 15 A.A.U.T. in every city, there were the Riverside Church Hawks, and there was New York Outers. And you played for one or the other. So as many good players as was coming out of New York City at the time, both of us had really, really good teams. Okay. Okay, now we can fast forward to high school. What was your high school experience like?

Oh, phenomenal. I went to Bishop Lachlan like I talked about. Because I knew one of the assistant coaches for the varsity program there, who was my mentor, Kenny Putlow, I was exposed to that program, probably from the time I was in fifth or sixth grade. I would go to their practices. I would go to their games. Sometimes I'd even practice with the guys.

So I had a lot of familiarity with the people at the school. But when I got there, my experience was unbelievable. I played JV basketball as a freshman in high school and had a great experience. I wasn't good enough to play on a varsity team then. That team had just graduated Selden Jefferson, who had a great career at West Virginia. In my freshman year, the juniors on varsity were Brian Brown and Will Dudley, who both played at Ohio State, Cliff Strong, who's the all-time leaving rebound at my high school, who actually went on to have a really good career at Loyola, Maryland.

And so as a freshman I played JV, I was able to be good enough, I guess, as a sophomore to move up to varsity, played for a legendary coach named Bob Lucky, who's still a pretty strong figure in youth basketball in New York City now. You mentioned Kenny Pretlow's your mentor. Yeah. What was he like with you? Because, again, you know, my experience is my dad was the guy who took me around Southern California. he coached my AU teams and there were a couple other coaches along the way

but like you know like I experienced much of my high school life like in his Buick listen to his music or with dudes from all over the country or all over Southern California what was your and Kenny's relationship like? Oh man so I actually met Kenny Pretlo when I was about seven years old

I went with an older cousin of mine to an after school basketball experience or whatever it was. And I was just kind of the little cousin sitting off to the side, but I was pretty tall. I mean, I was one of the taller, you know, I don't know, I was in maybe second or third grade at the time.

And I remember Kenny Prellup coming up to me asking me afterwards if I like basketball and I said, yeah, and he asked if I ever played and I told him, I only play when I go to the park of my dad. He said, would your mom let you play on the team? And I remember

like, I don't know. He actually drove me and my cousin home that day to ask my mom if she would be okay with me coming back to go to the after school program to be a part of the team. So Kenny started pouring into my life when I was really, really young, and we still have a tremendous relationship to this day. But if you talk about being discovered, he would be the first coach that I really ever had that saw something in me that thought I could maybe, you know, at least be good enough as a seven, eight-year-old to play on a, you know, elementary school. team. But from then, man, I just developed a great relationship with him.

So Kenny worked in Riverside Church. Ernie Lodge was the founder of that program, and he was the guy in Brooklyn, because Riverside Church is in Harlem. So he was the guy for contact for all the kids in Brooklyn and would make sure we got to practice in games and things like that. And I remember Kenny drove probably, this was in, I'm going to guess this in late 80s to maybe 1990, and Kenny Prello drove a standard. like Buick,

four-door car, and he were piled seven or eight dudes and just driving around the different places in the city to play. And, you know, we never thought anything else. You know, we just loved who. We loved each other. Kenny was doing this all. We didn't have to pay anything. And so

we had a great time doing it. So I'm very thankful for him, kind of saying something in me that kind of spear me on for the rest of my life. Your favorite basketball player going up was who? My favorite player growing up, I had several. From a professional standpoint, I was a Knicks fan. So I really admired John Starks and Anthony Mason and Charles Al Capulcli.

But I still was an MJ fan. I mean, I loved the way he played the flair, the dominance, the competitiveness. But guys that I didn't feel connected to those guys, you know, and I really didn't see myself as an NBA player. This is a buyer that they fit at the highest level. But I did grow up in the era where Jamal Massburn was a pretty, pretty big figure in New York City, you know, in the early 90s, late 80s.

So he was somebody I really would have looked up to. In fact, he's the reason I actually became a Kentucky fan as a young guy because I watched Massburn from the Bronx go to Kentucky and have great success and get drafted. And then I also became a Patino fan

because he's a New York guy. He coached Kentucky. Then he coached the next. So those would be the guys that I probably looked up to the most, but I was around so many great players. I mean, from Elton Brand to Ron Arquez, to Lamar Oldham, to guys again that you may have never even heard of in the likes of Shelton Jefferson and went to my high school and Brian Brown. You know, and then I played against high-level competition. In fact, in my senior year in high school in New York City, I played point guard.

Rice was loaded, right? Rice was loaded, Anthony Gloward. And then St. Ray's had, St. Ray's was Julius Hodge, right? St. Ray said Julius Haas, and Rice had like four dudes. Yeah, they had majestic math. There was just talent all over New York City at the time. And guys that were going on and having good careers in college in my senior year, which was 2000, there were three McDonald-All-American point guards from New York City.

So three guys in one city who played the same position all became McDonald's All-American. That was my competition growing up. And it's probably the reason that I've always had to fight a little bit harder. that's talented as those dudes, but still thought that I could achieve at least close to the same level as they could. The three guys were, what, Andre Barrett? Andre Barrett, who went to Wright High School and then went on to have a really good career at Seen Hall.

Salick Brown. Yep. St. John's Prep, right? Yeah, St. John's Prep. And Omar Cook, who went to Christ the King. Arguably one of the best past, he's the best pastor I've ever seen, no distance. expect, Doug. Didn't watch you play a tug, but still playing.

I mean, he left college, he left St. John's up there, especially year, which would have been in 2001. Still playing professional basketball. So those three guys, that was, you know, those are my, that was my competition. And if I wanted to do something with the game, I had to prove that I could at least compete with those dudes every day. But those are still, you know, really good friends of mine. And you were known as steady Mike at the time.

Who's just, I need you to be. And who gave you that nickname? Pete Edwards. So there's a big event name, ISA. It's a local tournament in Queens, literally out of, I had a middle school gym that may be on a good-day seat 200. And, you know, you go in there and you either can play or you can't. There's no hype. You don't come in ranked and people care.

You get on the court and you can play or you can't and you get called out for it either way. So I was a guy who I didn't have a whole lot of class, just efficient. Got the ball to, yeah, got the ball where I needed to go, made an open shot when I needed to defend it really hard, was unselfish. And, you know, because of that, that's what Pete kind of gave me the name, steady Mike. In fact, a quick story. So the last time I played in Ice State, Omar, Felic and Andre,

all played together on a Koon against the team that I was playing with. Now, I had some really good players. and we actually beat them in the championship game, and I was the MVP. So that's my claim of the thing. They were three McDonald's on Americans, but the one time they teamed up and played against me, I won, and I walked away with the hardware.

Oh, no question, because you know they were all doing their N1 mixtape thing. And, okay, so now here comes the big question. How the hell did you get to South Carolina? Because, now, look, I know the history of Frank McGuire and bringing New York City guys down, but, like, that was a long, that was back, I mean, that was a long time ago. It was.

So how did you, how did, how did it become South Carolina? Like, how did you get out of the Big East? And I'll be honest. I'm not sure that had any, the really didn't have anything to do with me, and it really wasn't even talked about in my recruitment as much. I learned about that more as I was, after I committed and started doing more research, and then obviously once you're there, I knew who coach McGuire was, but didn't really know the history of all the great players from New York City

who had gone there. I was really recruited because in the late 90s, they were playing three good guards together, Larry Davis, Melvin Watson, and BJ Mackey. Might have been your class, or maybe the year before. BJ Mackey was my class, yeah. BJ Mackey was my class. But I remember is my class, and then I transferred out of Notre Dame,

so I sat out a year. So then I became 2000, yeah. Yeah, so those guys were kind of the three-head-a-monster and coach Fogler, who had been an assistant coach at North Carolina, and then went to Wichita State, Vandy, and South Carolina, was also from New York City. And always desired to go back to their recruit, you know, smart, tough, you know, point guards who kind of he thought could play the Carolina way,

you know, North Carolina, the way he knew it. Sure. So he came and recruited me. In fact, Rick Callahan was my primary recruiter, and John Cooper did some legwork on it all as well. But got to know him. I just had an unbelievable feel for his genuineness. And as you get older, you have more of appreciation for people who are really honest.

And Coach Spogh, I felt was the most honest person that I connected with in my recruitment. Not that anybody else was dishonest. I just felt a connection with him. He was being truthful about what my experience would be there. So I visited UMass, Seen Hall, Boston College, and South Carolina. Carolina and ultimately committed to go to South Carolina and play there. That's that's an, that's an, that's, that's an, that's that there's that there's that's, uh, juxtaposition in schools, right? Because if you've been like you know,

UMass is you mess as a college town. It's up in Amherst, right? And if you visit in the fall, it's very pretty. Um, you know, Boston college is outside of, uh, of Boston, right? And chestnut hills is really nice, small though, and private and Catholic, right? And then Seaton Hall is right there in East Orange and probably felt more like some. And then South Carolina is state capital, southern, college town, very, very different. Yes. You go, so I'd have to imagine, like, your first year had to be a trip. Like, because for me, my first year, I was in Notre Dame, it's in the Midwest, it's Catholic.

I was a public school guy, you know, like some of the parts I like, some of the parts I didn't like. What was it like at South Carolina for a bedstye kid? It was tough. I convinced myself that I wanted to get away. way, didn't really think about the cultural differences, because you only know what you know. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where

Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laugh, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Sports Slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to Sports Slice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Welcome to my new podcast, learn the hard way with me. host and your favorite therapist, Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine,

Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch. Life becomes

about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth? Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, is we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast.

Learn the Hardway. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. What's up, guys? This is Clever Taylor the 4th. And on my podcast, The Clivert Show, I'm bringing you conversations about all kinds of stuff,

like being an internet famous referee. We're in the middle of a game. This linebacker, this guy, this linebacker walks up to me, he goes, Hey, ref, my mom wants you to wave at her. What? Come on out. Quarterback on office blue 42.

Hey, Brett, my mama want you to wave at her. What? Hey, Miss Parker. Listen to the Cliverts show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast, Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what.

He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the game. the playoffs. I think Joker's gonna be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys

like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court

licking his fingers why he got the ball, like after you go through a training camp with that Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Oh, yeah. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And although I traveled a lot, I'd been to Paris twice, and I played in basketball a lot of different places, I never stayed anywhere, like, permanent, you know. And so when you go to college, you're there. So I still remember, like, yesterday, when my parents first left campus on a Saturday night, my first couple days, I was really uncomfortable. I didn't really know anybody. My teammates were all comfortable. They had established friends.

And I'm not necessarily an extrovert. I'm probably more extroverted now than I was, you know, 20 years ago. But I still remember just feeling like, man, this just doesn't feel good to be here. And first of all, I go outside at, you know, 7.30 after dinner and no one's outside. No one's playing ball. No one's shooting dice. No one's talking. No one joking on each other.

There's no rap battles going on in the corner. You know, to me, just stuff that I was just accustomed to being around. You know, not necessarily I took part in all of it, but just feeling like the city was lively, and there was always things going on. So it took me probably about three months, and I would say I didn't really get comfortable again until the season started, where I felt like things were normal again, and I was just hooping, and I was with my teammates every day, and we're going to practice. But I remember, like yesterday, getting in my car after a preseason workout,

on like a Thursday, and coaches gave us off the weekend and getting in my car like 6 o'clock and driving through the night to go back to Brooklyn. Like, I need to get back to the city. And I pulled up into my parents' apartment and whatever, like, you know, 4 in the morning the next day, and my mom looked at me like, if you ever do this again, we won't have a serious conversation

because she did not want me, hey, driving home in the middle of the night, but also she didn't want me back in the city I wish you know I should have been off of the school doing things that she sent me to do. BetRiver's Sportsbook wants to invite you to discover the complete sports betting experience. The foundation of that experience is a massive number of betting options on nearly every regulated sporting event around the world. Add on top of that live streaming of sports every day. There's almost always a live match to watch on BetRer's Sportsbook right in your phone. BetRivers features top-tier customer service.

Ready to answer your questions any time day or night. Plus, they have this unique rush-paste system. Sportsbook can authorize most withdrawal requests instantly. Customer satisfaction is always their number one priority, and Bet Rivers will match your first deposit up to $250. Now, unlike some other sportsbooks, BetRivers only requires a one-time pay-through to turn bonuses in the cash, so you're going to experience the difference.

Just go to betrivers.com. You'll see it for yourself. You must be 21. It must be President Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, or Pennsylvania to play. You had a gambling problem called 1-800 gambler. Remember, BetRivers Sportsbook. It's the place. go to bed rivers,

B-E-T-R-I-V-E-R-S dot com. I don't know about you, but I feel like I'm printing nonstop through the holidays. You got cards, gift tags, lists, cookie receipts, mostly cookie receipts. Plus, you got to get travel docs as well. You know, you've got to get those reimbursements.

And nothing will ruin the fun like good old-fashioned cartridge conyption. That's when your printer's pricey ink cartridges run out of ink at the worst possible time. And you can't help but lose it a little. Or a lot. It's frustrating, but all-ball community. You know what we do around here.

We bring you tech solutions. And the Epson Eco Tank cartridge-free printer is a great solution. Epson Eco-Tank uses big ink tanks and comes with a ridiculous amount of ink. Go ahead. Add some people to your holiday card list. No more running out of Magenta when you're trying to make the season merry. No more having to apologize to your house guests after having a total cartridge conibption. With Epson Eco Tank, Kiss expensive cartridges.

goodbye. You can just fill and chill. Who doesn't want some more chill around the holidays? Epsom Eco Tank. Learn more at Epson.com slash all ball with Doug. These days, it can be hard to find and hire the right candidates for your small business. That's why LinkedIn jobs made it easier to find the people you want to talk to you, faster and for free. Create a job post in minutes on LinkedIn jobs to reach your network and beyond

to the world's largest professional network of over 770 million people. Focus on candidates with the skills and experience you need. Use screening questions to get your role in front of only the most qualified people. Then, use the simple tools on LinkedIn jobs to quickly filter and prioritize who you'd like to interview and hire. That's why small businesses rate LinkedIn jobs number one and delivering quality hires versus leading competitors. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the candidates worth interviewing faster. Did you know every week nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash reach.

That's LinkedIn.com slash reach to post your job. job for free. Terms and conditions apply. You mentioned how honest Eddie Fogler was and how earnest he felt he was. Did you know he was going to retire after your freshman season? No, and it's interesting me, I didn't play. I wasn't good enough to play.

I mean, I know that now. I probably didn't realize that as much then, but I felt good about him, and I felt good about my development under his watch. Well, I remember at the end of the season, um, it was actually right after the SEC tournament. Coach Fogler calls a meeting on that Sunday night. And I don't think we thought we were making the tournament,

but I think we thought we were making the NIT. So I just thought we were meeting about who we're going to be playing next. And on the whole, I hear the night before, you know, South Carolina is going to match up with Yukon and the first M.I.T. And I'm like, all right, great. I guess maybe some people can come watch me in Stores, Connecticut, from Brooklyn. But it wasn't. Coach Fogler actually had announced his retirement or told our AD that he was walking away.

And that was a shock to all of us. I don't know if it was somber because the way coach delivered it. I felt it was a new school, felt like it was just the right time. He and his AD started maybe button heads a little bit too much. He didn't really want to start. He saw kind of the change in the way things were being done on a recruiting side. Didn't want to necessarily do some of those things anymore. And so, but as I thought about, you know, immediately thought,

man, I could have went somewhere else if I knew coaches didn't leave. Well, UMass has fired Booza Flint who recruited me. Yeah. Jay Wright, who was at Hofstra and left to go to Villanova. And Tommy Hammerclough went to Michigan. Okay, so before we get to playing for Dave Odom, which ultimately ended up in the NCAA tournament appearance your senior year, what was it like to lose?

You mentioned eighth grade didn't lose a game. You wouldn't have been All-City, like, I don't know if you guys want to say champion, but you wouldn't have been all city unless you guys won. You know, so I'm like, this was, this was what I went through at Notre Dame. I'd never been on a bad team before. I'd never been on a bad team before.

And we were just not good enough. We were young and we were Notre Dame and we were too slow and the Big East was loaded. And it was as much as being across the country in a different environment that I wasn't used to as hard. It was also really, really hard to lose. What was that like for you? It was incredibly frustrating because, and this is going to sound like total fabrication,

but my dad probably still has a taste to prove it. From the time I started playing basketball at 8 years old, I did not lose a game until after I graduated from 8th grade. So I went like four and a half years of playing basketball without ever experiencing what losing was like. In fact, wait, wait, wait, wait, you never lost like, like, wait, wait, in 6th and 7th grade, Like, you never lost a game in school or, like, you know, the tournaments that we won every, we won every tournament. So we lose a tournament, we lose for the first time the summer of, I guess it's 96. I'm going into my freshman in high school, the summer event. And I come home and tell my dad, I don't want to play basketball anymore.

That was my reaction. I swear. And he's like, okay, first of all, if you don't want to play, you. you're on this team, and you're going to finish the season. And then, if you don't want to play, I'm not going to make you, you're going to go tell your coach and your teammates that you're not going to play with the team. And I was like, oh, yeah, I'm probably not going to tell them. I quit.

So I kept playing. That's amazing. Okay, so now you're at South Carolina. Almost 13 years ago. Yeah, so. My freshman year, and, you know, we're just okay. And I'm not necessarily involved. I'm not the man by any stretch.

I'm barely a backup and frustrated. just I don't understand why I'm not playing more, you know. And so, yeah, it was frustrating. It was hard to understand, you know, to move on to the next thing. You've got to prepare the same way for the next game as you do for the last. And there's incredibly incredible highs and lows in college basketball. We got up to a good start. You know, my freshman year, you know, probably there wasn't all these preseason events.

So I don't think we were in one at all. So we probably started like 9 and 2 or something like. that, and we win my first ever SEC game. We play Florida at home, a kid named Travis Kraft, hits a shot at the buzzer after not playing the whole game

to beat Florida in 2001. And I'm thinking, like, man, this is cool. This is like the best thing I could ever imagine. Let me go on to maybe one like six games and three. You go like six and ten. Six and ten is hard. And then it becomes more complicated when you think, this is my chance to step up, and I've got a

coach coming in who didn't recruit me maybe doesn't value the same things coach foger did um and so it was it was a challenging transition well so what was that like you know like did you your first meeting with dave odom what was it team setting did you call you in like what how did it work no team setting and you know this before social media so there was literally just talk there wasn't any this guy was you know rum attack been on his campus or these the people. In fact, people thought that Tubby Smith, who was the coach at Kentucky,

crazy to sound. He was the coach at Kentucky at the time. He was going to leave there to come to coach in South Carolina. Because he was an assistant there, you know, like a decade before he's from North Carolina, and they thought they could get him there. Obviously, we don't want to tell him. And Coach Oldham comes in, and, you know,

the very first meeting, he's like, well, you guys didn't pick me, but this is kind of the way things are going to go from here. We want to be athletic, we want to be fast. I've coached in the ACC. You know, I know what it takes to have success, and some of us are looking around like, what does that mean for me? You know what I mean?

I hear what you're saying, Coach, but you didn't say anything about me. Coach Froeblo recruited me and said all the things that he was going to do to help me. So it took a little while. And on his staff, Frank Haight, had come in with him from Wake. and I may have met with Coach Hayth and the week he was there more than I even met with Coach Odom. I may have talked to Coach Odom once.

And then a week later, Frank Hayth leaves and goes to be an assistant at Texas. Yeah. And so it was a, you know, you just kind of, you don't understand it at 19 years old. Like, there's a business side of this thing. But obviously, I appreciate all that stuff even more now. But I was just okay.

Coach brought us some other guys, and we had more success in my sophomore year than we did my freshman year. We still went to the NIT, but we actually almost won it. We lost in the championship game to Memphis, Kyle's team with DeWan Wagner in 2002, and felt like, you know, all right, now is the time to step up. I had two guys who were senior, some guards ahead of me, thought I could kind of transition to being a starter, and it actually wanted to be in my worst year of my career, my junior year in college.

it's interesting because you were behind Aaron Lucas, who wasn't just a South Carolina kid. He was like a Columbia, South Carolina kid. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Which is, I mean, that's hard, right? Like, you're like, yo, I'm steady Mike from Brooklyn. I'm all city.

They're like, we never heard of you. This is South Carolina. Like, this is before, like you said, social media, no one even knew. And I didn't experience this as much at Oklahoma. Like, when I got there, there was a Stellaster who transferred out in Joe Atkins. but like, you know, Oklahoma fans knew Oklahoma kids,

so they didn't care really what you did beforehand. You know, they did. It's a different. So why was your junior year so frustrating? Yes, because I think my mindset changed. Those guys are gone. Now it's my time. And I'll put it on myself.

I probably didn't work as hard as I could have that year to prove that I deserved to play more. And, you know, truthfully, we had poor internal leadership. It's one of the things I stress so much now is, you know, we had a couple of seniors who were totally bought into just becoming pros and what the year was going to be like for them. And so it was really, really frustrated. We actually wound up finishing dead last. I think we were 12 and 16 that year. We had four seniors, and, you know, it was just a really, really poor experience. And I didn't do anything to help myself.

I actually stopped being as focused. And maybe then I could have been in, like, Sky Report and film sessions. and, you know, I was never disrespectful or anything, you know, outright wrong, but I definitely didn't have the focus that I needed to be able to help our program. So what changed in your senior year? Because your senior, you had a great year. You average, like, 10 a game. You know, they brought in Trey Kelly, but, you know, you didn't, you know, you guys played together

some. He backed you up. I know that Rinald of Balcman, I think it was. Yeah. So I changed first. And Dave Oldham actually. actually met with me after that season and said, hey, listen, I think you're a good kid. You have some talent.

You're not going to play next year. We've got this kid's side from D.C., who's terrific, and he's going to be our starting porn guard next year. And I just kind of nod to my head. Kind of like, you know what, no one's ever told me that you suck, basically. You know what I mean? And you're not good enough to play, and so you're not. So just, you know, you can stand scholarship and graduate.

And that was after, that was probably in March or April after my junior year, so going into the offseason for my senior year. And to be perfectly honest, I just worked harder than I had ever worked in my life. I met with our strength and conditioning coach every single day. I changed my body. I went from, I think, about 13% body fat and weighing about probably 196, 196. 196, 197 to like 4.5% body fat and laying like 189. So it really toned up.

Got in the best shape of my life and was just determined that I was going to, A, prove that I was worthy of being recruited here. Because to this point, I haven't done anything worth noting about, right? B, if there's any chance you're going to play basketball for a living, you need to have a good year. And see, your coach just looked you in your eye and told you that you some. And so I had a little of my shoulder going into that year. And, you know, I was more determined to make sure our team had success

and that I could experience playing an infate tournament. It's fascinating because that experience for you has to be really interesting as a head coach. Because, and I don't know, and like you and I have talked coaching philosophy some, but I think it's interesting. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you. exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines.

We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer-beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered. Brings You Clice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsSlice on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardway with me, your host, and your favorite therapist,

Kear Games. And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. And we're still chasing it. And we don't know when we've done enough. Because people scoreboard watch.

Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on Earth. Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust. I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines,

as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hardway. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. What's up, guys? This is Clivert Taylor the 4th. And on my podcast, The Cliverts Show,

I'm bringing you conversations about all kinds of stuff, like being an internet famous referee. We're in the middle of a game. This linebacker, this linebacker walks up to me, he goes, hey, ref, my mom wants you to wave at her. What? Time out. Quarterback on office, blue with 42.

Hey, rep, my mama want you to wave at her. What? Where's she at? Hey, Miss Parker. Listen to the Clifford show on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. American soccer is about to explode. The World Cup is coming.

Ramos sending on to Ernie Stewart, the chip. I'm Tad Ramos. I'm Tom Boe. On our podcast, Inside American Soccer, you'll get the real storylines. I'm not worried about Policic. I'm not worried about Balagan. I'm not worried about McKinney. My only concern is what happens in the back.

The biggest decisions. If you're going to look at stats and numbers, he has no shot at making this World Cup team. And the truth about the U.S. national team. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if our team ends up in the quarterfinals or potentially a great run into the semifinals. The World Cup is almost here. Experience it all with us.

Listen, Inside American Soccer with Tom Bogart and Tabramos and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. Interesting. A lot of coaches, they get down on kids, and they can't ever see that the kid has changed or that the kids evolved. Like, they just, I mean, coaches, especially assistant coaches I talk to. They're like, man, I just, I can't talk my head coach into liking this kid. Like, he's just done with them.

He just wants and wants to run them off, get a scholarship spot open when kids do change, right? They do go home. They do become better shooters. They do, right? And it's so, so do you, is that part of, have you been able to maintain that part of who you are as a head coach that, like, look, this is who this guy was, this kid was. But I'm willing, because I know there's, like, I know you have a kid on your team who had, actually had a hell of a year. You and I talked about him before you're like, man. I don't know, but because he does one thing really, really well,

he end up being a guy you had to have on the floor. I just wonder how much of that used from your own experience into your own team now. Yeah, I mean, I use it a little bit for my experience, but I've also evolved as a person, and I've coached longed up to have seen it also. And it keeps coming up every year where you see a guy who's friends who could go either way. and a lot of it is. I mean, coaches have a lot more influence over a kid's mindset than they give themselves credit for.

And kids know when you believe in them. They know when you try to help them be better. They know when you're committed to seeing that they have some success. And I remember working at South Carolina, we had a kid who, and it probably ended up, honestly, at the end of the day, really, really derailing our opportunity to stay there. kid named Ramon Galloway from South Florida, really, really talented.

He came in like a four-star. He was being recruited by other schools at that level. And he committed to us. He's got all this promise, but he's button heads with our head coach all time. And after his sophomore year, man, he just can't get out of his own way, and we can't help him and can't figure it out.

I mean, I don't know if you ever heard of his name before, the kid transferred to the South. Yep. I did his game to the South. He went into this tournament. They beat in the state

first round. They go to C-16. John Zedini gets an extension. We get fired to you. Did you think you'd be a coach? But I think I would be a coach?

Yeah. When you're playing, you're like, I can do that. I mean, what was the, obviously everybody has, everybody thinks they're going to play.

I always thought I could coach. And I always thought that maybe later on in my life, I would try to maybe coach, maybe youth basketball, and think about coaching college. In New York, you just exposed to so much professional sports. You don't really think about college athletics that much. But as I got into coach, as I got into college,

I started to think more about, man, I really kind of see the game differently to my teammates. I understand everything my coach says the very first time he says it. I can go do it either any of the five positions on the floor that he's told maybe he can't do it as well. well as the seven footer, but I can do that too. I can guard, you know what I mean? So I always felt like I thought the game, like the coach.

And I really hoped that I would play, to be perfectly honest. Sure. You know, for a few years. And they didn't pan out. I had an opportunity maybe to go to Belgium right after my senior year. I had some knee issues, which kind of slowed me down. But the truth is, it just wasn't a pro basketball player, man. And so, you know, I've gotten a coaching on the advice of,

again, both of my college coaches called me after a kind of got over filling back for myself and didn't have great professional playing opportunities. I said, hey, man, we think you could do this. I talked to Coach Bogart and Coach Odom, and they helped me get on as a graduate assistant with Larry Davis at Furman University. Larry was most recently,

the associate head coach at Cincinnati. Yeah, yeah. Larry's is kind of crazy person. Like, in a good way. I mean... Yeah, you're excited. He's got a lot of relationships. He makes guys better. But I learned so much from him about the grind

that is college basketball coaching. In fact, he threatened to fire me in my interview. I'm not saying the day I got the job during the interview, he threatened to fire me. So he set the tone like, this is how this is going to be. And you're either going to do it or you're not.

And you're going to learn a lot if you do it the right way or you're not going to be here. So I learned that this harshness. I work for six different guys, I believe. They all do it differently. But they've all had a certain level of success. Do you own or rent your home? Sure you do. And I bet it can be hard work. You know, it's easy. Bundling policies with GEICO.

GEICO makes it easy to bundle your homeowners or renters insurance along with your auto policy. It's a good thing, too, because you already have so much to do around your home. Go to GEICO.com, get a quote, and see how much you could save. It's GEICO easy. Visit GEICO.com today. This clip is brought to you by State Farm. At State Farm, they know it's important to ensure the things you love. They also get that everyone has a budget. That's why they have options, like insuring your car and your home, getting you great rates

on both. It's a good idea to consider State Farm. For surprisingly great rates, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Call or go to StateFarm.com for a quote today. If you could talk to me a little bit about the process you went through, and I think it's good to not pat yourself on the back, but to put it out there so other people can kind of hear what it takes. Like, I don't know. I always look at like this. Like, what do I want?

I wanted to be a WWE superstar. All right, what does it take to be a WW superstar? What are the tools I will need to give me every possible opportunity I can get? And so I took the tools of acting classes, improv classes, wrestling school, everything I possibly can. to knock on the door of WW. The people of the, everyone on that real world show would wear my t-shirts, would always ask me to do the MIS. Like, they were so supportive.

Like, you don't get it that very often. You really don't. Listen to the My Culturra podcast network available on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. This clip is brought to you by State Farm. At State Farm, they know it's important to ensure the things you love. They also get that everyone has a budget. That's why they have options, like ensuring your car and your home, getting you great rates on both.

It's a good idea to consider State Farm. For surprisingly great rates, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Call or go to StateFarm.com for a quote today. In high school, I never really was like dating around or anything like that. And then I got into a long-term relationship and was dating someone for a few years. And then after getting out of that relationship, I think this past year or so, whatever, whatever, has been, like, actually living life as a single person, it's very hard. And I think it's not hard, like, not hard, I should say, but like, it's very different, knowing nothing but long-term relationships.

And then moving into, like, the single lifestyle that's, like, quote, dating around and, like, feeling people out. That's kind of been something interesting to navigate. Listen to the MyCultura podcast network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. So you're working for Larry at Furman. And then you, did you go to work for Buzz at Coastal? Is that what happened, Buzz Peterson?

I did. Yeah, yeah. So Buzz had been at Tennessee. A bus was pretty successful at State and then actually took over for Bill South Tulsa team when Bill left. I think Bill might have gone to like the 316 or Elite 8 at Tulsa. And before he went to Illinois. So bus takes over for Bill Self.

He has a good year with them. I think they go to the NIT championship game. And then he gets a tentative job. And he gets fired in 2005 the same time. I'm finishing my GA year at Furman. And he gives me my first assistant coaching on the road recruiting opportunity. Okay, so you mentioned Furman. So Furman's a small, I've heard, I've never been there.

I've heard just incredibly beautiful, small school in North Carolina. What was that? South Carolina. Since South Carolina, okay, so what is? One of the beautiful, most beautiful campuses you'll ever, you know, visit. It's a high academic school and the southern conference. Did you get your master's there?

Would you do, during your GA year? I didn't. So I started, I actually started a master's program, master's in teaching, a two-year program, but after my first year permanent is when Buzz got the Coastal Carolina job, and I went with him, so I did finish my master's. How did it come about? Because Buzz is a Carolina guy, right?

Like even now he's working for Jordan with the Bobcats. How did you get into the Carolina? I mean, I guess, how did you get into the Carolina family? So, again, Coach Fogers, mentor, big help for me, all my career. and he actually recruited Buzz and actually recruited Buzz in the same class that he recruited Michael Jordan and helped

because obviously Buzz wouldn't bring his whole staff from Tennessee down to that level all of them were kind of looking for more opportunities to stay at a high-major program so there was an opportunity there and I was ready to take it. Okay, so Coastal for people who don't know, Coastal Carolina is in what Conway, South Carolina.

So like you just can't get out of the state of state, to South Carolina. Like you come down, you're like, man, no. So you take this job, what was it like when he, what was the instructions he gave you on your first,

now you're on the road actually recruiting? Yes, so the first thing I had to do is I went to the Southern Conference office and took the recruiting test. It was in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and so drove up there, took the test,

and I literally get the results, and I go on the road from the test. and I go recruiting in North Carolina, some places that buzzed at noon some people. And we're just trying to figure out how to get this program going. They weren't very good a year before. So I hit the ground running. Didn't know anything about recruiting. I did think I knew how to identify talent,

but kind of learned on the ropes and started figuring things out from there. You know, it's interesting because Selfwood has told me the story of Billy Clyde, and Billy Gillespie, that Billy was at Baylor. in 97 and that's when self hired him to Tulsa and he literally said like he hired him like on the phone and he's like hey man send me some hats and shirts and he's like sent him ahead to like the hotel wherever they were going to be wherever he's going to stay and like literally the next day he just changed hats t-shirts and he started recruiting for Tulsa like it was literally like that absolutely so so what was it like you're in your your your your

You're born 82. This is 05. So you're 23 years, 23 years old. You've been out of school for... Been out of college a year. And, you know, literally just trying to get my feet wet. You know, and I really didn't understand at the time, levels of basketball, you know, from a collegiate standpoint, like, who's realistic to recruit here?

So you just kind of start calling people you know and trying to get the best guys possible. And so we stopped up those. Well, we landed a couple of pretty good kids. We actually got a kid out of Tennessee who was a really good player named Josh Mack. But the first kid I ever personally found was a kid named Everidge Richardson. Obviously, you go back to what you know, and I knew some people in New York. Everidge was a non-qualifier out of New York City, out of Brooklyn. I knew his older brother.

I knew his A.U. guys. And so they said, hey, if you can help us figure out a way to get this kid eligible, he'll come to Myrtle Beach. So he was actually at Sullivan Community College in New York. I went up to Shaw Hand, visited with his mom and brother. And the rest of the sister is the first kid I ever signed. And I'm proud of saying. He was still playing basketball now.

Yeah, he's still playing. Like, I just looked him up while you were talking. Like, he must have got hurt his second year because he was averaging like 14 a game, but only played 17 games. But yeah, he's still playing. Yeah, he's still hoping. I've got a family now. You know, one of my proud of stories is, so when I first start talking to this kid and his family,

obviously you do the background in transcripts. And, I mean, it's not anything that you would take anywhere close to Stanford or even Furman for that matter. And wondering, like, man, how are we going to get this kid into a college? And I remember sitting in this living room and telling the kid, hey, if you take a chance and believe in me and our staff and what we can do here, then when you graduate from college, I'll be there for your graduation. and the kid came in highly motivated. Obviously, he had a lot of academic support, and he graduated.

I made sure I was there, even though I was no longer working at Coast of Carolina by the time he actually did, finishes a degree two years later. Yeah, he's playing in Iceland last year. Yep. Average 30 a game in Iceland. He's a bucket getter.

Always has been. He's still getting buckets in Iceland. And he's only, I don't know if you know this, like, you're only like three and a half years older than him, right? Like, I mean, you guys... No, listen, I knew his older brother, so I knew him because he was kind of the little guy around when we were big, you know, big-ass playing. So I kind of had a, it was an easy end and wait for me to get started. So, yeah, and I still talk to the kids to this day.

Okay, so... You know, all those, all those good things. So then you're there for two years. How did you come to work for Mike Young at Wofford? So the business of basketball continues to get revealed to me, two years in. We actually started hearing some grumblings about midway through our second year there that Buzz wasn't necessarily happy coaching at that level anymore. And Buzz had act – Buzz and Michael Jordan have always remained really close,

even when they went different ways from a professional standpoint. And Buzz Michael Jordan will come down to Wilmington where he's from, which is about an hour from Conway, Myrtle Beach area, where Coastalids. And they were golfed throughout the year. We started hearing Rumbling about Buzz maybe leaving. Again, I'm young. I'm just excited to be working. And lo and behold, about maybe like early April, mid-April,

bus calls us into a meeting and says, hey, this opportunity to come up, I can't pass up. Michael wants to be come joining his front office staff. At the time, they were a bobcat, I believe. Yep. And the rest of history. I mean, what's sitting there as a staff trying to figure out what's next? Because, you know, when your college assistant,

and your guy leaves for another college job, you think there's an opportunity for you to go with him. And when he goes to the NBA, and he's not coaching, it doesn't really necessarily work if you have an opportunity there. So he was off at NBA, and Cliff Ellis came in, who I never really met. I played against his teams at Auburn when I was in college. I didn't really know much about him other than that.

And then Mike Young had a change in his staff. And I respected Mike and had a conversation with him about that. He took that opportunity to go work for him. The major news in that story was Coast of Carolina is a pretty well-paying job for a lower-level school. So I was probably 25 years old at the time. And I was making about $65,000. They gave me a car and a cell phone. And life was good.

Could have probably stayed there at Myrtle Beach for a long time. single and I went to Wofford took about a $15,000 pay cut maybe a little bit more no car no cell phone but an opportunity to work for a guy I had a lot of respect for and thought would have a chance to be really successful and Mike Young who remains really really close to me and my family yeah and of course he just he he finally left after such an incredible success unbelievable man I'm a shot that took this long because you can't imagine the the lack of resources that he was able to have an unbelievable amount of success with for 25 some odd years at Wofford.

I mean, literally, when I worked for him, I was his associate head coach, and this was in 2007, and we had another assistant coach who was full-time, and we had a third assistant entitled only, because he did not get paid by the university. He actually had a job that he worked from 8 to 3, and then he came to the office for practice. That's crazy. It's crazy. Okay, let's go back for a second. So now you're starting to build up kind of working for different guys.

And it's not like you're in one basketball family, right? Where like the Carolina guys all run the Carolina secondary into motion. They run kind of the same stuff back then, you know. And, you know, like, and before you became an Underwood guy, but like Underwood, like you guys got to all run that same spread. You guys all play defense. There's a similar style. whatever, but, okay, but you played for two different coaches, and now you've worked for, this is your third coach,

Mike's your third coach you've worked for. All right, so let's go through it for a second. Fogler, his greatest strength is a coach. You already talked about how honest a guy he was. Yeah. But what is his greatest strength as a coach? Just preparation. The most meticulously prepared coach that I ever been around.

I mean, it's down to a science. every out-of-bounce play, every out-of-time-out, that the other team would, he would know it, and he would have us prepared to defend it and to attack them defensively. If you were going to be honest with him and tell him, here's something that he could have done better, what would it be? He was extremely rigid.

I mean, he was an old-school guy. This is how we do things, right? And so from a player development standpoint, there wasn't a whole lot of emphasis. It wasn't a whole lot of emphasis. in terms of that specifically as it relates to strength and conditioning. So I think just some of the changes, he wasn't very adaptable from a coaching standpoint. And I think part of it is he watched Coach Smith do it for so long one way

and then also had success himself for so long doing it that way. Remember, he was the coach of the year at Wichita State when they were in the Valley. He was the coach of the year in the SEC when he first came in at Vanderbilt. It took them to the tournament. There was a coach of the year in the SEC with South Carolina playing the, the same style with a different type of player at South Carolina. So it's pretty set in its ways. It's one of the things that I would say.

It wasn't very adaptable. Okay. Let me ask you about Buzz. What was Buzz's greatest strength as a coach? Oh, man, just the most easy-going guy that you could imagine. Didn't sweat anything. The house may be on fire, and he'll tell you, man, it's just getting warm in here. But that's just Buzz.

You know, he was very, very relaxed, very confident, very comfortable. comfortable with the way things are going. All right. And then was that his weakness, too? Is that there was some detail stuff that you would have? It hurt. You know, I heard us in a lot of ways. And again, it's hard for me to speak on how he was before he coached at Coastal

because he had had so much success and did a really good job at Tennessee. If we're being honest, they didn't make the term in a ton. But he had built what Bruce Pearl took over and then elevated, you know, it was based on the foundation that bus had built. But, yeah, I heard him in the fronting. But again, there was times that he would take off of Michael Jordan and go play golf in the middle of the year. And that's just not something that you sleep very often. But that's part.

Yeah, no, we play their App State team my senior year. They were really good. We kicked the hell out of it. We played really, really well that game. But I remember watching them on – it's one of those, like, you play a team, and they're supposed to be good, and then you kick the shit out of them. And you're like, man, they're not any good. And you're like, oh, they just didn't play well.

And we actually played – we actually played had a night where we played really, really well. Okay, so now you, what about what, okay, we talk about Mike Young. What, how is he able, what's, what's the secret sauce there? So the secret sauce of Mike is that he is a basketball chunky. I mean, in terms of just meticulously studying the game, being on top of recruiting, but at a place where there was not a whole lot of pressure, but you wouldn't be able to tell that. He worked every day, like, you know, he was on a hot seat.

and that's part of the reason he was so driven and had so much success. Even though he worked at a place, I think it was just his competitive nature. He watched, and he was after Coach Cress, but the great college of Charleston teams, Chattanooga had a good run, and then Davidson basically took over the league there in the mid-2000s. So I think just his competitive job is what made him really, really good, because he was so determined to overcome some of those challenges. Okay, so you're there one year, right?

just one year. And now of a sudden, Dave Odom, who you had played for your last three years, he, I don't know if he, did he retire, he got fired,

I think he got fired. He retired. Everybody who coaches you retires, by the way. The place you go to retire. Right? It's true, though, right? College of Charleston is the ultimate retired job.

But like, right? So you have two that you play for, both retired, and then Buzz essentially retired, too. So, you know, maybe. Yeah, he doesn't have a coach again.

Yeah. So, um, so, Darren Horn gets the job. How, what was, what was the decision like to go back to your alma mater?

And it was, uh, 25 again, I'm 25 years old, 26 maybe, and, you know, my alma mater opens and I'm 90 minutes up the road,

and I've kind of established a little bit of a work ethic, a little bit of a reputation that somebody who can help get players and develop them and all that stuff. Uh, the thing I can miscalate it was just, how it was, what is working for someone at the high major level that you don't know.

And so it was a bit of an adjustment. They didn't get a great job in terms of bringing a winning attitude and trying to change the culture because it had gone to be a little bit at the end of Coach Odom's time. He's high energy. If this come off, the hot name, it just come off of Suite 16 at Western Kentucky. The thing we miscalculated was just how much, you know, how much the difference is in terms of recruiting and having talent.

to win in the SEC versus the sum belt at the time. And West Kentucky is the best job in that league at the time. South Carolina is not the best job in the SEC. So the way you approach things and have success are really not that close. Why is, like, I'm fascinated by South Carolina. Not just knowing you, knowing Frank, not to name drop, but, but,

Darious Rucker is a friend of mine and I don't know if you remember Anton James Harold Harold Jameson So Harold Jameson Before my senior year he came out Stayed at my house all summer Played with us in AU and he went to Clemson

And he started talking about all the dudes In the state of South Carolina And I didn't know like That was before I'd ever seen Kevin Garnett play I don't know he's really from South Carolina And I know Ray Allen was an Army brat but he went to high school, South Carolina. South Carolina produces a lot of players.

Raymond Thompson, why is it such a tough job in comparison to some other big state schools? Part of it is, and it's probably going to sound like coach speak, but turnover is not necessarily always good. I think when you don't have consistency and the messaging for recruits, so you have turnover every four, five, years, it creates a lot of instability.

You know, the players who are coming in don't have a connection to the players who play for the last coach, and those guys don't have a connection to the guys who played for the coach previously. And we've talked about this, you know, off the record, about where we are now. You know, there's been a lot of turnover. And that harms the development of a program in terms of having a consistent success. The resources may be there, but, again, if you're changing leadership, you're changing philosophies and when you're changing philosophies,

then you're dealing with totally different people in the way they do things in a short amount of time. It really, really hurts your growth. That's a great point. And ultimately, what was that like to get fired by your alma mater? It was amazing. I thought I would go there and be there for the rest of my career, to be honest, and that maybe Darren would have success.

Maybe you go back to his home school, Kentucky, or whatever, and then I may become a head coach there. And this is, again, at 25 years old, thinking, you know, I'm in SEC, and I'm at the highest level as you can be as an assistant coach. You know, at a PowerFile school where you've got all the resources. So I was excited to get to work and try to build ourselves to be contenders in SEC. Favorite player you signed there? So we signed Stephen Spinella, Ramon Galloway, and John Drey Jefferson, our first year.

second year we had a really good recruiting class Bruce Ellington who now plays in the NFL and Demontra Harris will probably the most highly touted on our recruits but Eric Smith and R.J. Sloss and two South Carolina kids were part of that class brought in a transfer from Nevada who originally was from

Charlotte named Malik Cook was kind of a combo for it and then we signed Anthony Gill and Damien Lerner Leonard, who were both really, really highly recruited kids, Anthony Gill was on Virginia's lead 18 not too far ago. And, you know, at the end of the day, we just didn't win enough.

He didn't develop quick enough and, you know, didn't give ourselves enough, you know, rope to have our administration believing what we're doing. No, no, no. Favorite player you signed? It doesn't have to be the best player. My favorite player. I thought you said name the players he signed.

No, no, no. I don't give a shit about all those other players. Favorite player you signed? Anywhere? No, at South Carolina. Oh, that's South Carolina. Favorite player we signed at South Carolina? Probably was Bruce.

Probably was Bruce. Bruce was an interested story. So he grew up as a two-sport athlete. It was like one of the top football players in South Carolina. And we were kind of puzzled because he was really being recruited heavily by football programs, but not by South Carolina football. In Cleveland, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, in football.

And so we see the kid once summer playing in an AU. I'm like, man, this kid's got a chance. I wonder if he would want to play both sports. And he does.

Steve Spurs, our football coach at the time, and we tell him, hey, this kid wants to do both. We could use your help here. And they don't really want to recruit them. So wait, wait,

but this is interesting, I think, to people. How did it work? Did Darren go directly to the top? Did you go to what would be the recruiting coordinator? like what's the conversation like because every school is different.

Some, it's the football does the football thing and everybody else does everything else. Like how did it actually, how was the conversation, do you remember how the conversation went? Well, I was actually one of our assistants called one of their assistants. He said, hey, this is kid. It's a Monks Corner, which is not near Charleston, really, really talented. I'm sure they knew about them. But maybe they didn't evaluate them the way some of the other football programs had. And so that was how it started.

But you got to remember at the time, South Carolina football is rolling. And they have Alshan Jeffrey, Marcus Latimore. I mean, there's like eight or nine dudes that are in the NFL making, a difference right now. They were in their program at the time.

So it just never materialized very much. And he leads his team to a state championship as a senior, but has signed to play basketball that November, with our program. Great story. So we actually have him this freshman year and it's really good.

He then decides at the end of his freshman year he's got the football itch again. We think that the football staffs now realize, holy shit, this guy's really good.

And so he can't go on scholarship in football, but you can do it understand. If you come to play two sports at a college, you have to go, there's a hierarchy. You have to be on scholarship at a higher, you know, higher level of sport.

So football is number one on that pool chain because you don't want to have football programs bringing in track athletes on scholarship. And you know what I mean? Then having them be football players stealing extra scholarship players that way. So long story short, he can't play basketball this spring and he goes out and plays the next year. Well, he becomes an all-Sucing freshman basketball player as a true freshman. And his first year of playing football in the SEC.

He's an all-freshman SEC football player as a retrofreshment. That's crazy. Phenomenal aspect. You were there, were you a student in South Carolina when they had the bad fight, Lou Holtz's last game? So that was actually, I graduated and leave in 2004. And so that football game was in 2004, but I was gone. I was actually a firm, which was close in the Clemson,

where the fight actually happened in Columbia. crazy. Crazy. You know that the night before that fight at Clemson was the malice of the palace between the patients and the presence. There was a while week in sports. Man, I was, so the malice of the palace

I was actually watching the game with my wife. We had just, oh, three, I started at ESPN. So it was like, oh, four, I'm watching it. And I was like, oh, my God. And I was, like, on radio. I think I was on sports center or whatever, just like on the phone, just giving kind of commentary on it.

And then I remember sitting on, like, the exact same couch in the exact same living room. And I'm watching South Carolina and Clemson. And it was one of the craziest brawls I'd ever seen, right? And that was the end of, I think that was Lou Holt's last game. That was his last game. And then they didn't play the next year or something, right? Like it's punishment, like, hey, we're not going to play. Like, what?

It's crazy. So, yeah. Okay, so, but this is where it gets. hard to be fired by your you guys were fired right at the end of uh oh yeah four years four years and you know kind of you start here in this business you know to me you look at your record uh we didn't have a whole lot of momentum recruiting that's really kind of your biggest death nail because there's no hope then right if you're not recruiting well then why why should we believe so yeah we get fired four years later and uh probably one of the more difficult

moments because you know the AD comes in and tells Darren hey I'm not honored well honor the last few years but you're not going to have this job and as an assistant you don't have multi years this is kind of before that became a bulk thing

so yeah we let go this is in 2012 I believe okay so what do you at the time? Were you married at the time no you weren't married I'm trying to think you're married no I actually yeah I got married in May of 2011

So I was less than a year married. And, you know, we had just found out that my wife was pregnant with our first child. And so here we are sitting there in spring, summer of 2012. My wife's got a child going away, and I don't necessarily know what kind of income I'm going to be able to help provide for this. But you stayed one year with Frank, didn't you? Or did you go leave that year? Frank comes in and replace Darren and had some, Frank and I crossed past before, not professionally.

But when I was younger, he was actually counsel at Nike Old American camp. You know, kind of continued to know from there. But he comes in and, you know, Brad is actually trying to get the head coaching job at K-State. Yeah, I remember. And Frank says, hey, I don't know what's going to happen. if he gets the job, maybe a guy who stays, if he doesn't get the job, and bring the whole staff with me,

and I'll try to help you, but I won't have an assistant coaching job for you. I get it. I respect to Frank to being honest, telling me straight up what it was, so I could kind of prepare. So his whole staff does come, and Brad comes with him,

and Frank actually asked that I help him kind of figure out the lay of land over the first couple months that he's there. My wife and I had decided that we would stay, so that we could continue to see the doctors that she had been seeing through the pregnancy. We could have the baby in a place that we knew well, a million people around.

My parents live in Atlanta three hours away so they could get there. And so we stayed. And Frank actually helped us figure out a way to stay within the athletic department, kind of working on some transitional things for student athletes, but in the role that was more encompassing of the whole athletic department as opposed to just basketball. What's that like to watch?

And it's like you're managing your wife, but you're like watching somebody else do a job you just had. That had to be hard. Well, you know what the hardest part is, if I'm honest, is when you're the guy who gets fired and it hasn't gone well, then a lot of times what happens with the new staff comes in, and they kill everything that the last step's done. Right.

And the players stink And while we recruiting these guys And while we took these accruing services And what the heck we were doing with facilities And so just dealing with that But I was also Self-aware enough to know Some of it was right

There was a reason that we Didn't continue to have our job And, you know So there was some things that I learned It wasn't easy And especially because I had relationships with those guys who then became, you know, entrenched in that talk. And a lot of them were then moved on pretty quickly after Frank got there.

So that was challenging. At the same time, I looked at it as an opportunity to learn. Now I'm exposed to a whole different philosophy, and I'm around Frank and listen to him coach and how he teaches and talks to kids and how they do recruiting and stuff like that. So there was a learning opportunity. I actually was able to remove the emotion of having to live with kids. wins and losses and just be an objective observer of basketball.

So I took the time to go around to some other people's practices that year also. And just really use it as a year of growth for myself. What was the best practice you went and saw? Best practice I went and saw actually was Mike Young. I went back to Wofford that year and just watched how he built it because it's different when you're involved. You don't observe the same way as when you're part of something. And obviously, I was rooting for him to have success,

and they did have unbelievable success moving forward. But just watching how good he was sharp. He communicated clearly. His guys understood exactly what they were supposed to do all the time. But I'll tell you what. Frank Martin runs a hell of a practice. Man, I wouldn't necessarily advise it for kids underage, right? But there's a teaching going on.

There's learning involved. There's growth. And you can see that there's a plan. And I'm not saying, I'm just saying the language sometimes. It's uncomfortable. But I'm not saying he's not personal. It's challenging. And it's an environment of growth.

But he is really, really good on the basketball court. So then Brad gets the Stephen F job. You got a baby, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it works out, right? So actually, I'm around the program, kind of observing. I'm able to bounce ideas off me, and I go into Lamont's office.

I go into Brad's office. I go in the Brad's office. I go in the Figgs office and talk to Frank and, you know, just different things. Hey, when we go to Lexington, what do you think we should stay and helping him with that? They actually played at both the Barclays and at St. John's, a true road game of St. John's that year. So I traveled with him and helped him with some different things. So I got to know Brad.

I had never met him before. That was actually the way I got to know. It's just being around that program for the year. So Brad gets the head coaching job at Stephen F. Austin that spring, and he doesn't have a staff. He's been an assistant coach. They knows people, but he doesn't know anybody they feel super comfortable with. So he offers me an opportunity.

And, you know, didn't really know much about it. In fact, never really even heard of Stephen F. Austin at the time that I heard Brad was getting the job. But I knew I knew I wanted to coach. And I knew I wanted an opportunity to get with some of the job. who I felt comfortable. I was going to have a chance to have success, would have support. I knew Brad was going to want to continue to recruit the Southeast,

and it would help me start to establish another reason that I could build relationships in, but I do have a wife and a newborn child. So going home to try to convince my wife that this is a good idea wasn't the easiest thing, especially when she asked me where the school was, and I couldn't really tell her. You're like knacket, knackad, knackad no, no, it's worse.

Doug, she, I told her, I say, hey, Brad, you know, come home, say, hey, Brad, he's going to take this job of Stephen F. Austin, and he likes me to join the staff. You know, obviously, want your blessing, what your support, and my wife, she's a soldier, let's do it. You think this is good for us and our family, but we've got this new one, baby, where is it? We'd like to look at houses, wife's, right? I want to know where they're going to live. And I tell her.

Realtor.com or Zillow, that's what they go to immediately. I told her it was in Austin, Texas. With a straight face, because that's what I thought. Okay. Okay. And so we go on the computer to start looking up housing, and we type in Austin, Texas. And we find these houses, but we can't find this school because the school is not anywhere near Austin. And so, you know, you have that sensation where you know someone's looking at you, like, angry.

She's like over my shoulder. I don't want to look at her because I know she's much. So you weren't in all honest. Like you weren't, you weren't just trying to tell her Austin to get her off your back. You really thought it was in Austin? I really did not know what this was. This is the day. I haven't even had time of research.

I just know, I want to coach. I want to do this. You know, guys, you know, we get something. We're not doing research. Whatever. Yeah. Listen, I mean. All right.

I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. It gives us a chance to get back in. Let's do it. Let's do it. How long before you realized it was in Nacadoches?

Why don't we search this place by the school name? So we type in Stephen F. Austin and the computer screen, like, moves to Louisiana. Yeah, I mean, listen, Stephen F. Austin thinking it was in Austin is not, it's not that, it's not like you thought it was in San Antonio. Austin in the name would leave a lot of people to think it was in Austin. That's not the worst thing. Except for, if two years prior, you had gotten married and your wife was pregnant a year later, and you got fired so you don't have a job, and now you're going to tell her and her newborn baby

to move to Texas where there's, no family, and you don't even know where it is, probably not good. Not a good way to start that. Not a great way to start. Okay, so you show up there. You guys show up in, Nagadoza, Texas. Now, isn't it like hill country?

Yeah, pine trees, tall, pine trees, beautiful area, the oldest town in Texas, learn that, right? But great basketball tradition, right? Really, really strong basketball program at that level. It's been really successful in their lead for a long time. And so the best thing that happens is we have a lot of success. The problem is basketball season wasn't until November. We moved way before November.

So trying to get used to life with a newborn and a new area where we don't know anyone. I automatically have a group of people to associate with because I'm with a team. My wife doesn't. But your wife doesn't. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. And you're in Nacadoces, Texas. And where's she from, region?

Yeah, so she's from Michigan. And again, I'm not banging on Nakadotis. We had a great time there. We loved the people. We loved our experience. No, when you first get there. City, you can get to. It's two and a half hours away.

They got a Walmart there, though, right? Like, my brother's in Corvallis, my sister-in-law is like, there's a target an hour away. I was like, damn. You know, still one had a target for two hours. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's. That's an interesting one. How long did, how long, Danny Casper was, I remember when Bob Knight came to ESPN.

You know, like, he didn't, he hadn't watched everybody play. I mean, like, it was a, they should have hired him like 10 years previously. Sure, sure, sure. But he would go on and on about Danny Casper and about his team, Gany Casper's and his team. How long before you got there, they were like, damn, we actually. actually left us a good team. No, we didn't know.

We actually thought that our team was terrible. They won 27 games the year before. They were 27 and 5 the year before we got there. And we're thinking Danny left because he thinks that this thing's about to go to crap. The leading scorer and player the year in the league graduates. The second leading scorer and first team all league got graduates. The third leading scorer. graduates. The best

returning player was a kid who averaged eight points a game. Okay, so the guy who was coming back as the starting point guard didn't not play. He played about 10 minutes a game. He took

seven shots, not per game all year. So there was really no way to look on paper, look at what they lost, and what they were turning. Think you're going to have any chance to be good, except they had a culture. They had a group of guys who already bought into defense because that's what Danny preached.

They won games 49 to 48. In fact, they lost five games that year by a combined total of like seven points. One of them was to Stanford and the NIT by one. One of them was in their conference tournament championship game by one. They lost three other games the whole year. They beat OU that year at the enormous. So they were really good, had an established culture. We just didn't see that we had any talent.

How long before you knew? We didn't really know until we go to Marshall, like the second week of the season. And, you know, we played okay, but we hadn't really played anybody. Marshall was really good. They had the nation's leading score at the time. And we wound up beating them in overtime, and we found out that we had enough talent, but we had even more toughness and connectivity. Jacob Parker goes off.

He's a junior sophomore at the time. No, he's a junior. Hey, come. Tell me, I looked this up because I was, because I'm interested. Didn't you play Danny Casper in like your first game? So we actually had, they had contracted the game. Danny goes to Texas State, and we played tennis. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life.

We're actually contracted to play Texas State, like the second game of the scene. And his players really didn't. They liked him as a person. They hated playing for him. So they were jacked to go play. And they felt liberated and free because Brad brought this offensive philosophy that seemed pretty cool, gave him an opportunity to score. You know what I mean?

And we kept the defensive stuff and rent that up some. But we go there. And after the game, Danny Casper is doing a press conference. conference and tells Brad to come see him, and they have one together. I've never seen that in my life. That has to just be the weirdest thing ever. It wasn't like he left to go to Texas. He left to go to Texas State, and I think...

Brad, because, hey, we won the game. He's in his first year. He's trying to talk about all the things he wants to do. We're in our first year. And Brad's, you know, wants to give him some credit, but also he's a competitor, man. Yeah. And then he wants to talk about how he wants to have. all these guys that he just left.

I mean, it was a weird dynamic. Yeah, so you beat them. Like, crazy, you beat them. You lose to Texas. You beat Marshall, lose the East Tennessee State, and then you don't lose again. Yeah, and that was the turnaround. I mean, when we lost at East Tennessee State,

there was on a, like, a quick turnaround. We played two games back to back. We had one at Marshall guys start filling themselves, and a kid named Desmond Hayman. well this thing comes full circle brings up we get back on the Sunday night and we're supposed to be off

Desmond Desmond Heyman has practice the player Senior player I got it He runs it goes to it We don't lose another game

until the second round in the state tournament That's insane What was that like to be a part of? I got it I'm looking at November 23rd November 23rd November 23rd

You lost 66th to 58. You beat Sanford, UNC Wilmington, high point, Towson, James Madison, North Texas, Northridge, Lamar. Then you run undefeated through league. Then you win, not only do you win your tournament, the Northwestern State game, I remember watching, because you had a point guard that shot less than me, that little dude. And then you,

and then you beat Sam Houston, you beat the dog piss out of Sam Houston State. And I remember watching the game. game like, dude, I have no idea who these guys are, but whoever draws them is going to lose. What was that like to be a part of you? You had a 28 game winning streak heading into the, like coming from, like, do you? Yeah, and, I mean, like, look. Back to my childhood. I got to, like, I forgot what losing was like.

And, like, the leadership and the team ship amongst that, that group was fascinating, just to watch. Like, they were determined they had lost again, the core of that team, the seniors had lost in their conference tournament championship game for the year of sport. Right.

By one point. This year, we get back, there's no way they're losing. And so they just carried us, man, and I said that this Desmond Heyman things comes full circle.

We play DCU in the first round. We get this 512 thing. And this is at the point where this 512 has kind of become a thing to talk about. Yeah. And so the 5th, cities are really like, damn.

You know, like, we're going to play somebody really good. And we draw them, and we could kind of tell in the lab line, B.C. had been to the final four a few years prior. This seems to be a little air of arrogance in the warm-ups. Like, oh, we got sleeping up awesome. I'm sure their coaches weren't that way, but we got the sense of that from their players going through warm-ups. And they, I mean, they're pressing and it's back and forth for a while, but they kind of get away from us.

We come back, and we're down four. I think we're like eight seconds to go. We're down for B.C.U. This is at, this is in San Diego, wasn't it? Yes, yes. We're down for BCU is at the line for two shots with eight seconds to go. They miss both. Thomas Walker gets the rebound, drives the length of the court.

Our leader, Desmond, Haman Haman, gets open on the wing. He kicks it, shoots it, shoots it, kid files them. Four-point play over time, and life's never been the same. Yeah, so here's my story about that regional. Okay. So the whole year, I was at CBS at the time, the whole year I said like, look, you know, my game schedule is my game schedule. I was living out here.

And it's my second year living out here. And I literally had never, my son was born March 19th. It was the first day of the tournament in 2009. and I went and worked at night. And March is just a terrible birthday, right? Because you're just never there. And, you know, in 2000, I was working at E. I always worked, you know, at ESPN on his birthday.

And then when I was at CBS, I was like, I'm, like, gone for the whole month of March. Like, gone. So this is 2014, right? It's his fifth birthday. And I'm in Orange County. And there's a San Diego regional. And I was like, I'm there. I was like, look, I don't really care about anything else.

Just you don't even have to book me a flight because after the selection Sunday, I can just fly home and I can drive down. I was like in San New State, my brother used to work there. Like, I don't need a hotel. I'll save you money. I'll sleep at home. I'll be home for my son's birthday. Like I don't give a shit about, because I'm not calling the Duke Carolina games,

a Kentucky game, right? There's a pecking order in the way it works. So we're sitting there and we would get the bracket like 15 minutes. before everybody else. And I'll never forget, and I see like Oklahoma State is in it. And I was like, huh, I wonder if that's a big deal.

I wonder that's a big deal. And so we do the show. I get on the plane and I get a text message and it says, Spokane. And I was like, Spokane?

What the fuck? And they said, and I put a question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark, question mark. and like, why not San Diego? Like, it's right down the street. And they're like, look at the bracket. Like, I was like, Oklahoma State?

Like, yeah, we can't. It just would look bad. And I was like, wait a second. At the time, Steve Kerr, he had called Arizona games. You know, Kenny Smith works Carolina. He's Mr. Carolina. Like, really? So then I look in the Spokane bracket and Oklahoma's in it.

And I said, and I told him, I said, listen, If there's any one person who thinks I'm a homer for Oklahoma State for Travis Ford, who I didn't play for, I'm friendly with, but I'm not, we're not like boys. Like, the same people that will think that will think that I hate Oklahoma.

Like, don't you guys, they're like, oh, we never, we never thought of that. And by the way, Oklahoma end up,

both of them end up getting beat in the first game. But that's one of the reasons I was watching your regional, was because I would have been home for my son's birthday, March 19th, done all the interviews on the 20th, and then senior game on the 21st. And I was mad about it. I was like, man, I got to watch the San Diego thing.

What I was missing. I was like, are you kidding me? I watched the most incredible comeback I've ever seen. Unbelievable, man. Why? I mean, is it just margin for error? Why? Because it wasn't until two years later.

The next year you went and you lost to Utah. But it wasn't until two years later that you guys were almost unbeatable, could have been a very easily could have been a Final Four team, lost in a ridiculously good game. Was the second year? Was it just harder around the second year? Was it guys that you lost? What was it?

Yeah, it was probably a combination. It was the year. It's actually the only year we lost a conference game. So you could tell there was a little bit more of a cheek in our armor. And we actually had a really bad draw. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending.

Opinions are flying. And nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories,

their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer-beaters to controversial calls, we break it down, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants answered. SportsClyce

brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to SportsClace on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hardway with me, your host, and your favorite therapist, Kier Games.

And in recognition of mental health awareness month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field and conversations with so many incredible guests. I'm talking, Tripp Fontaine, Ryan Clark. Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase that we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing. and we're still chasing it and we don't know when we've done enough because people scoreboard watch.

Life becomes about wins and losses. Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you hear on earth? Are you a good person because you're afraid? Because that's two different intentions, bro. Absolutely. And that's two different levels of trust.

I want you to just really be a good person. Join me, Kear Gaines, as we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure, and purpose on my new podcast. Learn the hard way. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Search Learn the hard way and listen now.

What's up, guys? This is Clivert Taylor the 4th. And on my podcast, The Cliverts show, I'm bringing you conversations about all kinds of stuff. Like being an internet famous referee. We're in the middle of a game. This linebacker, this linebacker walks up to me. He goes, hey, ref, my mom wants you to wave at her.

What? Time out. Quarterback on office blue with 42. A rep, mom, I'm a one. want you to wave at her. What? Where's she at? Hey, Miss Parker.

Listen to the Cliverts show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what.

He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. He knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall.

And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. he running up the court, licking his fingers, why he got the ball. Like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Oh, yeah. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball.

So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're being honest in the tournament. So we play a team. The thing that bothered us the most was functional size. And we didn't face that with VCU that first year. they had some undersized dudes like us, right? They had a big portal, and they had a team. And they got Yacquiporto who, without scoring 20,

dominates the game because he can really pass. And they got the line right. And so the poor matchup, our best player, play the year in the league, Jacob Parker goes 0 for 8 from the field. That, you know, we only lost by 7. It was a low-scoring game. We just couldn't get going offensively. Is that what happened?

The Notre Dame game was an unbelievable. game the next year. The next year you're 28, and 6. Yep. And people have now noticed Walk up is making shots. You know, you beat the crap out of a good West Virginia team, which I know was big for Brad because it's against Huggy and it's all the same family. It's a former coach.

Yep. What's your memories of the Notre Dame game? Oh, man. I remember feeling like we were going to win until we didn't. Like, you know, You know what I mean? Like that was the moment that I realized how cruel the finality of the end of a season is. And there was no question in our players' minds. We were a second weekend team.

Walk-up was good enough to be one of the top two or three players on the court against anybody. And he literally had become the face of college basketball for the weekend after he dominated West Virginia. And, you know, we actually played really well. Well, man, we made shots. We guarded well. And, you know, fluke thing, kind of like the way we won against BCU. We're up late. All we got to do is get a stop.

It's the best thing we do is defend. And we force a shot literally off the side of the backboard. I mean, the side. I'm not talking about the face side. The side side. The initial shot is the side of the backboard. So it takes a funky bounce. One of the guys.

tips to then and, you know, there were a couple of questionable calls in there, late, and, you know, you got that going, and you know, always in the back of your mind, but, you know, give credit to those things. They made a play at the end, and our season was over, and that run was over, essentially. How long after that did you know Brad was going to Oklahoma State? Well, this was a Sunday, and if you know anything about this tournament, you don't have travel plans. It's just kind of listening to what they tell you.

Probably two hours. We've got to fly to the street port because you can't fly to Nacadocious. So we fly to Shreveport. It's like an hour and a half. So we don't get home until I'm going to guess midnight. It's a Sunday. Brad's named the Oklahoma State Head Coach Monday after soon. When did he tell you?

Didn't tell me anything. I mean, he didn't. So he goes to Stillwater. He was done. And he comes back. I met with him early because he was trying to make a plan for me to go through the interview processes for the head coaching job there. And then we started making plans for, you know, how to deal with the players there and the administration and all that stuff. And he was off.

He was off the store. When did you know you were going with him? I didn't know. I honestly thought I was going to become the head coach of the Stephen Foster. I really believed that with all my heart, maybe a little naive. and probably more naive now that I think back and kind of how it all went and the rest of the pool candidates,

pool of candidates. So I didn't know until after I was told I wasn't going to be I knew I had an opportunity to come if I didn't get a job. So there was some comfort going through the process. Yeah, it's interesting because Kyle Keller got the job and he was my assistant coach when I played in college, right? So it's amazing. So you get to Stillwater

and now you're back in high major. basketball. What was your first impression of what was left for you? I thought it was pretty good. You know, you kind of look at the roster against the first thing. Who's going to help you win? You need players.

The first of the year in the league, Juan Evans coming back. Joan Evans going to come off his red shirt, play a 50 year. So starting there with a pretty good back court. Pretty good. It didn't have a whole lot of size. Mr. Solomon.

You mean you mean Phil, you mean Phil Forte? No confidence. You mean Phil Forte? Mike, you mean Phil Forte? You mean Phil Forte. Joanne Evans came back. Phil Forte was he had the arm thing, right?

And so then he missed the... Joe. He had a show of the deal. Yeah. It was freshman year in the league being before. And then Phil Forte coming into his fifth year, you know? So felt pretty good. Didn't know if we could win the league,

but thought we're going to have a chance to be a competitive team. What was it like? Because when you got to Stephen F., there was always. already a culture, there was already a toughness. And that really wasn't the case with Travis at the end. It was almost a polar opposite, in terms of guys being brought into winning and caring about work and how to have success buying into.

It was really, really challenging. Probably the hardest transition that I've experienced in college basketball. So how long did it take before it worked? You know, I'm not sure, if I'm being honest, that it never really hurts as much as we had enough talent to figure out how to winch games. Because we changed. We didn't change it. We changed. We changed.

We changed a lot. We changed how we operated. We changed how we played. And so I don't know if we really. you know, for a long-term standpoint, did anything that year that really put us in position to have success on term. Yeah, because you went from,

you went from pressuring everything. You went from pressuring everything to, like, packlining everything, right? You change your offense, you changed everything. Yeah. And he went like 10 out of 11 at one stretch and snuck into the tournament and lost an unbelievable game to Michigan,

just like a remarkable game to Michigan. Okay, so then Brad leaves and goes to Illinois and stuns people. How did you find that one out? I was literally in my car with my wife the day after the season in Oklahoma City, and I was starting to get these texts and calls from these national media guys. They didn't know why. And then earlier in the day had gotten a text message that we were going to have a meeting, which was strange because the season had just ended the day before.

we're on spring break so none of the players are here I can see like it's over we're going to meet when spring break's done we'll come back you know so it was a little few strange things that happened and um you know found out well i went to twitter not long after i started getting those calls from you know jeff goodman's and matt niland is in the world and saw that the rumors were what the rumors were and and ultimately that they were true there's a recipe for getting your car running just right and whatever you're cooking up in the garage You'll find what you need at eBay Motors.com. They have over 122 million car parts and accessories in stock, all at the right prices. And that can help you turn your ride into something really tasty.

The parts you need are just to click away at eBaymotors.com. Let's ride. This clip is brought to you by State Farm. At State Farm, they know it's important to ensure the things you love. They also get that everyone has a budget. That's why they have options. like insuring your car and your home, getting you great rates on both. It's a good idea to consider State Farm.

For surprisingly great rates, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Call or go to StateFarm.com for a quote today. I can post a picture that a girl that is way skinnier than I am, a size 2, a size 4, the same exact picture. And I look vulgar because I'm thicker. but if a thinner girl does it, it's not that much of a big deal. And that's what I'm not okay with. Because why? Why? Because I have cellulite because I have thick thighs.

I can't do that. I can't feel sexy in my own skin. And those are the things that I want to break because there are so many women like me. And I want to be and represent us, you know? Obviously, there's always room for improvement. I always want to look better. I want to work out. I want to lose weight. But in reality, this is the body God gave me. And I've never really been skinny.

Listen to the My Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. This episode is brought to you by AT&T Fiber, and we just want to say we know there's nothing better in the world than getting a great deal. Like getting upgraded to a better seat on a long flight, or getting a free dessert when you're a restaurant regular. Even that free latte you get when you fill up your punch card, a deal just makes it taste better. And now, as an AT&T wireless customer, you can get an exclusive. deal on super fast internet from AT&T fiber. You'll get faster upload speeds and a great deal with AT&T fiber. That means smooth gaming, reliable video calls, and a quality work-from-home experience.

It might not be as tasty as a free donut with your coffee, but it is pretty sweet. You can learn more at ATT.com slash fiber offer. Limited availability in select areas. Restrictions apply. So, you know, then let's just like craziness, right? I mean, obviously, I was a part of it as well. Yes. You thought you were going to get the Stephen F job.

You didn't. Did you think you were going to get the Oklahoma State job? No, I never thought about being the head coach at Oklahoma State. It never even crossed my mind when it was open. First thing I thought was, I'm in Oklahoma City. I need to get back to Stillwater and figure out, you know, when Brad's leaving. And if I need to get ready to get on a plane with him,

and moved to champagne. And because I wasn't there, I didn't have an opportunity to be at the meeting where he told everyone and the athletic director Mike Holder was there, and so I didn't have a chance to talk to him either. And so I'm in the office. This is a Saturday that this all happens. The next day, I see Mike Holder in the wait room and just he just says, hey, when you're done, come up and talk. I'm thinking, oh, this goes back to me in my South Toronto days. He just wants his keys and his car back.

You know, he kind of goes on and asks me stuff about what I think about the program and asks if I think I can do the job and totally caught me off guard. Not too much off guard that I didn't say yes, I think I could do the job, but caught me off guard that that was a question. And, you know, that was a Tuesday or Monday, whatever it was. By Friday, I was named the head coach of Oklahoma State. Yeah, so that Thursday was when they told you, I think, right? Or maybe it was Friday morning.

No, no. So I had to interview Thursday. I think all the interviews were Thursday. I got a call early Friday morning from Coach Holder asking if I can meet him at the office. It's like 6.30 in the morning. Kind of freaked me out. And I get there and, you know, you would appreciate this in his own way. You know, Coach Holder comes in and says, I just had a couple follow-up questions.

And he literally asks me something about, maybe I've mentioned something about commitment to the school or loyalty or something like that and about staffing. He asks me those two questions. It's like 645 because I just throw some stuff on and go meet him. Like, you do whatever you got to do, right? So it's 6.50 in the morning. He actually two questions and he gets up and leaves the room. I'm sitting there like, is that it?

Yeah, yeah. Because he never came back. So I go get my kids ready for school. I get a call again a few hours later that I need to go meet with the president, who wasn't in the interviews the day before. I think he was out of town or something like that. That was the first time I thought, well, maybe this is real. Because I still haven't convinced myself that I'm going to get the job.

Right. Cautiously optimistic, but more cautious than optimistic. So then, so you meet with the president. He tells you're getting the job. No, the president just doesn't tell me. I meet with the president and Holder. The president had some questions again because he wasn't in the interview. And then I leave and they say, hey, we hope to have this wrapped up soon.

Somebody will be in touch you either way. Coach Holder called me probably about an hour or two later. I can remember his early afternoon. Who was the first phone call you made? honestly I don't know if I called anybody immediately there's so much stuff that they wanted to do because this stuff happened so fast

they wanted to get their messaging out so I immediately get called to my SID's office and then I get told hey we got some players here we want you to talk to them before we put anything out so come back and I'm sitting back in Coach Holder's office talking a couple players about 30 minutes later

and I realized that I just gave the okay for the SIDs to put it out, I haven't called my wife yet. At least she doesn't have to move back to Nacadoces. I call my wife, she's freaking out because she's hurt already. And so, you know, I don't even necessarily get a chance to break the news or I'm still paying for that

to this day, by the way. The first phone call I made outside of that was when I actually, they want to take pictures and do this stuff at the baseball game that night. So I'm like, I've got to go change. I'm not dressed or a photo shoot or anything like this when we get a coat and tie and all that stuff. So on my way home, I call my dad,

and this is literally how the conversation goes. My dad answered the phone. I say, hey, I have five minutes, but I want to let you know. I know my dad, he's going to, he is then like a bullhorn. Everyone else in the family is going to know once he knows. I just became, I just was named head coach at Oklahoma State. he proceeds to like scream for about 45 seconds

and I say you got that make sure you let everybody know my five minutes up I hang up and I didn't talk to him again until the next day so you've been an assistant forever you've been an associate head coach how different was it how different was it to have

it wasn't just to have your own program but like now you get to do whatever you want to do Now, it was a little bit different because you had a couple, you had Dezaguay, you had Averette, who you recruited at Stephen F. You had Lindy, and you had McGriff who you recruited at Stephen Fis. So you had some guys, but you didn't really have many freshmen incoming. So there was still some Travis guys. There were some guys that you and Brad had brought in together.

Like, what was it like to be a head coach of a team? Yeah, it was, it was weird. But what I tried to do was, and this is probably a stake girl, I try to continue. to operate as I had and just, I was an 18-hour-day guy, you know, he's just burning a candle at both ends and you figure it out as you go and try to continue to maintain those same relationships. But all of a sudden, there's many more people who want a piece at that time. You've got media, you got boosters, you got former players, you got administration.

And so starting to try to figure out how to balance all that was a real challenge early on besides the fact that it's not like my hiring was met with a whole lot of praise, right? There's a lot of skepticism and criticism even when I was initially hired. So just trying to introduce myself to people and let them know, hey, they didn't hire, like, a statue. Like, I'm a real person. I actually can articulate things. I think I communicate well with people.

I'm going to try to make our guys better. But had to start creating an image of my heart. myself, which for me was just being myself, but getting myself out there in the public for people to kind of get to know me. Your first year was wild, obviously, because there were the upsets, the upsets that people saw. I mean, you beat Kansas at Kansas, and I know you know this, but Eddie Sutton never won at Kansas, ever, ever. And your first year, you go in there, and they're really good, and you beat them. And this is, and this was after, and you had lost like three in a row. And I would watch

And like Got our tails kick At home against TCU Which is the third Of a three game loser street Because we had lost at Texas And at Arkansas The week before

And we're playing Without a start Tovar's shot And hurt his back So he's not even going to play How'd you do it? And I think our guys Are just excited

About the opportunity You knew how good they were You know You always It's natural You get more excited And more focused To play against

the better teams, but we play with a great desire and will. I mean, I'll be honest, the game we won, but we really dominated the game. I mean, it got close late. You know, you get a few whistles that go bad against you. You're hoping that you can hold it off.

But we really dominated the game. And our kids are just locked in, play well. Kendall Smith played exceptional there. Jeff Carroll's good, and Cam McGriff was phenomenal at their place. Yeah, and then, I mean, and then you rolled him again at your place. I mean,

beat him 18. Yeah, we didn't have a comeback in them in our place. Mr. Solomon was out of his mind, played probably the best game of his life. You know, he was making threes. He's dunking on folks. You know, it was a senior day for our guys. We had some seniors who really meant a lot, too. You know, and I'll be honest, we thought we were playing for an interstate

time a bit. We thought if we had swept him and and beat him the way we did, we thought, you know, told those guys it should be the last time you played in front of this crowd. So we thought we were going to be an insane tournament team. So to go from, you know, and then a week later you lost to Kansas the third time you played him, kind of just ran out of gas. But to go from that moment where you got hired when people are questioned you,

I mean, shit, I'm pissed. You know, I'm like, man, what? and to now you are like America's sweetheart. Like I'm watching on Selection Sunday and you know,

Vital's, oh, you gotta put a man, you gotta, everybody is like, you have to, and then obviously you didn't get in, but what is,

what is that, do you have, is there, is there a time during that period of time where you're able to, uh, get the juxtaposition of how it starts. at the start of the year to that moment?

No, I probably didn't get it honestly until about maybe a week and a half, two weeks later, because I felt it from the people who probably were the most skeptical, which were Oklahoma State fans. I think there were people outside of the program that was skeptical, but no one really cares, right? Oklahoma State made it bad higher. Too bad for them. But the people that were invested in the program,

they really were worried about whether they were invested in the program that was about to go down in flames, you know, because they hired a bad person or bad coach or whatever it was. To see them then, once we didn't get into the tournament, we had 11,500 people short for an 19-te game on spring break on Wednesday. I mean, I think that was the moment where I felt like, okay, they believed in me and what we're trying to do again, and we're going to have a chance to have successful a long time.

I mean, in all of this, of course, and you had, then you have the FBI thing too, right? I mean, that part is crazy. FBI deal in December, literally at the end of one semester, probably two best athletes, Devon Dillon and Zach Dawson. And, you know, from a behold, we go the next day and beat a really good and top 20 ranked Florida State team in the orange bowl. And that was a moment where I felt like we had the right kind of guys to give us a chance

to have success. Okay. So then last year you walk in and now all of a sudden those older guys are gone. You take a grad transfer in Mike Cunningham. You had Michael Weathers sitting out who was an all-freshman team kid, who played for one of your assistants at Miami of Ohio. You had Curtis Jones who'd been sitting out as a transfer. So you had, you know, look, and this is the way you got to do it now.

You've got to take some transfers. You've got to take a fifth year. You've got to get some good freshmen. What did you think you had coming? the last season? I wasn't really sure, but I thought we had more talent. I really did. I thought we had more talent.

I thought we had more depth, and I thought we had a team that could again compete with anybody, you know, if we prepared the right way and continue to develop the guys. The thing I didn't probably calculate enough is, you know, maturity is probably more important than age. I talked about age a lot, and it was actually maturity. lack of maturity that really hurt us. Obviously, you know, some of the things that are publicly known, decision-making from our players,

really, really came to bite us. And there was something that really helped me reflect on how I wanted to recalibrate things going into this year and move forward. You know, it's interesting because, like, the cliche is, well, it seems a reflection of their coach. But I've never heard anyone say, like, okay, he's, he curses, he's drunk, he's this, like, literally, I mean, you can't find a personal work with you, you know, from people who know you and around you all the time.

And yet you have a team full of guys. And again, most of them are not major things. Like a couple of guys with a BB gun shooting out of window is in the grand scheme of things in comparison to other things. They even happen in Oklahoma State. It's very, very minor. But what's that like to be a guy who, like, you've never been accused of recruiting violation ever to have. to have that as a reflection when you know that that's not really a reflection

of who you are and what you're about. It's hard, I mean, especially because you know the kids, you spent time with their families and it's actually more challenging when it feels like it's maybe people and it's more now than it was 20 years ago and it becomes like it's personal about you. But I get it.

I'm a big boy. I'm involved in, you know, highly visible competitive athletics, and that's part of it. And what I try to do is focus on the things that, you know, as a staff, as a program, we can do to get better in the voice of most pitfalls. And I truly believe that because of some of the things that I went through personally, when our program went through over the last year, really going to help us be able to be really, really solid and more aware of being forward. you've changed your staff and then you have you have like three things going on here right like you have the older group that's all back those three seniors McGriff Lindy Waters and Tom Stazagua who is the guy I was talking about earlier who went from like

man how do we hide this guy and get him out there to he's such a weapon because he just I mean just I mean like he can shoot right he's a dude who will never get out of any time that they shoot for a pickup game he will be in the pickup game because he's an unbelievable shooter, an unbelievable worker. And then you got Isaac, who had a terrific year and an even better summer.

And then you're a nay, who, for my money, like, that's what an NBA center looks like as a freshman, potentially, because he's just, he's got the natural gifts of understanding rim protection and movement, and if he continues to develop. And then you have this remarkable group of incoming freshmen.

I mean, you have to be, you got to be super excited. Like, I know you're already practicing, but what's your level, of excitement now as compared to what you thought you had last year? Oh, man, I feel so much more comfortable that we're building it with guys who believe in what our program values. And I say that, and I don't mean anything bad about the kids.

I recruit them all still care about them, but I've had time to evaluate these kids for all in a period of time. I know their family's well. I know their backgrounds. I know exactly what they're made up. I know they care about winning and the messaging to those guys. have been a part of what happened, and we're not going to continue to have those type of bad decision makers in our program.

So, again, I think that's part of the reason why we feel good about last year helping us have successful forward because we learned how to better manage things internally. And so I'm excited about, again, we've got a really strong group of freshmen who are really talented, but the expectations aren't out of control from a personal standpoint. They know they're coming in and they have to work. They understand that things aren't going to be easy. and that things may not go their way all the time. And then the leadership that I have amongst our three primary seniors,

we've got another one grad transfer to Jonathan Laurent, but between Thomas, maybe you can. So those guys truly understand everything that takes to have success, and they have an awareness of the things that can be pitfalls because they've been around a lot of them. So in terms of managing that stuff better, how do you do so? Well, just communication. Be very clear and what I expectations.

is and don't wait. I think part of the reason, you know, maybe we didn't have more success putting out fires before because we let them blaze a little bit too long. You know, we didn't nip things in the butt early. Whereas now we see things and we got more internal leadership. Our seniors are being more vocal about the things that are unacceptable within our program, being on times and things, making sure you're respectful of people on campus. You know, maybe going harder, don't skip reps in the weight room.

little things that make a big difference to building the team. Best thing about being a head coach is what? I would say probably the autonomy that you have from a decision-making standpoint. But at the same time, when you kind of built like I am and nothing's ever been easy, you're always wary of getting too comfortable. So just then making sure you surround yourself with the right people. Worst thing about being head.

make those choices. Your life is not yours. I mean, and, you know, everything about how you're perceived, a lot of not everything, but a lot of how you perceive is based off decisions of, you know, young people who sometimes make the bad decisions. So that's challenging, again, especially when you have family and they're affected by those things. In terms of the coolest things you've done, coaching at Barclays, head coach of your own team in Brooklyn?

Is that the coolest thing? Or was because it's your team? Probably because it's something I never even could fathom. Like I jumped out of an airplane a year ago. That was pretty cool. But I always knew that you could do that. When I grew up, there wasn't no arena in Brooklyn. There was no basketball team because the Knicks were the only team in the city.

So you only thought about the Knicks. but to be able to coach in the arena that an NBA franchise out-hosts games in as a college head coach was really, really cool. The, give me the one that got away. The player that you and during any of your recruiting, you thought you had, you knew you had, you didn't get, and they went on to have a great career. Oh, wow. probably Montres, Harold. We are South Carolina, and we were in on them early

from a really, really small town in North Carolina. And we had a kid committed to us already in the following class, Anthony Gill. So we didn't want to upset the Apple Card. That kid was from North Carolina, too. But if I'm in that position again as a head coach, I'm going to take Montres and make sure Anthony Gil understands, as we want him to.

But if we had both of them, maybe our, maybe our fortune is a little bit different as he moved forward because he's turned out to be a hell of a player. It's still playing an NBA now. No, no question. That's interesting that, because I was recruited by Jim Herrick. And I think, because we decided not to take him, I think he was going to go to the King of Tech.

And then Seth got fired. So he wanted to go on a Louisville. Yeah, that's exactly what, that's exactly what happens. It's funny because I was recruited by Jim Herrick at UCLA, and he used to go, So, Dougie, Dougie, positions don't matter. We play the best five guys at UCLA. We play the best five guys.

I was like, yeah, except coach, I'm six feet tall. I'm white and Jewish. I have only one position I can play. So if you take a losing me man, it was the class behind me, like, where am I going to play? Like, he's a six-foot-five point guard. Like, that's not going to happen. If you could change one thing about college basketball,

what would it be? This is really radical, man. I actually think basketball in general. I don't think the court's big enough anymore. I agree. My dad just think is not wide enough. Yeah, maybe that's, maybe that's widening. But I think, you know, the game has evolved so much players.

We always talk about how much bigger, faster, athletic, stronger, or whatever, and we still play in the confines to the same space. That's a good one. I just, the problem is the arenas are built. I guess you could, I mean, you get. Sure, no, it's all right. I mean, I'm really, really radical, like I said. No, that honestly, no, listen, my late, my late, my late,

father. He grew up in the Bronx. We got to Long Island. His whole thing was like, guys are too big, guys are too long, need more space. You've got to play. It's got to be wider. He thought wider, not longer. Although longer would be incredible too, right? Deeper three point lines, whatever. So we've extended

the line. There'll be more guys step out of bounds in the corners of the arena's now than ever before. Yes. Of course. Unless they do the Ray Allen drill. Let's say, I do it. Isn't it amazing how this thing has changed from like my junior year,

we had an incredible, it would have been an incredible small ball team. And we only did it once against Texas. We're down like 20. Our big guys were terrible that game. So we went small. Desmond Mason played the five. And we cut it to like four. And he would never go back to it.

Like never. And we were, we played small. Isn't it amazing on how the game has changed and evolved? Oh, for sure. Hey man, listen, you've been more than gracious with your time. I really appreciate it. Let's catch it. All right.

We'll talk soon. All right. Later. Wow, that was unbelievable. My thanks to Mike Boyton for all his time. By the way, you can listen to the Doug Gottlieb show daily. Three to six Eastern Time, 12 to 3 Pacific on Fox Sports Radio, the IHeart Radio app, or wherever you download this, you can download that show daily. It's called the Doug Gottlieb show.

In the meantime, tell a friend, tweet it, put it on Facebook, IG it, whatever you want. Tell somebody it's good content. It's not necessarily me. telling you it's good content. You listen to it. You probably liked it. I'm Doug Gottlieb. This is all bought. If you work in IT, you'll want to check out Changemakers, a podcast, profiling IT industry leaders. We dive deep into IT profiles and learn what it takes to drive large-scale IT transformations for successful businesses. Visit changemakers.freshworks.com. Do you own or rent your home? Sure you do, and I bet it can be hard work. You know,

it's easy, bundling policies with Geico. Geico makes it easy to bundle your homeowners or renters insurance along with your auto policy. It's a good thing too because you already have so much to do around your home. Go to geico.com, get a quote, and see how much you could save. It's Geico easy. Visit geico.com today. That's geico.com. If you work in IT, you'll want to check out Changemakers, a podcast profiling IT industry leaders. We dive deep into IT profiles and learn what it takes to drive large-scale IT transformations for six

successful businesses. Visit changemakers.freshworks.com. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slicalif 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok.

Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement. homes. Those people are starving for banter.

Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, guys? This is Clivert Taylor the Fourth. And on my podcast, The Clivert Show, I'm bringing you conversations about all kinds of stuff. Like being an internet famous referee. We're in the middle of a game. This linebacker, this linebacker walks up to me, he goes, hey, ref, my mom wants you to wave at her. What? Time out. Look. Quarterback on office blue with 42. Hey, Brett.

My mama want you to weigh better. What? Where's she at? Hey, Miss Parker. Listen to the Clifford show on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas.

And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. didn't talk ever again, I was crying. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow.

Then after that game seven, Marquis come in to you, he's like, you know, I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.