Episode #51: Caleb Kimbrough

In this exciting kickoff to Season 2 of The Significant Coaching Podcast, host Matt Rogers sits down with Caleb Kimbrough, Head Men’s Basketball Coach at Hampden-Sydney University in Virginia. As a leader in NCAA Division III athletics, Caleb shares his journey from player to coach and how he’s building a winning culture by empowering his players and assistant coaches.

Tune in for insights on leadership, teamwork, and fostering accountability at every level. Whether you're a coach, athlete, or fan of the game, this episode is packed with lessons that go beyond basketball.

Learn more about Caleb Kimbrough by visiting hscathletics.com/staff-directory/caleb-kimbrough/35.

Stay tuned until the end for ways to connect with Matt, schedule a recruiting strategy session, and explore resources to help you take your game to the next level.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Significant Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Rogers. We're thrilled to kick off Season 2 with an incredible guest who knows all about leadership, grit, and building a winning culture. Today, we're diving into the world of NCAA Division III Men's College Basketball with none other than Coach Caleb Kimbrough, the head men's basketball coach at Hampton Sydney University in Virginia. Caleb has been transforming the Tigers program and we're going to unpack what it takes to lead, inspire, and succeed at this level. One thing that stands out about Caleb is the level of ownership he gives to his players and assistant coaches. His approach fosters leadership and accountability across the board, a key element in developing a resilient and cohesive team. Whether you're a coach, athlete, or just someone who loves the game, this episode is for you. Caleb's journey from player to coach is full of insights that stretch far beyond the court. Get ready for an exciting conversation on passion, development, and the heart of competition. Let's get started. Here's my guest, Caleb Kimbrough. Coach Kimbrough, so thankful to have you today. What a great start to your season. Talk a little bit about this crew. Cause you graduated some studs last year. Talk about what it feels like to we won't call this a rebuild, but you've got a lot of young bucks that are getting playing time this year. Yeah, we do. We have a lot of new faces. First off, Matt, thanks for. Yeah. Thanks for having me on here. Listen to some of the episodes already and really enjoyed them. But this year's team, yeah, it's interesting. We had a group that was together for so long, some four, some five years, and it's just such a cohesive group. Everybody knew each other. We knew the next move, even sometimes in practice over the course of that time, especially the last two years. As a coach, I did a poor job of assuming that some of the new guys knew what was going on because it was such routine. So this year we really tried to make sure we were being really detailed and explaining things the way we needed to and not trying to Overcomplicate or jump ahead. And this group's, they've done a phenomenal job. Just with competing as a freshman, you just want to play. We have a lot of freshmen, so at least ignite, like we acknowledge that right off the bat, Hey, we get it. But the only way we're going to be great, not everybody's going to play a lot or at all. So this group has really been selfless and I think humble and wanted to learn. And I think that's, what's allowed us to have a good start. Not that we're. Sharp and everything that we do, but just the approach that these guys have. I always felt like when I brought a freshman in, I'd cross my fingers and go, if I can get them playing man to man defense the way I want them to, by the end of year one, start of year two, I was always thrilled. Do you have some mindset like that with what, it's going to take to develop a young guy coming in, or do you just, are you specifically recruiting certain things? I think it's a combination. I think it's a, we have the fundamentals of what we want to do. I think we, we obviously tried to recruit that to a certain extent, but there are exceptions, right? If you're 6'10 and you don't do something exactly like we think we want, we're probably going to take a risk. No, then we, yeah, then you get into a practice setting. The biggest thing I learned is just like the level of intensity that, that we're asking you to do things. That's the adjustment. It's not that they can't do it, but it's this combination of. A lot of teaching and then the level of intensity. I'm telling these guys a lot, give yourself a little bit of grace, we're paralyzing you a little bit right now. Because we're feeding you so much information, and it's taken your ability to just play away thinking. So give yourself some time, like you'll get it and let's try to be good at a couple of things. And I think they're doing a good job of that. Each guy is progressing at a slightly different. Pace and it's fun to see. How do you go about coaching leadership and figuring out who your leaders are and how do you go about molding that, that idea of leadership with your guys. Yeah. That's, yeah, I love that question. It's, I think it starts in the recruiting process. Yeah, I do. And not that I'm acting like I can just, oh yeah, that guy for sure is 100 percent a leader, but I think you can see the way people interact with their teammates. You may not, it may not always be the loudest, but maybe you're a guy that I'll give you an example. There's a kid on our team, Peter Moy. He's from Charlotte, a freshman and he we saw him play with his AU team and he had a couple of ball dominant players on his AU team. And, but he was high energy all, maybe played a lot, some games, not a lot of others, but always just into it, good personality, high energy and made plays when he could. Then you go to his high school and he's the guy and he's playing the whole game and scoring all the points, but he was able to do both things. It showed some real leadership capability and selflessness. And I think we look for those things, when they get here, there's a series of. I think having a having developed and continuing to develop a strong culture of values and standards I think everybody leads in their own way, and then, a lot of times people talk about captains, being, for us, like everybody leads. The captains aren't like the leaders of the team. They're just two or three or whatever it is, guys. And for us that holds specific characteristics that we look for in those leaders. And we had an interesting process with that, that we do here. The guys with the help of the team, we've actually developed a, like a job description for our captains and and so we asked them, like, why do we have this position and, why is it important and how does it help us, pursue our vision and and when we got into it, we, we learned that the team needed this from the captains. In order for us to be great, this type of leadership, right? We do need a guy that can be, is great at communication. Yeah. Great at listening and speaking and with all the guys on the team. To make a long story short, we developed like a very concrete, it's a job description. Just like you'd see. On a website, guys have to apply for the job. And then the guys have to interview for the job in front of the team. And I'm not in this. The coaches aren't there. So smart coach. I love it. And then they, they can get the job. We vote on that, but then you can also be fired from the job. I love it. We, and that's happened. And it's happened for me too. Yeah. Oh, it's maybe it's not, much different than other people do, but it's something that's worked for us. And I think it's really given ownership to the team that this isn't just a popularity contest. If we're going to do this, there needs to be purpose behind it. Why are we doing it? And what did these guys bring to the table? But I think that's just an example of. Leadership is important to us and in every phase we want to make sure, we're utilizing, how we're being led by each person. We always talk about ownership and culture building and what a great way to give your guys the ownership of who's going to lead us. Why are they leading us? What do we expect from them? Such a great life skill. Forget about basketball. So I love it. I remember my last three or four years as a college head coach I just met with like a Marine or just great leader. And we talked about this foxhole test. So for my last three or four years as a head coach, I'd have the kids, I'd give them a circle with a line through it. And then I'd have lines on the side and in the back, and they all had to write down first, who's the guy on the team you want to have at your back in a Fox hole. We're a battle. Who do you want to have you back? Who do you want on your right? Who do you want on your left? And that's how we started, got a determined. Captains. It's very similar to what you're doing. It's a different way to skin a cat. But I just, I love that mentality of we're going to create a job description. You guys are going to help create it. You're going to interview each other. You're going to interview the guys that want to apply for this. So dynamic, just great stuff. How have they reacted to it? They've reacted well. Of it is like the first time you do it is a little bit trial and error. You've got caught you're dealing with college students, college age kids. So you can develop what you want, but it's really if there's not a shared accountability to what you're doing, how much you really going to get out of it. How much do they commit to it? Really take it serious on like how we were developing it. There were certain points in that conversation where we're like, you go into, you're talking to your team and you're brainstorming what these characteristics may be of a captain. And then, the room's silent when you ask a question. And my response to that is like, Batman, we don't have to do this. Like we, this is for us, this is. And so I think that gave them some ownership where now you hear, we always presented with we're going to, as much as we want to get out of this, we're going to put into it, and so you'll hear some of our older guys being like, nah, like you have to speak, you got to speak up. Or I'll talk to some of them after they've done their interviews or something along those lines. And they'll say this year, for instance, they're like, yeah, God's brought like presentations to, there was a lot of Q and a, and I was like, man I'm not, I I don't over ask. I think that's like a special thing through, but there's part of me really I want to know, I want to record apparently they took it really serious and we got three guys that are doing a great job right now. So good. It's such a great sign of coaching maturity that I don't know if I ever got to as a college coach, because it was probably my biggest struggle. If I go back, if I were ever to go back and coach again at the college level, I'd be so much more prepared for it because I've realized how much when you don't say anything, how impactful that is and how you as a head coach, you don't insert yourself into certain situations or you really have to be patient on when you insert. So I love that you have that patience and maturity as a coach that I didn't have to say, okay, this is how we're gonna do this. You guys gonna help create it. Let's go. So I love that. I could talk leadership with you for an hour, but I'm a junkie. I'm a basketball junkie. I got to talk X's and O's with you. Are you comfortable talking X's and O's? I will keep this out of the hands of your upcoming coaches. Let's talk about, let's talk about defense first. I've always intrigued how you go into a season. I was, I'd go back and I'd watch every single game and I would have yellow notepads of just stuff we did wrong or stuff I wanted to do better or stuff that I blew as a coach. How do you go into the summer, the fall? How do you think about defense? How do you get there and say, this is the identity I want to stab defensively. Absolutely. I, I think we have the core beliefs of what you want to do. I have a core belief in how we want to play that I think is going to be successful. And really based off of guys that I've worked for, and like you said, I didn't have a maturity when I first became head coach, like I didn't either. So trial and error, I would say through the years of developing, something that you're confident coaching. And then it definitely it's due to, personnel. Like how do you slightly adjust based on what you have and who's ready to step in and play? But over the course of the year, I think we do a pretty good job as a staff. Of really breaking down each game and, developing post game notes that are detailed regardless of we play a team again or not, what were we successful with, what hurt us, what would we do next time? How would we, what would we do in practice if we played these guys again, that would help us. And it's amazing over the course of a year, how, if you go sit through those notes. the trends that you see of things that you struggled with and things that really helped you. And I think, so like we do, I did the same thing you just said. Thankfully right now, like watching film is very easy. 10 years ago was not, but 20 years ago, it wasn't but yeah, I think sifting through those games and sifting through the notes and then going through the game and sifting through and then figuring out, trying to find those holes and figuring out what you might be coaching. What you might need to improve upon. Yeah, we try to go through that process every year. You can't, I think There's no shortcut to it. It's you've got to watch the film. I think you got to take the notes and, you've got to talk through it. I don't think it's something you can do yourself either. Like I lean on the staff. I've Bryson Gibson's here. Associate head coach. He's been with me for five years and Carson Long's going to just third year. I've really leaned on those guys because, they're really smart guys. And we collaborate to figure out. how to tweak things year in and year out. What are your core defensive philosophies? What are the things, you're going to do every year and no matter your personnel. Yeah. We're a man to man defensive team, right? Like last year, if you look at our synergy we use synergy, I think it was like zero possessions of zone unless they messed it up. Cause we were like helping off somebody and the daughter so definitely man to man coaching team. And it's all about being disruptive, but under control and there's the, don't want to allow the ball here. There's the two or three points that are specific to what you want to do. But all in all is, we want to be disruptive, but we want to be able to keep our shell so we can get the rebound. And how do we do that? And so that's gonna be broken down into, your fundamental shell stuff and breaking down. We'll have fundamental ways that we defend just about every situation. That's going to put you in that same scenario where you're defending, specific to our fundamental course. Talk about how you use shell drill because I walk into high school, I go to a lot of high school practices and I'm always shocked when I walk into a high school practice and maybe I'm there for a couple of days and there's no shell drill being done whatsoever. How do you guys use it and why is that valuable for you? Here's the thing. So there's the big shell drill believers and then there's the guys that are like, you got to get up and down like it's the shell drill. I just learned that way. And then and it was something that when I learned it, we were successful doing it. So what I've learned is, anything you want to be good at, you just need to rep it. That's the key. And so if we want to be excellent at half court defense man to man be in shell and we need to learn how to defend all these different scenarios. There's no trick to how we do it. We'll set up three on three, four on four, four out, one in, five out. Whatever scenario that we're trying to work on. And it's really the fundamental positioning. What does your stance look like? What is your positioning on and off the ball look like? How are we moving? We say SPM stance, position, movement. These are the keys. And it starts very simply like on my pass and just how specific you need, how well you need to be doing these small fundamental things. And then it starts to move to maybe a passing cut and then it starts to move to exchange and then it starts to move, what happens with the balls caught in the post? What happens? And then we get into the situational things and handoffs and stagger screens and about as basic as you can think it. Yeah. I love shell because you could do a thousand things with it. It's a controlled scenario, when I got into coaching 25, 30 years ago, it was, there were so many teams running some version of flex or swing where you had to deal with those screen, the screener actions. And I just, I love shell for that, whether it's pick and roll, whether it's screen, the screener, what's back cuts, flare cuts in eight minutes in a practice. You can harness what you wanna do and get so much done. So I love, I guys would love that. Eight minutes they would be like, oh, eight minutes we're good. No, the I, I say that now, but I'm probably, if you come to one of my practices, probably 20, 25 minutes, we're pounding it in. But I like it. There's a coach that talk. The one thing that I was always, I always question year in and year out is when you're, when you, if you do, shell drill for 20 to 20 plus minutes. You, there's a, there can be a lot of standing. And, I always questioned wow, we like our practices to be sharp and we're moving and communicating and it feels high energy with a lot of enthusiasm, but I had a good Dave Davis who coached at VMI and Newberry and five. He's a, he's a legend in the game. He is. Yeah. He came to watch one of our practices this year. And I thought, it was really reassuring to hear him say, he said something like, you have no idea how important these reps are of people just watching, there's a huge significance to people watching the rep and seeing people make a mistake and then, needing to be engaged when they're on the side and not in, and how are they communicating, if they are on the side and learning to do that. I thought, That was great advice. It is. That's really great advice because, we hear it so much on the NFL side. Every time there's a rookie quarterback, there's that debate. Should he sit for a year? Should he sit for six games? So the mentality is there across the board in terms of athletics, that idea that, Now we got to teach these guys how to learn what are you watching for? Why is it so important that you're watching, you're out of that rep right now for a minute and a half, what do you want to get out of that minute and a half? Do you guys have those conversations? Without a doubt. Yeah. And it's it's really helpful, right? Cause there's. You want to make sure there's purpose across the board when you're in that setting and you want practice you want guys to always be working to be engaged while in practice. So I think You know that's part of it and then we definitely stress it all the time. I started doing shell drill. I think for years I would do 10 15 minutes of shell drill and it would be static or we wouldn't be dynamic. It'd just be in that half court and then I started doing, okay, we're going to do a 30 second shell drill. We're going to really work on whatever we're focused on and then I'm going to yell shot. Whoever's got the ball is going to shoot it and we're transitioning into that defense live. We want to see it, just down back. And I've, especially with transition defense, picking up the ball early, protecting the rim early. Have you guys, do you guys do something along those lines? We have, I'm, I got to work under Adam Hutchinson and Tom Palumbo, the two guys, and I played for Tom. So I feel like. I learned a lot under both guys. But I didn't feel like I was like the G. A. Or the ops guy that was just getting to watch drill work and make opinions. So sometimes I feel like I'm just making stuff up on the fly, according to how that's coaching. But no, we definitely do stuff like that. For instance, transition and we'll go We'll line a team up on the baseline. If a team really attacks and transition, we'll line up five up on the baseline with the ball and then have the other five, execute a five on a, one of our sets or something like that. As soon as the ball goes through the hoop, the team of the baseline can run full head steam, just take off anything to put you at a slight disadvantage. That's right. A little more. Then what you're going to see in the game. If you can learn how to defend that in practice, you feel confident when you get into the game. Yeah. That's the power of having a fit, a solid 15 where you can have three, two, three teams, you can go five, five, five, and keep guys moving and keep guys fresh. I love that. Do you have a philosophy on switching, not switching, forcing baseline force, taking away middle? I would say like we're. I'd say we're like a pseudo PAC line, that is really personnel based, honestly. I don't know, they have a phrase for how we, because I learned the PAC line with Tom Palumbo at Guilford. Then I went down to Huntington College and became a head coach, tried the PAC line and that was not what we needed to be running. And so we turned into Bill, we were a full court press. Really picking up and being disruptive. And I loved, I felt like that's how I was as a player a little bit. So I really loved that. And, now it's transitioned to, I wouldn't say we're a full court, trapping team, but I would say we're a more disruptive kind of like pseudo pack line. Yeah, we're trying to keep the ball out of the middle best we can, keep it out of the paint. And yeah, there's different ways that we do that. Are you, it's, I love having this conversation. Are you, do you force baseline or do you force away from baseline? I would say we do not let guys drive straight line. Number one. Okay. So like we, you, we used to use the term force baseline, but then I felt as though. We were guiding people towards the basket. Yes. And you can put it that way. Like Baylor is unbelievable. Absolutely. But it helps when you got a six 11 guy with a 38 inch vertical protecting the room and it's a way you can be successful, we were really recruiting guys who could defend one on one and we, and so it more became like no straight line drives. And here are some slight guidelines, right? Even when we say no middle, for instance, so what would a middle drive look like? If I take a dribble towards the middle is that bad or what? We define those things for the team so they're not freaking out. But the biggest thing is the level of intensity that we expect the guys to defend one on one without fouling is what we work on every day. That's great. Every day, different scenarios in all over the court. We have a probably four or five minute segment defend without fouling. I saw, I remember where I was. I think it was like, I think it was when Wes Miller was at UNCG is it Cincinnati now? And I went and watched a practice. I was like an assistant at Guilford or something. And they were doing these breakdowns. And Where, offensive players start at the elbow or start at the block or no, and you could eat, sometimes he had no dribbles. Sometimes he had one, sometimes he had unlimited. It's all about, but it was all about defending without fouling, not trying to get a steal and not trying to block the shot, stay in between him and the basket. A big part of what we talk about is, it's got to be through a tiger Jersey, not around everything's got through a tiger Jersey. And I love that. Just force a tough shot. Everything's, if we can force them into 80 tough shots is over the course of the game, we're gonna probably win the game. We're gonna be right there. I love that. Let's talk about offense. Alright. What do you talked about your playing style when you were playing, I love playing with my hair on fire. I was point guard. I wanted the ball and I wanted to go, I wanted four guys running lanes. What is your mindset as you. As you enjoy the game and you want to see it play definitely shoot when I was a player, we just threw the ball into the d three national player of the year and he was a black hole. So we don't have to do that. He just shot it every time. But Yeah, this has really been like a work in progress. I think personally for me is the development of how we want to play offensively and being specific and like really creating some guidelines towards what that looks like. So I think just now, because when people ask like coaching philosophy and they're talking X's and O's offensively, ODAC championship, like up until that point, like I had never won a championship as a coach. So the answer would always be Hey, it's a work in progress. I don't know that I have the philosophy that I'm 100 percent and it's probably, slightly, going to be building it the whole career, but it's but I would say we run like an open off, we call it our open offense predicated on a lot of, two man game and three man game, where we teach. We probably specify maybe three ways we like to create an advantage outside of transition. So obviously, like in transition, there are ways that we like to attack a broken defense and create an advantage. But outside of that, in the half court against a set defense, we talk a lot about here are maybe the three ways That we love to create an advantage, like for instance, a ball screen, or whatever it is, a post touch and whatever we're emphasizing that year. And then I tell you what, Matt, we just drill those to death. And our guys are very confident. And how do we attack in a two man game? How do we attack in a three man game? If we find that one of these actions creates an advantage throughout the game better than the other, we can go to it time and time again. And it could be in multiple spots on the floor. We want to be a big part. I think of How we were developing the offense was we need to make sure we are unpredictable, right? It's okay if there's a little bit of randomness to what we do, meaning I don't always know exactly what the guy is going to do because I feel like the coaches in the league are so good. Yeah. And, we don't want to be easily scouted. And it's funny, like we get from some coaching friends, they get feedback or because, we scored a ball pretty decently where we haven't the past two years. And I'm like, man, we got a couple of good play. We might just be running a ball screen. It's you're just, all you're doing is what are you doing, man? He's running a ball screen. I'm like man, if it works, that's probably what we're going to go to. Stockton Malone were pretty good for 17 years, running that pick and roll. Yeah, like then we create whatever our sets are to get to specific things. We create those and some of that is going to be based off our personnel year in and year out where we think we can be dominant and that kind of thing. Yeah I'd say he's shooting 50 percent from the floor. You're shooting 72 percent for the free throw line. You're scoring 80 points per game. You're doing all the little things that you want a team to do. You're doing it really well this year, so it's exciting. Talk about practice planning. What do you, are there, and I go back, one of the things I learned, and I had, I just did this out of need because I remember my first game as a head college coach. I was 26 years old and we're planning its handover with their hall of fame coach. He had 700 wins and I'm like, okay, I got these guys ready and we lose by 50. It just got killed and there was nothing special. They didn't press, they didn't trap, they just executed so well. And I remember at the end of that first year going, all right. I've got to get rid of the thousand things in my head and I got to get our practices more focused. We've got to be in better shape. We've got to be more physical. We've got to rebound the ball better. We've got to protect the rim better and we've got to execute screening and passing better. Are there things that you want to accomplish every practice? Without a doubt. By the way, yeah, I go like everything you just said, I feel like I go through that whole process. Maybe every practice plan. I said, the staff like laughs at me because I'll sit here. I literally was doing it right before we got on this call and I'm sitting here and, I get pretty detailed in my notes within the practice plan for each coach, it's not just a couple of words. It's like a box of notes and without fail, I'll spend. However much time I spend on the practice plan and then they look at it and it's like the same drill, just a slightly different emphasis. And I'm like, guys, I don't know. I just have to go through that process. But I think I've learned the same thing that you just said. I think I've learned over the years that it doesn't matter. You're not trying to share all the information, with your team, you're trying to make sure your team is confident in executing a few things really well. And that's what we try to do in our practice plans and, fail often with that over, there's, there are times this year, often I've left. And talk to the team and guys, I overdid it. I'm sorry about that. We'll simplify this, and I think it's key though. You're not going to be able to do everything. And if you try, it can be too much. You want your team needs to be confident. Your team not, does not need to be thinking too much unless you just know your team and you can feed your team a ton of information. That part of that is just the feel of, being around them, but we really focus on rebounding and everything that we do. We really focus on how we defend one on one without fouling. And we focus immensely on our acknowledgement. Like we have to acknowledge each other all the time. Right eye contact, high fives, like touches, like random hugs from behind. It's not okay. If you're quiet, you're thinking about yourself. It's not okay just to be there. If you see someone that's just getting caught in their own thoughts, right? Go collaborate with them. We have to be connected as a team. The only way to do that. Is to acknowledge each other all the time. And it's a big emphasis. We started in our strength and conditioning before we even get to practice. And it builds from there. Love that. Those three things will win you a conference championship every other year, rebounding, defending, without following. Acknowledging your teammates. And, it's like the avatar in the movie where the tree is connected to all living life. When everybody's connected communication, like physically touching, talking, it's amazing what culture is built out of those three things without a doubt. What we found is. Enthusiasm is one of our, Tiger performance standards. As we cover our core values, like part of our Tiger DNA, and our enthusiasm doesn't mean you always feel good, it's just for us. It's you're into it. You're like, you're passionate about what you're doing right then. You gotta be locked in, but sometimes gotta struggle with that. So we really push like for us to be connected. It's just like somebody. Struggling to shoot the ball one day. Like, how else are they going to influence your team? If you're not playing, if you're injured, how are you going to influence the team in practice? We have to work on that all the time. People would be a different spot, like right now in exams, and we had to have practice crazy late last night because exams went all the way, I think, till nine p. m. We're used to having practice at 2 33. And we just got in there and we were like, look, we're Yeah, we just got guys that just left exams like we got to pick them up. We're not gonna let you, and this can only be a great practice. So let's do it. And no excuses. It's great. I love your demeanor coach. I wish I, if I could transfer something from another coach to me, I transfer your demeanor to me because I was so demonstrative I'm, I'm all over the place, cause I'm 50 years old and I'm still, I want to get out there and play. And that's always been my problem. I got to step back and realize I'm. I'm not in a jersey anymore. So I really respect that. I do the same thing now, Matt. I stepped in practice last night. I joked in and mixed it up with those guys. I got a technical foul in our last game. So they made me do a, we have a punishment for that I had to do. They made me do that too. But I stepped in there. So I'll get like that, man. I love it. I love it. I want to transition a little bit to recruiting coach. Cause you're obviously knocking it out of the park with recruiting. And that's what I do now. I consult, I work with colleges all over the country on recruiting and I help kids get recruited. So I'm really interested in your process. So take me through, and I get this question all the time. People ask me about what's the season for college basketball recruiting. I go starts January 1st and it ends right about December 31st. It never ends. So what is your process? Cause I know you graduated what? Seven last year, six, eight, eight. And it was a big number. What's your process knowing that you're going to graduate a year ago? What's your thought process going into that recruiting cycle and how do you and your staff attack it? Yeah, I think in division three which is the only level that I've been at so far, there, there can be some turnover year in, year out. For us, When we knew we had a large roster every year we want to bring in, four, four, four to six, maybe, around there I think that, I think the key to recruiting is just being honest with the guys you're recruiting. And, not share unrealistic expectation, just be forthright and everything that you're saying. So when they get here, even if it's not what they like, they'll stick it out, their attention, I think is the whole key It doesn't always happen like that. People develop a different in different ways and different time frames. But I want to give a lot of the credit on our recruitment. Bryson Gibson, the associate head coach here, he's he's phenomenal. He's our recruiting coordinator. He knows all the coaches. He's from North Carolina, I've shared Alabama, Georgia when I was down there at Huntington, got a lot of success in Georgia and, worked our way a lot of North Carolina guys gotten into D. C. A little bit. So he just a really good job of keeping the whole staff on the same page with what exactly we're looking for. So we definitely identify that, we have our team, we have our feel with exactly we have conversations with the guys. So we think we have a good idea of who's and who might be stepping away or whatever the case is. And then we identify exactly you know, what we think we need, to add to the group going into the next year. Something as simple as a physically like size or strength or defense or something that's more like a, a character trait. We need a championship role guy. Yeah. We don't need the small town scores 26 points a game guy. We like a guy on a really Good team. That's like the seventh man, but because he's going to be selfless and come in and probably do really well with the group that we have. So we identify those things and then we go out and I think inevitably you find those traits or maybe in a series of guys, you like, you also find some dudes that you're like, we're going to recruit you anyways. That's right. There's the combination. I think yeah, I think everybody like. Hopefully has the thing that they think they're good at in recruiting. I think one of the things that our staff does well is we're just really, we're really honest. I think make you take a deep dive. We're not afraid to tell you the truth, but we're also not afraid to fight for you all the way until we figure out, is this something that really works well for the both of us or or not? And, I think that's the tough part. What? Anywhere I go, whether I'm here for a long time or whether I'm somewhere else, it'll definitely be like, I'm not trying to convince you that Hampton Sydney is the best school for you. I'm trying to share as much information as I can about why I love this place and why I think we could do some great things together, but then you need to share, what things are important to you, and then we need to figure out if these things match. And sometimes you learn. Man, you have enough things that match where I'm going to try to fight to get you to campus, right? You learn, wow, you're really good. Things are not matching up. I really hope you don't go in league. But just bells and whistles, everything. And, just get you here. But we want you to get here and stay here. That's right. Like love, love a lot about this. Not just the coach that's talking to you. We want you to love like the culture of our program, the guys, so we get pretty in depth, I would say with it. And that all starts is spearheaded by Bryson and. Carson does an unbelievable job too. That guy's never met anybody. He couldn't have a 30 minute conversation with and like I lean on the staff a lot. I get out there and I'll recruit, I'll make as many calls or go anywhere it needs to be done. But I give those guys a lot of credit for making sure we're all on the same page and and, and helping to find those guys. Take us behind the curtain a little bit for the families that are, that want to understand how. The logistics of how a college coach recruits. Do you guys meet as a staff on a regular basis where it's just a recruiting meeting where they're bringing guys to the table and saying, Hey, I just saw this kid on film, or this kid just reached out to us, or I saw this kid play. Are you having those weekly, monthly conversations? We'll probably meet, we'll probably meet once a week for a lengthy recruiting talk. Okay. Diving in and, but then every day we're talking recruiting, if someone new comes to the table, if you've had a conversation with somebody, we have the way we organize our conversations so we know when the next person is calling, what the conversation has been like. So we can we're not a staff that just one guy calls the recruit. That's assigned to you or we're like, no, we want to, we want the guy to talk to all the staff at some point. Love that the family recruiting. Takes a little bit more work, but I think it's worth it in the end. And I think also you learn, There may be a personality that the young man really connects with that can then turn into like the pseudo lead of the whole thing. I try to put my ego aside that I'm not just that guy every time. That's right. My ego is this big? No, I got to put it aside at times. But No, I think those conversations are key, but recruiting is ever changing. It's we talk about that all the time. We get, we find these guys that we love and we recruit them really hard. It's great. Then we get to a point where the 10, 15, 20 guys that we loved coming out of the summer are all off the board. And, now we're moving on to the next group of guys. And then sometimes you haven't paid that group of guys enough attention, so you have to tell them we tell them the truth. Yeah, we were on another guy, this guy. Now, we understand if this is going to take a moment to build this relationship. So yeah, it's wants to be number two. Nobody wants to be number two, but we're constantly, like we talk about it can never stop. Like you, this is not something you need to like, not as stressful, it never stops, but this is part of our life. We don't work a nine to five job. Our job is our life. And so it's, gosh, we're always just networking that's why your people, But you have to focus too. You can't have weekly conversations with a hundred recruits. You have to focus on your top kids. And the majority of your energy has to go to those kids that need that time right away. Yeah, we sift through the things that we really look for. It's obviously starts with, did we see you at an event? We've received some film. We an alumni. Yeah. reached out and has a guy in his area that's really good. Typically we figure out what your grades are. We try to have a conversation with you on the phone. Do you answer the phone? Do you answer a text? Is when I talked to you on the phone, is it a one word answer or are you actually engaged in the conversation? Not always like a one call deal breaker, but it definitely, this is a kid where you're just, he's a feeler from one of your alumni hits you up. Can you please call this guy? I'm telling you, he's good. You've never seen him play. You're just calling to get that initial contact. If it's a one word answer only, that may be the last time you talk to them. Your major core values is enthusiasm and you call it. There's no enthusiasm red flag. But yeah, then, like you said, then a list of a hundred, 150, whatever it is you start with down into the priority list being guys. Where there's mutual interest and have the type of academics that we're looking for that can get you into school and where it would be, we always have to look at a division three with the financial aid situation looks like. We'll recruit against a D two or like army, Navy prep or, something that happens a lot. But those could be free scenarios. We need to know enough information when we're not you're not on the priority list. And so we know if we're going to be going after you and constant communication. We know that this will be a good situation for you and your family. I'm confident about that. That doesn't mean you love everything about Hampton Sydney yet. We just know what we're going after and we're not doing it blindly. So we eliminate hurdles and we really fight for the no early in the recruiting process. We fight for the no, which is crazy, but it's been it's worked for us. I teach kids the same thing. I go, if you can get a college coach to look at you, you're looking for three outcomes. Yes. I know. Or honesty, all three of those are victories because if they tell you no, and they're honest with you and they say, Hey, this is what we see. This is what we like. You think we, you got to get better. This is where we think you belong. That's a victory for you. So I love that you're fighting for the no, it makes a lot of sense because you don't want to waste your or their time, right? Yeah. And there's some guys, we're going at war shooting for the stars and we're going after like us, a kid that's getting a lot of scholarship interests, I think. What is it's worth our time, even if we lose, it's worth our time. So we'll express that sometimes as well and just say, Hey we'll stick around and that's okay. We understand where you are, as long as you need to be honest with us, and yeah, it's. It's cool. I think it's fun if yeah, I think as soon as you think of it as like a thorn in your side, it can become stressful, but man, if you just think of it no, this is fun. And I get to figure out who I get to work with on a day to day basis doesn't always mean you get the exact person you always want. I think that's the stricter. But you can get the exact type of person that you want. You just got to work hard. Yeah. I give you stories about kids. I recruited their pants off and they ended up going somewhere else because of money or something other. And I, 25 years later, we're still close. I still love them. They're, the relationship, the bond was so strong. that I still talk to him, every other month. So I love that. I had, I just had an interview and one of my old assistants is now a big time division one assistant. He's blowing it up. And he was teasing me because we were talking about recruiting. He was teasing me about I had a board, which I'm sure you have, where I Color coordinated everything and had magnets and we had a huge recruiting board where we rearrange kids and say, Nope, he's our two shooting guard now, or this kid's up. Do you guys organize, have something organized like that? We do. We do. It's not, I think as the years go on, I'm like, man, a lot of things I did in coaching was just'cause I saw someone else do it, right? I gotta figure out like there are things that just work for you. Yes. We've developed that along, along the way. And we collaborate together as a staff and we just figure out the key is we want to be on the same page, right? So the meetings and the talks early are a little longer, more kids. How do we organize this? How do we. What do our evals look like? How do each of us know the eval? And just how are we on the same page? And then we develop a system now that, that really works and something similar to what you're talking about. That's cool. I love that. You talked about the characteristics of guys you love. What are some of those things when you guys are watching film, you're watching kids live. What are some of those characteristics? And they're probably things that the average parent doesn't think about. What are some of those things that just jump out at you? You're like, gosh, I need to watch this kid more. I'm already, I'm hooked. What are some of those things? You have your physical traits, I think your quickness, your size, your athleticism, whatever it is. I think the things that we really look for when we're looking in detail, once we probably like our second look or third look or diving into a kid is you know what, instinctually what is your lateral movement look like? Yeah. Because we stress man to man defense. So much that, can you move laterally? And what is, what does that look like? And that's just step one, because, step two is everybody says toughness yeah, can you take a hit in the chest? Like a lot of people can stay in front and sometimes they stay in front, but the guy keeps going all the way to the basket and lays it up and I'm like, you're in front of him, but he just scored the ball. But so is there a toughness to you and a competitiveness where you're, like the normal game changing play dive after a loose ball, are you willing to give up your body there? Are you avoiding contact or can you take a hit? That's a big one for us. Love that. I love that. Those are such great things. It tells you so much about the kid too, because if they don't have that fire in their belly now, It's so hard to try and coach that into them, right? It's just talking about that year and a half of development. It might take three years to, for them to figure out that they've got a fire in their belly and we're willing to take a hit and be a hustler and be a guy that can do those extra things. So I love that. We'd love to see guys that are what was I about to say here? Yeah. As far as like the Intuit enthusiasm piece, that's been easier and to spot because it's so often that someone's. Like staring into space miss a shot and looks to see if they're getting pulled from the game. I love to see if someone's not even in the play, but their teammate makes a big play and you see them get excited about it. That's a that's translated for us in the past. Just, Oh, he's trying, really, you said, Oh, he's a great teammate. I'm like, man, he's trying to win. You make it to be in one go crazy. Or hits, hits a big three and you see a guy pumping his fist. It's oh, yeah, he's into it and he's trying to win the game. That's what he's thinking about. And yeah, that's important to us. I love that. It's such a key characteristic. And I think as a college coach and a high school coach, you have to, especially as a recruiter, you have to fail a little bit. To really understand how important some of those little things are, right? I know I've recruited kids that were great scores, great defenders, but I didn't pay attention enough to those things and it bit me in the butt. Because I didn't pay attention that his energy came from him and not from the team, not from the family, not from what we're doing together. And that's a really, that's a sign of a coach that really gets it. If you guys are pinpointing that and going after that. Coach, what advice would you give to a mom and a dad and a young man that wants to play college basketball? Would love the opportunity to play for you at some point. What advice would you give on the recruiting trail in terms of what to do, how to do it? Yeah, I think getting exposure one, I would say if you're good enough, you'll be found. I would say, if you are working hard and if you're a guy that is good enough, to play college basketball, like someone's gonna find you the ways you can help with that. It's obviously to try to get exposure best you can by putting yourself out there. Sometimes it feels like you're doing that in a way where you're going to an event where there are no college coaches. So you probably have to do a little bit of research to figure out what do those events look like? And those are events that get you a little bit of exposure, but sometimes it's very difficult. Everybody's out to get theirs. So I think Keeping, keep a level head, take a calc, be smart about where you go get exposure and then understand it's not always easy even when you get there, but you have to continually try, but like I, I think lastly that the most important thing I would say to parents is surround yourself with people that are going to tell you the truth. About your chances to play college basketball reality. Yeah. I feel like so often I hear people that are just searching for someone to tell them that they should be doing this. and there's, there's often not enough people saying, here's my honest opinion. Yes, sir. Look, make that opinion. If it's not what you want to be, push you to work harder. I'm all about that. Prove somebody wrong, right? Go, but you need to, I think you need to know you need to know the truth about where you are. And then at the end of the day, it's the school doesn't make you, you make the school, that mentality can be very key. And we'll open, expand your mind to maybe more opportunities. If you really want to do this, you make the opportunity. So it's your attitude and it's how you're going to approach it. And you can have a very joyful experience if you approach it like that. Coach, you're so darn impressive and you'll get a giggle out of this. I write a blog every week for parents and coaches. And this week was the dirty dozen of recruiting red flags, the 12 things that I want parents and kids to be aware of as they're going through the process. I think you've hit the white flags of all 12 today. I really do. Honesty, you're not guaranteeing anything. There's no promises, so thankful for you and how you're doing your job and how you're building your team and the expectations and the significance of, it's not just about wins for you guys want to do it right. You want your guys to be leaders. You want it to be a transitional relationship. So your leaders are teaching the young guys coming in. So really just fantastic stuff. Is there a piece of advice that you've gotten over the years that you'd like to share with our audience and something that you think is significant? Sure. Like we actually use a mental skills coach for our team and maybe the past three, four years or so, which has been pretty amazing. And one of the phrases that has really stuck in our program and really stuck with me, so I don't know if it'll help anybody else is that, the devotion is greater than feelings. And yeah, it's just, it's easy to do something when you're motivated. It's difficult to do something when you don't feel like it, or you don't feel good, but stay devoted and the things will happen for you. Such great advice. I love, I've never heard that in that context. We talked about our Don Parker Dom's got one of my guys this year and We've been talking to him about that, he's not going to play much this year. He's a young buck. He's six, six. And he's going to take his whooping this year, but that devotion over the emotion is such a great way to hear it and feel it and to think about that. So I love that. Coach, thank you so much for your time today. I enjoyed the heck out of it. You got a big fan in me. I'll be cheering for for him to Cindy and I'll be cheering for you and the boys. And if there's anything I can ever do for you and your program, don't be afraid to ask. Thank you so much, Matt. It was a pleasure, man. I appreciate it. Pleasure was all mine, coach. What an incredible conversation with Coach Kimbrough. His passion for teaching and coaching really shines through. A huge thank you to Caleb for sharing his insights and experiences with us today. If you're looking to take that next step in your athletic or coaching journey, head over to my website at CoachMattRogers. com. There you can schedule a college recruiting strategy session with me, buy my book, read my blog, catch up on past episodes of the podcast, or even book me to speak at your school or organization. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Significant Coaching Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. It helps more people discover the show. Until next time, keep striving, keep leading, and keep making a significant difference in your part of the world.