Episode #146: John Payan

🏀 John Payan on Mindset, Accountability, and Building a Program That Holds Under Pressure | Significant Coaching Podcast 

In Part 1 of this Significant Coaching conversation, Matt Rogers sits down with John Payan, head men’s basketball coach at Coe College, for a deep, honest discussion about what it really takes to build a program that lasts.

Payan shares lessons from his rise through the coaching ranks—from grinding as a graduate assistant to helping lead back-to-back NCAA Tournament teams, and now carrying the responsibility of the head chair. He breaks down why mindset, effort, and energy are daily expectations, not motivational slogans, and explains how fundamentals, physicality, and habits show up when games tighten and seasons get hard.

This episode dives into:

• Teaching accountability without crushing confidence
• Why rebounding and ball security are mindset issues first
• How young head coaches learn to adjust without ego
• Practice planning that mirrors real game situations
• Developing players for basketball and life beyond the game

This is a pure coaching episode—practical, grounded, and built for coaches who care about standards, development, and doing the job the right way.

🎧 Part 2 of this conversation shifts to Significant Recruiting, where Coach Payan shares insight for student-athletes, parents, and high school coaches navigating the recruiting process.

📚 Books & Journals by Matt Rogers

Significant Recruiting: The Playbook for Prospective College Athletes
👉 https://amzn.to/3NbWP9S

The Recruit’s Journal Series (Sport-Specific Editions)

• Soccer Recruit’s Journal: https://amzn.to/3M4PFDX
  
  
• Volleyball Recruit’s Journal: https://amzn.to/4qMLr2S
  
  
• Basketball Recruit’s Journal: https://amzn.to/4bxljEJ
  
  
• Baseball Recruit’s Journal: https://amzn.to/3ZGbCMQ
  
  
• Softball Recruit’s Journal: https://amzn.to/4qd4PFp

(All Available on Amazon and at coachmattrogers.com)

🚀 Significant Recruiting Launchpad

Online courses and guided resources for families navigating the recruiting process:
 👉 https://coachmattrogers.com/launchpad

Transcript

0:10

On the latest edition of The Significant Coaching Podcast, a video presentation of the coach Matt Rogers YouTube channel. Also available audio only everywhere you get your favorite podcasts. I'm your host Matt Rogers. Before we get started, a quick reminder you can find all my coaching and recruiting tools, podcast episodes, blogs, books, courses and resources, including the new basketball recruits journal@coachmattrogers.com or@amazon.com. Everything there is built to help athletes, parents, and coaches make better decisions and take real ownership of the recruiting journey. Today is part one of my conversation with co college men's basketball head coach John Payin as a co alum, I've followed this program closely and John has been a central figure in one of the strongest stretches in co hawk basketball history. Helping lead back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances. Before stepping into the Head Coach role in the summer of 2024, his path reflects earned growth, starting at the bottom, learning inside winning programs, and now building the co basketball program with intention and standards and real substance. In this conversation, we go deep into coaching. John shares his three core foundational pillars, mindset, energy, and effort, and explains why fundamentals still matter at the college level. And how physicality and accountability and daily habits shape winning teams over the course of a long season. This is a coaching conversation with a bright, passionate leader and tactician. We had some technical difficulties during this episode, So I apologize if there's some warping of the sound. Stay with it. I was able to capture most of the good of our conversation. Alright, let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Coach John Payne. I. Coach so great to see you, man. I talk about being a co alum all the time for anybody that's a regular listener to the show and, I've been meaning to have you on. I follow the program. I watch what you're doing and you just, you've done some great work. How do you feel about where the haws are right now? You're 11 and five, three and four conference, how you feeling about the year? It's been an exciting year. It's been, it's been, like every season, a lot of ups and downs and challenges and. I thought our guys were sounding well and excited to talk about'em. We really challenged ourselves in the non-conference this year where they went after some of the top teams in the country. We thought, and, had some slip up, some conference early, some road troubles and, ultimately have been able to clean some of those things up, especially in the short term and. It's always a, it's always remind myself that you're never as good as you think you are and never as bad as you think you are. And, you get the ups and downs in the season. We play a lot of really talented teams with good coaches. so it's always a challenge. It's fun to get to work and try to scheme and get our guys in the best position. That's great. I it's, basket is such a fluid sport'cause you're gonna play 25 games and you're hoping you get to play more than that. But there's so many things that you have to navigate throughout the year. Kid gets hurt, kid gets sick, got finals week, whatever that may be. There's so many things that you have to overcome. You came in and a great time in Hawk basketball, back to back national tournaments that you were a huge part of. Coach Leaves you take over the reins. What did you learn about yourself in that first year? I don't know if I ever learned as much as anything I did my first year of being the head coach. I've coached a lot of AAU programs, a lot of AAU games, camps been an assistant on a bench a lot. I think the biggest lesson overall is like a microcosm moment. I remember my first year as the assistant, I made a suggestion. Late game we took, it didn't go very well and we lost, and so I was a little naive. I went to apologize, like my bad on that. My coach Brian Martin at the time, he goes, it's not your fault. I make all the decisions. What I take the input, it's ultimately gonna be on me. That's right. And so learning that like we're, good, bad or ugly, it's gonna fall on my shoulders for a decision making, playing time scheme, decision making, timeout strategy. And that can be a lot, and my wife was really supportive of me our first year because we went through a lot of ups and downs our first year and had a record. It's just, the, I would say that I take the losses a little harder now, and that's something you have to learn to navigate with because you put so much time and effort into it. Ultimately, w I trust my coaches. I have great staff and I have really good players. But you, at the end of the day, it has to be a decision from the top and a chain of command. And just learning how to navigate those decision making process where. Even and being able to adjust, and putting your ego to the side just because I think it's gonna work, I think it's gonna work and it's not working. Can you adjust? Can you have flexibility within that? How much constrict, how much constructive criticism can you take and apply? Ultimately running a program. And, I still think I'm in the process of getting better at it and working at it, and I don't think it's ever a thing you're finished with. And it's, it definitely year two has been a lot smoother as far as operational and getting a feel for things and just knowing the rhythm of it. So I've really enjoyed it though, and it's been my dream to be a college head coach and, I was fortunate to be in a position to get that, and just try to do the best I job I can do and represent our school and our program in a first class way. An alum, from my perspective, you're doing great job and I love your energy and I love your commitment to the development side. So you're doing great. Just keep being you. Don't let anybody shift you off of being you. Let's talk a little bit about. What being at co college means to you, what that co hawk spirit's like when you think about building this program for the next 10 years.'cause it's hard not to think about that. When you're recruiting kids to have'em for four years plus, and then the alumni. When you think about the foundation of what you want this program to be, what are some of those words or ideas that are the foundation of what you're building? I think code is a special place. I think it's a pr, a pristine location. I think our facilities are top notch, but ultimately the AT code, what I really enjoyed is the people at code. It's a very welcoming environment. Never once have I ever felt here like I was on the outs or had to work my way into something. Everyone just opened arms and accepting. And, for our program, I've been fortunate to be an assistant on championship programs and play for, really good play for coaches that are really successful and coach with them and learn from them. And for us, a lot of the things, the big three words that always come to mind for our program are our mindset, our energy, and our in our effort. And I think that mindset might be the biggest thing of all of it, and I still believe in what John Wooden says is Jimmy and Joe, Xs and Os. And so you need to have a talent and base and in place, but you have to have that mindset. We, I'm a big socialism guy. I love I have my stomach book reading. We do, most of our quotes are from guys that have been dead for about a couple thousand years for our daily quotes. I got really into Marcus Aurelius and a Ticus and Seneca and just that mindset of controls you can control. And ultimately, what's your response mentality? Because, you said basketball's really fluid, like team's going, it's a game of runs, game to game is so different. Play to play is so different, and ultimately teams that win championships and compete at a high level or are able to move forward, past mistakes, and we talk a lot about body language in our program. You have to move forward. We can't fix anything that already happened. Like it is a, it's a pointless exercise. So embracing that with our mindset that we only worry about weight control. And that we work, focus on the next, play, the next effort. And I like the stoic viewpoint of it, is that you can be a dog tied, everyone's a dog tied to a cart, and you can either choose to be drug along by the cart, and it's gonna go no matter what the world keeps going, no matter what you do, and pow and cry about it. Or you can choose to get up on your step and move along with it and move forward with stuff. And so that's what I really want our guys to have because we have super talented players and really good humans in our program. And that's why we've had success ultimately is because of the personalities and their work ethic and their mindset, and then their basketball talent obviously plays a huge part in that as well. And so for us, that mindset, your effort, are you, you leave all on floor guy, are you empty a tank player or burn the boats? That's what our mindset is. And then your energy, right? Are you gonna be an energy vampire? Like I know that's a very common term. Are you gonna be a guy that boosts stuff? And that's the big thing for younger guys that aren't getting as many reps as they want, are they, that's the only minds are allowed is are they gonna be an energy booster for our team when it's their term to be a guy? Because if you're a pouty guy, when you're not playing. I can't I have to imagine you won't change very much when you are playing, and so being consistent with that. And so we try really base our core on that, because I love playbooks. I love drawing up plays. I love scheming. I love watching film. But ultimately, those things don't matter if you don't have the right mental fortitude in place and the right habits in place. Love it. How much being a GA to start with and having to work your way from the bottom and being a part of really good programs, is that giving you some perspective on how you talk to your young buck that come in terms of being patient? Like you just said, you just gave great advice on, having great energy every day and bringing that effort no matter what your role is at that point, but being consistent on giving and not being that energy vampire did being a GA and having to start from the bottom and work your way up. Did that, did it start there? That philosophy. I definitely started from the bottom. I went for the GA's and stuff when I finished playing. Didn't get anything to bite, and I met a coach, Dave Schwab. Oliver Cornell, and he offered me what I thought was a pretty good deal. I still think it is. I got to live on campus and a crappy coach's house. I got paid$0 a year from the school. But I was running the AAU program and doing a lot of workouts in clinics and I definitely, for me, definitely knowing that, how can you make a role when you are the bottom of the totem pole? How can you improve things? I remember when I was a younger coach one time, we had a halftime with a coach and we, all these systems were problems. But it was, and then he goes, what about solutions? Everybody knows we're having those problems. Are we just gonna talk about the problems? Are we gonna actually have a solution to them? And definitely, it's a little bit of humble pie when you know, when, especially when you're a player. I think all players that wanna be coaches, imagine it's a lot of glamor, like a oh, big time play call or putting the scheme and all that when really it's a lot of managing, especially as a head coach, I feel like I do more managing now and operational stuff. Getting our program day to day, making sure it's in the right. Scheduling calendars, food, bus trips, everything like that. Getting organized and right. Learning to embrace the dirty work and those kind of things that really aren't that much fun from on a regular basis. But and it is getting a chance to absorb and learn from guys and watch other mannerisms on what ticks'em off. What makes'em really happy. What's, what leads to success overall? And, know I wouldn't have traded my experience for the world for anything. And it was really good. And, especially being a ga it was a great situation where there's only three coaches on staff, so I got to recruit a lot. I got to coach the jv, I got to scout. And gather stats and all that kind of fun stuff, and, learning how what is important to that coach? He's won a lot of games. He's been to the high, the levels you want to be at. What are the things that really are important to him? And are those things important to you too? Or, learning all through those things. It's such a it's such a hard thing to do when you're growing a program and a young coach and figuring things out because you've got a mindset, but you also have to be so accepting that you're gonna make changes. You're gonna you, things are gonna challenge you that you may have never been challenged for with, and when you gotta be that guy that's making those decisions for, the first time. It almost gives you a perspective of all those guys you worked for beforehand. Gosh, I didn't know you had to make that decision. I didn't know you were, 50 times a day you had to be the one that said, yes, no, or this, or that. And it just it's a lot that comes on your plate. When you thought you were working your butt off as an assistant. Now as a head coach, you've got the same work times 10, because now you gotta deal with the boosters and the alumni and the financial aid and all those things that come with it. Let's talk about some basketball. Let's just, let's talk hoops for a while.'cause that's where my brain always goes, and that's what I always love to do. Let's go back to March, April, the season ended. You got the summer ahead of you, you're not gonna have your hands on your guys for four or five months. What are the some of the things that you start doing at the end of a season that helps you get ready for who you want to be and what you want that team to look like the next season? Especially this past year, what I really wanted to focus on was the things you want to ignore is the things you're really bad at. And last year we had a winning record with a negative turnover ratio and a negative rebounding margin. Yeah. That's to me is still shocking. I can't believe we had a winning record with those things. And what is, what were we not doing in practice? What were we not focusing on? How is our style of play affecting those numbers? And ultimately having some tough times. And I brought the whiteboard out for our first practice this year because after watching all our games and watching other teams that we want to emulate, it, you just put it on board. We lose rebounding battles and we lost these games.'cause of that, we lose turnover battles and we lost these games because of that. And no matter how skilled we are offensively or the all the things we do really well, if we can't stop beating ourselves, then we're just never gonna win. And so for me, it's really trying to look at what were we bad at first, and I don't like doing that. I don't think anybody likes, I hate watching our losing games on film. That's like my, that's like my nightmare is, and I, you still gotta do it. You gotta sucker it up because it's, the feeling is almost embarrassment, that's the initial gut feeling you get. But it's, but are you mature enough? Do you care about your guys enough that you can push through that? Oh, woe is me mindset. I don't wanna look at this. Let's just move on. Can we learn things from it? Can we have tough conversations about what we're doing? And can we ultimately get better? And so for me it's really just an, it's like an autopsy of our season. What were we doing well, what we doing poorly? And then trying to be a student of the game. Am I watching the right kind of film? Am I, am I picking some up an a u tournament? I'm watching that. How are guys interacting with each other? What are coaches doing? I don't think any coach ever has fully figured it out, and I definitely haven't. So what can I learn from who can I talk to? What conversations can I have to lead us to? How can I guide our players in the summer to focus on key areas of improvement that I think they need to work on? Like for anybody could be, it would be vastly different. Some guys, hey, you need to take it a little easier this summer. You need to be lighter on your body. You were hurt all banged up last year. Like you need to adjust that. And some guys, you need a gut check. You need to get in the weight room, you need to get stronger. You, you need to get mean. And just trying to support them and help know that even though we're not in practice, we're not in games in the summer, that we're also still conversating and it's not just a see you next year type deal. And knowing that they, what goals can they have to build towards that? And, it's a lot of managing through the phone and watching film and, obviously it's a nice part of the coaching is your summer sometimes, and but obviously trying to, be valuable at that time. Intentional, but also make sure. Just like your players, you're getting time with your family and you're getting time away from it where you can take a step back and be able to see things a little clearer. And, because my least favorite part of the whole year is like our five days after we lose, that is like the most lost I'll ever be. I'm like a puppy. Like I don't have film to watch anymore. I don't have a scouting report to do. There's no practice plan to write, and so trying to get through that funk quickly and then turning it around and focusing on what's in front of you. The control you could control really kicks in at that point, doesn't it? Yeah, because there's no practice tomorrow, you're gonna have a pretty different roster in some shape or form in October, so it's what can I control today? And let's watch film and figure some of that out so we're ready for next year. I remember John, my first head coaching. At the college level, we played Hanover, and at that point they were ranked two or three in the country. They were just monsters, but they weren't real big. The biggest kid may have been six five and we lost by 50. My first game, I think we lost by 50 points. And I remember watching that film three or four times after the season was over, and I was like, they're not bigger than us. They're really not that much talented than us. They kicked our butts in shape. They kicked our butts in rebounding, and they kicked our butts in ball security, and so I was just like you. That was the first thing. I was like, all right, those are the things we gotta fix. Where does that start with ball security taking care of the ball? Because I think that's the hardest thing to teach young players is how important those possessions are that we, every possession needs to end in a shot. Whether we score or not. Yes. We wanna make sure we get a shot. Where does that start for you in terms of taking care of the ball? I think we made a huge emphasis this preseason on fundamentals. Yeah. And I think that's something that as a young, and I'm so young, but as a newer coach, I think it's something that's really over easily overlooked because you have this assumption that, okay, these guys are really good in high school, they're really talented players. We don't need to waste time on passing drills or we don't need to. That's a waste of time. That's gonna be something more productive, a little fancier, a little shinier to appearance where we start all, every practice with five or 10 minutes of passing, and a huge emphasis on two hand catches, meeting the ball and a vision on it, and not leaving your eyes on it. And those are things they teach you when you're in fourth grade. Yeah. It's something that you need to constantly reinforce, constantly have conversations about, because we've lost in game, we didn't have ball security. With one handed catches and or not meeting the ball or getting a little skittish on your back feet, yeah. When you look back on that, just like you said, like that wasn't a talent thing. That was you just being fundamental. Yep. And taking care of it. And I think it, to me, being fundamental for our players takes a lot of stress and lets them play and lets them do some of the fancier moves that they can do because it puts them in better positions and, but most 90% of our passes are gonna be chest passes. Or cross court and very simple things. And the teams that win championships and dominate just catch the two hands. And my old cop, my coach Robbie, at Dubuque, just said, be normal. Be normal when you catch it. Don't get on looky dooky and get a little wild with it. There's times to make plays and make decisions, but for vast majority of times, so we've really put an emphasis on passing and practice and being hard on'em with that. And it's really simple drills. I wouldn't say they're reinventing anything or a lot of jump stopping and catching and, but it's just a constant reinforcement for us that. That's something I can always get better at is en forcing that, talking about it, we win games'cause we're fundamentally better than the other team usually. Yeah. And that's where we lose the margins too. And just know and knowing, and talking where is the help coming from? Where is, we're schematically, how we're gonna get these looks. And we have some really good posts this year and we've gotten some issues where we stare'em down too much and, it's a good thing because we want to get it in there. I always tell like the guard it's responsibility on you. He can't see behind him if he's fronting, and we gotta make sure that you have a connection there where you're talking to each other. So I think communication and fundamentals go huge with ball control and I think you can solve most of your pro a lot of your problems very quickly with that. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And you're doing a great job of this year. You look at, you got a great rebounding margin to start the year. You've got a really strong turnover ratio. So the things that you implemented this year are working and the kids that are buying in, so that's obvious. Physicality is such a big part of the Division three game, especially in your conference. The teams that are the most physical are typically gonna rise to the top because it's a long season. And if you can't pound and take that physicality, you're gonna fall apart the end of the year. What are some of the things that you do every day in practice from that rebounding and that physicality standpoint? I'll start off with saying that we have a great strength coach and we lift twice a week in season. We lift three times a week off until our first game week. And I think that's the biggest piece too, is that beyond some of the fundamentals of rebounding, there's also gotta be, I'm gonna go get that ball. Yeah, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go eyes on it and I'm gonna get it. And you need to be in the right physical shape to go do that. And I think our strength coaches a great job with that, and our guys need to, we don't, we're not, we live the day before games all the time, and we don't have any fear about that total trust in our strength program. And I think that's where our rebound physicality comes from, that weight room first and foremost. And that's why you don't see as many freshmen playing. And college level because of the physicality difference and it takes some time to get in that weight room. But we rebound every day. We do a rebounding drill of some sort every single day. Whether that's, sometimes we do a kind of individual, more individual style where you have to get your own two, rebound by yourself to get out of there. Sometimes it's team on teams and that's coach shooting. They're shooting. But we're doing rebounding every single day, even though it was a double overtime game before, or we had a big game the next day. Because I found that as much trust as you can have in your team that when you get less physical and practice now, I don't mean two and a half hours of physicality before a game, but if you take away physicality an hour and 25 minute practice, then you're just setting yourself up to fail the next day because now you're getting yourself into a mindset of I don't need to be physical today. I just think that's really hard for guys to turn around. And I've made that mistake before trying to save legs or keep'em safe, and in reality they don need to go on battle, yeah. And so I think with that mind, I think rebounding is all about your mindset. Are you gonna go get it? And I, and then your strength, are you strong enough? Because we showed'em on film early in the year. A couple times last year we had a box out, but we didn't hold our ground. And the guy was gonna walk through us and in college they're just not gonna call, they're not gonna bail you out. In high school, that's gonna get bailed out quite a bit. But in college, if you don't hold your spot, they're gonna walk you down and get it over you. And so even positioning isn't enough. Always. You gotta get position and then you gotta hold your ground and you gotta go to war in that moment there. And that's where you win games. And we won games because we've been able to get key rebounds at points, and that was a problem for us last year, when you can't rebound in key moments. Now the best shot in basketball is an offensive rebound three. I tell our guys, I don't care how Chuck it. Goes out, you shoot it. Yeah. There's no question about it. You shoot that ball, and so if that's a huge component of what we want to do, we gotta make sure we take that away on the other end of the floor as well. Yeah. And so we gotta win those battles. What's your offensive rebounding mindset? What do, how are you teaching it? How many guys you crash with, and how much technique are you teaching on the offensive side in terms of how to attack a shoulder and things like that? Do you put a lot of effort in that or is it more just we go, it's effort. Go get it. We get one back, then it'll go, I don't know. I, part of one thing is I don't know if I really know if it's for me, this is just completely me. I don't know how much beneficial it's for us to work a bunch of angles of rebounding. I think it's a pretty instinctual thing. And and obviously there's certain shots like a corner three, you're gonna get more rebounds out of that, and so for us it's more shot choice, and I think you get a lot of offensive rebounds when you shoot shots within the flow of your offense. I think when you shoot really unexpected shots, that's when you don't get any offensive rebounds, because no one he just shot that. I couldn't believe that. Yeah. So for us, I think our offensive rebounding goes more of our shot choices. And then, like for instance, last night. They were racing the ball at the floor. So we went to two back, two guys back. Every time you just get back, we're just gonna, we're gonna lose maybe a little edge on our small boards. We got some bigs banging down there. They're already down there, so there's anion to get one. But we're gonna to basically at this point with lead there's cir circumstantial things we need to consider, and, they had hurt us on that a little bit, so let's adjust and let's get guys back now. And so it can vary, it's, I'll be honest, rebounds a huge piece and I, there's some teams, they just really hammer it. And it's something I've explored, but we, we more just teaching impact and we're more defensive, rebounding group than anything we've had. We just have them guys that are pretty naturally good at it too, and we just let them go loose a little bit. That's the thing about coaching. We talked about the fluidity of it. Sometimes you just got kids that are really good at certain things that you don't have to put a half an hour into it every day. It's not something that you have to teach'cause they're doing it really well. And rebounding is like anything else. The more you do it, the more you start learning those ankles, you start learning those advantage points. Rebounding again is about the effort. Let's roll that into accountability. Because that's a big part of this, what you teach and the boys accepting that, I've gotta be accountable to this. How do you teach accountability without killing confidence? I think it starts with your body language. When you're being coached and the guys know I can get a little feisty from time to time. Especi your early in the year, we expect eye contact and we respect the, you respect. One thing we put a big emphasis here is that you a respect the game and you respect your opponents. And then respecting the game means we talk about, pick a guy up with you, knock him down. If he turns you down, you won that mental battle with him. Yeah. If he throws your hand away and doesn't let you pick him up, that's fine. Like he, he doesn't, we keep pounding on that, right now we're moving forward. Now they're getting a little petty with stuff. And I have a high expectation for our guys to represent themselves because a you're always representing yourself and your family no matter what you know, and what product are you putting out there? Are you a, are you gonna, would your mom be embarrassed by how you're acting right now? Like we, we don't do father or mother calls ever, really, but would she be embarrassed by how you're acting? Would you do this in front of her? And being able to take criticism and, going into being a head coach, that's probably one of the hardest adjustments is that when you're assisting you, you're not their player's friends, right? You're still their, it's, they're still a chain of command, but you can be the soft blow for them. Like coach consume'em, and then you can ease'em down a little bit where, for me now it's having those hard conversations. Like we just had an instance, nothing crazy, but we, an instance where a conversation I did not appreciate with a staff member. I, and then that has to be addressed. You're coming in, you're gonna talk to me, you're gonna look me in the eyes. And if you do that again, there's gonna be real problems now, because we just don't have time for it. And we have a lot of talented players, and if you're gonna act out of control or not up to our standards, it's just not gonna work for you. And we don't, I don't to say we're trying to kick everybody off team, but you're gonna act the way we expect you to at a high level rate and that your family would want you to, and how you'd represent your school. And we try to talk to our guys a lot about, you may think just'cause of the Vision three School that people aren't watching you. If you go out in public on a Saturday night wearing a co basketball sweater and act a fool you just made everybody else in our program look like a fool. And so having that accountability, having be, being able to be coached, be able to respond to that. And I really, I don't like the meaning I, I had a, I don't think the meaning is very good for anybody. I never liked as a player being belittled or anything like that. But there's tough conversations and sometimes your feelings need to be hurt, and you need to be able to get through that because we're not gonna put up with it. We're always trying to work on that and, I just think that goes a lot with recruiting, who you're bringing in, all those kind of things. But ultimately when they're here, their parents are trusting you to help them grow and develop. Yeah. And that, I think that entails tough conversations. I think our Duke guys do a great job with that. Sounds like it. Where are you at with how you perceive discipline? Are you a guy that runs sprints? Are you a pushups guy? Are you a you're gonna sit for a couple games or a sit for a half if you do something wrong? Where are you at with how you handle lack of effort, lack of respect, lack of this or that? Where do you sit with that? I always say point blank, if you're not an effort or a fed guy, you won't last in our program. I will not tolerate that. I'm a big fan of running be and I was too. But my thing is I think it helps you because of in shape. So ultimately I think it can be really positive. I am a fan of maybe sticking you at half court and making everybody else run, because I like to see how the other players will respond to that. Yep. And like for one things, we always did, pushups here always had, and I thought guys were halfing it at times. So we do it, we count'em all together now, so you have to count'em out together. One group, when we do a lot of our drills, the winner, so the drill still has to prove it with a free throw. And if they miss a free throw, then they will run, it'll be less than the losers. Yeah. But if you make it, you can make the losers run a little less too, so validating those kind of things. And I just have a very low tolerance for bad attitudes or bad body language. You're probably gonna sit out. Yeah, too. And if you are always sitting out, then you might as well just always be sat out at that point. You can't, but we always wanna help guys improve, and when we sound harsh with our guys sometimes we are harsh at times, but ultimately we want them to get the best out of them. And even if that's not a basketball related thing, it's just a mental thing where, hey, I, you need to be able to accept being wrong. Not doing well and except coaching. Just like when you graduate, when your boss says you messed up this Excel sheet, are you gonna just not do it or not fix it? You're gonna have to fix it or he'll fire you. And for us, like trying to, build those habits into them and I think the school does a great job, their academics and holding'em accountable there. And we just get to add an extra blow to it at the end of the day. I, that's the thing that most people don't understand about us coaches. We're always thinking about life skills. We're always thinking about who you're gonna be when you're an adult. You when you leave here. Yeah, we're trying to win games. We're trying to make you a better ball player, but gosh darn it, we don't want you to leave here. And being a knucklehead, yes. If you're not a better person than when you came in here, then we blew it. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Talk to me about free throws. I have this conversation with high school coaches all the time. How many free throws are you shooting in practice? What do they look like and what's the expectation to become a better shooter, better free throw shooter outside of practice, more than inside of practice? Where do you sit with that? First of all I try to never talk about free drugs. I just never bring'em up. We either shoot'em or and last year we had a couple games where we went about 10 for 40 in two games. Then we're gonna address it and talk about it. Yeah. But this year, like we shot, knock on one, we shot pretty solid from the pre throw line. I'm a big believer in not talking about it in the practice. Not really harping on'em. I would like, the big things for me is when we do free throws in practice, you're not talking while you're shooting. Like we do, we call'em just speed free throws, where if you're, there's four guys in the hoop one's always getting a drink and you're rotating through that, so you're getting a drink while the are three, nothing rocket science or complicated. My big thing is I just, I, I think shooting is such a confidence mindset thing, and, we do a lot of free throws Hey, we break the huddle down. You gotta make eight before you go, or eight in a row before you leave. And that's on your own, that's on your accountability time. But I do think there is a level of superstition within free throws, and there's a mindset thing there. And I tried and I never, I try to avoid them, and we do what we do in the preseason line of is a lot of our conditioning. The symbols that you get, you put'em all on a line. Everyone has to make a free throw before they leave. And if you miss a free throw, the whole team runs. It's nothing crazy but. And then that, I think that builds in natural pressure into your drills and free throws especially. And then especially knocking out conditioning with it too in the early part of the year. So we do quite a bit of that. We don't doing nearly as much of that, but we try to validate all our drills with a free throw. And we in practice. But I really don't talk about'em much. I just think that a bad user when you talk about'em too much. I agree. I agree. Talk to me about practice planning. How do you go about building your practice? What's that structure look like for you? And I know it changes day in and day out, but are there some consistencies in terms of how you begin, how you end, what you're gonna get in every day, blocks where you know you're gonna move some things around? How do you look at practice planning? Yeah. Obviously, there's like kind of two big segments of it. Your preseason and you're in season. In our preseason, we go about two 20 in the floor. We're involved with a lot of running in between, drill a lot of up and down. We do a lot of five man weaves, a three on two to three on two and a half. We play up and down quite a bit. In the early part of the year we did, I call it vitamins. So every day we had four hoops that were doing five minute chunks of different skill. And we have an emotion hoop. You're working on cutting and passing. One's a wall up hoop. I might be working with the bigs and their ball screen positioning, and the guards come down to us, their ball screen positioning. So a lot of skill work, especially in the early part of the year, we still do skill every single day. Whether these guards, guard big breakdowns. But every practice is gonna start with we move before we stretch. So we always do passing before we stretch. Love it. By the 10 minutes of passing, just jogging around, focusing mentally, then we stretch. And then I like to get shooting up pretty early in practice. We shoot for the first part. And that can vary. Actually I have my practice plans right over here, but and always passing, we usually get our skill workout in, in the beginning of it and, and my assistant, look, mark loves a great job with the guards and I take the bigs and we're usually about as simple as you can be, just drop set finishes and short, shorter cuts and just really getting them warmed up to go, getting their bodies moving. We pretty much all, we do some kind of small sided or small games, whether that's the three on two and a half 11, man, anything like that. Then we just start flowing. So then we go usually right to a def defense, a rebounding segment where you're gonna have to rebound for five, 10 minutes. Or some individual defensive thing where it's a, one-on-one, or something like that. And we can do 20, 25 minutes of defense every single day. We do usually two, one to two drills before Scout, for instance. We'll do a disadvantaged drill, we'll do a no paint drill. We do a lot of four on four cutthroat stop and stay, no dribble stuff. And that's all we always do that before we scout. We always do about 10 to 15 minutes of defensive drills where teams are competing against each other to get wins, to stop and stay on the floor. And then we'll get into our scout. And then after that, we always are playing. We're gonna do some minimal transitional drills. Depending on a time of year, we'll always be up and down in, in transition and we do a lot of ODOD or a score stop score or you have to score, get stopped and then score again to get one point. And then situational, especially in the early part of the year. So that's how our practices flow. I'm a big believer this time of the year, if you can't get it all done in an hour and a half on the floor, you're not very good. Yeah. But we, the expectation, and we always, and there's always a, it always takes a little bit to get to this mindset where just because you're on the floor for an hour and a half, not two and a half like you were earlier in your year, that you are going very hard than an hour and a half. It's not an hour and a half. We might as well do two hours, like then if we're gonna do that, and nobody wants to do that. It's, it is the grind of the season. So we do about a half hour and we always do film before practice. And then pretty much every day we do halftime film too as well. I think especially when we struggle at half in the second half ever, we're gonna do halftime film, so they have to get re-fired up reback to go after, after watching film and get right back into the flow of practice and simulate that game environment. Love that. And it's that's where practice has really gone in the last 10, 15 years. Because if you're not, if you're not throwing situational stuff where it's natural and hey, this is what happens when we've got a four on three break, or we've got a one two adv disadvantage. If you're not practicing that every day, that's where you get bit in the butt outside of your fundamentals and your shape. So I love hearing that. I gotta get C rapids, get to a practice one of these, one of these years. Bub I'm excited about how you practice. Coach, this has been awesome. I'm loving you and loving your program, and obviously I'm a big fan of the Hawks. I wanna do a little rapid fire for you and then we'll, we'll get everybody excited about coming back on Monday to talk some recruiting with you. Okay. Is that cool? Yeah. Let's do it. Best coaching advice you ever received? J it's Jimmy's and Joe's, not X's and O's. Gotta find the players. Yes. Yes. One habit every serious player should build in high school. Recovery. Stretching stretching eating habits. How are you recovering? Your body will slow down when you're 21. It would not be the same as when you're 16. Sleep habits? Yes. Oh, yeah. Yes. Okay. Film or practice. Where do you, where can you, where do you like to make your biggest dent? We've like as far as timeframe? Yeah. In terms of where you feel like you can get the light bulb to turn on. I Film, film. Film. Yeah. Line. Yeah. Toughest road Gym in the American Rivers. Lo College. Lo one stat. You trust more than points per game. Turnover. Margin. Turnover. Yeah, me too. First thing you notice when you're evaluating your recruit about a language, yeah. Culture builder or culture breaker. What's one example of each? A me guy is a breaker. It's all about me. Yeah. And a we guy where it's all about everybody else all the time. As a culture builder, always pointing, always talking, always helping. I love that. What's your favorite off court team activity for your group? We I definitely just I like hanging out watching, hanging out with the guys. Yeah, we things out the court, but anytime where they can be themselves and just be laughing and talking with each other is my favorite. Is there always a movie on in the, on the bus to games? I've been slacking on that. I've been, we can try to get Gloria Road forever to get outta it. We need to put Gloria Road out. We be my talk about it all the time. I always had a rotation of, they got, now they got, everybody had, I'm just as bad. Everybody's on their phones now. Everybody's on their own device. Yeah. When I was coaching you, nobody was on their device. You had one TV and there are two on the bus and that was all I had oh yeah. Everybody's got an iPad now or a phone. Yeah. One book or resource you recommend to young coaches daily Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Great one. I gotta write that one down. I gotta go back and look at that one some more. Final one. What still fires you up every day about coaching? Getting time to spend with our players and help'em grow. I think that's the worst part of the season ending is not being able to be with them three hours a day. That's what sucks about D three. It really is. It's a godsend because. D three allows you to have that break and gives, allows them to breathe and go be a student. And, D three, sometimes they can be multi-sport athletes or at least go use their bodies differently, but not being able to be on the floor with'em is so hard. So Coach, thanks for doing this. You're great. I'm so glad the Hawks have you and I'm always cheering for co. But. Keep busting your butt, man. You're doing great. Keep listening to your brain and good things are coming. Appreciate it. And for those of you listening, coach and I are gonna come back. We're gonna talk recruiting. He's gonna give some advice to student athletes and to parents and the high school coaches, so you don't wanna miss that on Monday. Thanks again, coach. Thank you. You just heard part one of my conversation with Coco men's basketball head coach John Pan. As a coco graduate and co hawk basketball alumnus, I am excited about John's leadership and his passion for the game. It's obvious how much he loves mentoring young men as much as he loves coaching and winning on the court. Don't forget to come back for part two of our conversation where Coach Pan and I shift the focus to recruiting. We talk about the world class experience student athletes get at co college. He also shares his advice for all student athletes, parents, and high school coaches on how to handle the college recruiting process. You don't want to miss it. As always, you can find more coaching tools, resources, and episodes@coachmattrogers.com. Until next time, stay focused on what you can control. Stay humble and keep chasing significance. I.