Episode #147: John Payan on Recruiting

 John Payan on the Recruiting Fit Truth About Division III Basketball | (Part 2) 

In Part 2 of this Significant Coaching conversation, Matt Rogers continues his discussion with John Payan, Head Men’s Basketball Coach at Coe College, with a deep dive into what college basketball recruiting actually looks like from the coach’s seat.

Payan breaks down how he builds his roster—starting with fit as a student and person before anything basketball-related—why winning your “backyard” matters, and how geography, culture, and family support all factor into long-term success. He explains why seeing recruits in person still matters, what body language and behavior reveal during evaluations, and why some traits simply can’t be taught.

This episode covers:

• How coaches truly evaluate recruits beyond film and stats
• Why body language, respect, and response matter more than highlight plays
• The reality of JV development and why playing time is never promised
• What families often misunderstand about Division III basketball
• Honest advice for recruits, parents, and high school coaches navigating the process

This is a truth-filled recruiting conversation—direct, practical, and grounded in long-term development and fit, not shortcuts.

🎧 Missed Part 1? Go back and listen for a coaching-focused conversation on culture, standards, and program building.

Transcript

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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 podcast. I'm your host Matt Rogers. Before we get started, a quick reminder. You can find all of my coaching and recruiting books and classes, podcast episodes, blogs and journals, including the new basketball recruits journal@coachmattrogers.com or@amazon.com. Everything there is built to help families, parents, and coaches make better decisions and take real ownership of their journey. Today is part two of my recruiting conversation with co college men's basketball head coach John Payin. In this episode, coach gets incredibly practical about how he evaluates recruits the importance of strength and physicality at the D three level, why JV opportunities can be the best path for a lot of recruits and why he won't promise playing time to any recruit. As we close the conversation, you're gonna hear Coach, give real advice for recruits, parents and high school coaches. I think you'll walk away feeling a lot more confident about your recruiting path after this conversation. Alright, let's get into it. Here's part two with Coach John Pan. Coach we just had a great conversation about your coaching world and how you build your program and practices. That was awesome. I can't wait to come watch you practice and watch your team work. I want to jump into recruiting. I live in Colorado. You've got a couple of guys that I've talked to that are now Hawks, which I'm thrilled about, and a guy that I coached against and Mr. Beason. And and I love that you recruit all over the country. You're bringing in really great kids from everywhere. What is your overall mentality on building your roster in terms of geography and culture and building that melting pot of athletes. Where does that start for you? For, I think always you have to work around what your school is good at. It'd be foolish for me to try to recruit, like we are a different school. We need to recruit to co. Yeah. At the end of the day, they need to be able to fit at co college as a student. They can't fit as that, but they fit in our basketball program. There's gonna be a disconnect. And for geography we always have to win Iowa. I think that there, there's, I love our Colorado, our Arizona guys, they do a great job for us. The second, you can't win your backyard, you can't win the local states and you became become a 18 plus state roster. I just think you're gonna have issues with, crowds, family support, being too separated and as much as we love our guys from out west, are we, how can we not be? Is everyone here local, thinks CO is a dump or CO is no good to go to. Then you got, then you have, if you have to go really far to only get certain kids, there's also a fundamental issue with what's going on with you. Yeah. We need to win our backyard. We need to be able to get Iowa kids here at co. We've done a good job with that and in Midwest as a whole. And then as far as geography, I like to accent with kids from out west, that, that fit really well with our school. We have a resource of the airport and just being right here in the city. A kid from Denver, Phoenix is not gonna be quite the culture shock that some schools in our league might be. And there's nothing against those. But, we do have a mall, we do have movie theaters, we have chain restaurants. It's not, there's no traffic. There's no major city thing. But it's also not quite shocking to the experience, and so that's why I think we can get big and small school kids and they can both really enjoy their experience here. Big broad recruiting is always seeing them in person. And that doesn't mean to say that we can't ever have a kid we didn't see in person. That's not a, it's not a black and white situation. It's grayer. But if I can see a kid in person that means huge. That's, it's a huge thing for us because the biggest thing I don't wanna see when I'm recruiting, all right? And usually you have a decent idea when you go into a tournament, you'll find some diamonds in a rough, you'll find guys you hadn't seen'cause you're always keeping an open eye. But a lot of times you come in with a list of, okay, here's some positional guy, here's their GPA, here's their interest level. Okay, I got a good feel. Especially if I've seen, let's say I have a kid recommended I've seen his film, high school film or whatever, and I'm going out to a tournament and I sit in my, I sit down in front row and watching him, if he's disrespectful to his coach, if he's disrespectful to his teammates, if he's a crybaby at every call if he can't figure it out there. I think highly of our programing myself a lot of times, but I don't think I can fundamentally change humans. Yeah. In that sense. Where, for instance, especially let's say have a kid and is a little off child, but if a kid comes on a visit and he is a little disrespectful to his mom, he's not great body language with her. He complaining to her. If you're confident enough to not be super respectful of your parent in front of me. Probably gonna be really disrespectful to me when your parent's not around. And like I said, it's not black and white. It's a gray situation where things can always change. There can be circumstances, but for me, I don't want to have to coach a bunch of guys to play hard at Good Bottom anyways. Like we always not talk about it, emphasize it. If I'm spending most of my time in practice or a game talking about response and body language, all games we've watched this year, I thought we've had bad, we've had bad body language at times. And I think that's a direct correlation to how you play. Yeah. And I think it's foolish to try to separate the human emotion from the sport when they're so intertwined. And so obviously that's a huge thing as far as the basketball side of things. I'm always looking at things we can't teach. Your foot speed your size and your measurements, your physicality. Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? Like things like that, those things are really important to me because those are your base. I believe in our weight program, I believe in our skill development. But like for instance, my sister's five foot, nothing. I love her to death, but I probably could not make her into a varsity basketball player for us, no matter how much I try, that's probably the least fair part of recruiting is because you're making evaluations and my job and my livelihood is tied to this job. We have to. Bring in varsity players help us win. Like as much as I love, the academics and that's a huge part of it. We still need to win ball games for our program to be successful. So we have to have talented players and there's guys that have great mindset, great work ethic, great everything, but I. Sometimes their bodies will not allow them to perform at the level they would like to. And there's guys that are super talented, but their mindset won't allow them to perform at the me, the talent you want them to as well. So there's always a push pull. I think with the body language and with your physical attributes, I don't get too spooked by funky shooting motions. If you're comfortable with it, and I think you can fix those things and put time into'em and help them with that. Yeah, you can, if you run a seven second 40. It is gonna be tough for us to help you really improve that in a big time play, and there's always my, some guys have different high school situations where that coach is big time in a strength and big time in development, or maybe some guys that don't have that experience as well. And so you can see that kind of what is there, and then also ultimately what is their potential to grow. Because you're not taking'em as 17 year olds. What are they gonna look like in two to three years when you need them to play for you? Or do you think that they're gonna grow into their body? Do you think they're gonna be a little gangly right now and hey, this needs a little time to mature? And that's why we're fortunate at CO right now we have a really strong program where we have a lot of upperclassmen that take all five of our starters, have played JV at some. And that's awesome. What a great recruiting tool that is. That's fantastic. I think and I'll tell you what, and any recruit, listen to this. I've ne I don't promise plenty time to anybody because I think it's a false notion. It's a way to say yourself to fail with a recruit on a personal level. Yeah. For instance, if I really like you, Matt, and think you could come help us play, and I think you're a stud, and I say, I tell you, Hey, I think you're gonna meet you 10 minutes a game next year, and then you play four minutes a game. We already had a break of trust. Yep. I already lied to you. And even in the flip side, you played more than that. I lied to you too. Yeah. We don't recruit players to be JV guys. We recruit guys to be varsity guys, but we understand that to be a championship level team, you're probably not gonna get that done with five freshmen. Yeah. It's just too much for'em to learn, too much for them to handle. They need even be able to be mixed into the flow with older guys that can help them develop. And then when it's their time to shine. Cooper Nailer, he's a, he was an all conference guard for, he had 38 points last night. He didn't play a second of VARs season after Christmas his freshman year. He, and you can tell you this too, he came in, wasn't in great shape. Didn't have a good understanding of the offense at first, but he, all of a sudden he's playing 30 minutes of game in jv, playing scout, getting all these reps, getting comfortable. This bar's, the guy can't guard me. Now all of a sudden, I get in the flow of things and then gets an opportunity, kills it, gets himself into rotation. He is a three year start, yeah. And I just think that especially in the modern landscape of basketball where development is division one coaches will say they develop, but I, and I don't blame'em either. If you could bring in 4 22 year olds that are ready to go right away. Yeah. Who's gonna say not to do that? Yeah. Like that's it's also broken to say they shouldn't do that, if the rules allow that, then they're gonna do that. Yeah. We don't live in that world, and I think it helps our level because we can focus on high school guys that. A higher level might say, ah, he is gonna take too long. He is gonna take too long. We don't wanna waste time. Or we might bring him in, but the next year, a 22-year-old comes in right on top of you, for us, and we can really sell that because we are trying to develop you and we know you're not ready and we want you to be ready and put that time with you. Yeah, it's a lot easier to say. He is six nine. Or man, he is faster than any kid I've seen this year. He is. Can't shoot it worth a lick, but man, is he fast. There's certain things that at the D three level, you have to swallow a little bit and say, I can't find that in its perfect form, but I'll take a guy that maybe I can help him get there. I love that. Let's flip the coin here. Why should a recruit consider Cole? Why should they look at Cole really hard and playing at that school? I think there's three big things we talk about in recruiting with our guys. One, our academics are off the chart. In my time here had a hundred percent job of secondary school placement, and I think COVID does an elite job of placing people in jobs. Yeah. I like to consider myself a renaissance man. I love the liberal arts experience. I love learning different things. Having interest in things outside of basketball. I think it's huge for young athletes. Something that I had to work on myself. Finding more interest that you're not just you're wide, you have diverse thought process, but at the end of the day, your college experience is to prime you to get a job. And I think that within our program, with our internship opportunities at CO and our academic strength, that our guys get jobs because they're put in place to do that. And I think that being on a college basketball team or any college athletic team, I think team sport may be a little more, is that you have to be able to work together. You have to be accepted out. I was the, I was top dog in my high school. Now I'm bottom of the totem pole. I'm the youngest guy now. Can you work through those things? Can you ask questions? Can you put your head down and work and rise your way up through those ranks? I think those are super applicable to your jobs and your career going forward. That those and also making sacrifices, even though the Division three athletic experience is a little looser in some ways. There's gonna be times where it's a Friday night, all your buddies are going out to the bar and having a good time, and you're of age and you can do it, but you have a game that next day, and you need to get down. I have 6:00 AM practice that next day I need to go to bed at 9:00 PM tonight. Yeah. And I think those habits that I always say college basketball is super fun, but it's not always fun. Yeah, there's a lot of moments where it's not fun, and I think that's where you learn the most from. It is where it's not fun that you can go oh man, I know this coach is mad at me today. I know this practice is gonna stink. I know we're gonna get up and down. I know we're gonna get chewed on. But can you respond to that? Can you get through that and then still be successful? Because that'd the biggest thing for me as academics at CO are so strong. And then I think the culture of our team is really strong. Secondly I think our guys are super welcoming and I think that ultimately you make your best friends in life. A lot of times with your college teammates, because it's different than high school. You grow up together. You probably, maybe you're playing on the same block for eight years, it's a different kind. But then when you're in college, you're all adults. You're all on your own. There's no oversight for you really anymore. As much as we say we oversee them, we're not, we they have their freedom and they can make their choices. And I think that experience. Going with these guys that are all in the same spot as you. You're all broke, you're all just hungry. You're grinding, you're playing hoops, you're getting your academics done. I think that experience build such close friendships compared to other things. And that, that's, I think our team does a great job at that. And they all live together in some way or form and dorms, houses, whatever. Every single player on our team lives with another player. Yeah. And I think that's just a huge testament to that. And then third, I think we play a fun style of basketball. I will say I have extremely high expectations. I maybe have a screw loose, but I think I have not met a coach. That's good. That does not have a screw loose in them. That's for sure. And I think that, and I think right now we're a super youthful program. I'm 29, my assistant's my age. We're a young program. I think that gives a lot of understand. I like rap music still. We play music at practice. But when it's time to put the music off and get into defense, we do that. And I consider myself a pretty normal guy off the court where you can talk to and understand with. Obviously it's a relationship that's different on the court and we have that expectation. But I think we play a fun style and I think I would, the guys make a lot of choices and play and, especially if you have tools to do it, I'm gonna let you do it, and we're gonna try to build around what we're strong at or the other way around. And I'll add to that, that there's 40 years of us former Hawk players that we still love, co We still love each other. It's still a brotherhood to us. We still root for you guys. We're still a phone call away for every kid that comes there that wants some help, wants some advice, wants some direction. So it's a great place to, to have your four years of college. So that that's awesome. Talk to me a little bit about. What families and recruits misunderstand about D three? I think that it's, that that it's a anything conjoin type deal, that, you know that, oh, that's always a funny one to me, yeah. Oh, I Illinois didn't recruit me, so this school will take me and I'll be really good there. It, I think it's the level of commitment and the skill and physicality. I always tell this is beating the drum, but I always tell kids, go watch a game before you think you can play somewhere. Yep. Go watch it and go, oh, those guys are big and mean and play really hard and are coached hard and they have high expectations for them, and all of a sudden you look out there and there's not one freshman out there playing, and having that. And I think it's a great style of ball. I think you watch our warmups, it's like an NBA dunk contest. You watch our games, our battles, the coaches we play against are really good. It's their job to win just as much as mine is. There's a lot of desperation out there to win and perform at a high level. And I think that made the biggest understanding is the grind of it all, that it's a lot more than high school. And it's a lot and it's hard to start over in the bottom of the totem pole. Yeah, it is. Coach. Loving the conversation. I want to use you as the master teacher you are, and give some advice. What advice would you give to a 15 to 18-year-old that really wants to play in college, wants to be a college basketball player? How do they go about it? If they want to play for somebody like you what direction would you give them in terms of not only their ability, but also how to communicate that? I wanna be seen, coach. I wanna be evaluated by you. The big thing is that a u for all its problems is really good tool, and finding the right fit of an AAU team, don't go to the guy selling you a golden pipe, a golden dream and everything like that. Like, where are they and where are they going? For instance, for an Iowa kid if you're not division one prospect and all of a sudden you're in Atlanta, you're in Houston, you're in South Carolina, you're in Pennsylvania, and now you're never in the Midwest for a tournament. Mo no. D two, D three NEI coach is gonna be out in the East coast or out in the south the entire summer recruiting you. Yeah. And so that's a big thing to look at is where are you playing at? I go to Kansas City a lot, Des Moines a lot, Chicago a lot. Yep. I'm able to see Colorado, Arizona kids there too, for in, and also building relationships, going to elite camps, if there's an elite camp open, go to it. There's no better way to be seen as going to Elite camp because I do think emailing is effective. I think DMing is effective. I think following on Twitter is effective, but can you put yourself on that campus as a sophomore or a junior and be seen and go, okay, I'll put him on a big board and we'll keep a tabs on him and he had 18 points a game his junior year. I'm gonna go check him out in AAU now. He played really well there. I'm liking that, and I think also understanding. What you want out of your academic experience too, as well. Are and I think that, I think kids sometimes go wrong with like my two, 18 visits. I think you should take visits. I'm not saying that, but are you a kid that's just farming that graphic on Twitter that you can post and feel good about it? Like you're gonna get 18 of'em, do you like that? I don't mind the graphic part. I just think, I think you can farm'em too much. You can collect them like Pokemon cards, yeah. I don't get it. I don't get it. If I Why you, if I want, I'm not putting every girl I date on. I'm not taking a picture of her, putting her on Twitter and say, I dated this girl. Yeah. Thinking I'm gonna get another date. That's, and then the flip side would be, you can ch, you can chum the water a little bit, and I do think there is some of that where oh, Dubuque recruited that kid. We probably should get on'em now. Maybe, there's some benefits in that sense, but I do get turned off. When does that work? So I don't, I get turned off when a kid has 30 of them. Yeah. I do honest with you because are you really putting time and effort into 30 schools? That's a lot. That's a lot. I'm not sure what they're trying to tell me as a coach. Yeah. Are you trying to tell me you're really good and all these other coaches think so too? Is that your mindset or are you telling me you had a great visit, you loved it there you're giving them praise and thanking them and that's where you might, you're probably gonna go, yeah. Now I'm going I guess you're going there. So I, to me, I don't understand how I'm supposed to think as a college recruiter. Yeah. You post eight schools you went and visited to in your uniform. You know what I mean? And that's the kind of the ugly part is you wanna make sure they have a great visit and make'em feel like they're wanted, especially when you want'em. Yeah. But you gotta play that game and you gotta make sure, that's different between you and the recruit, right? Yeah. If they go post it so they could get another visit. Now, that relationship they just built with you, I feel like it's tarnished a little bit. Yeah. I don't know. I'm pretty new age on I, I'm old John. I don't know. I said there's a certain value where it hits where I'm like, what's going on at this point? That's that's a lot. I don't think I've ever talked to 15 different organizations period. About anything, but if you like us Wartburg and Dubuque, I get that, like you're all kind, we're all pretty similar. And I think the big thing is as much as I love Coke. I think a lot of schools in our league have a lot of similar strengths. Yeah. And so to me it is when you're deciding between two schools that are pretty similar academically. Where do you think A, you can get jobs out of this school? Yep. And B, do you think that this program fits your style of play and what you want to experience out of. Because I don't want, I think code's the best. I work here, I think they're the best, but they're similar. There's a lot of great schools out there and do a lot of good things, and that's foolish to not think that and so for us, recruiting kids, we wanna be able to establish a relationship. But I also, my big thing is I don't wanna super bug you either, because I think coaches can go astray when they text the kid seven days a week. Yeah. Yeah.'cause I don't text our players seven days a week. I see'em all the time, but I don't text'em at 8:00 PM How was your day at school today? I'll see you. I practice. How you doing? Like we wanna make sure you're wanted and feel like you're connected, but also not overload you and feel like, what kind of relationship is this? I feel like I'm just getting info from the salesman every single day, yeah. So that I love that. But the other side of it is every time a kid does, comes to visit and the NCAA doesn't allow this, but if, even if it did, would you post that kid's picture on your Twitter account just'cause they came and visited? Probably not. Tell me this. Imagine I'm a 17-year-old. I'm going into my. Mid through my junior year. I'm gonna be a senior this summer. How do I know you like me? How do you know you're serious about How do I know CO and Coach Pan is interested in me? How would I know that? My big thing is phone calls. I like a phone call. Try to get'em on the phone quickly. And that'd be a big thing. And then depending on how that went, like how much are we communicating now? Am I just completely ghosted you now? Have you ghosted me now? Are we able to, and to me it's can we maintain a normal conver, like a normal pattern of communication? Like it is kinda like you said, the girlfriends if you like a girl, you don't text her 45 times a day and just blow her phone up nonstop. You gotta have a little feel to you a little, a little swag to it, and wasn't texting when I was that age, you letters. I don't know. And but the big thing is that we want you out and visit. Yeah. And to go along with the offers. We really don't do the offers unless you come. Yeah. And because you can, I could hand out a hundred offers probably through my emails today on the phone, and are you, and are you taking, and for me it's are you taking the time to actually talk to our academics? Maybe meet with the professor, see the academic side, if if we're trying to show you all those things and then hammer a bunch of basketball on you, we're probably really interested in you. Yeah. And then eventually am I going to your AAU tournaments? Am I going to evaluate you in person? Maybe I'm done evaluating you, but now I'm just. Getting a face-to-face opportunity to talk with you about, just chat. Yeah. And so that'd be the big things and is invites and conversations and stuff like that. And that'd be the biggest thing I would say would be interest level is that we are also being very proactive on our end as well with you. Yeah. Investment goes two ways. If we're, if you're getting phone calls from us, we're offering a visit to you, we're reaching out to you and keeping you updated on our season, but you're not giving us any feedback. We got probably another 50 kids we're gonna look at and we can move on. That's the name. We're looking for six to eight kids that help us a year, and there's. A hundred thousand players that would jump a bit to play back college basketball. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's not quite like football where you can bring in bigger numbers of quarterbacks and receivers and, I'm not saying they're same anymore, but it's a bigger pool, and different, and we have a much smaller pool of needs we have every year. Yeah. So we gotta be very deliberate and gotta think that I, to me, any recruit if I can't see them fitting in as a normal student at co. It's probably not gonna work. Because what if they tailor ACL? I don't want that to happen. But what happens then? Oh, you're just that miserable now. Yeah. So we gotta make sure they're the right fit academically and financially too, at our level. I'll never lie to a kid about price or anything, and I always hammer them to make sure that they understand. What scholarships are being offered to them? Does the family think it's comfortable? Is it worth the investment ultimately? Yeah. And in theory you could lose a kid over that, but I wouldn't want'em anyway'cause it wouldn't be a right fit for'em. That's right. One quick piece of advice to parents. Who's got a kid that is trying to get recruited, what would you tell them? Save money on trainers, make'em play open gym. Yeah. Play for a smart a u team. Don't spend a hundred thousand dollars on your kids' development and a u tickets and flights and put yourself in a financial position that maybe a division three could have been available, but now you spent$10,000 in the last four months on Yeah. While recruiting services and also the big thing is if you want a recruiting service, there's nothing wrong with them. But I think those are more national based for division three. If you are a Cedar Rapids kid and you say, I wanna play in Iowa. I'm, I wanna play in Iowa or Illinois, then you probably don't need to spend a dime on anything. 10 emails, 10 phone calls. Yeah. Colorado kid or Arizona kid. I don't, I wanna play in the Midwest. I wanna open up. That's a different story, and make sure you're going with the right guys and you're doing your research on those guys. And a lot of'em do really good stuff. But in anything, like any business there's guys that are gonna sell you snake oil too, and or say I have relationship with college coaches when they really don't, or anything like that. So just make sure you have the right feel. I think the biggest thing is finding where you think you wanna fit at. Are you a local guy? Are you a national guy? And don't kid yourself, don't just say I'll go anywhere. Have a little idea. I'm not, it can change, it can morph. But overall, like if you're a local Iowa kid and you want to go to an Iowa D three N ai, juco. They're all here, yeah. They're close to you, they're drivable. Go to games, immerse yourself. Learn about it. Be realistic with your skillset and your potential. And, try to find the right fit and ultimately have a big picture view of what this grad, what the degree looks like when you graduate, whether you scored two points or 2000. Yeah. Yep. There's a really good book I heard John, that walks families through all this if they want to go check it out. It's called Significant recruiting. Last piece of advice to high school coaches that want to build a relationship with, you wanna learn from, you wanna be able to have a pipeline to send kids to you. What would you advise them to do? I'd say, coaches too. Yeah. I would say, big things if you're local, make sure you go to games. Like I, it like, it's so funny. I used to coach like, is it okay if we bring our whole team? Yes. Yeah, you could bring'em all, you can come in every game for free. Yeah. I'll let you in. Yeah. I have a pass list. I'll put you on the pass list. I'd never say no to that. And I love when coaches ask those kind of questions, and it's different for us. We're never gonna go, we're bringing our whole team down to Cedar Rapids Prairie High School. That's just not realistic with all the different guys we have and every, and it is not really much of a point. I would say bring your teams, reach out to these coaches. I don't even, I would assume D two and D one will let you in for free a lot of times too. Yeah. Or try to help you out with tickets and stuff like that, and I think just being proactive with that. And, I always try to work on that too. I can always do a better job with that, but, Hey. Co Mount Mercy and co have elite camps. The next two weeks you guys should probably check'em out, and stuff like that and help'em out. And I'll be honest with you, an email from a college coach comes across the slog of emails. I get a lot quicker than random players too. Yeah. And and they spent a lot of time with them. And we had a, for instance, we had a kid at a great kid visit from Colorado Springs. And his coach just emailed me, Colt emailed me, I got on the phone with him. I can't visited two weeks later, and so love, that's a little proactivity and especially if you want to help your guys out, and I, and we like winning program players too. So if you're a winning program coach and I look across and it says three state titles and eight state appearances. And hey, I think this could be really good for you. You probably know what you're talking about. Probably, definitely things like that. Good. Comes from good oftentimes. Yes. Yeah. Coach, thank you for doing this. Thanks for your time. I know you're in the middle of your season, so it means a ton to me that you would you'd sacrifice an hour and 15 minutes to spend with us and share your knowledge and your experience with our families and our listeners. So keep doing what you're doing man. I'm in your corner and anything I can do to help, you've got me 24 7. I appreciate you having me on, coach. My pleasure, buddy. Good luck. Thank you. You just heard part two of my conversation with Coco Men's basketball head coach John Pan, and if you're a recruit or a parent or a high school coach, there was a lot of real truth packed into this one. John pulled back the curtain on how roster decisions are actually made, including fit as a student, fit as a person, body language communication, and why development still matters at the division three level. No promises, no shortcuts, just honest evaluation and long-term thinking. If you miss part one of our conversation, make sure you go back and listen. That conversation was all about how he's building a powerhouse Division three program and doing it the right way. And as always, you can find more tools, resources, books, and journals to support your recruiting journey@coachmattrogers.com. Until next time, stay focused on what you can control. Stay humble and keep chasing significance.