Juli Fulks on the Neuroscience of Trust, Offensive Rebounding, and Zone Defensive Principles {Transylvania}

Inside the Episode

It was one heck of a year for Transylvania WBB and Head Coach, Juli Fulks, as the completed one of the best seasons in all of basketball on their way to an undefeated 2023 DIII National Championship. We were fortunate to have Coach Fulks on the podcast this week to give us a peek under the hood about some of the core concepts she’s used to build her program including:

• The Neuroscience of Trust and Communication: In the first part of the episode we detail much of what goes into Coach Fulks’ scientific approach to culture-building. We discuss how science and data help her form her team’s building blocks of trust, communication, tone, leadership, and much more. An excellent segment with a ton of practical coaching nuggets. 
• Analytics that Matter: During “Start, Sub, or Sit?!” we hear Coach Fulks’ thoughts on the key stats that matter when it comes to winning games. You’ll hear ideas on offensive rebounding (sending all five players!), shot selection, turnover percentage, fouling, and more. 
• From “Man” to “Zone”: Coach Fulks discusses on the podcast the why’s and how’s of her change from a “Man to Man” to “Zone” coach this past season. A really interesting conversation hear on coaching to strengths and backing it up with analytics.

Transcript

Juli Fulks 00:00

And when you walk into the gym, people give you a pass on behavior. You know, so for all of a sudden you were able to interact with people, yell at people, and do different things that for whatever reason, if we did any other place, that would not be acceptable behavior.

And I have realized kind of in my core personality, I’ve never been okay with that. I can think of plenty of moments when I was back on the West Coast and we were playing a game and I was so angry and so mad, you know, I literally see red, you can’t coach from a great place in that perspective. I have spent a lot of time, I’ll be honest, you know, there’s been a lot of meditation, a lot of things to help me handle the anxiety of the big moments to be able to coach calmly. 

Dan 00:41

Hi, I’m Dan Krakorian, and I’m Patrick Carney, and welcome to Slapping Glass, exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies, and coaches from around the world. Today, we’re excited to welcome the head coach to the 2023 Division III women’s basketball national champions from Transylvania, Julie Folks. After an undefeated run to the national championship, Coach Folks joins us today to discuss the strategies and neuroscience behind building a culture, and we talk zone defenses and analytics that matter during the always fun start, sub, or sit.

Please enjoy our conversation with Coach Juli Folks. Coach, congrats on an unbelievable season, and thank you so much for making some time for us today. We’re excited to talk to you. 

Juli Fulks 02:24

Thank you. I was excited when I got the invite. The both of you have been doing amazing work and, you know, what better way is there to, you know, start your day talking basketball and culture and rebounding? You know, I think this is the part of the job that we love to do. So I was excited to join you today and see where we take this. 

Pat 02:40

Thank you, Coach, we appreciate that. So, Coach, we would like to start right with what you just mentioned, which is culture. And we’ve had multiple conversations, different guests on the podcast, about how they build their own unique cultures. And there was a really great article a while back on you and how you measure your culture and how you have different things that you use, data and science, to really study and measure the impact of what you build. And we wanted to start there with this conversation and first of all, how you build the culture, but then specifically to how you measure it for success. 

Juli Fulks 03:16

The way you started is probably a great description in terms of everybody’s culture and that it’s unique. And I am a big believer that the leader is in charge of creating the vision of their culture. And so what are their core values? What are the systems in place that they’re going to have for their culture? What is the language that they use? What is the common purpose? And for those leaders, it does need to still reflect who they are.

And so, you know, probably a part of my core personality is I grew up always interested in the sciences. And there’s no doubt my players all think that I am a nerd. I have now surrounded my staff members who also have a similar value in science and numbers and nerdiness. And, you know, I think I didn’t realize it early on in my career. And then as you move forward, I always wanted to know the why. And not just the why, why you do things, you know, the why on a, honestly, a biological and neurological function of how do these things happen? How do you build trust? How do you build connection? Why do our brains work this way? And that led many years later, I have a PhD in leadership studies.

But the whole focus was how do we use communication to build trust and culture and teams? How does that work from a neuroscience level? And, you know, when I think about our team, and I think about our core values on the wall behind me, it says show up, work hard, adapt. And that is the one of the language sets that we use. But really, I think, you know, maybe because of my science background, I am a huge believer in systems. And, you know, what are the systems that we are going to put in place that demonstrate our culture? And then similarly, what are the systems that we put in place for basketball? And I believe that the consistency of systems allows confidence. And so hopefully, we are doing something from a leadership standpoint within our coaching staff, that we are constantly adding to what is our culture. And I’m sure you guys know and believe, you know, culture is something you have to build every day. If you leave a void, somebody else is going to fill in for you. And, you know, so all of those things matter to us.

And I thought it was interesting that you talked about, you know, the positive touches. And us coaches, we are the stealers of all things. I think one of the really interesting parts from a neuroscience perspective is all the things that happen when you’re having, we call them positive touches. But they’re all the things that we see in games, whether it is the high fives, the chest bumps. When I’ve worked with different teams around the country in different sports, it’s interesting for me to hear all the different ways that different teams have positive touches. I worked with a softball team and they were talking about, you know, tapping helmets, lacrosse, they’re tapping sticks. And we went down a, you know, a dark hole in whether tapping sticks has the same effects. But, you know, I really believe it is all about kind of the systems you have in place to help build the confidence in your team of what to expect every day when they walk in the gym. 

Pat 06:14

Coach, if I could go back, you mentioned, you know, your PhD in leadership studies. I’d like to ask you about that for a second and maybe specifically, and I’m not sure exactly, you know, what you studied within that PhD, but the science of trust, you mentioned it once and what you found through theory and practice, obviously, about how trust is built through these kinds of interactions. 

Juli Fulks 06:38

There is a gentleman that’s at the university at Penn, and he had what I thought might have been my dream job. He has a position that crosses their business school, their med school, and their psychology department. And what his whole purpose is is kind of using neuroscience on how trust is established in different cultures. And they were able to do kind of all these, you know, using MRI, able to, you know, see, I won’t go into the depths of the science, but, you know, how does your brain light up when different things happen? And different business models that people can use. And we know the science of touch is obviously a really important one. When you go back, you know, to when you’re a baby, you need your mom to pick you up and hold you. So there’s different things that matter. And so as a coaching staff, we know some things that matter, and one of them is using people’s names. And that seems like an obvious no-brainer, but every time we’re able to use somebody’s name, your brain lights up. You know, obviously all the positive touches, one of the ways we call it compliments, you know, it’s unexpected phrase. And one of the phrases that we use all the time in our coaching staff is, phrase the behavior you want repeated. And we are kind of probably an extreme, and this is based on science too, we are extreme staff on happiness and positivity and gratitude in the belief how much further you can take things using those as your poor background. We are always trying to talk about the things that happen that we want repeated. And we use as a measuring stick with our team, we have identifiable basketball things of our culture. And we are always looking for when other people talk about us as our culture. We want our culture to be so strong and powerful that other people, when they see it, they can identify the things that matter to us. And so I think, you know, those kinds of things for everybody who’s building a system, you know, you really need to know what matters to your system. But for me, I really like taking it from, you know, what is the neuroscience thing that matters and why? And so, you know, eye contact is a great one that many of our players tell you that, you know, they struggle with that. And I think as a generational shift, and we won’t go down the cell phone piece of how much of that is affected language and communication, but different parts that we really work on because we know for them personally, these are the ways you build connection with other people. 

Dan 08:58

Coach, we don’t have to go down that rabbit hole in all the technology. But when you do get a freshman, what are you seeing in terms of their communication that your program is hoping to fill in the gaps and improve for them? 

Juli Fulks 09:09

But one reality is cell phones have changed communication. And I think it’ll be interesting in 20 years of data why that’s happened. And one of the things that we know now is it’s just decreased your practice of communicating. And so I’m much older, I think, than both of you. And so the only choice I had when I was young, college, to talk to somebody was to talk to somebody or pick a phone, talk to somebody. And so you just had a lot of practice of having a one-on-one conversation and meeting people. And then the confidence you had of whether that went well or didn’t go well. And we now know there’s a lot of anxiety around communication.

And so with college students, one of the things that we do is we’ve put in a system for them to become better communicators. We try to keep it really simple. And we practice it because whether they’re talking to their professors, whether they’re talking to their teammates, talking to recruits and their parents, we need them to help feel better about their ability to communicate. And so that matters to us.

The keywords that we have in our practice all the time is we say the word tone. And we have some very introverted players. We have some very extroverted players. But one of the games that we play at the beginning of the year is it’s a little comedy club. And we have one of our extroverted players stand up, and we take a phrase. And it could be a phrase like, that’s your box out. And then we pick 10 different tones, five different tones. And our extroverted player acts those out, whether it is angry, whether it is excitement, enthusiasm, disgust. We believe you’ve got to practice all of these things. And we talk about that language from two perspectives. Obviously, we play an emotional sport. And so one of the things that we work on is how can we communicate with our players in the right tone?

And that obviously can be very hard when you are in the national championship and the other team is making a run, and you’re trying to keep it together. But one of the things we talk about is also the grace and ability to let your other teammates have those moments where they didn’t say anything in the right tone. And so it is the giver of the tone and the receiver of the tone, both of them’s together in a high trust culture. We are able to forgive our teammate when they don’t say something to us in the exact way that we want to hear it.

And I think once you help explain that to them, they’re much more forgiving. And even as coaches, I have made every mistake in the book. And when I look back, there are so many moments I wish I could undo. And there are very specifically moments I wish I could undo how I said something. And hopefully for all of us, our players, our coaching staff, when the moment gets the best of us, hopefully we have enough rapport built up with our players. They have it with each other that when we don’t say things perfectly, we understand the part of our culture that matters that we work on that, but it also matters that the other side works on hearing that. 

Juli Fulks 12:10

We do different things like that. I think you have to practice being good teammates. You have to practice using communication the same way you practice the Xs and Os to have a championship culture. 

Dan 12:22

Coach, I’m sure there’s probably a lot of overlap, but in this communication aspect, there’s always a difference between the peer to peer, just teammate to teammate, but then when it’s peer to peer, but one of them’s the leader and like being a leader and talking to your teammates, how does that the tone or how are you helping them with leadership communication? 

Juli Fulks 12:40

That’s a great question. We are a serve-down culture. So it is my job to serve all of the coaches and players under me. It is the assistant’s job to serve down. It’s the senior’s jobs to serve down. The freshmen, in my opinion, should always be the one that had the least responsibility because they are going through the biggest life change.

And teaching players how to communicate starts with being the role model of what that communication looks like. Our staff, we really believe that we are educators first. And every player learns in different ways. And so it’s my job. We talk about being able to do adapt. It is adapting to everything. It’s adapting to the game plan the other people have when we go out and play. It is adapting to how your teammates need to hear things or how they’re going to say things. And we put a premium on the diversity of our team in all ways. And that includes leadership. And while I believe everybody has to lead on our team, there are going to be natural leadership styles for our players. And it’s important to understand them while they grow their others. They’re still college athletes. And so helping them develop as leaders starts with, what is your most natural way that you lead? And when I take our seniors, we had four seniors that started this year, they all lead in really different ways. Our point guard, we joke she was the silent assassin and her preferred way of leading was by example. I’m going to outwork everybody. I’m going to do everything the right way. And her least preferred because she is a true introvert is to do it vocally. But when it’s your point guard, that can be challenging. And we always joked with her, she wouldn’t speak until losing was on the line. And if losing was on the line, she would say everything that she needed to say, but it was always going to be in the right tone. It’s just her personality. Then we have our Eastern Kentucky enforcer who brings a lot of intensity and fierceness to the game. And our players know that she’s going to say things and she’s going to say exactly what she’s thinking. And it’s going to come with a lot more intensity. And so for her, that matter that we had that intensity and that person who was going to showcase the fierceness that we play the game, but that also meant there was going to be times that she probably didn’t say everything exactly how everybody would want to hear it. And so her job, we had the teachers, you had to build amazing connections for your team in the moment that this was going to happen and continue working. And so I think that’s how we hopefully approach everything with our athletes. When you come in, who are you as a leader, as a person, as a player, as a citizen of this campus, what are you naturally good at? What are the things that are going to be uncomfortable that we’re going to work to grow that? And teaching communication, the first thing really is show them what it looks like and then give them a chance to practice it. That efficacy of practicing everything and mastering that, we really want to help them through that process.  If you watch the post-season in any game, really, we have built-in rule sets for positive touches. We have built-in communication things that help them give a system and a backbone. And then they expand from there every time there’s a dead ball. We know we’re leading the country in positive touches. We have no doubt about that.

Everybody’s finding everybody. And part of that is there’s a science. If you’re telling somebody else, good job, you can’t be thinking about the things you did wrong. And thinking about the things you did wrong was not usually a formula for success in the big moments. 

Pat 16:10

Coach, all this is such good stuff. I wanted to kind of go back and ask about when you talk about helping players figure out their personal leadership style, and if there’s any methods or ways that you prefer to do that, and what I mean is, are there self-assessments? Are there personality tests? Is it just self-reflection? Is it conversation? I’m sure it’s a little bit all of it, but are there any preferred ways that you help someone actually figure out who am I as a person and a leader? 

Juli Fulks 16:35

I do believe it is all the things that you just mentioned, but we do have some things in place. So we are a university that has two semesters, and then we have May term. And in May term, it is this great way to send the players off. It’s a three and a half week events where they have one class that gets to leave in a great place. But one of the things that we do over May term is we have book club and the NCAA changed some leadership roles that allow us to do that.

And last year, we did the five dysfunctions of the team. And I think we try to really demonstrate, you know, connection doesn’t happen until you’re vulnerable. And last year after the season we had, obviously, there were so many amazing things. We also had a lot of really hard off the court things. We had a father pass away from COVID, another father have a stroke. And so just different things that made it really hard. And so we were able to be very vulnerable in that place.

So what made that season great for all of us? And then really reflecting, using that book as a tool, what do we want to be better at? What were the parts that broke us down, that maybe didn’t let us win a national championship, both collectively and individually. And we are currently in May term right now. And so the book that we’ve used this year, we chose the energy bus, because we really wanted to build on the positive energy this team had and the gratefulness.

But mostly, you know, I really wanted them to understand why was that our secret weapon? We had, you know, one of the phrases this year that has now kind of been all over everything was join the journey. And we picked that phrase last May term because, you know, as a coach, I’m a big believer in staying in the present. And, you know, teaching everybody how can we be in the present? How can we not let the past dictate who we are or the future, you know, Great stress and anxiety. But right now in the moment, how can we enjoy it? And so we use this phrase join the journey because I didn’t want whether we won a national championship this year or not. Or went undefeated. You know, those are huge tasks when you’re bringing everybody back. We didn’t want that to define all of a sudden whether they thought this year was going to be great. And, you know, now you fast forward and everything, you know, kind of went perfectly. But every day we, you know, after games, we would come together. And what moment brought you joy? How did you bring joy? And that seems, you know, in some ways kind of cliche-ish. But for us, that really mattered that we came together and especially, you know, after COVID. And remember how lucky we are, how grateful we are that we get to go to the court every day together.

It’s super fun to be together. And, you know, I remember we even come out, you know, during the COVID year when we finally got to play a game, how excited everybody was. And we wanted to honor that and just keep remembering, like, you know, we are excited to be on the court and it is not, you know, something, oh, we have practice again. And, you know, we were never going to be perfect at that. But every time we got a chance to be together, we wanted to celebrate that and have fun. And it was one of the things that lots of people talked about down the stretch.

They would see our team and they would fall in love with watching this team play. And I think people know what great culture looks like and it’s fun and exciting and you resonate with it. And so they were able to win over fans because of, I think, how they play the game, the enthusiasm. But it was very clear that the common goal was bigger than any individual goal. And so I think that made it a really fun year with team culture building. 

Pat 19:55

Coach, I wanted to ask about your past a little bit and how you got to this place. And you mentioned mistakes you’ve made that you wish you could take back or moments or things like that. And you’re coming off a non-defeated season where, like you mentioned, it was pretty great. But I know in your past that every coach has had seasons that were hard where you’re building this stuff. And I wonder if there’s any specific moments in your past that you turned to that helped you get to where you’re at now with all of this. 

Juli Fulks 20:21

Yeah, there’s probably, well, there’s not probably, there are plenty. In recent history, we had a moment last year at an away game, and I completely lost my cool. And it struck me then, because it was just things that were happening off the court, you know, there was outside stresses in my life. And we came into this game and, you know, things were going fine. And something happened and I literally spiked a water bottle and it was an aquafina bottle. So we can give them all sorts of credit that the bottle did not explode. And it was with one of our, you know, upperclassmen. And that moment for me really solidified a few things in terms of, you know, you can come a long way, but I had so much regrets after that moment.

I have always felt this way for whatever reason, and when you walk into the gym, people give you a pass on behavior, you know, so for all of a sudden, you were able to interact with people, yell at people, and do different things that for whatever reason, if we did any other place, that would not be acceptable behavior. And I have realized kind of in my core personality, I’ve never been okay with that. You know, that moment for me really struck a chord because I had worked on that. I can think of plenty of moments when I was back on the West Coast and we were playing a game and I was so angry and so mad, you know, I literally see red, you can’t coach from a great place in that perspective. You know, and I apologize that player, we’ve talked about that as a group, but it really set me into like, when I went into this next season, I have spent a lot of time, and I’ll be honest, you know, there’s been a lot of meditation, a lot of things to help me handle the anxiety of the big moments to be able to coach calmly. And, you know, down the stretch this year, humility is one of our core cultures, and this doesn’t sound humble, but there are lots of things about the calmness that we’ve displayed as a coaching staff. And I really believe your players reflect back. And after the national championship game, one of the things that they were asked about, I was asked about was, you know, when they made their run, our team never looked frantic. And I can think about all the times that I’ve been screaming at refs and been upset, and then you watch your players do it, and they start reflecting that back. And then all of a sudden, you’re just not as good a team as you were. You know, I think every player plays, you know, there’s kind of this number on the energy scale they play their best at, and it’s pretty unusual that somebody’s a 10. You know, they’re no longer able to think and process. And I realized my behavior was moving our team in a direction that was unproductive. And so I have spent a lot of time trying to make sure that I am displaying the confidence I have in them, that I am able to keep myself in a mental composed place that I can think clearly. That was a recent example of years of, you know, I think all of us probably when we were young, we had the coaches that yelled, and that’s just how you were taught to coach. And that was the norm. And realizing, one, for me, that was not who I was as a person, but two, you know, that’s really unproductive 98% of the time. And every now and then, you know, you got to kind of jump a little bit and give people’s attention. But, you know, I don’t believe that is the best way to educate and move players forward. 

Pat 23:16

Coach, first of all, thank you for sharing. And I think you mentioned the word fierce. When watching your team play, they’re fierce. They play hard, obviously at a great season. You have great players that compete at a highest of levels. And also you have this calmness and this joy in your program. How do you marry those things? 

Juli Fulks 23:32

That’s a great question and way to put that together because they do have to exist simultaneously. You know, and I think one of the things that we do is, you know, we love to compete. And so we value competing and we value that in practice. For us, when we love to play and have fun, we find fun in the competition. And we have acknowledged that that is something that matters to us.

Everything we do generally has a score, but when it is over, it needs to be over. You know, and I think that’s one of the really hard lessons for all of us is, how can we learn to play at this intense level and still behave in ways that we want to behave? And that just takes practice and reflection. A few years ago, we had a player who’s now coaching and I’m confident she’s okay with me sharing this story, but you know, her freshman year, she didn’t communicate in ways with her teammates that was often productive. And she wanted to win so badly. And that was how she believed she was trying to help move things forward. And, you know, that next year, you know, we sat down and really had some pretty honest one-on-one discussions. And I use one of our assistant coaches who was, you know, very skilled in this kind of area as well. And we had to work on it in the calm moment. And that’s what I really believe. For all of us, when we are heated, myself included, we don’t hear things in those moments. But I think for everything we do, you know, we sat down when we’re in book club last year, this year, you know, we look at who we are as people. And does that behavior actually help us reach our goals? And that is the honest reflection part, and maybe part of the answer you asked earlier.

Does how we behave help us reach our goals? And then we have to be honest about it. And if it doesn’t, then what are we going to do? You know, for us, that is a system-wide effect and, you know, something that we’re doing, and it can be on defense. Does how I play defense work? Does the shot selection I have, does it help us reach our goals? And if the answer is yes, awesome. If the answer is no, then we have to find new ways. And so I think that is probably one of the commonalities in our program. But, you know, that includes us as coaches. Everybody knows on our team that I know that I coached a really poor elite A-game last year. You know, you look back on games and you’re like, you know, I got that one right. You know, I feel good about things. And last year, I feel terribly that I thought I coached a poor game, and I did not have my best A-game. But I thought that was important so that, you know, I share that with the players, and they know that. And we have tough conversations because, you know, in big games, you need your big players to play well, and you need your coaching staff to coach well. And I let us down last year.

And one of my commitments this year was, okay, how can I make sure that I had the energy I needed and did everything I needed to not have a repeat of that. And that was part of all the off-season stuff with the meditation and all of that. I needed to be better in the postseason. 

Dan 26:19

Coach, we’ve been talking about your culture system and you mentioned that you have a communication system. How are you kind of measuring or tracking these things? I think with what we talked about, the positive touches, we can understand that. But are there other things that you’re measuring tracking to hold your players accountable to say this is our culture and here we can look at it, we can measure it? 

Juli Fulks 26:40

Well, I think measurement culture is one of the hardest things that you can do. I wish that we had the staff probably to do a better job and, you know, cause in some ways I think the measurements become the intuitive noticing of things, you know, so we can, on the basketball court, it’s much easier. We have often counted positive touches for them versus our opponents. We look at the bench and we have very specific rule sets for when people come in and out, you know, those sort of things. And so those are great measurements. Every game, it matters to us that, you know, the refs tell me at least five times to have my teams sit down and they all kind of laugh, you know, like those things are clear outputs and results, you know, that the other stuff is much harder to measure.

You know, how do you help a player measure, you know, this game? I used a much better tone, you know, than I did my freshman year, my sophomore year. We don’t have an honest mathematical assessment of those things outside of the kind of constant conversation. I wish we did, you know, it’s obviously for the statistical things, we do measure those. I love the quantitative side of things that I have measurements. Culture is often a qualitative thing where we would need somebody to be tracking our conversations and putting, you know, every time we said this, it’s a positive, but you know, I think the ways we do measure is, you know, when somebody else talks about who we are as a team, we play that clip for them. That’s our version of praising the behavior that we want repeated. For our players who struggle with eye contact, we give them feedback on, hey, that was awesome. You know, I noticed when you were talking to that person, that was better. And so I think it’s much more with those type of things. We don’t have the ability to film everything with communication and give them these clear markings. But when they’re able to do that, hey, when you met this person, you asked three or four questions, you were listening intently, and so it’s much more giving them feedback about, you know, this is where you started. You know, this is where you’re at now. What do you think? What’s the next step? And so I think that’s how we’re measuring it.

And because, you know, it’s a more qualitative assessment, that’s okay. It really falls on the coaching staff to be very cognitive of these behaviors in how they’re changing. And so that’s very individualized. Unfortunately, I wish I had this, you know, check, check, check, but it’s much more, you know, try to get the ball moving and build momentum. You know, it’s really fun because we have lots of language that we use phrases. And there was a post-season after we won, go to the final four, I sent the seniors up to the press conference without me, you know, lo and behold, they did a fake press conference imitating me that somebody had filmed and, you know, and they sent it to me and they’re pretty comical. I enjoy that. But what I loved is I heard them use several of our phrases, stay until you score, tone, rising tide, raises all boats. You know, we use often creative language to help stick in their brain. You know, in defense, we have known as the awkward area and, you know, offensively, you know, our post players, they’re like cactus and crab walking, but to hear them use our language, you know, is in some ways a metric of things moving forward and that matters to us. 

Pat 29:52

Coach, all this stuff, obviously, as you guys are having good teammates and everything’s going well is great, what have you learned and what does your culture do with unwanted behaviors or people not being good teammates? How do you handle those situations? 

Juli Fulks 30:06

they’re never going to be perfect and we’re never going to be perfect. And I think one of the ways that we set that up is by having that very honest conversation. It’s one of the reasons we have to join the journey phrase. It is unlikely that from October 15th to this year, April 1st, things are going to be perfect. You know, on a basketball court, we have a couple things that we do in terms of a mislayup or a turnover that we require players to hold themselves accountable. And so it’s a quick downback. But we often talk about the lesson is not that you run for these things. The lesson is you’re willing to see something that has an expectation. And if you’re not able to meet that, you’re able to hold yourself accountable. And that’s really everything in life.

This is what we’re supposed to do. There is an accountability factor. It is our job as coaches to help them. You know, one of the random things that started this year is because of tone. When somebody would say something in the wrong tone, it was almost always another teammate would just yell tone and immediately, like, kind of re-click, hey, that’s not how we say things. And it matters that your upperclassmen are able to have an understanding of this is how we do things. This is our culture. And it’s powerful when they say to somebody, that’s not how we do things. And while I never want things to really be in the negative, that matters. Like, how we talk to each other, how we approach things outside of the court, all of those things, we want to be the gold standard in everything. And so we know this is how we do things and not how we do things. But, you know, I think for a coach, oftentimes if things aren’t going well, you know, it feels like 90% of the time it’s because things are happening off the court, whether it’s finals and everybody is just inherently more stressed, whether they’re having hard things at home or, you know, with family, not getting enough sleep, it is almost always that seeping in.

And so a lot of times with us, it’s just trying to figure out as a coach and say, Hey, what is going on? And how can we help you handle this better so that you can come back on the court? Then there’s the other kind of natural, like everybody wants to play. You know, it’s one of the reasons that we have the phrase, a rising tide lifts all boats. I’ve got to be able to be excited for my teammate who plays at the same position and is doing well, even though that might cost, you know, me playing time. And it matters that we understand our group goal, you know, this year was trying to win a national championship. That meant everybody had to sacrifice. It meant our senior starters, when we were winning games by 50, we’re only going to play 20 minutes and we’re going to give up some postseason awards because their numbers couldn’t be as good. It meant for some of our role players who got to play the early games, you know, in the national championship, their minutes were diminished. And so everybody has to sacrifice something along the way. But I think just talking about how special that is, help alleviates problems once they happen. 

Dan 33:31

Now back to our conversation. Coach, this has been awesome so far. Thanks for all your thoughts there. We want to transition now to a segment, kind of a lightning round segment we call Start, Sub, or Sit. We’ll give you three different topics, ask you to start one, sub one, sit one. We’ll have a quick little discussion from there, and so we’re going to kind of move on to the court now with some of these. And so, Coach, if you’re ready, I’ll give you this first one. 

Juli Fulks 33:54

Okay, let’s go. 

Dan 33:55

Okay, first one has to do with analytics. This is going to be analytics that matter. So your start here would be the one that matters most to you and your staff. So start, sub, or sit.

The first option is using analytics for opponent scouting. So whatever, getting the game, playing together for the opponent scout. The second option is lineup decisions within your team. Who’s going to play, what position, how many minutes, all that. The third option is offensive scheme or design, basically just using them as what to run, who to run it for, things like that. So start, subset, analytics that matter to you. 

Juli Fulks 34:32

I’m going to sit the one about the other team. I’ll start with the analytics on who we are and what we run. I remember back in the day, we would do drills, you know, when I was a player, and then when I first started coaching, honestly, I did the drills because everybody did the drills and these are what you do. And then if I have to progress now to 19 years later, you couldn’t find a drill that we do that doesn’t have a direct application to how we play.

And everything that we do, we try to build back from what happens the most in games. And so if you take offense, we have five numbers that we track every game. And so our players know exactly what they are. They’re on the board. One of those is what we know is we’re going to have a trip down the floor and we are going to have the ball. So at its, you know, most elementary, when we talk about, you know, points per possession, we are really talking about times that we come down the floor. The first thing that we do is we talk about valuing the basketball. Everybody talks about valuing the basketball. And for us, the number that we use is we have to get a shot up 80% of the time. And so our players need to understand what that means, what that feels like. And so we often do, the offense has the ball. They get the ball 10 possessions. You have to get a shot up eight of the, you know, eight of the possession. And then that moves forward to, you know, shot selection for us is very, very important. You know, there is the reality that we both coach division three athletes and there is a limit. And if there is going to be a limited time that they’re going to be able to put in the gym, put on an offense, it seems mathematically insane that I asked them to be great at 12 shots.

Because what we are really trying to do on offense is be great. And we have to figure out what we can be great at. And what I’ve learned as part of that simplification is before it became cool, we eliminated mid-range shots for most of our players. You know, and this is before that we had synergy and I could literally pull up your shot chart and I could pull all the numbers immediately. But, you know, what we knew that we could be great at and that was repetitive and predictable was shooting threes and shooting threes with our feet set. So, you know, we know that that is something that is predictable. It is in the exact same place. Our players, you know, depending on their position are going to shoot at the exact same spots. And so that predictability matters to us. When we’re building out our offensive system, it is based on analytics and we are one of the teams, we send all five to the offensive glass. That is something that is different. I first laughed when I came to Kentucky, I had a new assistant and she didn’t tell me until much later, she’s like, I thought you were insane. That’s part of a system. And part of that is you can’t send all of your players to the offensive glass if your team doesn’t know when shots are going to go up. That is an impossible feat. And so everybody needs to know when we’re going to shoot based on how we play. 

Juli Fulks 37:23

It’s fairly impossible if you’re shooting most of your possessions with a pull up dribble because the post players are still posting up or moving, you know, everybody’s kind of the constant move. And so we decided that, hey, most of our possessions, we want to be predictable. We’re going to take a set three, we’re going to score on the block and that could be off the drive, that could be a post entry. And so kind of one of our language sets is, you know, how do we create advantage on offense? And we have one player who always gives the answer. She was a freshman last year. He’s a sophomore this year. And so one of the things that we were teaching everybody is our job is to create advantages on offense. We do that, you know, three ways. One is dominant post play, you know, because now with angles, you should be able to score on the block at a really high rate. The second one is screening and the third one is beating somebody off the dribble. And so everything we teach is about how are we going to get the shots that we want that are predictable and from the ways that we create advantages.

And I think that really helps our players understand, you know, what it is they’re looking for. How did we create the advantage? How do we take advantage of it? And then what is the most likely thing that’s going to happen? You’re still going to miss, you know, on a good day, you’re shooting, you know, 40 to 46%, which still means over half your possessions end in a miss. And so that’s one of the reasons we send all five to the glass and, you know, we have learned on our trips down the floor, if our first shot is a three in the postseason, all season long, but it really matters in the postseason, we get 55 to 60% of our misses up a three point line because it comes off at seven feet. We have a better habit in going and getting the ball because you have to box us out at all five positions because we send everybody. And so if our first shot is a three, we make that around 30 to 33%. That’s a point for possession. We’re getting 55 to 60% of our misses. And so we found out that with our first shots of three, we score, you know, 1.3 points per trip down the floor. And our players understand that math and what we’re trying to accomplish as a group.

And so I think all of that plays into this is how we score, why we score. And this is why we score at a much higher rate than most teams we play. 

Dan 39:40

Coach, so much to dive into and great stuff. You said there’s five things you track. I’m not gonna ask you to give away your secret sauce of all five. Is there another one that you’d be comfortable sharing of the five?

You mentioned the 80% that is important to you to track. 

Juli Fulks 39:54

We track offensive rebounding as an overall. And so it’s 40% for the game and that’s a different number than the three points because those are just easier. And so this year when we played one of our postseason teams ranked in the top 10 and we knew it was going to be a very hard game for us to win. Tim Weitzel, who runs our analytics and is a mathematical genius, he came in and he goes, well, I’m going to just tell you, we have to get 40% of our misses. And it is a clear cut number.

And I looked at who we were playing and I’m like, Oh, okay. And, you know, and it’s great that that was our team goal all year. And that’s one of the ones we track and we track by quarter. And in that game, we didn’t track by quarter. We tracked by every time out, we gave them where we were at. Every time they came over, this is where we’re at. This is where we’re at. And we ended up getting 43% back game. And so that is one for us. It’s 40% of our offensive misses. We cannot send five and not come up the ball. That just obviously put you in a bad place and transition teams have stopped trying to run because if you’re sending somebody back and it’s five on four, that usually plays out better for us than them. You know, we have to work on defensive transition and that system a lot because we know we’re going to, you know, put ourselves sometimes in some tough spots, but stay until you score is our mentality and literally demoralized teams on rebounding.

One of the things that we track, probably I, you know, this, you know, not as polite, let’s put it that way, track timeout that coaches have to call because of us on offensive rebounding. And one of the players and things that we’ve seen many times is we shoot a three miss, shoot a three miss and make the third one. And that is like a 90% guarantee. The other coach is calling timeout. That’s one of the numbers that just as a collective group, not on the board. We celebrate that every time that somebody calls timeout, because we have demoralized them on offensive rebounding.

That’s our culture. That’s who we are. We want people to talk about how we rebound and that is a toughness factor. But you guys coach, it’s a toughness factor. And it is every drill starts or stops with rebounding for us. Every drill. We don’t do a single drill that doesn’t include rebounding. If we are going five, one, oh, on offense, as soon as somebody shoots, everybody’s got to get both feet in the paint. Every drill has to reflect that we value rebounding. 

Pat 42:03

Coach, I just like to ask about your offensive rebounding strategy. When you’re sending all five to the boards, what are the rules that you’re telling your players when they go to rebound? 

Juli Fulks 42:12

There’s kind of two rules. One is from the corners we’ve learned you can’t go baseline side. And that’s actually a much harder habit and rule. That seems like a really simple thing. But very often, they’re in the corner. We always have somebody fill in corner. And the natural is to try to beat them baseline. We have just set ourselves up to get beat down the floor.

And so really, from the corners, their rule set is you have to flood middle. And then the other rule set is, which is much more kind of ingrained, if the ball goes into the post and it is a back to the basket move, everybody else has defensive rebounding position. In theory, the whole defense should probably be between us and the basket. And so in those moments, we really, we send our other post, but all of our guards, we’re at the three-point line. That’s one of the times that we don’t emphasize as much, off the dribble, everybody’s in transition, everybody’s moving on defense. But the classic back to the basket, one, all of our other players are staying at three-point line waiting. If they miss, it’s usually coming off one foot, the defense usually has position. We want them to understand in that moment. This is probably when we’re gonna have to concede. We’ve thrown the ball in there, we need to make it 50% of the time. That is effective on offense. We know we can make it at that rate. That is when we concede, but that is the only time. And still we expect our other post player to get in the mix. 

Dan 43:31

Coach, I just have to ask on this analytics thing real fast before we move on. You might’ve been the number one team. I have to look back, but not fouling, free throws attempted. 6.9, right? I believe.

So you let under seven free throws per game. I just wonder how that plays into analytics and not fouling. 

Juli Fulks 43:51

Well, you know, like if we’re doing well and we’re shooting 33%, that’s a point for possession down the floor. And to match that from two, we have to be shooting 50, which obviously is, you know, can be much more challenging. And if we are shooting free throws, you know, our number is 75% this year. We didn’t hit that until the post-season, but if we’re at 70%, that’s 1.4. And so inherently shooting free throws, especially in the women’s game that doesn’t have a one-on-one, that is conceding the highest rate of points per possession. And so that’s where it starts. So that is kind of step one of that. Step two for us is defensively on the analytics. Our team knows these are the ways they score the highest rate. So defensively, we’re not going to foul and we are not going to give up set threes. And then because we play all zone, there’s a very specific three we cannot give up because now we are out of defensive rebounding position, which leads to fouling and those sorts of things. And so we actually think about defense backwards, probably than most people. We start with what defense are we going to be in that gives us the best chance to defensive rebound, because still they are going to miss 60% of their shots. And so if you only get one possession and we don’t foul you and you get over 50 points a game and, you know, this year, our number, one of our numbers we tracked was 11 points per quarter and it started at 15 and nobody got 15 a quarter last year. And we started this year and finally I walked in after about the fifth game and I said, Hey, listen, this is not a goal. We have to come up with a number that actually reflects that we have competed well this quarter. And so we came up with the number 11 and, you know, we were able to hold in the national championship. There was a quarter we held into eight in the semifinal. We had a quarter we hold held into eight, but it came out of this collective philosophy of our teams understand we don’t found in, you know, in the women’s game with five fouls being two free throws. We can’t pick up the dumb fouls. We don’t foul. Now with that said, there’s again, open rule sets. If you pick up an offensive foul on a box out, awesome. You know, we want to send messages every time we box out. We know we’re going to pick up a couple there. You pick up one going to the offensive boards, great. Those are the places we are going to give you the freedom to go as hard as you can. And if you foul and because we know that we need to balance out on, we can’t foul in other ways that are mental mistakes. 

Pat 46:16

Do you think about two for ones, three for twos, or end of quarter possessions? 

Juli Fulks 46:21

I think about it. I’m not sure I can always get our players to think about it.

That’s something that we work on a lot, you know, and just because it all comes down to we want more possessions than they do, you know, I think there are some ways in the women’s game, you know, if you really understand timeouts and, you know, advancing the ball and those sorts of things, you can buy yourself some extra possessions, like a great example. We have a couple of things that we do that we know we don’t have to call time and on purpose, we don’t want the defense to be able to adapt to what we’re doing, and they know exactly what time on the clock the play is going to start in different things. So while we didn’t have many close games, you know, that’s something I believe is a confidence piece. We have our five sets that we go over on a weekly basis for end of game plays. We have the things that we know we’re going to do at the end of quarter. And so those things matter to us because at the end of the day, we want to play harder and we want to play smarter. And that matters that everybody understands the why behind everything we’re doing. Now, that said, I can still tell you, you know, we’ll come down and there’ll be eight seconds and we shoot it and they get a possession and, you know, I’m just head shakes because we want to get it right every time, not 85% of the time. 

Dan 47:32

For sure. 

Juli Fulks 47:32

It’s even worse when it goes in, you know? 

Dan 47:34

Yeah. 

Pat 47:35

How do you think then about using your timeouts and advancing the ball? Is it something that you’ll do maybe before anticipating that this could help us get the two for one or is it when you’re kind of in the two for one? 

Juli Fulks 47:46

Well, one, we try to never use timeouts during the game. And because I think this is probably a mistake that lots of people make where they’re using timeouts and under 10 seconds, if it’s a one point game, you really need to, you have to have two because there’s a great chance that you advance the ball with nine seconds and something happens in four seconds and they advance the ball and you get the ball back with one second. And so you have to have two and lots of people run themselves out of timeouts. And so in a close game, when it matters, you know, the advanced, the ball rule really matters the most when there’s one second on the clock and you have the ball and you can’t have it in the back court. So that is one of the kind of rule sets with our players.

You know, we used to call lots of timeouts when, you know, somebody was in a jump ball situation and those sort of things we had to change collectively as a philosophy, we need to have to see here’s some of the secret sauce that, you know, and it played out in the national championship game. They used a timeout. We got a rebound and they fouled us and they used the timeout to set up their defense and during their defense, we set up our advanced, the ballplay and what most people forget in that moment. So we walk out on the court, we call timeout, we immediately advance it and we asked to put the ball in play because you don’t have to use your timeout. And the team that calls the timeout gets to dictate that. And so we will call timeout, we will advance the ball and we will say we are ready to play now and barely, you know, makes the other coach very frustrated when that happened in the national championship game, I walked out to the rest on the first time out and explained this is exactly what we’re going to do. And when I call timeout, I expect the ball to go and play, but our players know that they already know what the play we’re going to run. They know exactly how we’re going to execute it. And on that play, we unbounded the ball. They didn’t have a chance to talk about the defense in that scenario. We got the ball and exactly where we wanted to the right person bow. So I think playing out all those situations, but really I was on the rules committee. It was the best thing that ever happened to me because I was able to, you know, within that you start to figure out some of the things that you might not have understood. 

Dan 49:44

Absolutely. 

Pat 49:45

 All right, coach this next one you alluded to it is your zone defense and the start subset is the three hardest assets to maintain when you’re playing the zone defense and i think i know your answer after the previous conversation but here they are start subset the first one is just maintaining your shape throughout the whole possession the second one is the scout discipline knowing who are the shooters who are not the shooters and then the third one is finishing the possession so rebounding in the zone

Juli Fulks 50:15

Those are tough ones for me. I could happily talk about all of them. You know, I think I’ll talk about the scout part and I’ll talk about a little bit of the analytics part within that we’ll start there. You know, one of the things to be fair, I was a man defensive coach. We would go make this man zone, but really at the end of the day, we’re going to be in man and that’s who we were going to be. And then during COVID, our team was physically very big. We had lots of six, three players. And we decided we were going to go the whole year of zone one, cause we’d never done it, but two, we never knew who we would have. And so rather than try to help everybody be good at all the things, if all of a sudden we were playing small, big, whatever, and so we played zone that whole year until the conference tournament and we went and played somebody and they hit four shots of mid range and we switched to man and we played man, the rest of the conference tournament, won the conference tournament. And that was the end of our zone experiment and which led us to last year.

We went back to being make miss. We played in Canada at the preseason play three division one teams came back and we scrimmage the team down the road. And we just got our tails kicked on defense. We couldn’t get a stop from anywhere. And this was when we were having some more players missing because their fathers were ill and kind of all over. And I’m like, okay, we’re going to go back to zone until we can get better at this man to man thing. And we go and we play Eastern Kentucky and two months ago in the third quarter, we’re down to okay. And then we go play tough suits, top 10 of the country. And we went there and I’m like, we’re going to stick to this zone thing for a little longer. And really we were just mostly good at the zone and in the postseason last year, after kind of working on it all year, we were great at the zone. And so from a scouting report, let me ask you this. What are the most common things that you see against the two three? 

Pat 51:53

Getting the high lows, corner threes, yep. 

Juli Fulks 51:55

Yeah, so high post corner threes. What we found out over all this time was our scouts became the simplest scouts we’ve ever done. And so I think about all the time for 19 years where I have known there are three base offenses in band to band. These are their eight quick hitter. And then we go into our scouts and we’re like, they’re going to be in a 1-3-1 high low set. They’re going to set a ball screen over here to try to get an advantage over here. You know, these are the common quick hitters. And then all of a sudden, our players this year are seniors. We didn’t even have to show them. Okay, the ball, they’re going to go high low, check. We know how to defend that. And what we realized is for our players, it really, it simplified the game.

It also, because they had played it for so long, they knew where they could flex out of the zone. So our bottom knew that if the ball went high post and they didn’t have anybody on their side, they could push up and help the top. So our top could push over. You know, so there are different things that they learned because there’s just a much smaller amount of ways to attack the zone. And then we were able to balance it off with the 1-3-1 zone because typically the way people could attack it the best was a dominant post player. And then if we, you know, balanced out with 1-3-1, we would be matched up perfectly with where they were matched up. And so that kept people off guard. We have an amazing player in our conference who led the country in scoring and the games against us, it really lets you extend out, pick them up full court because you no longer have to worry about having enough space to keep them in front while not giving up the three. And we ended up playing in the postseason, three first team, all American guards. And we held every one of them under 10 because it’s so much easier in zone to pressure as soon as they catch because you’re no longer scared about getting beat.

You know, at some point it hit me this year, Hey, the NBA doesn’t let people play zone for a reason. You know, for me, as an offensive coach, I love being able to set you up on defense and find the ways we’re going to be able to score because I can maneuver you around. When we go against the zone, you can’t do that. You know, it’s much harder. There’s going to be somebody between you and the rim and I can’t clear that person out. So from a scouting perspective, it makes it way easier to take away dominant guards, which the game has moved towards. Probably one of the things that’s hard is we know the two shots we give up statistically, you know, and after games, you know, the players, everybody’s kind of like, Oh yeah, they were open from that spot. And we’re like, yes, they were. And if they make it at a rate, we will adapt, but otherwise we’ll let them keep shooting and we will be in great rebounding position. 

Pat 54:19

You mentioned just with the game being so guard-dominant now, what is the problem the zone presents to these guards or how are you dealing? I guess I’m kind of linked with dribble penetration with guards who can penetrate how you handle the rotations and passing them off to the next player of the bottom line. 

Juli Fulks 54:35

Yeah. You know, and for us really, we’re thrilled to pass them off. And I think, you know, the things that we have to drill in a daily basis is when the ball gets to the high post, and so that can be off passing to the high post. But the other place that often gets there is in the zone. So when somebody beats his high post, you know, we have a very specific coverage in the balls in the high post. They have to know it.

And this group is really good at anticipating. And so as soon as they get beat, you know, the ball’s heading there, everybody is in that shift and towards the ball now going to the high post. And so there is a lot of reps on the middle of our zone, picking up a guard coming out and understanding still, we’re most likely going to give up that shot where they are now coming full speed, shooting over us, you know, so now you have the guard shooting over the six, three post player, we are not going to foul you, we’ve got all the other coverages at the end of the day, we’re not going to be able to take away every shot. But what we are going to be able to do is hopefully dictate the shots that you take and not let you get a second one.

And because of the analytics, we can figure out, this is somebody at this mid range shot that we need to worry about. And there are a few, but most times, you know, that becomes a 38% shot, 37. And that’s not going to be a number that’s high enough to beat us. And so we just concede some things. And, you know, so I think for defensive minded coaches, that can be challenging. But at the end of the day, it is to collectively win a game. And so we are trying to win the most possessions, you know, mathematically. And then all of a sudden people are struggling to get to 45. 

Dan 56:07

Coach, my last question, tying the two things we’ve talked about together, which is sending all five to the glass, transition defense, and then getting back into your zone, like we’ve been talking about, maybe any challenges there that you found this last year. 

Juli Fulks 56:21

That’s always the hard part. And that’s one of the reasons I believe you couldn’t play all zone was because of the transition. And so we have every day we do a defensive transition drill and then once a week we’re able to bring in three male practice players. And when the male practice players come in, they know one of the things we’re going to do is defensive transition because it’s at the fastest that we would likely ever compete against.

You know, transition defense starts with communication. And for a lot of our players, especially the underclassmen, getting them to understand they need to communicate desperately in those moments, that’s step one and step two, we have a designated ball stopper and that person needs to be great. And then even that person is playing within rule sets. You know, we are trying to get everybody going left. You know, I don’t know about the men’s game, but it is very unlikely that many of the women point guards we play at any level can throw a full court left-handed. And so that immediately, just that discipline of get ball, get it so their weak hand eliminates a lot of options that we might be giving up while we’re covering, and then our bottom row has to be amazing at understanding who’s back and who’s not. And so they’re really good at the ball is kind of right. We’ve got to shift and get that side cover. And that might mean for two seconds, our bottoms have switch spots. And so, you know, we know those things are going to happen. What really happens out of offensive rebounding and scoring at a high rate is one, you know, we’re scoring over 40% of our possessions. So we’re not worrying about transition and we want to mold teams into submission that they are not trying to run because we are getting so many offensive boards. We’re willing to give you the long rebound that you get a layup fine. You know, we know there’s going to be a couple of possessions that you’re going to probably get out on us, but we’re trying to win the collective 60% of the buses. 

Dan 58:06

Absolutely. Coach, great stuff. You’re off the start, sub, or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us. 

Juli Fulks 58:12

I loved it. I loved it. I guess we’re probably giving away all the secrets at this point. 

Dan 58:19

Well, that was great. So, Coach, we’ve got one last question for you to close the show, but before we do, really thank you again for coming on, being so thorough. Thank you very much for your time. 

Juli Fulks 58:29

I appreciate it. Thank you, guys, for having me. Love talking basketball and having the opportunity is a highlight in my day, for sure. I know you guys have some good horn stuff, so I might have to hit you up for that. 

Dan 58:39

Anytime. Thank you, Coach. Coach, our last question that we ask all the guests is, what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach? 

Juli Fulks 58:51

I probably think it’s the other way because I’ve had so many people invest in me that I just feel grateful, but maybe not. I don’t know if investment’s the right word, but I was able, coming back to the side of the country, really mattered to me because I am very family-oriented and being here has allowed me to have my parents at almost every game and to have them at the national championship game and to have them so connected to our team.

At the end of the day, it is a game and to be able to have shared. My whole family came to Texas, my three siblings, they all drove from Ohio. My parents were there, and so they have invested in me my whole career and to be here and to find ways to have that be a collective investment has been the most rewarding thing. I am so grateful to have a family that is supportive and to have my parents be at every game as they are aging. They invested in me and anything I can do to invest back so they can share this experience is the best thing I could ever ask for. 

Dan 59:54

I think just behind the scenes real quick for us on this, this kind of started a while back. There was a really great article that came out before they won the national title about the culture and about how she tracks it and things like that. And it just really piqued our interest. We’ve had some great conversations about culture on the podcast and how different coaches build it, their own unique style. But I think for us, we really were interested in trying to measure things and what was important and those kinds of things. And so that was just a ton of fun to nerd out with her on how she measures her culture. 

Pat 01:00:32

Yeah, absolutely. It was a great article. It’s always nice when in our research, we get like this clear path. And so I think we were all in like right from the beginning. Needless to say, she did not disappoint. No, the big thing that we were excited to get into was she mentioned neuroscience and like the actual physical reactions that can come from good cultures and hearing her thoughts on that and how like she kept, I mean, I’m gonna sound stupid if I try to keep going deeper into neuroscience.

Dan 01:00:57

No, I think we’re all here for that. 

Pat 01:00:58

lit up. And, you know, you could see that it’s lighting up when it’s physical interaction, these, what does she call it? The positive touches. Yeah, positive touches. Or when you call someone’s name. Yes. And just emphasizing the name and eye contact to the importance of that. And just basically turn into just the emphasis she put on communication. And based off of these three things and how you communicate to build trust, I thought was really cool. And like we said, like these practical ways. 

Dan 01:01:23

Yeah. And I liked a lot who just her thoughts on tone, I thought was just a great piece. And what I really specifically liked about that, how she would have her players act out the different tones. Why I thought that was super valuable too is because she did hit on like one, just acting things out is great because then players understand it before it happens.

But I also just liked how she discussed, we’re not going to be perfect for six months. We’re going to see each other every day, all day, we’re competitive. And sometimes the tone is going to be off or somebody’s going to say something. And like the mistakes that players might make in some of these things was built into how they handle it. And it’s okay, just accept it. We’re not going to be perfect and we move on. 

Pat 01:02:08

And that she mentioned how you receive the message. So the tone you say it within, but then the importance of the person receiving the message and accepting that tone.

And then also forgiving the player if the tone is incorrect or it’s a false tone, I thought was just a really important point that she makes and teaches to her players to start again, all go back to then building that trust. 

Dan 01:02:29

agreed. Going to start, sub, sit , I’ll let you kick this off in a second, but I think this was fun because her team had some like analytics and some things they did on the court that really stand out like the star outliers in a way. So it was fun to get into some of those. And I guess I’ll kick it to you to start on start subset as far as how we kind of came up with these and then maybe a point from you. Well, again, reference

Pat 01:02:55

Referencing that article, it basically said they really care a lot about analytics. And I’ve got a great quote, I’m going to paraphrase, such butcher it, but that of all the actions that occur the most in a game, she wants to skew them in her favor.

And that’s how she got her five things offensively. So we knew with the start subset, we just wanted to get on the analytical train. 

Dan 01:03:18

What’s fun? Well, we know going into a podcast that a coach is like analytics is a big part of their program. I think it’s fun for us to dive into like, okay, where and why and how, because oftentimes and like coach folks did, they have specific answers of things that actually matter to them from an analytics standpoint, because there’s so many numbers out there, but what matters? And I liked, you know, we got to a couple of the five things that they track and why and how. And honestly, it connected back to the culture stuff too, of who they are. And we had a, you know, sending all five tagging up conversation. We were excited about it. It’s been a little while since we’ve talked and she didn’t call it tagging up, but sending all five. And she did talk about not going baseline side. So, you know, not sure what she would call it, but it’s been a little while since we’ve talked about offensive rebounding, sending all five. And I think that was fun to get into with the numbers too, and just kind of hearing her philosophy on offensive rebounding and why it’s so important and why such a big part of their program. 

Pat 01:04:20

I especially liked how she tied shot selection into their rebounding, tagging up. I love how she broke it down, just understanding like, how are we creating advantages with the dribble penetration, a post-upper screen, and out of these advantages we want, like she said, those standstill threes, paint finishes. And then from there, I think with the tagging up, she has a good understanding of if it’s usually a post or a dribble penetration that they’re not really going to be so hardcore and that they have to go, understanding that usually the defense is more often than not set or sorry, I just, I think on post touches that usually the defense is always on the inside, but understanding that when we do generate those threes, we want to go. And then she alluded to just like those back breakers of forcing coaches to get timeouts when I miss a three rebound, miss a three rebound, make a three and how they celebrate that. But I just like that whole tying up them together, everything making sense, the shot selection leading to our, you know, our offensive rebounding philosophy. And I love their saying that they had is stay until you score, great use of language to tie together their scheme. 

Dan 01:05:29

100%. I circled that same thing too. And I think with the tagging up, just to close off that conversation, I feel like every off season, sending more to the offensive glass is a conversation that we have all the time with coaches thinking about it, wanting to learn more about it, just tinker with it, how you do it. Because I think that as coaches really think about the game, the value of tagging up is you’re just trying to win the possession battle any way you can. And like she broke down in the numbers, you can steal extra possessions through things like this and even some of the timeout stuff she was talking about here in a second. And I think the tagging up is so valuable because the numbers are through the roof on offensive rebounding. 

Pat 01:06:16

And she mentioned the toughness piece to it. Yeah. And I think as we talked about a lot with tagging up and coach Fern and it’s a war and you got to be prepared to play a team. That’s just going to every time you’re going to be willing to hit bodies. And usually your opponent who doesn’t see it every day in practice, isn’t quite ready. 

Dan 01:06:31

Real quick, the second start sub sit, we got an assist from Coach Lonergan, who’s on the podcast, sent us some stuff on a recent clinic about some zone stuff, and we kind of took some ideas from there about, well, first, like about what’s tough about a zone, but then Coach Folks, they played zone so well this year. And I just loved hearing her walking us through how she got to this team playing zone so well.  And then some of the points she brought up that also tied in the analytics of just at a certain point, you just understand the couple of actions that a zones can generate most of the time and how they’re going to guard it and what the odds or what the PPP of certain shots are and what you live with, what you don’t, it just like simplifies it and probably links to the analytics question about opponent scouting, she sat and I would imagine because a certain point, yeah, we don’t need to spend as much time really, really detailing stuff because we know kind of what they’re going to do. And then probably point I’m going to steal from you is how it makes it hard on guards to score and how they held because of the zone held guards down below their points per game throughout the tournament, like really good guards too was a good takeaway. 

Pat 01:07:42

And for me, just hearing her talk about the zone and why the zone and with the guards, it really reminded me, you know, we’re doing a kind of a group mentorship with coach Gonzalo Rodriguez right now. And he mentioned the other night too, just, and whatever defense you’re going to choose, just explaining to your team what you’re going to give up and like, that’s okay. And I think that came across too with her, with the high posts, like maybe we’re going to give it up and if they can really do it at a level that can damage just fix it or, you know, maybe we won’t play it, but for the most part, it’s like, yeah, I think she said it like, is it a 38% floater on a two-pointer? Like that’s a shot we’re going to live with. So let’s not stress about it. Let’s not overanalyze it. And I think that’s a big part with getting buy-in with anything you’re implementing, but especially on the defensive end and not frustrating players or being so result driven. It’s like, okay, they scored, but it’s a shot we want them to take. This is why we’re playing this defense. The odds are going to roll in our favor more times than not. 

Dan 01:08:39

She mentioned a bunch of times, we’re trying to win the game. We’re trying to win the overall game.

Whether it’s saying all five and they get a couple of leak out layups or whatever it is, the goal is to score more points on the other team in a 40-minute game, not to always just be exactly efficient every possession. The whole zero points for 40 minutes. There hasn’t been too many of those. The teams are going to score. There was one, I don’t think this is a miss at all. It was just an idea that popped up and maybe she has the answer or maybe you know the answer or there’s somebody that has the answer out there. But I was really interested in the relationship between shot selection and offensive rebounding rate. And I know there’s offensive rebounding analytics and I know there’s shot selection analytics. And I wonder if there’s a number or there’s a way to basically like if you have to manually, but just talk about better shot selection teams and their offensive rebounding percentage on the shots they want. So instead of just offensive rebounding on any shot, but just on the ones that are most important because she mentioned that part of the way to be a good offensive rebounding team is knowing who’s going to shoot when and from where, so they know where to go for most of those shots. And so I just kind of wondered, it’s like a teaching tool being able to point to a number or a way of, we get percentage of shots from say corner threes, the X amount of time or whatever it is. It would be something maybe just really, really down in the weeds exploring. 

Pat 01:10:11

We’re going to kind of down further on the, you know, PPP, if, okay, it’s corner shots. It’s the make, obviously the miss we’re getting this percent of rebound versus if we’re above the break or, you know, straight away. Is that what you kind of mean in terms of like, okay, our offensive rebounding rate is for this shot in this area and what it’s yielding. 

Dan 01:10:28

Wether its person or like in this action. One of the big reasons I think you have teams that are good cutting teams or teams that do a good job on diving opposite dunker or stuff like that, their offensive rebounding is really good because they’re just putting people in position as well because they know certain shots are on the extra pass three guys are crashing opposite because they know that extra pass is going to open up the corner three and you’re going to probably miss long.

Just something maybe just for you and I, I guess we, you know, contemplate at night. My other miss, I would have liked to had you just give us more neuroscience background in this wrap up too. I think I was ready. 

Pat 01:11:06

I mean, I was ready with my accounting background. I feel like I’m ready to speak on the subject. 

Dan 01:11:13

for sure. Anything from your end, anything for next time. 

Pat 01:11:17

No, I mean, she held so many things I wasn’t even thinking about. That was great and a real privilege to just hear her talk on these things.

So if anything I missed, it was definitely way too stupid to ask in this conversation. So for sure. 

Dan 01:11:33

Well, Coach Fulks, that was great. We thoroughly enjoyed that. Congrats to her and Pennsylvania once again. And we’ll wrap this up, and we’ll do this again next time. 

Dan 01:11:49

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to visit SlappingGlass.com for more information on the free newsletter, Slapping Glass Plus, and much more. Have a great week coaching, and we’ll see you next time on Slapping Glass.