We sat down this week with the Head Coach of DIII Nazareth University, Kevin Broderick! The past two seasons Coach Broderick’s teams have been the best in the nation at limiting turnovers, and we dive into his systematic approach to doing so including “patient pivots”, off-ball cutting, and more. We also discuss playing a deep bench and the benefits of a personal advisory counsel during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Transcript
Kevin Broderick 00:00
The temptation has always been that great feeling we get as coaches, which you don’t get it very often, but if you’re playing a good team and it’s almost like you’re saying, you know what plays coming. I know what plays coming.
I’m going to run it 15 times in a row and our execution is better than your defense and you’re just not going to stop it. As a young coach, that was my temptation to get there versus the temptation to do too much or try to do too much. That balance between stubbornness and flexibility that I think about a lot, trying to be a coach that has things that you believe in that you’re not going to change, but certainly having part of certain things that you have to be flexible about.
Dan 02:06
And now, please enjoy our conversation with coach Kevin Broderick. Coach, thank you very much for making some time for us. It was awesome to get a chance to meet up with you at the Final Four and happy to have you on the show today.
Kevin Broderick 02:29
Thanks Daniel, really excited to be here. Great to meet you too, Patrick, and appreciate you having me and appreciate your work.
Dan 02:36
Thank you, coach. Our first thing we wanted to dive in with you on is a really remarkable statistic from your team. And that is you guys have been the best team in the country for NCAA division three, the past two seasons and limiting your turnovers turnover margin. And that’s an incredible stat. Obviously, for two straight seasons, I’d take top 10 any season. And we know that that does not come just by accident. And we wanted to dive into all that goes into it from your end of trying to be that high up in the turnover battle each year.
Kevin Broderick 03:12
It certainly has been an emphasis on our program and obviously it starts with the right players in our point guard. This year was 162 assists, 24 turnovers. So in the history of that margins, I think I learned that they were keeping that stat, you know, since like 2008 and you know, at all levels, one, two, and three, nobody’s close to Luke Kinsley, our point guard. And you know, he has the ball a lot and, you know, certainly recruiting guys and having guys that value the ball and understanding how it simply leads to winning.
And you know, I worked for John Beeline for three years and Bill Van Gundy and there was just such emphasis on that part of the game. And honestly, I always felt like it was part of the game that if you really study it and work at it, it can be consistently impactful in the game. You know, for example, we can work like crazy on shooting percentage, but we’re going to have a bunch of 20% games no matter what it seems like. But I think one of the things I felt great about this year, our highest number of turnovers in a game was 12. So I just think it’s an area that if you really work at it, get the buy-in, it can be consistent every game, you know, give you a chance to win, particularly on those nights, you know, when you’re not making shots. Part of my fascination with it is I got annoyed and tired early in my coaching career with this discussion that while we shot bad, you know, players saying, well, we shot bad, they shot good. So we have an excuse for losing. And I just knew there had to be more to it than that. And it’s always a great, great feeling. If you can win a game when you have a really bad night with effective field goal percentage, and you still find a way to win against a good team. When we’ve done that, it’s almost always because we’ve been plus six or seven and turnover differential.
Dan 04:54
To me, I think about the technical part of not turning the ball over, say footwork or whatever it is. And then like a schematic part of not turning over like the system which you run. And I guess I’ll let you take it either way there that comes to your mind first when you think about this.
Kevin Broderick 05:09
With purely the fundamental part, when you lose, I think my second year in coaching, we lost a championship game to go to the NCAs and we traveled four times and I remember thinking, hey, I failed these guys and we can’t have that. The pure fundamentals part of it is for me, it starts and stops with best offensive stance. When we work with players, it always starts with when you catch the ball, do you get in your best stance? Then the back half of that is when you drive it and pick it up, do you get right back to your best stance? So many players, they’re going to catch the ball and face the rim, and they might sometimes use the right pivot foot, sometimes use their left pivot foot and all the players I coach, if I say, hey, shoot a jumper here and hit a three here and practice is over, they’re all going to get the ball and the right-handed players are going to get their left foot down and their right hip coming in and they know how they shoot it best. But yet, in the game unless we really drill it, they’re going to be careless with it, they’re going to not get in their best offensive stance.
A lot of times it has nothing to do with the defense. Then when they drive it and draw that second defender, do they get again in their best stance? We’ve just done a lot of studying the Villanova stuff, which I think now we’re getting better at when we do pick up and what Villanova always called the patient pivot to the other four guys cut and move. We got to play after the play stuff, but the bottom line is in our practice, we’re going to consistently put our guys in position where you got to catch it in your best stance, the second defender comes, you get a little bit into trouble, and can you pivot your way out of trouble into the next action?
Coach Bielien had a great ability to get the greatest of players to understand that they’re not too cool to practice simple pivoting, and just to understand how it helps them play better. One of the highlights of my coaching career, I guess as a practice coach was one October 15th walking in that one of our captains didn’t know I was behind him. He’s like, I know we’re going to start with four on four, no dribble. I hate that drill. I’ve always hated it, but I know it helps us win. That was a great feeling, and that’s something we do for three minutes every day.
We’re going to play no dribble and just work on catching it in their best stance and then pivoting, being strong with the ball. So the fundamentals are constant to put our players in position to best stance when you catch it, best stance when the second defender comes, and then to pivot your way out and the patient pivot, and again, the other four guys react into that.
Pat 07:42
What do you mean by best offensive stance? Is it individual to the player?
Kevin Broderick 07:49
Yeah. And again, I think that as we study our players, and you might get 15 touches a game or whatever it is, and how many times when you catch the ball, particularly a perimeter guy, how many times you catch and face, and again, best stance, you don’t waste your dribble. For me, I’m a big permanent pivot foot guy, so right-handed player, I love it when the left foot’s the pivot foot, basketball stance, showing their shot. I still say my favorite instructional tape, I think when Coach Patino was at Providence in 86, and they just had this instructional tape about how they drove the ball, and how they caught the ball, and all their dribble moves, and I think the best players start with their best stance. When I work with young kids, I’m always stuck, and can you imagine a baseball player who in a double-header gets eight at bats, and every time they come to the plate, they give a different stance? I think as basketball players sometimes, we’ve learned there’s a carelessness, how you ran this play to bring them off a stagger, and catch and face, and get a clean shot, and sometimes they pivot on the other foot, which has nothing to do with the defense, it’s just sometimes careless.
So we’re constantly, how can you get the ball in your best stance, and then again, when you dribble it twice, and now the second defender comes. For us, it’s more of the stride step than the jump stop, but guys have to be able to do both, and then again, get back to balance, and when we study our turnovers so many times, and I think you eliminate the travel on the catch and start, but on the stop, we see a lot of turnovers where players stop in the lane, and they pivot once or twice, or again, I don’t think for one second that the right-handed player is as good when their right foot’s their pivot foot, so that’s what I mean. Best stance on the catch, best stance when we make the scoring play, I think so many times the defense is not determined in that, just carelessness, so we’re constantly in everything we do in practice. Hey, did you get to your best stance? And at the end of the game, whatever actions we run, that our players make the defense guard what they do best.
Pat 09:59
When you’re in practice, you mentioned you’ll do four and four for three minutes, no dribble. Are there any other drills you’ll go to to help with players retaining what is their best offensive stand?
Kevin Broderick 10:09
Yeah. When we study our turnovers, for example, the percentage of them that are caused by the second defender, and we see it all the time where the help defender, sometimes you run them over, sometimes you get the charge, you get the second defender as the one who pokes the ball away. So for example, we play three on three plus one where we’re going to put a guy in the inner arc, and maybe it’s a chance for that guy to work on his rim protection and leaving the feed. And we just know for that six minute segment, even if I beat my man, the second defender’s there, and now I have to stop and get balanced. So a million different ways where we make sure they have to deal with the help defender. And when practice is over, they’ve just done what happens in the game so much, which in the end is the evaluation, are we practicing what happens in the game.
So three on three plus one would certainly be won by our defensive philosophy alone, right? We’re an all man team, but we play with a rim protector that doesn’t leave the paint much. So every time we’re playing five on five, they’re usually having to navigate that help defender in the lane.
Dan 11:18
You mentioned it a second ago, and then you and I have talked about it a little bit off-air too about you like to do kind of end of the year studies on your turnovers or really figure out where they come from. Is there anything in that study of your turnovers when it comes to actions that you turn it over? You just mentioned a second help defender coming, but what I mean is on a post-entry pass or in pick and roll, do you find certain areas that most of them come from?
Kevin Broderick 11:44
That’s a great question. And early on when we started to do it, I was surprised with one, how many times the help defender just causes the turnover. And for us, it’s anything that the player is attacking the single gap, right? We do a lot of dribble drive concepts and hope you’re creating that double gap to drive. But when it’s a single gap and the player still drives and tries to split it, you know, everything we do offensive philosophy wise is can, not only our best players, but can everybody execute that play and some of the higher skilled plays that we just avoid.
For example, we have never been a big, high, low team, but that post feeding pass we found was a pass that got intercepted a lot. Maybe this is a function of division three versus some of the great division one guards is that the pocket pass off the role in traffic, right? Is something we almost, you know, eliminate because we’re always trying to say, Hey, how can we get a good shot every possession without complicating this and not forcing our guys to make hard plays. So philosophy wise, Dan, everything we do is can we manipulate the help defender? So it’s a long help and recover. And then when the help defender does get there, are we well-schooled and fundamental enough to pivot our way and patient pivot out of that? Basically anything that spreads them out a little bit better is what we’ve ultimately landed on more often than not. You know, for example, a few years ago, you know, we went to the tipped and two sided break thing just because I thought it spaced us out better and transition same idea. And I think the other thing with the study that was really interesting when we started really looking at it is that each individual players has some pattern that they tend to turn it over more. For whatever reason, one year we had a point guard, there was no really good assist turnover numbers, but he turned it over way more in transition than the half court. And that was simply, you know, he had to get better at changing speed and moving the angles and slowing down. Now we had a guy a few years ago that he simply turned it over a ton on the spin dribble. And, you know, we landed on, Hey, you know, it’s part of your game, but we’re not going to spin in the lane. You got to get your spin done outside the arc and great advantage. And no, I think both philosophy wise and individual player wise, how they turn it over leads us to some coaching points. And like shooting, I think it’s an area that no player wants to turn it over. When you really show them the film and show them their pattern, they’re motivated to change it. We don’t get a lot of resistance there when we’re saying, Hey, you know, your assist turnover numbers were good, but here’s how you turn it over. They’re really motivated to correct that.
Pat 14:23
If I can just follow up on the pick and roll. You mentioned you try to eliminate that. What have you learned about the pick and roll with your guys and under this umbrella of decreasing turnovers in terms of maybe how you space to spread them out to one behind flat, all that stuff.
Kevin Broderick 14:39
Well, two things. One is basically in our program, it’s illegal to come off the screen and roll without, you know, if I get to your shoulder on the screen, I’m going to take two dribbles, right? Not one. We think in terms of creating the spacing and we’re hopeful that we set the screen on a good spot in the middle third, where you have more than half the court to work with as you come off it.
But we just feel that the second dribble, number one, it eliminates that long to a lot of times, right? We think that it improves the angle when you are looking at the role, man, that would be one. The second one is for whatever reason, and again, maybe it’s level that the ghost screen or what we call the wave screen where it’s that sprint at the ball and fake it somehow eliminates the second defender more than you would expect. So we end up, I think when I first started coaching, it was this idea that some players, no matter how much it works, some players can beat their man one-on-one, some can’t. But I think to me right now, you know, we’re always evaluate who can deal with the second defender and who can’t. So sometimes we’re going to have guys that we almost always ghost for that it usually eliminates the second defender. And again, everything we do, I was telling Dan, you know, I’m always struggling with this concept of how much can you ask players to be really good at and the speed of the game. And what we’ve landed on is we’re going to run the same concepts over and over again from creative new ways to get to it. So we’re going to get to that best players come into their strong hand off a ball screen and try to manipulate a million times a game when they do come off. There’s only one guy in the far corner on that side that they’re going to. And the whole idea that we create a long help and recover, that we make the offensive player deal with the second defender less and less.
Dan 16:36
The umbrella of turnovers again, and you mentioned this past year, you said 12 was the most you had in one game. Yeah. First of all, it’s incredible. But are all turnovers created equal to you?
And I guess what I mean is I’ll expand on, you know, dead ball turnovers versus live ball turnovers. Or if a guy turns a ball over and it’s trying to do something that’s to their strength versus their weakness. I mean, how do you categorize the ones that do eventually happen? I think
Kevin Broderick 17:03
we all struggle with when players try to do something in the speed of the game that they simply haven’t practiced, right? I don’t think any of us can accept that, right? So that obviously is a turnover that’s going to get the harshest coaching and maybe the severest penalty.
But absolutely, if they’re being aggressive and we say all the time, let’s get to the paint and figure it out and use our pivoting and use our cutting. And there’s going to be some turnovers there. And obviously, what a challenge is, is I don’t want to make players cautious, right? We don’t talk about, hey, we got to lead the country in fewest turnover. So we can’t make them cautious. I will say that there are certain things that when we talk about, hey, this is your pattern of how you turn it over and we’re going to correct that. We’re going to eliminate that. And so the guy who spends all the time that keeps spinning, well, you know, then that goes to, you know, you’re going to play the guys who turn it over less and that’s going to hurt your playing time. You know, one of the things on the study we saw over the years is that pass, you know, we certainly all like the skip pass, but the skip pass that goes maybe from the block to the opposite wing, meaning we’re throwing it towards their basket and a skip pass, you know, that’s a pick six and a dunk at the other end. So that’s one that we’re not going to live with because we’re just not going to make that pass, right? We’re going to make other skip passes. So, you know, we define those and it’s a constant evaluation of, are you doing things that we simply don’t practice or believe in? And if you are, then you can’t live with that.
Dan 18:34
I think, would you mention a second ago about not wanting guys to play scared or play tentative? In my experience, sometimes when you are talking about turnovers, players get robotic or they’re so afraid to play because they just don’t want to turn it over.
But like you just mentioned, I’d like to add on top of this, you guys were also, I think, the first or second most efficient offense in the country in Division 3 this year we’re looking at. I mean, you were top five. So, it was also a very efficient offense. How do you balance how you talk about all this stuff with your players?
Kevin Broderick 19:02
We simply don’t, maybe we do in the office with the coaches because we’re proud of it that we’re leading the country, but we don’t talk about it a ton with the players. But it is a challenge.
I do think some teams do better job than us of making those. I’m always trying to figure out, okay, how can we really take care of the ball, win the turnover differential battle and get those easy baskets that require, hey, this is not a thread the needle pass, but maybe a higher risk play that I tend to shy away from, but we’re all trying to balance that. And I think it almost always goes back to we believe in what we’re doing. We have a group of players that see, and we do remind them all the time, how winning the turnover differential battle leads to winning and just play aggressively play fast. I mean, our point guard, that was 162 and 24, he heard from me all season that we have the ball in the right guy’s hands. And we really struggled. We were five and five at one point this year. And one of our biggest weaknesses was we were not getting transition baskets and he wasn’t puncturing the lane. The coaching was, Hey, the right guy’s got the ball, just get in the lane. We’ll figure it out. Every time you get in the lane, something good happens. And you know, I do think he was not afraid to turn it over, but just a little bit more cautious. So I think that’s a constant teaching point, but I do think too, it goes back to the hard question every year is I think it’s a failure if I give guys too much that they have to digest. And if we play simple fundamental, we all know what we’re doing offense, they play aggressively, they play comfortable. And we’re not going to yank a guy if he throws it away. But if your turnovers are things that, you know, are well-practiced and sometimes it’s just great defense, fine.
Pat 21:56
We’ve talked a lot about maybe some passes you’ve tried to eliminate, and of course the pivot is how it helps limit turnovers, but are there from a systematic standpoint, riskier passes, but that you have to get your guys to make, you know, that you teach that we got to teach this skill, they got to make this pass, even if it is a little bit riskier.
Kevin Broderick 22:13
Right. Our whole offensive philosophy is based on can we for the most part drive the lane and draw that second defender. So, you know, we’re going to be passing it out of traffic and starts with getting to the patient pivot, but you know, even that, and you guys probably see this, I think in the last seven or eight years that so many teams we play at our level that even if you drive the ball and get in the lane, they do a way better job of not over helping and giving you that simple kick out three.
So I think the idea that, you know, you drive it and now you have to make multiple pivots. And, you know, we’ve really got into coaching those other four guys of the timing of when, how they caught and, you know, the constant thing of, as your teammate draws that second defender and they are making a tougher pass against almost against two is that getting the direct pass, meaning if he’s making a kick out pass or he’s making a pass out of a trap is that if he’s got to lob it, if he’s got to throw it over somebody, then you’re in the wrong spot. And coaching the receiver there, no coach beeline was so influential where if you watch his teams play against pressure defense, deny defense, you see his players, just a simple concept of rolling to the outside hand with a big target, but always a two hand catch. And, you know, small players having huge catch radius is that was, if you ever watched any of coach beeline’s teams, they were always doing that. So we try to copy that.
Pat 23:44
When you play opponents that are going to pressure, are going to trap, want to try to speed the game up, is there an added layer going into that week that you’ll talk to your team to remind them you work on so, again, you continue to control the turnover battle?
Kevin Broderick 23:58
Yeah. All 28 years I’ve been a head coach. We are built to, you know, with the skill rather than the size, meaning that, you know, I know small ball became a thing here, but way back when we were doing it simply because it’s so hard to find two really skilled quality bigs. So our foreman is always, a lot of times they were a two garden high school. So just to have that inbound or another decision maker, that’s not something we have to change when we are always there. But two, I think creating those long helping recovers is the same in the full court, meaning, you know, that simple, we’ve all seen it, that simple first pass where, you know, somebody’s playing a really hard pressure one, two, one, one, and you throw it to the short corner, let them have a short run to the ball. All of a sudden there’s two on the ball. And in that situation, we’re almost always running to the wide side. So the first pass is always a longer run to the trap or a longer get there. And then inbounders stand behind the ball. I’m amazed at how many times I seen that guy in the trap, the passers trying to advance it vertically, verse two on the ball verse throwing the ball behind to the inbounder who steps to the ball, shortening the pass, but is behind the ball and then make the next play. And the football concept of making them guard the 50 feet width of the field, right? Making them guard the width, especially against the press, I think is huge. And I always go back to every year, except the COVID year that I’ve been a head coach, our teams, whether I was at Oswego or Nazareth, our first scrimmage by design after four or five practices has been against Monroe Community College, which is a JUCO that always has division one talent and almost always presses. And we start our year with our first scrimmage, where we got tape of 30 turnovers, right? And I just can’t say enough about the value of that. It is the one time of the year where I kind of almost like that we turn it over because it’s just been something that’s been so beneficial that after four practices, five practice, we turn it over a ton. And it’s like, all right, guys, you know what I’m saying now, you know what we’re talking about. Here’s the great film of how we just turned it over 30 times. And if teams can do that, find somebody that’s a little bit more athletic, a little quicker, and that’s huge value that starts the Nazareth season every year. It’s painful, but helpful.
Dan 26:32
Great stuff. Well, coach, this has been awesome so far. Thanks for all your thoughts there.
We want to transition now to a segment on the show we call start, sub, or sit. We’ll give you three options around a topic, ask you to start one of them, sub one of them, and then sit one of them. So if you’re all set, we’ll dive into this first one. Let’s go. Okay, coach. This first one has to do with the benefits of having a personal advisory council rather than just a network of people. And this is something you and I actually talked about a little bit off air. And so I wanted to dive into three big benefits of that personal advisory council that you have. And so option one would be that these coaches help you see blind spots, things that maybe you don’t see as a coach. Option two are telling you hard truths about yourself or your team that maybe you don’t always want to hear, but you need to hear our option three is that it’s just a healthy sounding board outside of your coaching staff. So start, sub, or sit those three benefits. you
Kevin Broderick 27:32
Yeah. So I’m going to start the hard truth for sure, which I think is you get a little older and coaching think as a young coach, maybe I couldn’t handle that, but again, I’ve had the privilege of both Bill Van Gundy, Jeff Van Gundy, you know, who loved Nazareth and care about my coaching career. And they went to two of our games this year and we were all in two and you better believe I got some hard truths and I value that I can’t in all the years I’ve been a head coach, I don’t know if I’ve gone more than a week without calling coach Bill Van Gundy and just saying, Hey, coach, I’m dealing with this, what do you think? And I know it’s going to be the truth, even if the truth is, Hey, you screwed this up the first time. There’s huge, huge value in that.
The second one, I would say the blind spot thing. I mean, I think that that happens, that balance between stubbornness and flexibility that I think about a lot trying to be a coach that has things that you believe in that you’re not going to change, but, you know, certainly having part of certain things that you have to be flexible about. And those to me would probably be my blind spots. So there’s value in that, but we’ll sub that and sit the sounding board thing where I learned a long time ago, particularly from my wife that we’re not going to just vent and whine as a coach, you know, I’m just not going to do that, that’s not well received. So the hard truths, and I was thinking about this the other day that not too long ago, I dealt with some as a coach that it’s just one of those issues that as an experienced coach sit there and say, boy, this could be something that really hurts our team. And I was thinking about the fact that maybe it’s experience, whatever, but I have the privilege of, of seven or eight people that some situations, some hard things you call them all because maybe it’s an on the court and an off the court thing, you know, I have a guy that’s been a guidance counselor for 30 years that he’s so good. And he spent his whole life with understanding how young men make decisions and how valuable that is. I have a guy that’s a good friend. That’s one of the best attorneys in Rochester, you know, I’ll call him and say, Hey, you know, there’s some gray area here. I put myself and my team in jeopardy if I do this. And, you know, I have two friends, David nylon, who’s a great, great coach at the same level, we’ve been coaching the same level forever. And we both learned from coach Beilien, Mike McDonald , another one that philosophically we line up and, you know, I don’t make many big decisions without running it by, you know, certainly basketball decisions. I don’t think making it without running it by them. So I think that’s huge. Again, I’m lucky enough that the people that I have are not yes, men, you know, they care about our team and my career, but they’re going to tell you the truth. And that’s way more important than have a network of people that I know.
Dan 30:11
That was gonna be my follow-up. You kind of put the caveat about how important having a personal advisory council is, as opposed to just having a large network.Could you go deeper on that distinction for you?
Kevin Broderick 30:22
If you’re gonna… be a head coach, you simply have to be a decision maker and want to be a decision maker. And I want to be, but I find great value that I’m going to make a decision that affects our team, our players, you know, some individual’s future. It’s not going to be done lightly.
All those people, they have different expertise and skill and, you know, their opinion is going to help me. It’s never been a time that I haven’t called Jeff Van Gundy or Bill Van Gundy. And it gave me something that I simply just didn’t think about before that factors in. When you make hard decisions that affect your team and affect young men, I’ve learned to never be in a hurry with those things. And, you know, sometimes you just say to a player, listen, I haven’t decided this is really big. I’m going to decide, but I haven’t decided. And for me, that allows me to consult with those people that I respect the most and are helpful the most.
Pat 31:13
In the battle between stubbornness and flexibility that you mentioned, what has changed? Has there been, whether you call it a non-negotiable or something that was important to you maybe the beginning of the career to where now you have a differing of opinion on it?
Kevin Broderick 31:26
Yeah. When I started as a young coach, when I really got serious about coaching and working with Bill Van Gundy, he was the most consistent person I’ve ever met. There was such structure and there was just no greater in, and I saw great value. I saw great value and he knew exactly what he wanted to do every practice, and I copy that.
My temptation has always been that great feeling we get as coaches, which you don’t get it very often, but if you’re playing a good team and it’s almost like you’re saying, you know what play is coming. I know what plays coming. I’m going to run it 15 times in a row and our execution is better than your defense and you’re just not going to stop it. That was, as a young coach, that was my temptation to get there versus the temptation, which is also a temptation with all this great information you guys put out. My sons just started coaching after they got done playing. And you know, I remind them, Hey, when I started coaching, there was no slapping glass. There was no, you know, Google in the best 20 plays of the NCAA tournament. And now there’s the temptation to do too much or try to do too much and love the X’s and O’s like we all do and try to get our players to do too much. So Bill Van Gundy told me when I started coaching, I think about every day he said, you don’t coach for coaches. Your objective here is not to impress anybody, but to put your players in position to do what they do best in game conditions.
And is it good enough against the best teams? Now I will say where the flexibility came in is that I’ve landed on where, even though I’d love to just call the same play every time, I think like Michigan, when they won the national championship in football, they ended it off 21 times in a row. To me, that it was like the best possible feeling. The thing for me that I landed on is that, you know, when you have to be like we all do have to beat a really good team two or three times to make the NCAA tournament, right? In our league, it’s always the same bunch of teams. Hey, we’ve already played them twice. Now we got to play them a third time. We really know each other. You know, you can’t just run the same play and be that stubborn. So for me, it’s creative ways of doing the same thing. You know, we’re going to put our players in position where, Hey, we might run five different plays, but the concepts, the same, the fundamental teaching points are the same. We just might get to that patient pivot five different ways. And you know, I’ve had to evolve there because my stubbornness was, I just wanted to out execute teams with a few plays. And I’ve been able to understand we can expand that and still be fundamental, not get on the bus saying, Hey, we lost because I tried to do too much. That’s always been a fear.
Pat 35:16
All right, Coach, our next start subset has to do with the benefits of playing a deep bench. Three benefits of playing a deep bench. Option number one is keeping your starters, your main players fresh for the finish. Option number two is building team cohesion by everyone’s getting a chance to play. Or option number three is being able to have various playing styles or a varied playing style within the game by the virtue of playing a deep bench.
Kevin Broderick 35:48
All right. I’m going to start building cohesion. The importance of that is sky high for me. When we were in COVID, right, our team played 12 games that year. And I remember saying to our assistant coaches, whatever we can do to play one game, we’ll do whatever. We’ll follow every rule. We’ll get tested, you know, three times a week, which they did. And I remember, and we talk all the time about in our program, it’s not what you’re committed to. It’s what you’re willing to sacrifice. And not that those games that year were less important, but I told our assistants, I said, Hey, if these guys are all going to make those sacrifices, they’re all playing. It’s just different.
We’re just doing that. And I believed it. And it worked for us in some ways where the next year it was, Hey, a lot of these guys who played who might not have, you know, they produced enough. And you know, the cohesion part, again, I think the level I coach and I know, I don’t pretend to know how it goes down at different levels, but I know this, that the people who evaluate me care. They want to do both. They want to win championships and they want our student athletes to have a great experience. It’s not one or the other. They want both. And to me, it’s negligent not to think about how I can satisfy those two things without hurting our chances of winning.
For example, with our playing time that year after COVID, we were the number one team in the region and every single healthy player played in the first half of every game. That was by design. You know, we usually only had 13 healthy players. And growing up, Dean Smith had what he called the blue team, where he put five guys in the game at the same time, guys who didn’t play much. And I love that concept. And I loved looking for reasons to play guys more, you know, what the football guys do with special teams. Sometimes it’s a great defender that you can say, hey, when that other team needs a three, you’re going to play because you’re good at this. And looking for reasons to get more guys involved. But I just know that that year when everybody was playing in the first half, our practices were a little bit better. Our togetherness was better. And, you know, there’s nothing better than for team cohesion.
When guys get on the bus saying, hey, I know I’m going to be in there in the first half and I better be ready. So again, I think that’s a little bit specific to our level, but I know high school coaches deal with that all the time. The opportunity to make a kid feel valuable, I’m willing to go to great depths to do that. I just am. The second one, the various styles of play, we’ll sub this because one of the things that I came to the conclusion with, with that blue team, we would put that team in, play five guys together and they would play different, particularly on defense than the rest of our team, the other possessions, the starters, you know, we’re not a zone team. That group, we’d get ready to play zone. And that would help us particularly in games when we’re getting ready to play against a team that plays one, three, one. So I thought that was a way to get us more diverse on defense.
Kevin Broderick 38:40
Hey, you guys are only going in for a handful of possessions. You’re going to press or you’re going to play one, three, one, and really allowed our offense to get better, our starting offense, because playing against that. So, and the third one is keeping guys fresh. You know, we’ll sit that although we know at our level that we played seven weekends where, Hey, we got to win on Friday and then we got to come back and win at four on Saturday.
And we don’t have TV timeouts to think that that’s not different in terms of the number of guys that have to be in a rotation than division one who never does that. It’s just different. And I would say the one thing we’ve tried to do is playing a lot of guys to me is it works really good when our goal is, Hey, can our top three guys be in the top 10 in the league in minutes? But yet, you know, we’re getting a ton of rotation with those other guys and playing more guys, but still the best guys are playing more than the other team’s best guys. Now that happened that year. I think we had our three best players were clearly in the top in minutes, but able to rotate seven or eight of those other guys, the longer I coach, making a kid feel valuable. And certainly you have to do that within your standards, but I’m willing to go to great lengths to help that happen.
Pat 39:56
I’d like to just follow up with logistically, when you’re going to play 12 to 13 in the first half, you as a staff talk about it, how much were the substitutions predetermined? What was your process and how would you get all those guys in in the first half?
Kevin Broderick 40:10
It wasn’t predetermined other than the fact that that five, you know, we would say before the game the day before. All right. And we called it again, copy and Dean Smith blue team. All right. You five guys are on the gold team. And again, we did have, or guys who knew they weren’t normally in the rotation, you know, they were fighting to be on the gold team. They were motivated. So they always knew that at some point, usually later in the half, unless they, we get down 12, nothing, the gold team’s going in early, right? But, uh, that was predetermined. They were going to go in together and it wasn’t going to be, Hey, you guys stay in until your minus four, whatever.
We’re just going to go play. You’re going to play as long as obviously the better you play, the longer you’re going to play. That was predetermined. And basically the other, you know, eight or nine guys say that was just the feel and flow of the game. You know, it certainly was intentional. I wanted that year and that was a year. Normally most of that year we had 13 healthy guys. And obviously if we’re not going to keep 17, 18 guys, it starts with, Hey, we can’t find a role from them that we just have to cut them. Right. So, you know, we do think that they’re certainly not equal, but 13 guys are capable of helping us win in a college game. If they’re not, then, you know, they’re not going to be on the team, but those five predetermined, everything else was the feel of the game. And then it was hard. But one of the reasons that worked that year was we had those great leaders who bought into that, even though it might’ve felt like, Hey, this guy’s getting a little bit of my time. They bought into it. We had the right leaders who when we talk about, don’t tell me what you’re committed to, tell me what you’re willing to sacrifice our leaders were able to say, Hey, I’m willing to sacrifice to help our teammates feel more a part of this.
And I always study this Nova Southeastern team because they’re, you know, why wouldn’t you study the team that wins more? And, you know, they’re a true wear down team, right? The way they play and they simply wear people down and we don’t pretend we can do that. But when you’re playing more and we do think that it helps the cutting harder at the end of the game, being able to get a few more stops, we do think it helps in terms of overall playing full speed for the full sport. We’re certainly not that Nova Southeastern is the, it’s one of the most unbelievable things I’ve ever seen in coach. And you talk about turnovers, they don’t win the fewest turnovers, but they were plus 10 and differential this year, right? So that’s our study point. Now we were number one, but we were only like plus 2.8 and you know, how can we get to that number? Cause that’s really the number.
Pat 42:45
the minute distribution, I know it very look like in that, especially with like the 10th 11th or 11th, 12th, 13th player.
Kevin Broderick 42:52
Yeah. We ask them not to focus on minutes, just focus on possessions and plays and opportunities. And the top three guys, you know, by very intentionally, hey, we’re not going to turn this into the best three guys playing less because that’s still the thing, right? Those guys are going to be 30 plus.
It’s just, and maybe it’s the way we’ve been built where guys four through 12, there’s not huge separation. And I think the fact that it’s first half, I just don’t know in this era right now that we’re in and we all talk, hey, the transfer portal numbers, all that stuff, we have to own up to the fact that our sport is way worse than any of the other ones in terms of percentage of guys that going, that’s just it. We have to own up to that. And so we’re not doing it just to keep guys happy, but to say, Hey, I want this kid, I don’t know how kids feel valuable. The number one thing that makes them feel valuable say, I’m going to play you when the game still matters, right? So to play guys down 30 up 30, that doesn’t do anything. But I have guys that they don’t care about minutes. I got guys that, Hey, they were in a game to go to the sweet 16 and they’re in their garden and all American for two possessions. And, you know, one of them went in and hit a three and kid who never plays. And we’re losing a first round NCAA game in our gym. And we’re down like a few points and we’re struggling a little bit. He comes off and I’ve never heard our gym louder because again, the gym knows, Hey, this guy doesn’t get a lot of possessions, but he just banged a three and he doesn’t care how many minutes he played. He knows forever, right? He was valuable to our team, valuable that night.
And you know, the football guys, I think do a good job with this more than ever, right? Hey, you’re going to be on kickoff coverage. You’re going to be on special teams. I think that there’s ways for us to do that without hurting our chances of winning, but the togetherness cohesion, the consistent effort, the playing through injury, right?
That year we were number one in the region. We had a section real early. Now I suspended three guys. Well, you know, starters, some of those guys had already played and we went on two and O when they were out, we needed them. They were valuable. So when we have to win at our level, every game, if you lose a game in November, sometimes it’s the difference between an at-large or not. There’s no throwaway games, right? And we understand that, but we also understand that we got no chance to win a championship. If we can’t win a hard fought game at seven 30 on Friday and then come back and win a hard fought game at four o’clock on Saturday, we need more guys to do that. And we’re just in the mind frame of looking for reasons to play more guys, not reasons to play less.
Dan 45:34
Coach, you’re off the start, sub, sit hot seat. I appreciate the irony of playing start, sub, sit on a question about playing everybody.
Pat 45:40
Yeah, right.
Dan 45:42
We appreciate your thoughts there. That was a lot of fun. We’ve got one final question for you as we wrap up. Before we do, again, thank you so much for coming on today. Congratulations on all the success with your program.
Kevin Broderick 45:53
Great being with you guys. Again, you guys do tremendous work that helps us all. I’m not going to, but I always feel like I should be sending you guys a check because you do F of our work. I’m not going to. We’ll leave our bank account information for anybody else. It feels the same.
Dan 46:07
Coach, our final question for you is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Kevin Broderick 46:15
Yeah, you know, certainly in an investment in luck at the same time that, you know, everybody in my family, the five of us have all been Nazareth athletes, right? And my wife is the best Nazareth athlete, right? She was a high level swimmer and she gets the competitive and intensity of coaching. So that’s just a huge, huge advantage for us.
And early in my career that you know, Jeff and Gundy, and he’s done this for a lot of coaches, has laid out what he thinks, you know, coaches to survive in this, to do it well, have to be focused on. The top of his list is competence. And there’s so much to this job. There’s so much on the court, off the court, just investing and trying to get a little bit better at all those parts of, you know, teaching the game, learning the game, understanding the game. When I first started coaching, it’s like, I had done nothing but play point guard and Bill Van Gundy told me, well, if you’re a coach, you better learn how to coach those big guys. You know, we’re going to learn how to do that. You’re not going to be compartmentalized. You’re going to be a coach and learn how to do all that. So again, that investment, it’s never ending, but can you just keep getting a little bit better at this?
Dan 47:31
All right, Pat, boy, so much good stuff in a very, very interesting topic, which was the turnovers, turnover battle. And so appreciate Coach Broderick for coming on today. It was an awesome, awesome interview.
Pat 47:44
Yeah, we’re gonna get into it. A lot of great nuggets on turnovers and like learning this as a coach over his career with how he thoughts about rotating players and his advisory committee so really enjoyed the conversation.
Dan 47:55
Yeah, let’s dive in on the first bucket, winning the turnover battle. They’ve been the best team in the country at limiting turnovers, like we mentioned, the last two years in Division III, and that’s an incredible stat to have any year and then back-to-back years. There’s obviously a method to that. And so getting to hear his thoughts on all the different ways they try to think about the turnover battle was great. I will kick it back to you though on first takeaways. at the end of the season. We’re going to have a lot of fun at the end of the season. We’re going to have a lot of fun at the end of the season.
Pat 48:22
My first takeaway is he’s done an excellent job in marrying the philosophy of, you know, limiting turnovers to how he wants to practice that his methodologies, and through his study, you know, looking at the turnovers, how they commit turnovers, you know, he’s come across with passes, they don’t want to make passes, they eliminated pivots, they want this talk about a lot, the patient pivot, the stride stop. And it’s one thing, obviously, okay, this is what we want to do, this is what we want in our program, this is what we don’t want in our program, but how do you teach that to your players?
How do you create environments so they’re actually retaining the skills that you want to teach them, that you want to instill in them? I think he does a fantastic job at just creating environments and practice through his drills that put the guys in situations where they’re forced to use these passes, these pivots that he wants to emphasize within his program. And that was kind of the beauty of this conversation for me and what I took away from Coach Broderick.
Dan 49:18
Yeah. And the pivot stuff is so interesting. I mean, it’s not something that you see go viral on social media, just people just pivoting. Maybe we should start that in our channel, just the pivot network.
Yeah. I’ll add on to what you said, because I loved what you talked about, your best offensive stance for each player. What does that maybe look like? And talking about how it’s a little bit individual per player, but being in that stance, being ready, I liked the additional layer, as well as when they looked at where a lot of the turnovers came from when they do their post-season study. And it’s usually that second defender that’s coming, so learning how to pivot around or through other defenders to make that pass. And then to your point as well, connecting the skill or the act of pivoting, re-pivoting, all that to then a scheme, a philosophy of cutting behind the action. We got into talking a little bit with him afterwards on just some of their cutting concepts. And so it’s not just the skill, it’s the skill layered in with the way to play and that building an offense around it. And like I mentioned on the show, yes, they were number one in the country in lowest turnovers, but they were also top five in offensive efficiency across the board, like their offense was great. So this obviously then connects to what ultimately we want to do, which is score the ball in an efficient way. Reminds me of coach Scott Moore, NAIA. They preferred to do that through their post-ups, be one of the most efficient teams in the country offensively. So a lot of great stuff in there, but I loved, like you said, connecting the pivoting, connecting that skill to then maybe a whole style of how to play.
Pat 50:58
I think one of my early misses to the first point you made with just recruiting it, you know, he mentioned he tries to recruit guys who value the ball. I wish I had followed up more on what does he see in the gym or what does he look from a stat?
You know, is it just a counting box score he looks at their assisted turnover ratio? I think ever since our conversation with coach Pasquale or big into like looking at efficiency numbers, but yeah, he looks for and recruiting guys who value the ball, like what does that mean? Or is it simply, yeah, he just low turnovers, high assists or low turnovers in general, but how it catches his eye.
Dan 51:34
Yeah, I’ll add to your early miss. I’ll give you another early ish miss from me. I wish I would ask him about, and maybe I didn’t ask him this because it didn’t come up till later, but we got to start sub sit. We talked about his top three players still playing major minutes and everyone else falling in after that when we got to the benefits of playing a deep bench. I wonder what the turnover stats are for say four through 13 for him versus one, two, and three, because I know we’ve had conversations with coaches where your top two or three players are going to probably take tougher shots, your major minute guys, your creative guys. I asked him a little bit about, you know, our turnovers created equal type of thing. And just if you’re going to not be a major minute player, what their turnovers look like as opposed to maybe a little more leeway or just wanting more freedom from your top couple of guys.
Pat 52:24
I really enjoyed that part of the conversation too. I think you followed up with how you get his guys to still play free, play aggressive, take risks, you know, married in with, yeah, we don’t want to commit turnovers. He spoke really well on that and how he tries to balance that and knowing kind of what are the acceptable risks that they’re going to take and what are the stayaways, the passes, the types of pivots or like you said, jump stops tend to maybe get in more charges or more turnovers or the stride stops. So that’s a good follow up by you because I think that is like the balancing act.
You know, if you talk about turnovers or you want to limit as much, how do you get your guys not to be robots?
Dan 53:00
Yeah, and my last point, I liked talking about the types of actions that you just mentioned that do lead to the most turnovers. Out of love.
Pat 53:09
And maybe it’s a mess to have just run through pretty much every offensive action and what he’s learned about what creates turnovers, what limits turnovers. We talked about pick and rolls, we talked about the post, talked about single gaps, but getting DHO’s, off-ball screens, you know, maybe just kind of do an encyclopedia of nover actions and turnovers.
Dan 53:27
Yeah, that podcast will go viral for sure. Three hours of us dissecting every turnover type.
Yeah. Okay, flares. Let’s move to start, sub or sit. Tons in here as well. Let’s start with the first one, which was the benefits of a personal advisory council. I’ll quickly just take my takeaway from it. It was his start basically, which was helping hear hard truths. And he threw a nice nugget in there about as he’s gotten older, he’s okay with hearing the tough stuff maybe more than when he was younger. And he seeks it out. He wants it from people that are close to him in his life and how that’s valuable to navigate a season to hear the tough stuff. Coaching such a difficult profession, we all know it, but having people that help you see things maybe that you don’t see or don’t want to see or hear things you don’t want to hear is ultimately beneficial to you and your team.
Pat 54:22
I wrote down, which I think was a great point you raised when we’re talking about making hard decisions, hearing first hard truths, but then making hard decisions and relying on his advisory council. He said, never be in a hurry with hard decisions. I wrote that down. I thought that was a great quote to think about and not rush into decisions or not be so quick just because it’s a difficult question. You have to provide an answer right away.
Dan 54:47
Yeah, I think with the patience part of that, and you’ll never be in a hurry, it’s definitely different between like maybe a tactical decision or something, you got to do X and O wise or something for practice, whatever that day versus like a human decision where something’s going on with your team, your culture, a person, and maybe not rushing those things as much and coach being able to kind of differentiate when a quick decision needs to be made versus when one could use a little bit more time to marinate. I thought it was really good.
Let’s move to the second start subset, which was the benefits of playing a deep bench. He plays 13-14 players in the first half, like you mentioned, and they’re super efficient and they don’t turn it over. So an interesting topic. So I’ll kick it back to you on first takeaways because this was a good one too.
Pat 55:35
And knowing kind of everything you just said there, that was my biggest curiosity going into this question. Just, you know, what’s it kind of look like from logistically getting all those guys in? I like the point of it’s, you know, valuing with his guys, the possessions over the minutes, but yeah, everything from minute breakdown, substitution patterns, just with the challenge of getting 12, 13 guys in in the first half and 20 minutes span.
The other element I really liked the human side of his philosophy and why, and especially at the D3 level, and he gave the great example during COVID, the effort, the energy that these guys are expanding every day to be at practice or during COVID to take all those tests, they deserve to play. And we’re going to make an effort to give them actual meaningful minutes. And like you said, not just plus 30 down 30.
Dan 56:21
totally agree. His sub, which was the varied playing styles, because he mentioned that particularly on the defensive side, you know, when you get deeper into your bench and you have different combinations of defenders, or he mentioned that his, I think you call his blue group, like kind of second unit, was really good because they would simulate playing zone. You and I talked about this before, the question about asking if you’re going to play 12, 13, 14 players.
So many different combinations of both offensive and defensive skill sets that the other team has to sort of prepare for and the combination of your second group. Maybe they’re playing a similar scheme, but the skill sets, the synergies between those players are a little different. So even from like an advantage of a scouting standpoint, maybe you’re seeing some of those things play out. And so he subbed that saying that it was just interesting, particularly from the defensive side. And just a good conversation about the benefits of playing deeper into your bench as it relates to your overall team, like you just talked about.
Pat 57:19
It was interesting. I believe he said he thought practices got better, knowing that the one was going to get in and that he saw the effects there.
Dan 57:27
I think we both gave a couple misses. Is there anything else though to add as we wrap up here?
Pat 57:32
If we stay on this last start subset, I wish I had asked how his substitution pattern in the second half changes or varies or differs. What happens when the 12th, 13 men kind of get hot?
Is he going to have to keep that same rotation? Is he going to bypass the seventh, eighth, ninth man to get them back in or what just changes and to say if he’s as committed in the first half to the second half with the rotation and what factors into that?
Dan 57:58
Yeah, I could have just kept going on the turnover stuff. There’s other pockets of that, I think would have been interesting.
Pat 58:03
One other avenue to explore within the turnovers would have been interesting how he then thinks about defense. And he talked a little bit briefly when he said five on five and that usually they’re always playing with the big at the rim because that’s how they play defensively.
So it would have been interesting too than like every defense, how is he thinking about maybe trying to create more turnovers or just maybe what he thinks about tactically on the defensive end.
Dan 58:26
But once again, we thank coach Broderick for coming on and sharing all his thoughts today. Thank you everybody for listening. We’ll see you next time.