We sat down this week with newly hired Head Coach of Westmont College, after a successful tenure at Midwestern State, Justin Leslie! In this highly insightful conversation we explore Coach Leslie’s thoughts on creating an adaptable offense, simplifying actions, attacking through the middle third of the floor, and discuss how guards can anchor a defense, and valuable career growth advice during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Transcript
Justin Leslie 00:00
I was more of a controlling coach early on is because I like to fancy myself as a player. I was a smart guy. I would have been labeled. I could think the game and well, smart guys as coaches get things way too complicated. It’s not what you can know and remember. It’s what your players can know and learn and translate into behaviors that help you win.
Dan 02:01
Coach, congratulations on the new job. I know you’re going a million miles an hour trying to figure things out as you’re making the move, but congratulations on the success of last season and the new job.
Justin Leslie 02:12
Oh, thank you very much. As you mentioned, it’s definitely a whirlwind, but I tell coaches all the time that we’re blessed to have these basketball stresses in our life. It could be a whole heck of a lot worse, and I’m just really excited for this opportunity for my family and I moving forward at Westmont College.
Dan 02:27
And we’re excited to have you on the show today. You and I have got a chance to talk a little bit over the last few weeks and see each other at the Final Four. And one of the things that we thought would be interesting to discuss with you is the offensive side of the ball and your thoughts on over the years sort of retooling, simplifying maybe is another way to say it and then making an offense that’s very adaptable. I’ll kick it back to you because I know your thoughts on this are a lot and you’ve done a great job at it. And so your thoughts on retooling and simplifying your offense.
Justin Leslie 03:00
things that I have to mention is the fact that I grew up playing in a traditional motion-based concept offense back in the 90s. And that really shaped my mentality with how I view the game and I like well-rounded players that can not doubly simplify it, but they can shoot, can pass, can dribble, and then can set a screen and read out of a screen. And so as I’ve kind of gone down my coaching journey, I started off with a traditional motion and then adapted it to a five-out motion, a lot of patterns, scripted rules, and the like. And of course, as you get farther into coaching, you start playing with it a little bit more and putting in some more X’s and O’s and wrinkles and quick hitters and the like. And one of the things that I think was just great for me from a professional perspective was during COVID, having the time to go back and reevaluate all the different things that I was doing and having opportunities to be on Zooms with different coaches from around the country, watch a lot of film, consume podcasts and other just learning opportunities throughout that time, really started to understand the value of how to play more in concepts. And I had been doing it to a certain degree, but I wasn’t able to really define it nearly as well, get a better understanding of spacing to fit your personnel. Over the course of time, it’s kind of evolved to where staying within a few simple concepts. You have to watch your team early in the preseason, watch a lot of film for your incoming players to kind of get an idea for some of their strengths and weaknesses, and then to put a few things in place that then we can go start working from, understanding what’s going to be most efficient based on the personnel grouping that we have with that roster.
Dan 04:42
When you’re teaching or starting to install early on, is it spacing first? Is it concepts first and just let the spacing kind of play out? Is it retriggers of how we get back into our stuff? Where do you find yourself starting with this?
Justin Leslie 04:57
That’s a great question. I usually find myself starting with two-on-two actions, getting the initial players to understand how to create advantage and whatever the two-on-two action may be. Of course, it can be a ball screen. It can be an away screen. It can be a good action. I mean, the options are limitless on what you can do with two players. Once they start understanding how to make reads for advantage themselves, then I go to spacing from there. Now we start talking about where the other players on the floor go. Well, if these two are playing some type of action in the middle of the floor, well, what do the other three do? And then based off of their decision, there are triggers for the other three players based off of who they are. For example, if you have a ball screen in the slot, right? If you’ve got a shooter up in that high slot, weak side, well, you want them to hold space. Or maybe you slide, cut the baseline, fade them out to the corner. Well, if it’s a non-shooter up in that slot, maybe he needs to screen or get a 45 cut. So really trying to understand who the players are off the ball once we get to that spacing component. And really, there’s just a handful of decisions that have to be made. Once they learn what their particular decision is and best possible opportunity to help the team offensively, then you just start repping it over and over.
Pat 06:22
During this process, the growing pains when you made kind of this shift, I think for a lot of us, and as you alluded to at the top, we’ll often use probably sets to teach the solutions based on what the defense is doing, or this is kind of the opposite. They have the concepts and need to find the solutions within the concepts. So just as you’re going through this process, you just started early on when you made this kind of transformation, what was the growing pains for you? And what would be the advice that just understand it’s working or keep fighting, keep pushing through versus don’t rely on okay, just we’re going to go set base now.
Justin Leslie 06:56
I think the first thing is in the recruiting process and at the start of the year, letting the players know that they’re not going to be put in a box. And everybody wants to hear that. They’re going to have freedom. Well, the next part of freedom is making sure that they understand that with that freedom comes a lot of responsibility to just work through the process. There are going to be a lot of messy days early on, where we’re going to try something, it may work great, we’re going to try something, it’s going to be terrible. And so getting that shared commitment from the team and the players to where they understand that this is a process that we’re in together learning. That’s not a one size fits all type of solution. And then the next piece of it is, I think for most coaches that I would recommend, where I screwed up initially, was really naming all of your actions, teaching teams to talk on offense, call your cuts, call your screens. I mean, who cares if the defense knows what’s coming? You can get to the next action so much more effectively if the players on your team are on the same page. And so part of giving them that freedom and reading out of concepts, for example, a 45 cut, I will call a strong cut. Well, I call it a strong cut because I’m yet to have someone scream strong, authoritatively when they’re making a cut and then cut in a weak manner. So finding that language and terminology and word pictures that makes sense to the team, once they start articulating things, it starts clicking a lot sooner. So teaching them how to talk to each other, because a skill that a lot of players never get developed really until they get to college and some never even in college, is understanding how their voice can tip off a trigger for their teammates. They can call out an action and set their teammates up for just a tremendous amount of success, where if they’re silent on that cut or they’re silent on that screen, sometimes the passer might be guessing, or if there’s a back cut, well, and the other guy won’t know to pop out. So just that communication and terminology, I think in instilling that early in a season, helps the whole process go so much smoother.
Pat 09:03
Coach, we can stick on that strong cut. Is that something that, you know, when you start to develop these solutions within the concepts, you will introduce it a one solution here is the strong cut or whatever it is that you want to use it for? Or is it, if they get to it naturally that you will stop and identify and name it and they that’s our strong cut. Again, going back to you telling versus them kind of exploring or finding out.
Justin Leslie 09:28
That’s a good question. One of the things that happens a lot in my offensive schemes is we center the ball in the middle of the floor. The ball will get to the point up at the top. Now it could be on a five-out set with a big man, it could be with a point guard, and that leaves us two players on a side of the floor. So what we might do is just start off with a coach, you know, we’re in first week of workouts in September. Start with a coach at the top of the key, and it might be man in the corner, man on the winger slot, that 45 strong cut, with the other one lifting out of the corner, kind of a standard action that you might have. You know, we’ll play out of it for five minutes. Just give them the terminology, some of the teaching points. The next day, same thing, same setup, but this time we’re going to be in a wide pin down. Then the next day, it might be, you know, one of those kind of Princeton cuts. They come together face to face, could be a curl, could be a back cut, same formation, same spacing. They just teaching them how to play out of that, you know, you get three or four days in at each spot, then we have our actions up between the slots. We have our actions in the middle of the floor, and we just give them a few different looks. And over the course of a couple weeks, they start understanding those terminologies. And then you incorporate it into four on four, five on five, just your free play. But that’s usually how I’ll introduce it and just kind of give them a little bit of exposure, teach them some of the finer points, you know, mechanics that we’re looking for in the different actions. Then mainly how to talk and just work together in that scenario as we build out from there.
Dan 11:03
Could you go a little deeper on your philosophy on attacking through the middle of the court? That’s always been your philosophy or something you’ve developed with this offense?
Justin Leslie 11:13
Well, it’s definitely something that I’ve developed a lot more in the last couple years. Of course, you have to give credit to having quality guards that can make decisions and big men that are decision makers, whether it’s a ball mover or shooter. But the biggest difference is having shooters that can hold the corners. I mean, if you have shooters who can hold the corners and shoot effectively from there, that makes the decisions for the defense really difficult. That corner tag I’ve found is something that you can, I think in a shorter amount of time, teach your guards to recognize any tags or any defensive rotation. Usually those corner defenders are going to tip that off. And so that’s one of the things that we work on a lot with our guards in the middle of the floor is reading those corner defenders. And if they’re going to tag or they’re going to stay connected out there with the shooter, it makes their ability to attack in the middle third much, much easier.
Pat 12:08
Within this middle third attack and you mentioned holding the corners and again going back to just simplifying with one spacing if we take the middle ball screen for example are you trying to get the ball handler attacking then the single side always. Where there’s two behind are always trying to get a single side shake out of the boss in the middle third?
Justin Leslie 12:28
To be perfectly honest, they have complete freedom there. You can go either direction. Now, if you’re on the single side, of course you can play the shake action. Anyone comes and watches one of my teams play and they hear someone yell out sushi. We call that lift out of the corner on the shake a drag. And when I go out to sushi, my favorite thing is a dragon roll. So we got a drag and a roll anytime we’re playing that shake action. And so trying to give them word pictures that make sense for them. But to your point there, single side, yes, we’re going to play the shake. On the double side, if they’re coming off, the goal is to get downhill and just put pressure on the rim. I mean, that’s at the end of the day, whatever we’re doing, we want pressure on the rim, whether that’s the ball handler able to reject first and get down the lane, whether it’s that big man able to roll and collapse the defense, there’s a lot of flexibility back to that where on that two side, if there are two shooters, we want them holding space. If there’s a non shooter, he’s either cutting or screening or a shooter on that side.
Dan 13:33
Coach, if I could go back a little bit to you coaching this stuff, what a typical practice would look like for you from, if someone walked in and was observing you coach this, because I would imagine, you know, when you’re running a set or you’re teaching, there’s a lot of things that coaches are kind of dictating. And when you’re letting them flow and play through it, like what is your role in stopping it, letting them play through it, you know, restarting thing, basically the teaching of it and what it looks like from day to day from your stand point?
Justin Leslie 14:02
s going to change throughout the course of the season. Early on in the year, you have to let them play and figure it out. Pick a few things that you really want to get good at and then go back and look at the film. I’m a big fan of recording practice and having players go look and see both the good and the bad throughout the course of the early season.
But hen once you start getting closer to the season and you’re really into October, I think then it’s time to start going in there with your primary ball handlers. Okay, these are things you’re looking for out there today. Who’s on your team? I’ll mix the teams daily. Sometimes we’ll have a schoolyard draft for practice and just we let them kind of be a little bit random there. If you have two good shooters, well, you’re trying to find the paint to find them more. How can you put them in an action where they’re going to have more high percentage looks from three? Maybe you have a big man that is good in those get actions or can put the ball in the deck, play in some zoom looks. Well, okay. So today, instead of you calling for the screen, you need to get the ball in his hands more and allow him to be more of the playmaker. And so a lot of communication with the players about what they’re looking to do in that particular day on the front end of any drilling or practice. Then once we get into practice on the offensive side, we play. We do a lot of playing. So we’ll mix different games, half court, full court, last two minutes of a game. We’ll play first four minutes to the first media timeout. ODO segments is many variations of just playing basketball. I try to mix in.
Pat 15:39
withiWithine variations and in an effort to make your offense more adaptable and help them access solutions in real time, how much are you or are you not controlling the defense? In terms of if you just say, hey, we’re going to defense hedge, the offense, it can also prepare beforehand because they know the defense is hedging if I make sense.
I g ss how much are you then maybe encouraging the defense mix it up or constraining them to mix it up so the offense is having to also access these solutions and be adaptable.
Justin Leslie 16:09
So that’s the art of coaching, and that’s one of the greatest challenges. I’ve had some old coaches tell me one game’s worth a hundred practices. Why those preseason scrimmages are so valuable. The challenge is you want to establish your own defensive identity and you want to be consistent in that.
I’m believer in we mix between man and zone. And so it’s hard to go out there and mix between man and zone. And then within man, we’re going to ice here, hedge there, blitz. I mean, what I’ll try to do is in some of those controlled settings, we’ll do some constraints based group work with those actions or with those various coverages where we need to identify solutions. However, when we’re playing in practice, usually when I’m focusing on offense or we’re playing, I don’t do a lot of manipulating players defensive shifts in terms of you’re going to be hedging, you’re going to be in a drop coverage if it’s not something that they’re already doing normally.
Dan 17:09
When it comes to the game, you know, and we’re talking a lot about practice and installing and teaching, I would imagine though, when you get to a game and you as a staff sort of recognize certain actions that may or may not be better against a certain defense, all that stuff. Now, how much are you dictating from the bench, at least to start possessions, you know, certain calls that you want to start, or do you let them sort of just flow naturally?
I m n, where’s the balance with that now?
Justin Leslie 17:33
One of the things I haven’t been specific on yet, just to make sure, so you’re clear on, I have three actions this year that were our primary actions. Those would be our flow actions as we come up the floor, not calling a place specifically, but one is a stagger away. If the runner’s behind the ball, we’re going to stagger away to start the action. We have a rim runner who’s ahead. Well, that’s an action where we’re going to do a little dribble back door to a middle third look. And then we have kind of out of a pistol set that ends itself up in a floppy action. And so those three things are continuously happening throughout a game.
Any ther step plays are going to happen, ATOs, dead balls, or last few minutes of the game when you’re kind of in that. But within those three actions, we will just rep leading up to it. This is the team who switches everything. So when we’re running zip, for example, our stagger away package. In that one, if a team switching, you know these are your primary reads and then the triggers out of it. If a team is going to be staying connected, lock and trail, well, here are your reads. And so over the course of a season, I mean, because there really are only so many things defensively that a team can do, your team’s going to start to understand what works against different coverages.
And so as we’re going through the game, really what we do is just really put a lot of pressure on our team and our bench specifically. The guys who are out of the game will ask in that first media timeout, how are they defending us? What are they doing? And we had a really good team this year. We were a number four seed in the NCAA tournament. I mean, we had a very good team. We could get into those timeouts. I could ask the question, and then you hear eight to 10 voices all around me that are communicating what’s happening. And so from there, it starts to become, now every once in a while you’ll ask the question and they’re not sure. Well, okay, now I need to interject myself and the staff and make sure that we’re helping clarify the situation for them. But at the end of the day, when you’re complicating the simple, you know, you steal this from, you know, Ben McCollum. I mean, you’ve heard him say that over the course of time, it’s complicate the simple. We’re going to run just a couple primary actions, but we’re going to have a lot of counters. And over the course of a season, the players become very adept at recognizing what the defense is doing.
Dan 19:52
Funny you mentioned that Ben McCallum quote, because I actually have that written down here in my notes when we were thinking about this conversation. That quote stood out to me.
You entioned earlier in the show about coming from a motion-based background. I know motion-based background, you get up the floor, you’re reversing it, you’re screening away, you’re creating action, you’re trying to get reversals. Some of what we’re talking about now, centering the ball in the middle third, waiting for floppy action and staggers. How much do you care about reversing the ball early in offense versus getting it to spots and getting to actions and creating an advantage? I mean, what’s the balance there of just ball movement to move it side to side versus stuff we want to get into?
Justin Leslie 20:33
that I love question and I’m going to take it back to part of why I was more of a controlling coach early on is because I like to fancy myself as a player. I was a smart guy. I would have been labeled. I could think the game and well, smart guys as coaches get things way too complicated. It’s not what you can know and remember. It’s what your players can know and learn and translate into behaviors that help you win on the floor.
And o what I’ve really tried to do is this is where you bring in the analytics. So we are given the guy’s freedom, but what are we really trying to get to? You know, the most efficient shots in basketball or when you put pressure on the rim, you’re getting to the free throw line, you’re getting layups, you’re getting those inside out threes. Those are the types of looks that we’re going towards. So the communication is day one with these players of if it’s the first five seconds of a shot clock or the last five seconds of a shot clock and honestly anywhere in between, if we really get an understanding as a team of what we call them love shots, not shots that you love shots that we love as a program. And once players start to understand that concept of passing up good for great paint to great, that’s another one that I’ll use is we want to get pressure on the rim and get to a love shot. And so how we get there, especially with a more veteran team, I kind of don’t care as long as they know what the end result is that we’re trying to achieve on that possession.
Dan 22:03
Pat 22:03
A minute ago, you mentioned that sometimes in the first media timeouts, you’ll ask your guys what’s the defense doing and talk like solutions from there. Going back to early in the season, when you’re building out this offense, how you create that dialogue, how you get your players to basically talk, you mentioned naming things, but then really talk about their offense in a way that’s productive and on point and not just, again, maybe going back, we just need to do a different concept. No more floppy, let’s go middle ball serve, but really talking about what is the issue and fostering that dialogue.
Justin Leslie 23:44
that’s probably one of my favorite parts of the season is that September to early October when it’s just as a coach, you and your team figuring things out. And as I previously mentioned, we settled on three actions this year that we primarily ran. I started with about seven or eight, and we would play with those throughout the course of that time. And some of them were a complete disaster, but you have to try multiple things to get there. And asking the players questions, especially like your seniors, your veterans that understand kind of what a college basketball season looks like and getting their two cents. I mean, for example, our floppy action that we threw in this year, that actually came off the suggestion of one of my senior leaders of how do we get a little bit more movement because we were getting stagnant in the middle third. We were really good in the middle third. Our two leading scores were dynamic, first team, all conference, all region guards. Well, you get in the habit of watching those two play if you’re not careful. So we had to incorporate a floppy action where you had more guys moving in the balls out of their hands. And so that preseason time, we tried a lot of these things and then honestly, just conversation, spend time talking with the guys. And as they talk through it more and share their thoughts, of course, I can get a feel for who they are and what their acumen is in the game, but they’re starting to have some ownership and just giving them a little bit of that freedom. Because in all honesty, any pattern can work if it suits your players. But if you throw in that dynamic of them having a say, I think that goes a long way just in their commitment level in the process of working it throughout the course of a season.
Pat 25:30
When did you find like these conversations you’re gonna have being part of the most effective was it when it was actually happening in a practice. Was it a film session or was it maybe just talking you know to your senior leader before or after practice.
Justin Leslie 25:43
It’s all of the above. I’ve really tried, over the course of my career, to get better at making my office a more inviting place for the players just to stop in and say hi. I mean, that’s the first thing. Going into coach’s office usually just has a very negative connotation for players. So trying to be very, you know, get better over the course of time at making the office a safe space for them to come in and have some hard conversations or talk about something completely unrelated to basketball. And usually those things kind of cross over and get interwoven throughout the course of the season. But I think the best place to have these conversations is in the gym. I mean, they’re warming up and you’re rebounding for them. During the course of live action, you know, there’s a dead ball. Hey, what’d you see here? Get there quick two cents, and then we’ll go back and look at the practice tape later. One of the things that I just love that’s happened more over the course of the last couple of years is we’ve been recording practice. We’ll have that. The players can say, hey, at the 1705 mark in practice today, I saw this. What did you think? Right. And so I’ll encourage them to send me a timestamp, you know, because a lot of them don’t want to come in and set up a formal meeting. And honestly, I don’t want that all the time either, but it might be seven, eight o’clock at night. They have a question. Just shoot me the timestamp. Ask me a question. Probably takes me a minute or two to give them a response and feedback. And so it’s a constant ongoing dialogue from team film sessions down to the text exchanges, you know, early in the morning or late at night.
Pat 27:16
With the team film sessions, are you cognizant of having them speak first or asking for their opinion, their feedback before you start to roll the film and give your opinion?
Justin Leslie 27:26
Opinion . Now, that changes a lot off of the time of year. Early in the year, there’s a lot of education that’s going on. And you know, you can’t get 10 hours on the court or to just letting them beat each other to death physically. So you get a bunch of competitors. I mean, they’re really going to go at each other very hard out there. So limiting that practice time on the court, you know, you have to supplement that with some film where you can get some teaching and show them what it looks like, what we’re trying to get to. But beyond that, as the season goes on, you really try and pare it down to where the players are taking more ownership. You know, now with technology, we can push all the film to their phones. They have it all readily available. Now it’s a matter of them just going in there and then they know the answers to the test, so to speak. I just have to prompt them with some questions. One of the highlights of my season this year was in October after our second scrimmage, our top three guards were out. And so we’re playing a game with a lot of guys out of position. Offensively, we weren’t great, but defensively, we should have been fantastic. That was the strength of our team. After the scrimmage, I don’t really talk to the team right after a game. We’ll kind of get our little break at half court. And then I let them go until I watched the film. I don’t want to speak emotionally to them in that time. A couple of seniors came up and said, hey, coach, can we handle the film section? I’m like, well, sure. They had the film edited, the time stamps, everything, and they went through it with the team. And so, I mean, you hear this concept often, but it really rings true is, I mean, player led team is always going to be more effective than a coach led team. Things happen so fast out there, given the player’s freedom, but you have to create that space to where they’re allowed to take ownership. And I think the film room is a great place to do that. Pre-game chalk talks. I don’t do it. The players do it. Again, it’s a little bit unique as a staff, myself, who really work hard to give them all the information in advance, so that by the time we get to game time or practice, they’re able to have ownership and, well, in the film room is a great place for them to start that process.
Dan 29:29
Coach, the pregame chalk talk, them speaking, could you go a little deeper on what that looks like and why you went to it?
Justin Leslie 29:36
First scouts. What we went to, again, this technology that we have available now is mind-boggling when you compare it to what we used to have 20, 25 years ago. So if we finish a game on Thursday night, the scout is already done for our Saturday opponent. As soon as we break the huddle, we’ll go back to the office and a staff member will make the scout live and push it to their phones. So by the time I see them again on Friday, they have all the personnel scout video tendencies, statistics, every bit of analytics that we have so that when we come back together on Saturday, they’ve already had multiple opportunities to go through it and practice on their mobile device.
And then in our pregame meal, we’ll have a meeting about four or so hours before a tip-off. I’ll put it up on a big screen and I’ll allow them with their phones, like an open book test, they’ll run through the scout, like I’ll play the video. One of the players will give commentary on this particular action or look. We go to personnel, one player will have, you know, number five, the next player will have number 10 and they just run through it. They have their phones available so they can be following along. In the pregame, we go through, we just list out the name and number on the board, the keys for the game, and the players go down the line, they have to do someone different than they did in pregame. They couldn’t do the same player because we switch a lot, we play a lot of zone, you have to know who everyone is and the players run through the scout. And it’s amazing how much more detailed they go into than we would as coaches. Because as coaches, you don’t want to give too much, they get tired of your voice. The players, I mean, they’re a little bit competitive with wanting to give a better scout or description than the man either who preceded them or is following. They want to be completely just locked in and nails on this report. That’s another place where, you know, I mean, winning in college basketball is about dominating the margins and this is one of those margins where I think we’ve really been able to distinguish ourselves specifically on the defensive side of the ball is given the players the tools to have just complete ownership and that pregame is just an example of that.
Pat 31:52
Coach, just to hit on it even more, I guess look at the margin within the margin. Have you found that the players, is it the recognition of the opponent’s plays or their understanding of the opponent personnel that probably really shines through and putting them in charge of the pregame?
Justin Leslie 32:06
I really used to be big on understanding every play, you know, past here, screen there. We, I don’t know, maybe 5% of the time we’ll do a walk through of another team’s play. I’ll show them the film. But at the end of the day, we want to dictate the terms of how the possession is going to go, how they run it on film is not going to be how we let them run it. So we want them to know personnel just intimately who’s in what given spot. And then from there, we’re going to try and be the best that we can defensively and being disruptive. Again, we’re a team that switches defenses a lot to keep teams on their heels. So I’ve found that it’s more important for us to focus on being great in who we are, as opposed to trying to be too flexible based off of who our opponent is.
Dan 32:58
Coach, tons of great stuff in there. Thank you for all your thoughts. We wanna transition now to a segment on the show that we call Start, Sub, or Sit. We’re gonna give you three different options, ask you to start one, sub one, sit one, and then we’ll discuss from there. So, Coach, if you’re all set, we’ll dive into this first one. Let’s do it, I can’t wait. Okay, this first one has to do with career growth as a coach, and these are three different types of relationships in the industry that you think, especially thinking now about like a younger coach coming up, that it would be beneficial to have great relationships and sort of use them as you climb in your career. So, option one is creating great relationships with fellow assistants, those in your division, your leagues, creating great relationships with fellow assistants. Option two is finding great mentors or those ahead of you in the profession. And option three are, I’m calling like third party people, so athletic directors, agents, people that are outside of say coaching in one way or another and creating those relationships. So, Start, Sub, Sit, fellow assistants, mentors, or third party. All right.
Justin Leslie 34:09
Well, I’ll qualify this with saying, I’m talking for young coaches, people that are trying to, in the initial stages of their career and trying to grow, I would start without question mentors. All right, I had the privilege of playing for and then working for early in my career, a Hall of Fame coach. Now, not everyone’s gonna get that opportunity. I mean, Bill O’Dell was a legend that just being around him daily, you can’t overstate the value of having a mentor like that. But additionally, other veteran coaches or just people outside of coaching, it can just kind of speak truth into what you’re doing at that stage. It’s really easy for younger coaches to kind of get off track a little bit and not keep the main thing the main thing, to get lost who they are, their identity, their purpose, and why they decided to coach. One of the things that was just ingrained in me early on was don’t overcomplicate it, love Jesus, work hard, treat people right. Just keep it within a simple parameter and just go be you and go compete. Mentors are critical. And then I would sub relationships with assistants, especially when you’re young. Here’s a fact, I just started last week a new job. The athletic director who hired me was an assistant baseball coach at the school that I worked at when I was first starting off as an assistant. We were figuring out how to teach health education and write our syllabus. I mean, we’re figuring it out together. Now you fast forward 20 plus years, some of my greatest friends and allies and advocates in this business were mid 20s, early 20s guys that we’re sitting next to at a auxiliary gym in Vegas watching a game that now are accomplished administrators and leaders on campuses and in the business world that everybody starts somewhere, but those authentic relationships that you develop, those are gonna blossom throughout. It’s like investing, right? Compound interest. We’re not capable or the human mind of understanding what dollar cost averaging investing regularly can do for you in the longterm. Well, it’s the same thing with these relationships with other assistants when you’re young, they’re all gonna be some, somebody’s gonna be a big time coach. Someone’s gonna be a big time administrator and you don’t wanna be going to them in 20 years calling in a favor if you haven’t really developed an authentic relationship with them when there was no agenda other than just being a friend and wanting to go through this journey of basketball together. And then I would sit the third party. There’s going to come a time like I’ve had agents and search firms involved with me over the years, but that came much later in the process because at the end of the day, there’s only so much that they can do. If you fit the profile of a job, a search firm can say, hey, maybe you should look at this guy. If you fit the profile of what a school is looking for an agent might be able to make a call and say, take a look at this candidate. But if you don’t have the goods, if you don’t have mentors that have spoken into your life, if you don’t have quality relationships throughout a region and in the industry, those third party interests, well, they’re not gonna be of much use to you.
Dan 37:19
A lot of great stuff in there. You did pre-qualify your answer with young assistants before I asked some follow-ups. Would any of this change when you become more seasoned in your career? Maybe you have a head job or whatever it is, would the answer change at all there?
Justin Leslie 37:34
Absolutely. One of the things that I would add in is I started getting into my 40s. I found that trying to be competitive so early in my career and, you know, work for that next win, that next game, I started to take a step back and realize that there aren’t enough really authentic relationship amongst coaches. Everyone has like kind of their circle or their treaty that they’re within where they’re those relationships and friendships. However, some of the greatest relationships that I think can be formed, you know, for coaches in mid or late career is with your peers, those that you’re competing against. Now, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to go out there and give it everything you have to go out there and, you know, beat them by 30 if you get the opportunity. But there’s only so many people around the country that can relate to what we go through as college basketball coaches. And sometimes those are the only people that you might be able to vent to or they can relate with something that you’re going through. And I think it’s very, very important that coaches develop a support system just within the coaching industry because I have amazing friends. Like one of my dearest friends in the world, you know, a neighbor that I’m moving away from, we’re not excited about that. I mean, in life and family, I mean, we’re close as can be. However, he has no idea what my job is. He can’t comprehend it. And so I think that more veteran coaches need to have other coaches in their life that they can just go through this journey with. And, you know, you can serve as a kind of a peer just as a friend. Sometimes those folks can tell you, you know, hey, I know you call balls and strikes as you see them. Was I out of line? Did I do this right? Did I do this wrong? Also, those coaches further down in their career, they might be some of your best advocates for job opportunities or connections as well. So it does shift in time, but you get farther down the line. I look at some of my peers, you know, in conference play that they basically kind of check all three boxes that you just listed there.
Pat 39:37
If I can follow up back with young coaches, so young assistant coaches, what advice would you give on gaining vast amounts of experience in terms of when to switch a job, maybe when to go work for another staff or another coach or change a program?
Justin Leslie 39:52
One of the biggest challenges for young, actually any coach, but young coaches is understanding if they’re growing or not. I’ll use this comparison with players. Players are always going to come into the gym, eager, ready to work, if they’re getting better. They know if they’re getting better or not, right? If they’re starting to just whatever those benchmarks are that you kind of aim for, or just overall feel of play, players know if they’re getting better. You can’t fake that. And if you’re getting them better, they’re going to come in ready to go. As a coach, I think that same thing happens. You need to be able to identify, am I getting better? Am I growing? If I was given that next opportunity, am I developing a skillset that is preparing me for that? And at some point you butt up against the ceiling. It might be staff dynamics. It might be certain coaches aren’t willing to give things up or delegate. It might be family. It might be a relationship. Young coaches, a lot of them are single when they start. They might meet someone and they start thinking about getting married. And well, this changes the dynamic. All those things have to be factored in, but I think you boil it back to, am I growing? And is there a path for me to advance in this career? Because this is a very, very difficult business to break into. And then when you break into it, it is very, very challenging to advance to that next step. I mean, this is a very, very difficult business. And so I think the way coaches need to work to separate themselves is just simply, like we would say with a player, just get better, develop more capacity to add value to a program. And when you stop growing that capacity, it’s likely time to start looking.
Pat 42:45
All right, coach, we’re going to bring it back to the court and we’re going to look at the defensive side of the ball earlier. You had mentioned that you like to switch your defense. We’re going to look at the physical characteristics of the center, your wings and your guards. And based on the physical characteristics of that position, what would have the biggest impact in how you shape your defense? So if the center is big, strong, athletic versus undersized, slow, is that going to be a bigger impact over your guards? So start, sub, or sit, the physical characteristics of option one, your guards, option two, your wings, or option three, your center. And what would have the biggest impact based on their characteristics and how you shape your defense?
Justin Leslie 43:30
I love this question, because this is something that has devolved for me over time. Without a doubt, it is the guards. All right. And the physicality of the guards. I’m just going to give you a few things to think about within this. If you have guards that are capable of rebounding, now that might be, I had a five nine point guard, Pierre Sanders, he was about a three and a half rebound a game, sometimes four guy, but those extra few rebounds were critical for our team. So guards who can rebound regardless of kind of their stature, similarly with the guards, guards that won’t have the ability to keep the ball in front. They need to be strong enough. I mean, any defense is going to be good if you can keep the ball in front of you. I say that, you know, Pierre was kind of an outlier for me, but what I’m trying to do, and this kind of my sub would be the wings. I’m trying to get bigger in the back court and on the wings. It’s a lot easier to find at the division two level, a six, five big strong wing than it is to find a six, nine big strong center who can play. So I’ve found if I can get bigger, stronger, more athletic in the back court and on the wings, it gives me just so much more flexibility with what I do in the front court.
It’s a lot easier to get bigger there. So my goal in the back court in the wings, I’d like to get two inches taller than kind of the normal positional average, I would say, for division two. And then on the wings, same thing. I’d like to get two inches taller there, and then at both of those spots, 10 pounds heavier, right? I’m a big believer in the weight room. Officials, I mean, just call it like it is. They will let you style the snot out of someone if your hands are out. So if you can be strong enough to be physical with your body, like we found the least in our conference over the course of the last several years, and it wasn’t from lack of physicality at the point of attack, like there’s going to be a chest stop collision. We hunt those collisions, but we just want to do it with our hands out. And so the stature on the perimeter is critical. And then my sit would be the center. And that’s just the reality of Division II basketball.
Don’t get me wrong. The best defense I probably ever had was when I had 610 Selma Lube, who was an All-American, who’s now playing overseas. Boy, everything just worked great when you had an elite rim protector who would talk. And those are kind of the unicorns at this level. And so we kind of have to adapt everything with them. If you get a big who can shoot, well, maybe he can’t move his feet as well defensively, right? And so you get someone who can really move his feet and is really strong defensively, well, now maybe you’re trading something on the offensive end. And so that would be the one place I would say where I kind of have the most flexibility, but we create the margin for our centers based off of that positional size and strength in the back court and on the perimeter.
Pat 46:24
Coach, love your answer, really glad you started guards. Got a lot of questions about guards here, but you mentioned obviously value being rebounding and what I’d be safe to assume if you like to switch, then you need guards who can rebound and maybe rebound against size to make it effective zeroing in on the guards and their physical characteristics in terms of whether you’re going to switch hedge or drop in their ability, like you said, to stay on the ball, but navigate screens.
Justin Leslie 46:51
Well, just say this, we do switch a lot and both in man and zone and I’m not afraid of a mismatch. Probably heard this term before, but I use it often is mismatches don’t beat you. Open shots beat you. And so I’d rather have five nine who’s willing to fight against the six nine than trying to overcomplicate it and allowing someone an open shot in terms of navigating screens. We really keep it pretty simple. And this goes back to the whole personnel scout that we talked about. Very few players in ball screens are capable of stepping behind and shooting effectively on a consistent basis. We talked especially with guards in the scout of identifying what is the point at which they become efficient. Okay. And up until that point, we’ll go under a screen. We’re not going to overextend ourselves or allow teams to get two on the ball, two on the ball or reject. We’re trying to prevent those at all costs. And so there’s a lot of education that goes into that fact. And I’m going to take it now back to offense when we were talking about teaching offense. Everything that we try to do on offense is a complete flip on the defensive side. So offensively, we want to reject every single chance we get and we’re teaching it. So I’ll teach it all in offense. We want to reject that we want to get two on the ball. If we get either of those two things, we win.Now, when you go to start coaching defense, because you get their attention by teaching offense, then when we go to defense, we want to avoid rejects. We want to avoid putting two on the ball. And so trying to keep that message simple and consistent on both sides of the teaching helps them figure it out.
I mean, at the end of the day, we’re trying to recruit athletes. We’re trying to recruit players who are going to make plays. I can’t give them a solution to everything because if I say go over it every time, well, they’re just going to adjust their screen angle and make it more difficult to go over the top. They have to be able to play the game within the game and make those adjustments. And that goes back to that conversation. One of the things I’ve really had to work hard as a six, eight, six, nine kind of stretch big how I played, learning how to communicate with guards and work with them. And one of the ways that I’ve done a lot of that is I’ll go be their partner playing. I’ll still jump on the floor a little bit and kind of show them what some of the reads that could happen might look like or defensively. This might be something that you see players love that they love when the coach will get on the floor with them and just kind of work through that process. Because once you get in the game, I mean, they have to figure it out and compete. There’s no easy solution because the offense in defense, the other team is allowed to change what they’re doing as well.
Pat 49:38
On the unders what’s important under is i think like switching it sometimes it can be players can assume it’s a lazy defense. So what are you emphasizing with the under the maybe what are you talking to my work like we can’t go under here at this spot.
Justin Leslie 49:53
Great question. It is very complicated and the players have to know that switching going under drop coverage can be seen as a it’s kind of a passive option. It’s anything but passive. It is aggressive. It requires more work, lifting to the ball, getting in gaps, stunting. A big thing with those guards going under is the streamer’s defender. Making sure that he’s as wide as possible in a stance, not showing any seams or cracks that a guard might be able to reject. We really like him when they’re going under to mirror that ball. So his chest is exactly what the ball handler sees between him and the rim. If the guard with the ball sees that, he’s a lot less likely to attack aggressively downhill and that buys a half second for that defender to figure it out at the top. Because if they’re going under, they’re going to adjust the screen. They’re going to start sending it a little lower, a little lower, a little lower. Well, now you adjust and go over the top. So that screeners defender is really important. The next piece of it is, again, KYP, know your personnel. Where is he a threat? And try to just, again, be aware where he is on the floor and when he becomes a threat against our defense. And then I would say another component in that is they’re going to come downhill sometimes and you might have to. Maybe it’s a situation where that guard’s driving in the big has to rotate over and that smaller defender has to veer back and just, I mean, the officials will always let a little guy one time get away with the kind of a chalk against the big man. Then they’ll warn him and go, okay, you know, but don’t be afraid to go out there and earn your warning, especially with a bigger defender can’t be afraid to be physical on the defensive side out there. There is a lot of nuance with that. But if you stay with a consistent coverage from September through March, and then you just keep them working together, the players really start to figure out how to work in those given situations.
Dan 51:52
Earlier, you mentioned you found the least in your conference the last couple of years, but you also were physical. What’s the teaching in that and how hard is it to get to that point for you?
Justin Leslie 52:03
It’s really difficult and it’s a lot of effort on the entire staff and then buy-in from the team, you know The most efficient shot in basketball free throw we don’t want to foul You know in situations where they would be taking a less advantageous shot, right? We want them shooting contested shots over and through we will use a lot I want to say it was back in 2011 or 12. I was at a clinic that I went to in Orlando There was an NBA assistant at the time that talked about a study that was done where there was a 17 percentage point difference with shooters when there was a physical hand in the area on a contest with an audible call so it could be shot ball or just yelling at them when they Shoot with the hand that there was a 17 percentage point difference And so that’s something that stuck with me and then you know I asked some coaches during COVID that has been validated over time, you know at the NBA level and so We incorporate that we would rather them shoot that contested shot Especially from mid-range or three then get to the rim. Similarly. We do a lot of drilling on Teaching players how to contact with their hips and their chest with their hands out It’s a little bit awkward at first can be difficult to teach But you know what once you start throwing your chest in there every once in a while The offense will lower their shoulder sticking arm out. Well, that’s an easy offensive foul for the officials to get and so wall ups At the rim. That’s another thing that we work a ton on contested layups are really really hard to make I mean, it’s one of those skills that you know, I mean, I tell players all the time You make layups and you make step-in threes. Yeah, I know there’s all the fancy bag and everything that everybody want to works on But like my job as a coach is to get you layup attempts and to get you standing Beat square to the rim three-point attempts work on those skills. Well defensively We work on contesting those shots and we work on those wall ups because most players don’t know how to finish effectively at the rim And so make a miss now every once in a while like I was a shot blocker when I played every once Why are you gonna get dunked on? Hey, that’s part of it. You know, you got to check your ego at the door We’re playing a long game here just that hand discipline and that discipline of understanding The scout where you can get yourself in trouble I think those are places where we really pay a lot of attention to and that allows us Not to foul we’ve had it in coaches meetings where you know They get the officials a signer in the room and well You know, how come some teams foul more than others and it’s always his teams found the least it’s because he’s owns No, we foul a lot. We just do the fouls that officials don’t call, right? I mean, you just got to learn how to work the rules, you know I know we’ll talk about this later But one of the greatest benefits of my career that I never could have imagined is I was at a situation for 15 years We ran high school team camps in those team camps.
Justin Leslie 54:54
We had officials camps that would happen at the same time So you would have all the officials from you know, the West Coast they’re evaluating teaching these young Officials trying to learn hearing how they were teaching Officiating helped me so much as a coach to learn what’s marginal. What will they call automatically? What won’t they call and then using it for your advantage?
Dan 55:18
Coach, awesome stuff, really well said there. You’re off the start, sub, or sit hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us.
Coach, we’ve got one final question to close the show before we do. Thanks again for coming on the show, being so thoughtful, and congrats again also on the new job.
Justin Leslie 55:34
Oh, thanks so much. This has been a blast. I appreciate what you do for the game and there’s just a wonderful podcast and I hope there’s something here that can help someone else, just as so much of what you’ve done has helped me in my career.
Dan 55:46
Appreciate that. Thanks Coach. Coach, our final question that we ask all the guests is, what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career?
Justin Leslie 55:53
Now, when this question was coming, I was able to think about this a little bit. And the first one without having to qualify this with is being married to the best coach’s life possible. Coaching is a very, very tough business, as we’ve talked about, and my wife and my family all in. And I got married when I was young. Week after I graduated college, I got married. So my wife’s been in it with me from the beginning. And what I was able to do early in my career was time spent learning. I had mentors speaking into my life. I needed to go to more games, whether it was in-person scouting, whether it was watching Division III, NAIA, Division II, Division I games. There are a lot of friends you can make that can leave tickets for you. Go to as many games as you possibly can. Every AAU summer event where there are going to be coaches, go watch good players. But also, as you’re in the stands, talk to people, learn how to ask questions. Every year, I have two questions that I would go into the summer with that I would ask every coach that I would come in contact with. And you just keep learning, hear different answers, different perspectives. And also, the quality of questions you ask ultimately help people a lot about you. You can ask thoughtful questions and genuinely pick their brain. People are very willing to share in this game. They just need to be asked. So I spent a lot of time there going to practices, going to clinics. People asked me about breaking into coaching. And I tell them about my 20s. I didn’t have a social life in my 20s. My wife and I, on Saturday and Sunday mornings, we would basically kind of be a running joke with all of our friends where they would call us whatever they were into Friday or Saturday night and leave a voicemail on their way home. And we would just hear about their night, whatever they were doing on voicemail, because we’re grinding away trying to be a coach and provide for our family in this profession. It was a lot of sacrifice, a lot of reading and just developing relationships that may or may not pan out to something down the line, just being authentic. And the longer you’re in this business and the more you learn, you find out just how much you don’t know. And so just developing that sense of humility at a young age and having that taught to me, that’s the investment. It’s the time. It’s the learning that you don’t see the fruits about labor for many, many years down the line.
Dan 58:20
All right, Pat, let’s hop into this recap here with Coach Leslie. Got a chance to get to know him over the last couple of months. He was a great player and a great coach out here in Southern California at Azusa Pacific a while back. And so definitely a Southern California name. And now he’s heading back to SoCal, getting the Westmont job and highly regarded in the industry. And I think people who just listen to that understand why.
Pat 58:46
Absolutely. You know, and you kind of shared some thoughts that he had that I was super excited to have kind of retooling, simplifying offense, thinking more of an adaptable offense. So really excited to get into this conversation. He did not disappoint. And at the time of this recording coming out of our season. So it’s been a couple of weeks where we haven’t recorded in a while. And this was a great way to kind of get back in the saddle. Kick off the rust a little bit. Yeah, exactly.
Dan 59:11
Well, let’s hop in, as always, to our top three takeaways here and I will kick it off to you for number one.
Pat 59:19
Yeah, I’m going to start for sure with the first bucket. We’ve been talking about this a lot, simplifying offense, you’re seeing it a lot, especially in Europe, kind of just moving to, not simple concepts, but less concepts, less play, over-reliant on plays, and just finding solutions out of concepts and building like an adaptable offense. So my first takeaway will be just kind of how the process behind building this offense, what got them to there. And I really liked your question when you talked about, are you starting with spacing or starting with the concepts and the triggers? And to hear him kind of go through that process that he starts with the concepts and just working on building an advantage. But once you have the advantage, I mean, you can have the greatest spacing, but if the defense is just in their shell the whole time, still going to be hard to score. So it made a lot of sense just hearing how they work on advantage, building from two on two and just building up. As we move through the conversation, and he kind of just continued to preach just a couple of concepts, whittling it down from seven to three, I think then the guys get comfortable, you’re constantly finding yourself in these spacings. And then the offense gets comfortable at playing through the advantages. So you, whatever, hand off floppy, you create the advantage, but now they’re in familiar spacing. And that’s where I think you can really see how you build the cuts, you build the different solutions around this advantage, because they’re always going to be in familiar situations. So guys are getting more and more comfortable, you know, just then how they’re going to react off of a penetration of pick and roll, whatever it be. My last point is the emphasis he put on naming these actions and then building that familiarity and the key that it plays there.
Dan 01:00:56
On that last point, I definitely started that, the vocab and guys talking on offense being a big thing for him, which I think we could have spent even more time on. I also, it’s funny, he brought up the quote from Ben McCollum, complicate the simple. And I had actually written that on my paper before we started because that was something I was thinking about asking him about or getting to and watching his offense and talking about it. And so I thought that was just a point well taken there. And I’m gonna give a quick miss, not by Coach Leslie, of course, but by me. And it wasn’t really a miss, it was just, I could have spent more time on the process of going from starting with seven of these actions, because he mentioned the staggers, the pistol, the drag, and the stuff in the floppy that they got to. And he was great at explaining how they got to it because it fit the players, they liked it and it worked. But did he put in seven because he knew he was gonna chunk it down and it was just like, let’s put in these seven and see what works. Was it, he would have done five if five was really good, or did he wanna get to three? I guess more detail, more thoughts on, okay, he got to these base three. Is that something he always wants to get to? Like, does he feel like getting to the best three is the best way to run this style offense or in certain years, if they’re better at six or seven, they’ll just keep running the six or seven, you know? I don’t know, that’s coach team dependent, but I could have spent time digging into that a little bit more.
Pat 01:02:22
I think that’s very interesting. I’ll give you also one of my misses sharing a story. He talked about, I think when they had some injuries, I don’t think it was in relation to building the offense. It just got me thinking, also with this simplicity working only through concepts, I would have loved to have followed up. Does it allow them to be more fluid when, I mean, of course, when you lose talent, no matter what you’re running, it’s going to be hard, but just through the course of a season, maybe one guy’s out, a couple of guys sick, lineup’s got to be reshuffled. And you don’t have to worry about, this is now me kind of thinking it through, worry about like, well, we got to retool our offense or we got to throw in a couple new sets because now we’re, this is our team for this week. And I think this adaptability, let’s say, or just playing through these concepts also has its value. And okay, well, yeah, maybe a couple of things change, but it’s still the floppy, it’s, you don’t have the shooters, maybe they’re going to cheat, we just change the angles. I don’t think it requires a huge overhaul, just kind of tweaking the details, but you’ve been now working on that the whole season up to that point versus, okay, crap, we got to try to learn a couple new sets and work on the details of these sets to be effective for this game because this is our strength. I would imagine what I wish I had followed up on is just what he’s noticed too, maybe in just the course of a season, the trial tribulations of when it’s, you’re not going to have your ideal lineups or the full roster out there. For sure. All right, Dan, well, before we get too off track here, let’s get back, I’ll throw it to you with the second takeaway.
Dan 01:03:52
I’ll go to my Start, Sub, Sit which was the career growth and those types of relationships. And getting to know Coach Leslie has been really good on just seeing and talking about career and things that are important to coaches. And we kind of had a good double conversation about young assistants and as you get older. And I found both to be really fascinating. I’ll just say his sub with getting to know fellow assistants, I think it was a point very well taken. And I took that away. And I think one of the things that we’re both still young coaches in this, but we always talk to other people about or people talk to us about is the guys that are coming up with you, you mentioned that are in the gym with you early in the morning that you see at the clinics that are meeting up with, eventually those are the ones that as you create those true relationships, they will become the next coach that no one heard of and all of a sudden they’re at that spot or whatever. And so it was well taken on just being good to the people that are in your league, people that you’re around, because those are the ones that you’re going to grow with and not necessarily going and trying to shake the hand of the big name at the final four in passing or at the summer league, because you’re already not in that circle. But the people that are around you that you can show you’re a good coach or you’re trustable are the ones that down the line, as your career progresses, are great to have those relationships with.
Pat 01:05:17
I thought he gave an excellent example of obviously getting hired by like a full circle moment of an assistant coach he met and now that hired him at Westmont, but not only was it a great example, but he was a baseball coach. Definitely.
Dan 01:05:30
And then just to give my other point within this too, he talked really well about when you’re becoming an older, more seasoned coach and having friends in the industry that understand you. It reminded me of Stan Van Gundy talked about this on the podcast, I believe it was in his first episode with us, where he said one of the best things you can do is have actual true friends in the industry, not just people you hire or work for, but like people that are friends because it is a hard job. And coach Leslie today gave a good example about his close friend, next door neighbor, but has no idea what his job entails as a coach and you end up finding other coaches at your level who become friends even in your league because they really want to truly understand what this profession is like.
Pat 01:06:17
And we’ve had numerous coaches talk about the loneliness that can come with being like the head coach. And I think to his credit, this is why having that resource, another person who’s in the trenches with you to know, because we’ve also had to discuss like how weird this profession is. His neighbor example, or you know, when you’re around people who aren’t coaches, I think it is hard to find connections across other professions at times.
Dan 01:06:39
I always say this. There’s not many professions where most of what you’re judged on is a score, but 99.9% of what goes into that score is not seen by anyone else. All the practice, all the behind the scenes, the film, we put in so much work time effort and then we’re judged just flippantly on a score and it’s public.
I always go back, this is a public thing, so dealing with always that part of it, there’s not a scoreboard for most industries at the end of the night where you can judge someone’s day based off of how they scored. It’s different for us.
Pat 01:07:17
To check out after practice or leave it and not that any other job people of course bring more calm with them all the time but basketballs coaching is so weird.
Dan 01:07:27
There’s probably a certain coach’s stare that most husbands and wives of coaches would understand where you’re at dinner and the coach you’re having dinner with is just sort of staring into the distance. nodding.
Pat 01:07:43
Just thinking about why your team can’t properly screen or find the angle to create an over.
Dan 01:07:52
Yeah. All right, Pat, let’s pivot to our last takeaway here. I’ll kick that back to you.
Pat 01:07:57
My last takeaway is our starts up sit question on defense, looking at the physical characteristics of positions and what factors they play and how aggressive, non aggressive or zone man, you know, what he weighs, what he considers and what’s important. As I said, I mean, I’m glad he started guards cause also was thinking about that a lot with the season went through just the ability of your guards and they really are, I feel in what I like the tip of your spear and containing the ball, getting pressure on the ball. So like finding ways that their strengths that allow you to do different things or multiple things and, or if they’re weaknesses and how you got to try to protect them because I feel like they can be at times like the first domino that if you just can’t help them, it’s really going to make the rest of your defense tough.
Dan 01:08:45
I think through all the different conversations, but especially when you got back to this conversation, you could see how adaptable and malleable a coach, coach Leslie is because of how he thinks about the game. And I think his answer stem from what you can recruit to at the D2 level and how you build that out. And I assume people listening might have a different answer based off of your level, because if you’re able to get a 6’10 shot blocker, that might be the tip of the spear for your defense and you build around it. But a lot of us lower levels, you’re not getting that center, you’re getting someone much different skill set. And so you could hear his thoughts on, well, I’m going to recruit bigger at these other spots because it helps my defense knowing that I’m not going to have a terrific shot blocking big for the most part. I just liked that thought process from him and how he built it out and then why then you can switch everything and not get beat on open shots and change your defenses. And yeah, just a smart way to kind of look at how to build a defense based off of what you can or can’t get at your level.
Pat 01:09:47
Yeah, I think to within that when he mentioned the rebounding and talked a little bit about switching. I think it’s what we’ve continued to hear from other coaches, the success of the switch lies in the guards being able to rebound against size, not necessarily expecting them to stop size, but being able to rebound. And that yeah, if you can just, I mean, what did he say? It’s not like preventing the shots, but just contesting shots. You know, you live from there. His view opinion on that was really interesting. I did like his thoughts on under defense again, I think with switching and under, as he said, defense that can sometimes be passive and just what he talked about. And I really liked, he said, the big mirroring, the ball kind of tracking it on the ball handler. Yeah, it goes over the screen, but then the freedom he gave his guards that of course it’s KYP and the scouting, but yeah, understand as the defense starts to get aware that they’re going under the screens and then start to skip flatter and flatter. And now they can start to go over, but yeah, not kind of sticking to a, again, I think going back to the adaptability piece and how he views offense, not being a rule-based that it’s say we’re going under, always go under or whatever we’re dropping, you got to always go over, but giving them the freedom or the, you know, building that trust that they can understand the situation as it’s developing. And it doesn’t always have to be black or white.
Dan 01:11:07
I’m going to go like way back on the podcast here, like season one. I believe it was Mike Martin, Brown Head Coach. We had a conversation about unders on handoffs and like going under and making guys shoot the sit behind three because they just don’t make it at that high enough clip. I think I’m right on that. I think you’re right too. Yeah. I remember coach Martin talking about like making players consistently shoot at a high enough level on the under that’s going to actually hurt you. And why you see a lot of everything, obviously, depending on what you believe in. But Coach Leslie’s point, making someone shoot it at a certain clip and beat you until that point, they’re going to go under and try to keep it two on two.
Pat 01:11:47
Looking at their efficiency numbers, I believe, right, in the second roll.
Dan 01:11:50
Yep. So great stuff. Pat, we both gave some early misses, but was there anything else as we wrap this up that we thought we could have went deeper on or wish we had time for?
Pat 01:12:00
Sticking on the conversation we were just having, I think I would have liked to have followed up with or maybe zoomed out of the defensive conversation and just how his thoughts maybe have changed in relation to simplifying the offense, if he kind of adaptability and kind of where he’s at on defense and how he views it and maybe he’s now trying to think about it the same way with simplifying and building an adaptable defense as well. I think we got into it for sure at some pieces but maybe going more of a philosophical follow-up.
Dan 01:12:32
Yeah. He kind of mentioned whatever we try to do on offense, we talked about on defense, we’re obviously trying to take away and then hit a good little nugget about defense. So start with offense, it gets their attention first, and then you can slowly get to the defense when you have time. I guess I’ll just give you one last miss of mine. He had a quote, college basketball is about dominating the margins. Really liked that quote. Would have been fun to dive in a little bit on what margins he feels are worth dominating. And this about me, I find the margin conversation interesting, whether it’s offensive rebounding, turnovers, assists, free throws. What is it that maybe as a staff, they thought about trying to dominate marginally? Well, once again, we thank coach Leslie for coming on and wish him the best of luck in his new job out of Westmont. Thank you everybody for listening and we’ll see you next time.