🎙10 Lessons from Pat Juckem
This week’s podcast with WashU Head Coach Pat Juckem covered a lot of ground, but most of it came back to a central question:
What are we actually building into our players every day?
From practice design and scoring systems to role clarity, shot quality, and transition defense, here are 10 ideas we loved from the episode:
- Your first 15 minutes reveal your identity.​
If someone walked into practice, could they immediately tell what your team values? - Clean practice doesn’t always mean good practice.​
Mistakes, chaos, and failed solutions are often where the learning happens. - Teaching, learning, and competing are different.​
Not every segment needs a score. Sometimes players need instruction, sometimes room to work, sometimes consequence. - If you want more of something, put it in the scoring.​
Juckem’s example: baskets after an offensive rebound are worth double. Now crashing—and blocking out—matter a little more. - Only chart what you’ll actually keep charting.​
WashU focuses on things like rebounding and deflections because they matter to them and can be measured every day. - When practice goes poorly, look at the plan first.​
Was there too much teaching? Did the segments connect? Did the design give the players enough chances to actually learn? - Don’t solve every problem for the players.​
Constant stoppages might make practice look better while taking away some of the decisions players eventually have to make themselves. - Film should show up on the floor the next day.​
Juckem tries to keep film focused, then carries those same themes directly into practice. - Tell players where they stand, but keep the door open.​
Juckem is direct about roles while continuing to give players opportunities in practice to show they can impact winning. - Transition defense can start with the shot you just took.​
Turnovers and poor finishes can create the disadvantage before anyone has a chance to get back. WashU’s gold-silver-bronze system helps judge the decision instead of just the result.
The common thread: if something really matters to your team, it should probably show up somewhere in the way you practice.
Transcript
Dan 02:13
Coach, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Congrats on all the success last season and throughout your whole career. We’re excited to talk to you today.
Pat Juckem 02:23
I’m absolutely humbled and honored to be on with you guys. Huge fan, and your shows have gotten me through so many workouts and treadmills and made them somewhat more tolerable, so appreciate what you’ve done for me.
Dan 02:35
Thank you, Coach. We appreciate that.
Coach, we wanted to start with the general topic of practice efficiency and what goes into a great practice when it comes to just drills, design, competitiveness, how you incentivize things that you really want for you and you sit down every day to create a great practice. What does that look like and what goes through your mind?
Pat Juckem 02:56
I drive my staff crazy, probably, because I’m a very methodical practice planner, questioner, overthinker at times, reviser. I’ll take you back. When I got done playing, I played at Lawrence University up in Appleton, Wisconsin. I think many of our players, and I was this, had no idea what coaches do to create a practice. And so I stayed on and came back and helped out that coaching staff. And I remember sitting in the first pre-season meeting to plan the first practice and just being blown away. I think players just show up and we do what the coaches want us to do. And I just was going, oh, there’s all like, this planning process takes almost as long as the practice itself. And I was my first kind of like, aha, about this. And fortunately, I played and coached with an incredible coach, John Tharp, who went on to Hillsdale College and had a great coaching career. So as I got my opportunity as a head coach, I’ve always been just very planful and methodical in that process. And again, I think I’ve driven my staff nuts at times doing that, but it’s a fun part of what we get to do, right?
We’ve got this limited opportunity. We have 90 minutes, two hours, whatever it is. And of course, there’s so many things that we want to get in. We have to get better at what part of the season installs. Over time, the longer we do this, you really find what you value most. What are your priorities? I tell coaches all the time and I talk to, if I walk into your practice within the first 10 minutes, it should be very clear what you value, what your identity is. And I hold my staff and myself to that same standard. If someone came in from the outside, doesn’t know anything about us in the first 10 to 15 minutes, it should be very clear what is our core identity. What do we value most? I kind of keep that in mind. That helps keep our focus and keeping the main thing the main thing. I think the other thing is, especially when I started out, I overthought every drill, trying to have this perfect practice. I had this perception that a really good practice is this clean practice. There’s no mistakes. Every player goes from point A to point B to point C and it’s mechanical and robotic. And you come to learn that quite honestly, the best practices are the opposite of those. There is chaos, there are mistakes. That’s where the growth comes from, right? When we have the failures, when we really stress them, when we have sudden changes, when there’s some ugliness, oftentimes that ultimately are the conditions that we need to create the growth and the improvement throughout the season.
So I think my vision of what a great practice is really has evolved and changed over my some 20 years now as a head coach.
Dan 05:32
When you said you’re spending a lot of extra time thinking about planning practice, is it trying to add more? Is it trying to cut from your first draft? Is it reshaping the flow? What are you overall spending all that extra time thinking about?
Pat Juckem 05:47
I love to review my previous practice and I always look at the planning of the next practice is really based on how the previous practice went. What as I review that practice and we do something within our staff, we kind of download after the practice. I just want my assistants to just throw some ideas on the board, just something they like from practice. Hey, this is something we need to think about for a mile, kind of priming the pump for the next day. I try to do the same thing and just spend a little time post practice or at night in my journal, just writing down a couple ideas, hey, more of this tomorrow, hey, let’s throw this in. So I like to always have that pump kind of primed for the next day. That’s how I start our process.
And of course, depending on where we’re at in our season, are we pre-season, are we early install, right? All those, that has a big effect as well. But then what’s really helped me, I’m sure I stole this from a coach in one of these podcasts, but kind of breaking our segments into teaching segments, learning segments and competitive segments. And that’s really helped me in terms of just kind of, we’re creating more of a template. And I’m sure we’ll get into talking about some competitive. We love competitive practice, we love competitive drills, but the reality is that every segment can be a highly competitive segment. I know our guys would love that. Competitive practice, competitive segments and drills, that’s like the dessert. We need to eat the vegetables and those teaching install segments, whether that’s a walkthrough or a controlled segment. That’s your teaching, learning segments, right? Live could be small sided, could be 5v5. We’re not keeping score. I love recruiting and bringing in really competitive people. If we kept scoring everything we did, I don’t think we’d have any gas in the tank when it came to the game. So we have a common flow as a teaching segment, a learning segment to a competitive segment. And that’s really helped me kind of streamline a template, if you will, that’s helped with the planning process for us.
Pat 07:42
I’d like to follow up on these segments, but first I’d like to go back to when you said that the first 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes, you should be able to kind of get a feel for the identity of your team. And just to hit back on that, what do you strive for when you’re putting together these practice plans within that first 10 to 15 minutes?
Are you striving for after with, yeah, this is who we are, if I were to walk in there, what is the core identity you’re after? Is it through just specific drills you do? Or is it just the identity that’s going to carry over no matter what the drill is on that given day?
Pat Juckem 08:12
a really great question. A couple of things that I always really believe in and promote is loud gyms win. Quiet gyms lose and loud gyms win. And so we are huge in terms of having a high energy and practice environment. I think it’s just more fun. I tend to attract energy givers. That’s something that I value personally. And so if you walk into a WashU gym or our gym, it should be loud. You should hear voices, there should be clapping, there should be energy, there should be juice. We use the word juice all the time here. And what honestly starts with me, starts with the head coach. I tell our guys, listen, I don’t bring that level of energy every day. You call me out, but I need you guys there with me. Whether you’re on the floor or you’re not participating, I expect you to be clapping, you to be mentally and vocally on the court impacting. So that’s one, I think just having that type of environment.
And then the second thing is we’ll start with a vitamin segment. We’ll vary those offense and defense, whether it be footwork, finishing, a defensive technique, quick hitting. Those are not typically live, but they’re 90 seconds, two minutes really quick when we’re just sharpening our saws. And what I really love is going competitive early. Within those first 15 minutes, we’re going to do something that’s going to be competitive, keep score. We’re dealing with college guys here, right? They’ve been in class, they’ve been in a lab, they’ve been in a library, grinding away. Sometimes we got to snap them out of that mode and it’s like, okay, it’s time. And so a core, fundamental, competitive thing for us is just a score stop. You’ve got to put together a score and a stop and we might play, all right, first team to get three score stops or a stop sandwich for us is a stop, a score, a stop. I want over coach that segment. It’s just, we’re live. It’s going to be six to eight minutes long. Let’s go. And it just gets them, all right, it’s time to get after it. And then we maybe take a step back after that, get into our sequence of whether it be a new install into a live drill to another competitive segment.
Pat 10:26
I love that. And that kind of bleeds into my next question.
If you’re taking like maybe an installer, when you move from the teaching phase into the learning phase, and you mentioned, you know, maybe it’s small sided games, you’ll introduce some live competition. But from like, you, the head coach and your staff, how does that look different from the teaching to the learning and what your role is with the guys as they start to work through whatever the concept strategy you’ve been reduced.
Pat Juckem 10:56
I struggle. I don’t have a great wide lens. I think some coaches do. Some coaches can see all 10 and have a great feel. Personally, I clearly am an ADD person. I need to focus on one thing.
I’ll usually have that in my practice plan, what I personally looking for. I like to describe with my staff, with assistant coaches, defining their roles. So they know what they’re in a, any single learning, competitive. I usually have someone who’s focused on our blockouts and our rebounding. I’ll have another coach focused on our offensive execution and spacing. I’m jumping around here a little bit. That’s a great question, Patrick. But as an assistant coach, I loved when I was a given real responsibility, had a voice, but also I needed some guidance. There’s so many things going on in these segments. How should I narrow my focus? And I need that myself. My lens typically is going to be more of a defensive focus, unless there’s something that we really need to address. I want our guys to be locked in defensively, be talking, be playing with energy, be connected. And so usually that’s where my focus is in most of our segments.
And my lead assistant here, Patrick McGrail, is going to be focused more on our offensive side. And then I have Steve Wilcott, who’s going to focus on our blockouts. Are we crashing? We have our managers who are charting some of these outcomes in terms of our rebounding and deflections. I think having a specific focus works for me. And I think it’s helped my staff going in knowing exactly what they’re looking for. And then again, we empower each other, we empower our staff, and we keep that aligned with, again, what’s our core identity? What are our main things? Believer, we can’t be good at everything. Trying to be good at everything, you’re going to be average at everything.
So what are those three things that we really need to be good at this year, need to be great for us to be highly successful? And let’s make sure that each day, in different ways, we’re emphasizing those, we’re attacking those. And our players should be able, on a dime, when asked what are those three things, they should know it. They should know what those three things that we value, that we’re going to be great at. And if they don’t, that’s on me, the coach.
Dan 13:07
One of the things you and I were kind of texting about the last few weeks that I thought was interesting about this subject was incentivizing habits that you want, and then where within the competitiveness, the teaching, the learning, how you’re thinking about incentivizing the habits that you want from your team.
Pat Juckem 13:24
So, once again, I get drill ADD. I need to have things changing. I get bored. So, we change our scoring system.
We have three primary scoring systems for our competitive drills. We have a defensive scoring system. We have an offensive scoring system. And then we have traditional game scoring. Fortunately, I have incredibly intelligent managers here, way smarter than the coach, thankfully. And so, I’ll have it in our practice plan. This is a defensive scoring. This is an offensive scoring. This is a game scoring. I do like to keep our guys on their toes as well. I think there’s different philosophies in terms of, hey, we do the same things all the time. I like to keep our guys thinking. I like to keep our guys not knowing what’s coming next. Because I think our game is chaotic. There’s a chaos element to it. And here, we have really, really smart young men. I want to just engage them enough that they’re always thinking about how to, especially in these competitive segments, how do we take advantage of the scoring system? I’ll give you an example of shaping behavior and stolen from, I believe, Dave Hixon, the Hall of Fame Amherst coach, heard him end of his career talk about rebounding. Someone asked him, what is something you’ve stolen that you really believe in? And he talked about, well, if you want to get better at rebounding both sides, incentivize it. Make offensive rebound scores worth double. And it was like, that’s brilliant. We immediately instituted that. Many of our game scoring segments, I told our guys, even when they’re playing pickup, make all offensive rebound scores double twos or fours and threes or sixes. I’ll never forget the first year we went to that we’re early preseason practice, and there was a team that was getting dominated. They were down double digits. They were a little bit demoralized and they get an offensive rebound, kick, swing, dagger three. Lots of six. So now instead of being down 10 with two minutes to go in this segment, all of a sudden they’re down four. And as I recall, they get a stop, they come down and the same thing happens. They miss a shot, swing it, dagger three. They scored 12 points in two possessions and go on to win that drill. And that losing both sides. And I feel like we know when you give up an offensive rebound three, that has the impact of six emotionally and psychologically. That’s what it feels like. And that team that was on the losing end, we never seen guys more cognizant of finishing plays and blocking out. And again, simple, but how you can shape behavior on an incentivized scoring system. So that’s probably one of the best things we’ve done. And I share that all the time. And again, thank coach Hexton for putting that out there. We don’t do rebounding drills really others and some technique things, but you put that in and it’s amazing how your guys will crash and how your guys then will subsequently block out better because of, hey, they want to win their competitive young men.
Pat 16:33
Coach, just defensively in shaping habits, if you’re gonna do like a defensive scoring system, what are you guys emphasizing? What are kind of the main things?
Pat Juckem 16:42
Our defensive scoring system, very simple, it’s going to be stop to point. That’s really the only scoring.
We’ll typically have a minus for a foul. Usually turnovers, there’s a consequence for turnovers in terms of minus points. And then something we do, we really value activity within our defense. Our active hands, our active voices, our active feet. And so deflections in our program, we have a term we call them arenas named after a former player who had amazingly active hands and got a ton of deflections during his time here, John Arenas. So that’s something that is being charted throughout all of our competitive segments. And I’ve listened to coaches that promote like some of the hustle stats approach, where you’re charting a ton of things. If it’s important to you as a coach, it has to be measured. There has to be some objective data behind it. And so each year, each preseason as a staff, we review what are we capable of consistently measuring on a daily basis, not aspirationally, but what can we measure with consistency that really aligns with our identity and value and the two things that are consistent that we can do well, our managers can handle and we impact winning our rebounding and our deflections.
And so in any competitive segment, whether it be three on three, four on four, five on five, if you were out of one of our practices and someone gets a deflection, that young man will yell arenas because he wants to get credited for it. And stealing a little bit from Dean Smith back in the day, right? End of practice accountability. He would go through, I think his was a lot of times winning drill segments, but he had his players ranked. We don’t do exactly that, but our process at the end of a practice, when we come together and huddle and do a couple of things, I’ll have our managers come in and highlight, okay, today, the arenas winner was Joe with seven and Bobby had six. Offensive rebounding leader, Frank had four, defensive rebound. So we want to spotlight those, give those guys some shine, attention, guys all get excited and high five. And it’s a little thing, but it’s the consistency, the fact that we’re shouting that out and we are holding them accountable.
We are measuring that on a daily basis. Again, that’s something I love to always in the preseason with our staffs. Okay, you know, what are the things we value? What does this team’s identity need to be? And then how can we hold them accountable, measure those things and do that on a daily basis.
Dan 19:17
When a practice goes wrong or is not good, two-part question. First, what is it generally to you when it’s a, quote unquote, bad practice?
What you think has happened that makes it not good? And then as the head coach, when you and the staff and maybe the players know it wasn’t a good practice, how do you handle that at the end of the practice? What does that look like when it’s like, we all know this wasn’t up to par. Generally, how do you handle it on the court after practice with something that doesn’t go well?
Pat Juckem 19:47
The first thing I look at is the plan itself. Did I set our guys up for failure? Did we do a poor job with our practice design? Were we lacking enough learning opportunities? Did we put too much, one thing? So I look at kind of the flow, as I mentioned earlier, I really do try to think through how we connect from segment to segment in our practice. Does it make sense from a learning perspective? So always kind of reflecting first on our plan.
I think oftentimes, and if you were to ask me this question 15 years ago when I was a younger head coach, I think it would have answered this very differently. So turning the ball over or missing, whatever those things, actually want some of those things to happen. I think that the mistakes, again, that’s what creates the learning and the growth opportunities. I think typically the practices that maybe were disappointed is when the focus, right? We were just not very focused. There’s more mental errors or just our overall energy level is not up to par. The college basketball season is a long season, right? We’re a two semester sport. Our young men are all pre-season, getting ready in the season. They have a very shortened break. I think just our awareness that our players are human and they have a lot of responsibilities. If you’re in college, you have two full-time jobs. You’re a full-time student, you’re a full-time basketball player. We’re doing hard things. So understanding grace of what our guys go through at the same time, holding really high standards. And hey, part of when you come to WashU, we do hard things here and that’s what we run to. So I think as a younger coach, that would really, quote unquote, bad practice, sloppy turnovers would drive me insane. I would overthink and be up all night trying to figure out. And now it’s just with experience, you can kind of categorize that. And so our challenge and what I ask of our young men here is, hey, I want your best effort. I want us to have great energy and let’s not be afraid to make mistakes, okay? And again, what kind of mistakes are there? There’s some that are more acceptable than others, but let’s not be afraid to make them. That’s how we’re gonna continue to learn and grow. We’re very process oriented here, less of what outcomes, more about process. And if our process continues to be better and better, the outcomes are gonna follow.
Pat 22:06
I’d like to follow up on poor design just because I think it’s super important, especially as like young coaches and I just don’t think there’s anything worse than when you walk away from a practice feeling like you got in the way of your own guys’s growth and development. Just more thoughts or your elaboration is what you’ve learned about like pitfalls of practice design and what you’re mindful of trying to avoid or feel like, hey, this could impede actually or counteract what we’re trying to do here.
Pat Juckem 22:30
a mistake that’s common and certainly I made it, I’m sure a ton when I was a younger coach and probably still some today as coaches, we want to fix everything. We want to stop and fix every mistake.
And as has become very common, understanding is our players learn best when they’re playing the game. And the ability for us to coach while play is live, is a learned thing and something that is not natural for me. I’m a serial one to stop and correct every little detail. And if you do that, you just get in the way and it’s not how the game is played. We don’t huddle up every 35, 40 seconds in our game and call a play. Our game is so flow. And so I think trying to mimic that with our practices and again, keeping the main thing, the main thing is super important. The design, again, when I was younger, I was trying to, how we would rotate in every draw, I would have this meticulous plan of rotation. And it’s like, we want our guys to figure things out. They need to figure out how to rotate. They need to figure out how to do this. In the game, they have to solve the problems. We can’t solve everything for them. So it promotes their communication, their empowerment, their ownership, substitutions. Oftentimes, red team, you’re figuring out your rotation in this scrimmage. I’m not going to rotate you guys or sub you guys. You guys figure that out. Now there’s times where I’ll step in and I want to see certain players together, but giving our guys, again, I think that whole empowerment, this is your team. Take lead, take control of this. I really over time have stepped back a little more in terms of trying to control every single thing in practice, which is it requires so much energy and it takes you away as a coach from focusing on things you really need to get better at, as opposed to things that matter less. So that’s helped me. I think it’s helped our teams be empowered. I think that translates over into our games when, let’s face it, we have limited opportunities to stop and to teach. They’ve got to go and they’ve got to adjust on their own.
Pat 24:38
You mentioned early on that it wasn’t your natural instinct or ability to kind of see all 10 guys on the court. I guess how have you worked on that aspect of your coaching, especially as then you move into a game and trying to manage all that’s going on in a game?
Pat Juckem 24:56
I’m always amazed at coaches who are able to have that wide lens into maybe coach both sides in a practice. I am incapable. So personally what I’m intentional about is as I plan a practice or even right before practice thinking about, okay, this is what I need to focus on today. I might write it on my practice plan a couple of times and circle it and highlight it. Stay focused on X, okay? Like our stick hand close outs and our ball pressure, like those are things that you need to not just in a breakdown, but in every segment, let’s make sure that that’s what you are focused on. So I’m writing little reminders to myself. Sometimes that goes better than others. And sometimes you’re, you know, this, this, this happens, but I’ve thought it out. I’ve written it down. I’ve tried to remind myself that, hey, you can’t see everything. And that’s the beauty.
If you have the ability to film your practice and review it. I’m always amazed when I go back and review a practice, how much I missed and the value of going back. And if you have the time and the capability to review, I tried, especially in the early part of the season in those preseason practices, which are teaching, learning intensive, boy, there’s so many things. And that, as we talked about earlier, I’m using that as the catalyst to prepare my thoughts for the next day and how we start kind of planning the next practice based on that. There’s so much that I miss in a practice. And so it’s great to go back and oftentimes your perception of a practice is a little bit, you know, just like in a game, like you think you played really well and you go back and you watch the film and, and we didn’t do this, this, and this same thing with our practices. And I keep emphasizing with our players, we have an aggressive approach, aggressive style play. It’s going to lead to mistakes. It’s going to lead to some turnover. It’s going to lead to this.
Let’s not be passive. Let’s be aggressive. And we’re going to continue to refine, make better decisions, watch the film with our film sessions, having a clear theme. I think something that I’ve adjusted over time. I’m sure at times, I think coaches, sometimes we throw so much at these guys in a film session. They only have the capability to absorb so much. I challenge my staff always, let’s have one theme. Let’s have a defensive theme. Let’s have an offensive theme. Let’s have a culture theme and let’s make sure those clips were showing bit of that. So we have a clear focus and that’s aligning our practice with that film. And now we take that on the floor.
They’ve seen it. They’ve heard it. Now they get to do it. And that’s been helpful in terms of, again, there’s so many things that you want to improve upon. Let’s keep the main thing. The main thing. Let’s have a theme. It’s our conversion defense. Okay. We gave up these four transition baskets the day before or in the game. We’re not going to go defensively.
Pat Juckem 27:43
We give up these types of shots. It’s going to be a heavy emphasis in that film session. We’re going to have that emphasis carry over in practice. And then we’re going to review that and hopefully the next day we can show an example of growth.
We can pick out a clip, say, you know, this is it. This is the first three steps getting back. This is the pointing and talking. This is how we need to look if we’re going to be good at this skill.
Dan 28:08
The world’s best coaches are curious, prepared, and never satisfied with surface-level answers. That’s who we built SGPlus for. Each week, we study the game’s most useful ideas, from offensive actions and defensive coverages, to practice design, player development, teaching points, and in-game adjustments. For coaches who want to see the game more clearly, keep expanding their understanding, and sharpen how they teach it, join serious coaches at every level of the game at slappingglass.com today. Install week is where preparation either pays off or catches up with you. The staffs that come in with sports code and fast model already dialed in look completely different from the ones still figuring it out. Film, plays, and scouting all need to be ready before day one. Huddle makes sure they are. Preseason is the test. What you set up in August determines how fast you actually hit the ground running. Learn more at huddle.com slash slapping glass today. We do want to transition to a segment on the show that we call start, sub, or sit. We’re gonna give you three options around a topic, ask you to start one of them, sub one of them, and sit one of them, and then we’ll discuss from there. So, coach, if you’re set, we’ll dive into this first one.
Pat Juckem 29:21
Sounds good.
Dan 29:22
Okay, some context here for this first question. This first question is going to have to do with your learning in tougher years of your coaching career. And you’ve had a ton of success, we’ll obviously start off with that. But earlier on, you’ve taken over some programs that needed some rebuilding or bounce back years kind of things. And so when you were a co in 2009, 10, you were four and 21 early. And then you flipped it the next year to 16 and 10. You’re flipping that many wins in a D3 season, we were only playing 25 games, dramatic Wisconsin Oshkosh as well when you first took over a sub 500 team that then became a national championship contending team. And so to us, we thought it’d be interesting to ask you about what you learned during the sort of tougher times taking over some of these programs and flipping them around.
So start, sub, or sit your learnings through the tough times. Option one, just what you learned about culture and team dynamics. Option two, is what you learned about yourself personally on personal philosophy as a coach. And then option three is what you learned tactically about what wins or like what gets you beat in those tough times. So start, sub, or sit learnings and tough times culture about yourself personally, or tactically.
Pat Juckem 30:42
My start’s going to be very clear, and that is the learning about myself. You highlighted a very difficult year in my coaching career, but by far and away, the most important year, it kind of jumped, it stands out in my career, my fifth year as a head coach, my team was four and 21, as you mentioned. And I’ve said many times to many people, that was the most important year.
That was the year I had to go through, that I learned the most about who I want to be as a coach and what I truly value. And I wouldn’t have had the success I’ve had since without that year, as difficult as that was, I’d rather not go through that again, but I’m glad I went through it. And myself would be the culture piece. All these are important, but my set would be the importance of tactics. But my start is what I learned myself and who I am, what I value and what I want our teams to be about.
Dan 31:32
What were some of the learnings from that year that you’ve taken?
Pat Juckem 31:35
I’ll just give you a little more context. I took over at Coe College 2005-06. My first year, we won the first conference championship at Coe in 30 years. I inherited a good basketball team. So it wasn’t that I was amazing as a coach. I had really good players. So we had a couple really good seasons my first couple of years. We dipped a little bit in my fourth year.
In my fifth year, we went 4 and 21. And I’ll never forget this. I recall driving home from practices that year and really vowing to myself to really prioritize a couple of things. Number one, character. The importance of character, recruiting character, valuing character. I think it’s a quote attributed to Dick Bennett. You have to have guys you can lose with first before you win. I inherited a good culture. We had some good things going. Honestly, I skipped a couple of steps. I got infatuated with talent and overlooked some really critical pieces. So number one, and I think we’ve done a great job really ever since, is that’s the number one thing we look for in prospective recruits. Wherever I’ve been is we’re going to be around high character young men. And that’s a promise we make to the family, the young man. And that’s our coaches. That’s our managers. Come here, players. That really was number one and so important.
And a lesson that I needed to learn. And then second thing, and I’ll give credit to the on that four and 21 team, what often happens, and we would have been okay. I think we would have been a 500 team. Maybe we had a key injury to a really good player early on, missed most of the year. And we had a young man kind of late transfer our starting point guard. And so we went from having kind of a small margin to no margin. I probably panicked a little bit in terms of, okay, we’ve got to find someone to fill these and just overlooked a really critical thing. So never making that mistake again, that’s going to trump talent.
And I think ever since we’ve done a really good job, we’ve had amazing players at all places. I’ve been great players who are about the right things, share your values, are great teammates. I mean, no matter what your outcomes, you’re going to have a lot of success. You’re going to have a lot of fun doing it.
Dan 33:46
Kind of sticking on that example with co I mean the four and 21 year But then I mean the next year you go 16 and 10 I mean, that’s a very large turnaround in just one year What was happening between those two years then to bounce back so quickly?
Pat Juckem 34:01
Well, I think when you go through a really tough year, or when you maybe take over a job that is a classic rebuild, these are opportunities to kind of strip it down to the bare bones and to build it with a really solid foundation in a very methodical way. And we kind of use that year we went through as an opportunity to, you know, that was my fifth year. It was a hard reset in terms of our program.
I got the point where I thought, this wasn’t that hard. Like, winning just kind of happens in my last couple of years as an assistant coach, we were in the NCAA tournament. So we had a bunch of good years in a row. It just isn’t that easy, right? It just doesn’t happen. Winning is hard. So it was the ability to go back and kind of reset, start over. This is year one, and I’m going to credit, we had a core group of young men on that team that went 4 and 21 who stayed in the summer. They committed, like all of us, our pride was 4 and 21 is awful. And they stayed, they worked out together. They were committed to changing this. And they became the catalysts the following year to quite a turnaround. And then the year after that, we were a conference champion again, it was a second championship in 30 years. So the core guys that went 4 and 21 were on the conference championship team two years later. So, you know, there wasn’t any dramatics other than, hey, this isn’t good enough. We’ve got to rededicate in that commitment those guys made to stick around, to hold each other accountable really was the foundation to cutting down nets two years later.
Pat 35:34
You mentioned, of course, recruiting character, knowing the guys you want to target. We also mentioned the seasons long.
How do you think about engagement? And in terms of not everyone’s gonna be the primary score, the heavy minute guys, but we all know that the 10th, 11th, 12th, or 13th, 14th, they’re very valuable, especially over the course of a long season. So just what you’ve learned about the team dynamics and keeping everyone engaged, irrespective of minutes and roles.
Pat Juckem 36:02
It’s such an important thing. I was fortunate I mentioned John Tharp, who I played for my last year, coached with him for six years. This was one of his superpowers. So I got to see it, witnessed it, participated personally, how every player on our team, and he made a point of every player feeling valued, regardless of role, and that’s just what we do. And so it was really fortunate.
I think I had a great advantage to witness someone who is as good as anyone in terms of what you’re talking about. What I, as a head coach, try to do is, A, to be really direct with our players. There are playing roles, there are team roles, and we all know all players, hey, happiness is playing time, and we have ego, and we want to be starters and key contributors, and yet there’s 200 minutes. It’s finite. We can’t create more. And how do we, over this long season, how do we do this? And I spent a lot of time and energy and thought thinking about how to make sure everyone, and it’s not perfect. And I’m not saying that we’ve solved something. We certainly haven’t. But it’s been very intentional in our approach to that, starting with being really clear in terms of, has those roles kind of unfold? And I take the approach, I don’t assume anything going into a season. I tell our guys, our job as coaches is, we have all these puzzle pieces. We’ve got to put it together over the course of the season and create this beautiful picture. When the season’s over, we’re going to bust it up. Because some of those pieces, they’re graduating, they’re moving on. We’re bringing new pieces in. And the returning pieces, if we have a good off season, they’re going to be different. They’re going to change. And how these pieces come together for the next journey may look very different, even though a lot of the pieces may be the same pieces. How it comes together may be different.
I love that part of trying to figure it out. How do we optimize it? And yet we’re doing it with human beings. They’re not machines. And they have egos and they have expectations. And in our case, young men who are months away from entering a great job opportunity, you have some who are 18 years old, wide eyed, and are just excited but don’t know what they’re doing. That is so fun to put together.
Personally, I love to give it room to grow and evolve and not to pre-determine anything. Hey, this is going to be our starting lineup. Hey, this new player, I’m penciling him because we just don’t know. And getting back to our earlier conversation about practice in competition, I think that’s important because we need to allow these players to show what they can do, show us how they impact winning. And doing that over the course of a season where oftentimes players, I mean, they grow and evolve so much from October 15th to hopefully March 15th. And it’s those competitive segments in practice where maybe that young man who is in a team role has an opportunity maybe through injury or his growth. Do you know what? Hey, he deserves a look. He deserves an opportunity.
Pat Juckem 39:18
A couple of things there. One, just being really direct with guys, over-communicating it, but also… allowing opportunities for them to show they can impact winning. And again, if they lean in, and as we know, when you lean into your role and embrace your role, your role tends to expand. So we’re constantly with our messaging, with my communication, and really with those opportunities, trying to give them, again, every opportunity to potentially change that role over the course of this season.
A couple other things that we do, I’ll mention at the end of our practice. We come in, and after our managers give out our statistical leaders for the day, we do a practice called spotlighting, where we have four core values, and our players can essentially shout out each other how a core value of ours was exemplified today in practice or outside of practice. And it’s just a really cool organic thing where guys can highlight, I’m taking Calculus III, Johnny’s a Calquiz and Johnny came over last night and he spent some time. Examples like that to something in practice, hey, Joe really, his energy and his enthusiasm was infectious today. And so it goes beyond contributions in terms of scoring and minutes played, it’s all those other things. And so we try to create as many of those opportunities as possible. I love showing clips in our film sessions of our bench in a game, or our guys on the floor picking people up. Let’s call those culture clips, right? So we’re attacking this from several directions in the hopes of every player in our program feels not only valued, feels equally part of our success because they truly are. So it’s a lot of attention and energy and intentionality in my part, but I think it’s been something that we’ve done well and we will continue to focus on.
Pat 41:18
All right, coach, so our last start subset for you, we’d like to go back to the court and look at transition defense and how you build your transition defense. We want to look at it through most important to get right for a successful transition defense.
Option one would be the shot selection by your players. Option two would be offensive rebounding, just the consistency to go however many you want to send to go to the glass. Or option three would be how you load and get back behind the ball in your transition.
Pat Juckem 41:53
All three are very important. The start on this is your shot selection. We’ve charted, in fact, recently I went back and looked at all of our makes we’ve given up in transition this past season. And not surprisingly, the two biggest buckets, one, turnovers, and then two, miss at the rim. Not finishing, because so often when you miss at the rim or don’t finish, that turns into advantage five on four, four on threes. So that’s shot selection and just really the quality of your offense really has a big impact.
My sub would be the loading, the sit would be offensive rebound, and just the rebounding. While super important, that’s a pretty black and white. How we approach it is that’s a role dependent. We have players that are crashers, we are players that are getting back. Their role is pretty black and white. Coach, I’d like to thank you so much for your support.
Pat 42:46
like to start with your start and shot selection and you mentioned of course the turnovers are the big catalyst but then also your at-rim misses so maybe now tying it back to practice you mentioned you guys will do vitamins where are you stressing with your players whether it’s skill fundamentals technique on at-rim finishing or just at-rim decisions might be the better way to say it.
Pat Juckem 43:10
Certainly we are putting finishing opportunities in our practices, some on air. Really I think it’s just so important to drill as much as you can, the reason, the decisions. If it’s one-on-one or you’ve got an advantage, we should be scoring that at a high rate. We’re there, we draw two, we’re pulling off two feet. That’s a spray, that’s a multiple pivot, let’s get off of it. Again, it traces back to that decision the player made was off balance, didn’t have an angle, was scoring against, was going up against two. I think if we can go back and we can show that to players, that really cements that. That, hey, you have solutions, we’re never going to be perfect. We attract guys, we sometimes try to be perfectionists. It’s like basketball is not a game of perfection.
Let’s just continue to get better. You’re never going to make every read perfect. That’s not how this game works, but we can continue to improve it. I think understanding the why behind it, that really promotes the growth and learning when they can see examples of, you know what, yeah, I was off balance. I didn’t have my shoulders squared up and I ended up laying on the baseline while the ball went the other way and we put our team at a disadvantage. When we can have the film to back that up, at the same time, like I’ve talked about earlier, we want our guys to not be afraid to make mistakes in a practice. That’s how we learn and we grow.
Pat 44:34
As we progress through, let’s say, your buildup of transition defense, you mentioned offensive rebounding is role specific. You’ll have crash guys, you’ll have get back guys.
I guess at any different time, depending on your lineups, maybe I’m exaggerating if you have two get back guys or four crash guys, however it may be. First, I guess, how do you want them to go rebound attack, and how does that affect how you then will start to load and build your defense after the rebound based on whether it’s two crash guys, three crash guys, four crash guys?
Pat Juckem 45:04
to eliminate as much limbo as possible. And over the years have tried different ways of having this rebounding system, position, where you’re on the floor. And what we settled on, I always go into the season with, hey, all of you players are crashers. Let’s start with that premise.
We’ve had, just graduated a young man here, Yogi Olaf, our point guard here for the four years, who just, one of those guys that instinctive had a nose for the basketball. And we made him, he was a crasher, even though traditionally a point guard is getting back and setting your defense. He just had an instinct anticipation. And over the years has made so many massive plays for us and got us extra possessions that didn’t lead to some maybe additional vulnerability on the other end. Yes, there’s a trade off, but I think just trusting your eyes and watching players, some players, even though they look like they should be crashers, they have the size strength of medicine. Some guys just don’t want to go. And instead of putting the square peg in the round hole, we’ll say, hey, you’re a get back guy. And so I kind of allow them to show me who you are. So some of our best offensive rebounders here have been our guards and some of our, I think most consistent get back players have been bigger wings, bigger players who just, their skillset was not going to the glass and maybe they weren’t overly physical, but you know what, having a six, seven kid back setting your defense in the lane, there’s some advantages there too. So as opposed to trying to force it, I go into each season with show me who you are. And then we will build our transition defense around strength. So there’ll be times we might have four going to the glass this past year, we had times where we had five. I try to eliminate, okay, in this scenario, you’re going in this scenario, you’re getting back. And it does, it creates, we’ve been a really good rebounding team here. And I thought we probably took a little step back, least statistically, we were not quite as strong with our transition defense this year. So sometimes there’s trade-offs, right? That was a decision we made. And overall, I think we’re coming out on the plus side of it.
Dan 47:16
My last question has to do with the shot selection. And has anything changed about how you discuss it, teach it, prioritize it over the course of your career, more lenient, more analytical?
Absolutely.
Pat Juckem 47:28
has changed. And as we have entered this age we’re in with such strong analytics supporting so many aspects of the game, but let’s say we’re high value shots, we’ve always tussled with, you know, I think as a player, the last thing I want to be is to be looking over my shoulder, obviously having our players question, is this not a good shot? Okay, we want them to play, feel not overthinking the game.
So we’ve gone as a common way that people have gone and we use a gold, silver, bronze system, and it takes the emotion out of it. I rarely talk about shot selection in practice. It’s something that we consistently will evaluate after all five on five segments, the film, practices, scrimmages, games, and we’ve been tracking it now for I think we’ve gone into four years of this and the numbers are what they are. They’re very consistent in terms of pay off the dribble long to that’s about a point six. Okay, when we are at the rim, no contest or semi contest, you know, those are 1.3 is 1.4 is spray threes. Those are 1213 is and it just takes the emotion out of it. I do think our players, they’re just growing up with this environment more and more. It’s not foreign. And I love having an objective measure because sometimes you play and you feel like, gosh, I felt like we got great shots today. And yet you look down the stat sheet and your percentages maybe don’t reflect that. Having the ability to go back and to evaluate, you know what, we hit our measures. For us, we’ve kind of found our sweet spot is if 70% of our shots can fit in those gold and silver buckets. We rarely lose, if ever, even if we do either defensively, we were really poor that game or you know what, sometimes our completion percentage wasn’t great, but you know what, we got great shots. Okay, our process, guys, our process is really good and we’re not going to focus on the outcome. It’s basketball. Sometimes you do everything right and the ball doesn’t go into basket. Next play. So it’s taken some emotion out of it. And to your question, I’ve loved that. Personally, it’s not something I have to waste a lot of energy on in practice. If it’s a high value shot for us, you’re open. Let’s shoot that thing. And it’s a great shot when it leaves your fingertips. Outcome is whatever it is going to be.
Dan 49:54
Coach, you’re off the start, sub, or sit hot seat. Thank you for going through all that stuff with us. That was a lot of fun.
We got a final question to close the show. Before we do, thanks so much again for your time today. This was a fantastic conversation, so thanks for coming on.
Pat Juckem 50:06
Oh, I appreciate it, guys.
Dan 50:07
Coach, our final question that we ask all the guests is, what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Pat Juckem 50:14
I’ve listened to a lot of your podcasts and I thought a lot about how I’d answer this question. And so I’m gonna actually have two, of course, as a lot of coach talk about, you know, your significant other, your partner, your spouse, who’s all along in this journey, I’ve been so fortunate there, Alyssa is in a rock for me. Other thing that I’ve been fortunate and the longer I’ve done it, I try to share this with younger coaches.
Because if you have in the city, you’re in a retired coach, retired high school coach, someone who’s done it for a long time, add that person to your staff, you will not regret it. I’ve had two that really stand out, Greg Yaki, who was with me, I was a high school coach for a couple of years, he rejoined my staff when I was at UW Oshkosh. And then when I got to Wash U, Steve Wilcutt, these were a long time, very successful high school coaches. And what I love about these veteran coaches, they’re so sure of themselves. And as both Greg and now Steve have told me, they’re not offended, they’re just gonna tell me what they think, and that’s good. And that’s what we need. You know, Steve will come in on a Monday and say, these are my three things, take it or leave it, Pat. And you know, there’s no emotion attached to it. You know, these guys who taught the game, taught young kids how to shoot the basketball, they’ve corrected more shots in their lifetimes. I’ve been really fortunate. So my advice and my answer to that question is those veteran coaches who just love to coach and teach the game, they don’t want to deal with maybe the administrative parts of it. They would love to come to practice and love to be part of it. They are absolutely, incredibly great resources and can be helpful on your staff.
Dan 52:00
All right, Pat, hey, let’s hop into this recap. Coach Juckem, been a tremendous coach, obviously throughout his career. Tons of success with WashU, which is currently one of the top Division III programs in the country. And so it was awesome having him on today to talk about just a ton of really valuable stuff.Â
Pat 52:17
Yeah, before we hopped on, I mean, of course we’re biased. We’re D three guys, but always love getting a highlight in D three coach, getting to hear their experience, their perspective, always really enjoy the conversation today was no different.
Dan 52:30
Absolutely. Well, Pat, we’re gonna each do our top takeaway. So one takeaway each for two of us And so for the first one, I’ll throw that back to you. I’ll go from the first bucket
Pat 52:41
I really like really all of his thoughts on just what we kind of termed efficient practices, practice design. The first one I really liked was an early competitive kind of segment in the quote unquote the warm up, whether after the vitamins, just throwing that early segment and get the guys going. Don’t really overcoach it.
Just get what he also alluded to the juice building that loud gym early, kind of what their identity kind of making that shine through. He spoke well on shaping behaviors in the scoring system. I know we were excited to get into that. But then as we got to the back half of the conversation, I liked when we kind of talked about just his learnings of the poor practice design. I guess pitfalls that he’s learned from where things have gone wrong and just the importance that he places on himself of really keeping the main thing, the main thing, writing down the focus. I think we’ve all been victims of it. We want to hit on this one thing and this drill, this segment, and then we get way off course. I think the big thing that kept coming through for this whole practice segment is keeping the main thing, the main thing.
What is like your core identity and just that you always have to hit on that always has to be coached and you can’t do everything. I think he brought up a good point like your team should be able to echo it back to you. This is our defense. This is our offense, you know, and I thought that was a really good point. Yeah. I thought the last thing I liked too is when he talked about maybe this ties into the teaching learning aspect of course, having the focus and practice, but really holding himself and his staff accountable to just having like one theme, offense and defense in the video and maybe one culture. I think that’s another thing that struggle with and we’ve heard like, how do we keep video short and how do we keep it concise and like on target? That’s always a struggle because again, it’s in our nature. We want to coach everything. We want to teach everything, but then yeah, like he said, if you’re not studying it or if you’re teaching everything, then what really matters or if you’re not studying it, then does it really matter? So, I really like that point too, just how he takes in the video, really one thing, offense, one thing defense, trying to go get that better in practice or in the game and then being able to hopefully pull a clip the next day to show, hey, this is what it looks like. This is what we strive for.
Dan 54:48
Yeah. I mean, there was just so much there. I find on the podcast, when we get into like practice design, there’s just so much there to talk about every time. And especially when a coach like Coach Juckem is just willing to kind of go through all of it and the philosophy and they’re so detailed and thought out. It just always leaves you going.
We could keep going on different parts of it because there’s so much there from a teaching design standpoint. And I really enjoyed the incentivizing part of that conversation as well. When you’re in competitive parts versus learning, teaching, I thought that was a good conversation. But then when he got to his example about incentivizing for like offensive rebounds and like a dagger three and the points and how the team was able to come back and score 12 points in two possessions because they get offensive rebound, kick out extra three. Yeah. Just really real world high quality ways to implement into your practice to where, yeah, you want guys to offensive rebound and then find these high quality threes and ways to do that. I thought that was really cool to just kind of hear those examples. And then some of his quotes were great about loud gyms when the juice, the energy, the stuff you mentioned, that’s just really important to him. And then lastly within that too that I liked was the spotlighting at the very end. And I think it was kind of within, I don’t remember if it was towards the back half of the bucket, but he has four core values and just ways for guys to spotlight each other. I thought that was really actionable takeaway of ways to kind of reinforce your culture, get people’s voices heard, and then highlight things that are likely non basketball all the time that help with your culture. I thought was really good.
Pat 56:19
And I don’t want to step on if it is your next point, but I thought when he talked about the spotlighting and then to your other point about statting practice, it’s just really good ways to keep guys engaged on the back end of your bench. You spoke really well, but especially those things I like, of course, figure out who impacts winning, you know, you want to drive habits, but also guys can get at the end of practice spotlighted because they’re doing things that are to the core identity or this like you talk about management is going to say who won the deflections, I forget the arenas today as well.
And I think those are little ways that big impact, especially with guys that aren’t always going to get the major minutes, aren’t always going to get the shots that of course, you know, other guys are going to have. And I thought that was also a really key point.
Dan 57:03
It probably bleeds into my big takeaway a little bit, which was from the Star Subsit when he was talking about learning in the tough times. I just found his learning about culture and himself really insightful to hear about and the four core values and the spotlighting, I’m sure, came out of those years where he said he understood how important it was to get high character guys and what that means.
I found that Star Subsit personally just be really insightful and he’s had so much success. He’s such a great coach. Then we were talking about some of these years that are struggles and we all have them. They’re in everybody’s careers if we’re lucky to be around long enough. I thought his reflection on that was just valuable to hear.
Pat 57:46
Yeah, I think no surprise. We’ve heard it from several coaches when he’s talking about character, but you can tie that into like culture is what really wins culture is what defines your processes.
And I think he spoke really well that he kind of lost side of that maybe, you know, kind of fell into the trap again, that I think we all do like you fall in love with just the talent or what this kid can do. And maybe you look the other way or make concessions on things that are actually more important to you. But maybe you’re just not aware of at the time, we all have to kind of go through these experiences to really like dig our feet and like, no, hey, this does matter more than talent. And I think that’s just what these conversations we continue to have are kind of proving that you need some talent, you can’t take a bunch of nice guys that can’t play a lick, but walking that tightrope, you know, and just like the culture is what defines how you evaluate players, your processes, and that ultimately is what I think really has the biggest impact on winning. And then finding the guys that are talented within that framework being a huge piece of that.
Dan 58:45
And I think so many great coaches we’ve had on the podcast, I think our common thread that you always see is they have this ability to take losing streaks, tough seasons, tough breaks, whatever it is, and just turn it into high-quality learning for the future. And then you could tell too, he’s just so process-driven and oriented with talking shot selection, talking about how they teach and as he progresses as a coach, it’s just you become where sometimes the outcomes are just outside of our control as much as we don’t want them to be.
And I think he had the great quote in there about, I think it’s the Bennett quote about, guys you can lose with before you can win with, I’m going to find the guys I want to coach that are going to play hard, play together, that I can put my head on the pillow at night and rest easy if I lose with these guys. And then winning can happen because of our process. Well, Pat, there’s a ton in there on all of our star subsets and bucket. Was there any misses? Not from Coach Juckem, of course, but just anything you wish we would have explored more. you
Pat 59:45
I thought he spoke really well in the engagement part. We hit on it a little bit, we talked about it, but he identified the communication piece, how he tries to give these guys a voice, how he values one through 12. I thought he spoke really well on and so vital just because of the length of our seasons and how few guys are actually on the court. There’s always gonna be someone unhappy, but if you can get this engagement, this buy-in throughout the whole months is vital, is critical, just to practice quality.
And then of course, when injuries hit. So amiss, I would have loved to just keep picking at it because I just think it is such a crucial piece. Of course, we had a really great segment on transition defense. I think since you and me are big tagging up guys, I think it was also refreshing just to hear.
Dan 01:00:27
for sure. I’ll just close with I thought his best investment was terrific answer, a new one, a new one.
Yeah. And I was gonna say like, how do we add more time or another segment be interesting to just keep going down that thread about mentors and people on your staff and staff development, I thought was just a really well put great ending of the show to talk about, you know, bringing someone on your staff like that who’s been around that’s just gonna give it to you straight not care about you know, other thing I thought was great. Once again, we thank Coach Juckem for coming on, give us such a great interview. Thank you everybody for listening. We’ll see you next time.Â