Johnny Tauer on Intrinsic Motivation, Teaching Split Cuts, and Over Eager Parents {St. Thomas}

Inside the Episode

“You know, when we ask players, kids at camp, do coaches favor players? And they all say ‘no’ because they want to say the politically correct thing. Yes, we absolutely do. We favor the good listeners, we favor the hard workers, we favor the guys that are coachable, we favor the guys that shoot well, pass well. Yes, we absolutely play favorites. And so getting kids to understand, at some level, if you’re not getting what you want on a team, figuring out now ‘what does your coach want?’ Because I say that to our players all the time ‘you want better things in life. Give your boss what he or she wants.'” – Johnny Tauer

We had a fantastic time on the podcast this week as we were joined by University of St. Thomas Head Coach, Johnny Tauer. As you’ll hear in the episode, Coach Tauer is a high level thinker about all things on an off the court and we dove into topics on:

• The transition from D3 to D1, and what wins at both levels (St. Thomas was forced out of their conference in D3 and joined D1 the next season)
• Turnovers…how to limit and track them
• ​Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation ​
• And we talk “over eager parents” and teaching Split Cuts during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”

Chapters

0:00 Transitioning to Division 1 Basketball

10:11 Building Trust

14:10 Motivating Athletes and Building Teams

21:53 Setting Goals

28:43 Defensive Strategy Impact

31:53 Motivation and Parents in Youth Sports

40:24 Effective Coaching

51:13 Coaching Strategies and Personal Growth

56:40 Coaching Perspectives on Motivation

1:02:36 Episode Recap

Transcript

Johnny Tauer: 0:00

You know, when we ask players, kids at camp, do coaches favor players? And they all say no because they want to say the politically correct thing. Yes, we absolutely. We favor the good listeners, we favor the hard workers, we favor the guys that are coachable, we favor the guys that shoot well, pass well. Yes, we absolutely play favorites. And so getting kids to understand, like at some level, if you’re not getting what you want on a team, figuring out now what does your coach want? Because I say that to our players all the time you want better things in life. Give your boss what he or she wants.

Dan Krikorian: 0:36

Hi, I’m Dan Krikorian and I’m Patrick Carney, and welcome to Slapping Glass exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today we’re excited to welcome University of St Thomas head coach Johnny Tower. The coach tower is here today to discuss the unique transition from coaching Division 3 to Division 1 and what wins at both levels intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation and we talk over eager parents and teaching split cuts during the always fun start, sub or sit. Costa Rica, spain, italy, australia, south Africa. We’re excited to announce our newest partnership with the world leader and international sport tours. Beyond Sports Founder and former college and pro basketball coach, josh Erickson and his team of former athletes have built a go-to company for coaches looking to take their programs abroad. From the travel and accommodations to excursions and service learning opportunities, beyond Sports does it all. For more information and to learn why more than 650 universities have trusted Beyond Sports, visit Beyond Sports Tours dot com and tell them Slap and Glass, sinsha. And now please enjoy our conversation with coach Johnny Tower. Coach, thanks so much for making some time. I know you’ve got camps going on and you’re flying around recruiting and whatnot. We appreciate you spending some time with us today. Hey, thank you, dan Patrick.

Johnny Tauer: 2:18

I’ve been a huge fan of your guys. The show is one of my staples. What you do for basketball is just incredible, and so I’m grateful to be on here, really excited to talk hoops with you guys. Thank you, coach, we appreciate that.

Dan Krikorian: 2:28

Coach, I want to dive in with this and, for those that don’t know the story of the program too much, real quick, you guys had such a tremendous run of success at the D3 level and then a few years back, your conference kicked you out of the conference and you had to make the tough transition from D3 right to Division I. But that first season, like we’ve talked about before you started all the same D3 guys, that whole first year they played the majority of the minutes, all the minutes actually, and you were able to win 10 games at the Division I level that first year and also the second year as you were transitioning, we’ll get into as well that you still had a large majority of Division III players and we want to start with your thoughts on what went into winning at both of those levels that translated over from the D3 to D1 level that you found, as you were transitioning, really helped on or off the court.

Johnny Tauer: 3:17

Yeah, it’s been a fascinating kind of experiment, right that when we initially made the jump, I played Division III at St Thomas from 91 to 95. And so when we talk about our Division III guys that helped us make the transition, we reminded them frequently. They’re no longer Division III players and I don’t really like labels, right, you’re a basketball player. I’ve always felt like the elite Division III basketball players and teams can compete at an incredibly high level, although we didn’t have a lot of data that would test that. Necessarily Some individual cases, that Duncan Robinson’s of the world, but not entire teams, and so winning at any level is really tough. I mean Division III. I loved it. We had a good amount of success both at the national and the conference level and then making this jump really was historic. There were a lot of programs who had gone D2 to D1. There were coaches who had changed schools from D3 to D1. But there was not a program that had gone D3 to D1 that we could look to and for a confluence of reasons, as you alluded, dan, we ended up starting the same five guys that six months earlier were playing Division III basketball and had played D3 ball for three and four years, and the same five guys are now playing a full Division I schedule. And I think the two things that we really tried to double down on and this was important the first was our culture, my background as a social psychologist, my research and intrinsic motivation. That I think has permeated our culture for years and it affects how we recruit, it affects how we practice, it affects how we play. And so we doubled down on that and we said, listen, if we’re going to do this and we know we’re going Malcolm Gladwell’s book David and Goliath the reality is we are favored in most games in Division III not all, but many of them. We suddenly became the underdog in every Division I game. And so let’s embrace that journey, let’s not try to be somebody who we aren’t and let’s let intrinsic motivation and our trust in one another and in our culture really rule the day. And then I think the second thing was being who we were, which is an up-tempo team that shoots a lot of threes and takes care of the ball, and that first year, I think, we scored over 75 points a game. Again, we made the most threes we’ve ever made. Now, some of that was Darwinian, where we weren’t getting a lot of layups. So natural selection told us we better shoot a lot of threes and we had also led the nation in Division I and few of us turnovers. So we had done that before. In Division III we almost broke the all-time Division. I record that first year. In large part our schemes weren’t any different, but our guys knew we had zero chance to win if we didn’t take care of the ball. So that to me was one of the proudest moments I’ve had as a coach, like as much as any national championship or conference championship team. That team of guys that won 10 games that first year. To me, what they embraced every single day, it was unbelievably inspirational. Those were the two things I think we doubled down on our culture and intrinsic motivation and then taking care of the ball and being a team.

Dan Krikorian: 5:54

I really want to circle back to the motivation stuff in just a minute, but I actually like to ask you first about the turnovers and, fundamentally, I guess, what you thought about teaching with your players, because going from D3 to D1, they didn’t turn it over at the D3 level, but now you’re facing bigger, stronger, longer athletes and things like that, whether it’s in the post or pick and roll situations, trapping whatever it is, and what translated from a don’t turn it over fundamental standpoint from one level to the next.

Johnny Tauer: 6:22

We get asked that question a lot because historically we’ve been good. I always say tongue in cheek, and this is true though. Number one you better recruit skilled players right when people want to know how do you not turn it over. The reality is, you better have guys who can pass and catch and they’re smart and they’re tough and they’re coachable. So it starts there, I think. The second thing, and I was concerned to how we’d be able to run offense, and certainly some teams made it very difficult on us, but I think our guys acute awareness of who they were as players to thine own self, be true like, know who we are and embrace that. So we probably were a little less aggressive, right In part because we aren’t getting a lot of drives into the paint for layups. We didn’t have a prominent post player who’s just going to dominate you on the block. We had guys that were crafty, but I think we tried to mitigate some of our height and our quickness disadvantages by the way. We spaced the floor, passed the ball and shot the ball, and so it was a unique group of players. I don’t know that just anybody could do that. Those five guys really knew each other well and it wasn’t just those five. Obviously we played far more than that their understanding of our culture and who we were, and make no mistake about it. We also lost 12 straight games that year at one point in time. So some of the stats from that year are remarkable To me. That was the greatest pressure test to our culture we’ve ever had. Right, there were winning streaks we had that were a lot of fun. In Division III, in Division I, we’ve had big wins. But to lose 12 straight games and for me to know, walking in the locker room, that never were those guys gonna fracture, never were they gonna point fingers at one another, they weren’t happy, they didn’t like to lose. Those five guys had lost eight games in three years total. So think about that. They lost eight games in three years. They lost more than eight games in three weeks when we were in the midst of that losing streak, but to know that they were gonna stick together, that to me was the greatest test of our culture that are we doing things that are sustainable? At the Division I?

Patrick Carney: 8:03

On that note, what is it about your culture that you feel you do well that helped sustain your success or keep your guys engaged during, like I said, that it came losing streak?

Johnny Tauer: 8:13

Again. Number one. I go back to who you recruit. There’s a lot of great coaches out there. We are not miracle workers and frankly, I think the selection process through who you recruit so you can see over the top of my head on this podcast, the UST University of St Thomas, we have an acronym USST Unselfish, skilled, smart and Tough, and so those are four qualities we talk about a lot, like after you get through somebody’s moral character and their academic kind of motivation and pedigree. Those are two non-negotiables, but after that those are the four words we talk about a lot. And if you recruit unselfish, skilled, smart, tough guys, they’re gonna make the pass and not force a play that’s not there. They’re gonna have the skill to do it, they’re gonna be judicious and smart and how they operate and they’re also gonna be tough minded against like you alluded that first year and even last year a lot of athletes who are bigger, stronger, faster than our guys, and so that to me we try to put a premium on that. Now you can have anything you want in life. You can’t have everything you want. So whatever you prioritize in recruiting, you may be giving up somewhere else and probably over the years, even at the Division Three level we were a pretty small team, like, if you looked at us in Division Three, we had one dunk in 29 games. In our second to last year in Division Three, one dunk in 29 games. But that was because we were playing a bunch of guys who could pass, dribble, catch and shoot and I think that approach we’ve tried to carry through at the Division One level and early on at least. I’m really pleased how that has translated.

Patrick Carney: 9:30

You mentioned Tough Mindset and at the beginning you said when you made the change from D3 to D1, you went from being favorites to underdogs. So I’m just curious, with this Tough Mindset the mental component that you found in your players, or just what you learned about going from being a favorite to an underdog in terms of mentality?

Johnny Tauer: 9:46

I’ll be honest with you not just the players, but the coaches right that if you think about it, the players are in a relatively short window. This will be my 24th year coaching at St Thomas, and so, while I’d love to tell you it was easy, my wife would tell you that year I got an ulcer, I had vertigo and I don’t know how many of those are attributed to stress and how many are just me getting older. The reality of losing is that it’s not fun. I don’t care if you’re at summer basketball camp, I don’t care if you’re in the NBA. Losing’s hard I go back to. I think we were blessed, like there were. Some people are in the country saying, well, who are the transfers you’re gonna bring in? Who’s gonna play? And while none of us knew how our guys making the transition from D3 to D1 would do, I did know that they were going to be those things. They were going to be tough and they were gonna be together. And when you think about what are the things that break teams down, trust is number one. If a team has trust, you have a chance to be great. It doesn’t ensure you’re gonna be great, but you have a chance. And so probably those three things, without trying to have an alliteration, which we do far too often, but trust, toughness and togetherness. Those guys who had made that jump from division three, they were really embracing it. We had two of them come back, ryan Lindberg and Bert Headstrom, for their fifth years and they paid tuition. They weren’t on scholarship and they paid tuition to go to grad school and both of them had unbelievable full-time jobs lined up already. So when you start to think about their commitment to the program and I think also just their excitement, right, those two and Anders Nelson and Riley Miller had started four years together, basically, and I think they looked at it. Hey, covid took away a chance to win a national championship in 2020, again in 2021, but now here they got to do something that’s never been done before make a jump from D3 to D1, and particularly with many of the same players and so they really did embrace it. They looked at every one of those 30 games like this is our Super Bowl and let’s go make the most of it.

Patrick Carney: 11:28

On that trust. Was it an active decision by you and your staff? Let’s roll with our five guys, or the majority of D3 guys, versus yeah, we got to get some transfers in here. We got to recruit over these guys or bring in new guys.

Johnny Tauer: 11:39

I’d say some of both. That’s a great question, patrick. It was sort of serendipity the way it worked out. I did not think in June of that year we were going to start the same five guys and those five guys would tell you like three of them. We told you have a chance to be on the team, but I don’t know if you’ll play any minutes at all. And they trusted that and they jumped at that opportunity, which I’ll be always so grateful to them because they wanted to be a part of it. But they also had to know you’ve got door number one with this unbelievable job lined up. Door number two is you get to play Division one basketball, but we don’t know if we’re going to win any games and we don’t know if you’re going to play. And so for those guys to take that leap of faith. But again you come back to trust. We had been together several years and the trust built up over losing only eight games over three years and then saying, all right, we’re going to go through some tough stuff together. We did bring in four or five transfers that year and for a litany of reasons, some of them ended up going someplace else and didn’t come here. Some of them suffered some injury. So there was a bunch of stuff that happened. So it was not necessarily by design, but as the off season sort of unfolded, we started seeing, like this is probably going to be the same group we roll with, I think, our guards Anders Nelson and Riley Miller, who were both Division three, all Americans. Those were two guys that we sort of I said we’re not recruiting guards that year in the transfer market because these two guys have earned this opportunity. What they’ve done, and I think both of them showed that they could not just compete but really excel at the Division one level.

Dan Krikorian: 13:03

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Johnny Tauer: 14:09

One. Growing up I was never the most talented player. I was a good player, was on a state championship team in high school for basketball and baseball. But I really guys I played with baseball got drafted Major league. I was not one of those guys who got draft. I was not anybody’s draft board. I wasn’t recruited by division one schools. I ended up having a division three career that we made the final four. We had unbelievable run. But throughout all that I think I came to appreciate, you know, sort of being in the middle, not saying I was average all the time, right, but I was in the middle of a talent base where I could start to see and I’ve always been curious, and hence the interest in psychology of why sometimes the most prodigiously talented Athletes aren’t that motivated. And then you see the other gym rats and you guys probably saw this a chap and wear. Sometimes the guy on the jv who’s not getting any time on the jv is still in the gym every night for two hours and that just fascinated me and so I wanted to go into coaching. But I also knew I wanted to have something else right, some skill set. For some guys it’s going into video, for some guys now it’s analytics For me. I thought if I can go into psychology and really understand what makes people tick, because at the end of the day, the special sauce to me is, if you look, even at the highest levels in the nba, does height matter? Sure, but a lot of more really tall. The speed matter? Sure, but their elite quickness. What’s the difference? A lot of times it’s between the years and understanding who is it that’s going to be toughest during times of adversity? Who’s gonna keep working in the summers when you have a ton of freedom and a lot of money? And so Intrinsic motivation, simply put, is just a joy in taking part in an activity for its own sake, without thoughts of money, praise, prestige, accolades etc. And so that has always been for me something that in recruiting, looking for players who do love the game. Now they again have to be good people and good students. But I think that permeates our culture and I don’t think, if you hung around our program a lot, I probably intentionally don’t talk about intrinsic motivation or even psychology very often, because that’s what they think of me right in the freshman come in thinking, because I’ve got the background psychology, I can read their minds. Which, if I could read their minds, we would never miss shots or have turnovers. The reality is it’s more about free a culture that fosters intrinsic motivation. But before we even get there, we got to get guys who love basketball and they want to be a part of something special, and I think where we’re at our journey in division one Is such a unique story that there are a lot of guys were looking at the same. So hold on, I get a chance to play maybe a little bit more early in my career and be at this great school, play a style that’s fun, enough tempo and to truly do something that hasn’t been done before. So Intrinsic motivation piece is huge, but I think it’s probably more implicit than explicit if you were to follow us around.

Dan Krikorian: 16:40

Diving on the intrinsic first, extrinsic first, second, I’m sure in your career you coach great players that have kind of a balance of, yes, they want to win, but there’s also things when is playing time, scoring points or whatever his name in the paper now your division one level and there’s other types of extrinsic things that come into play and how you have dealt with those kinds of players to try to either mold them or fit them in your program somehow.

Johnny Tauer: 17:05

Three parts. That one probably the greatest aha moment I had in coaching first year is division three assistant. My head coach, steve fritz white, plate four, tells me I’m gonna run the defense, and most of my teammates that was laughable because I was invisible. Defender idea that I was running the defense to most of my teammates only six years out of college. I think they were worried about the state of the program at that point. But we had a player and he was really, really gifted on offense, and defense is probably not something that most guys are intrinsically motivated to do anyways, but I had tried everything with him every motivational trick a month into practice Blowing the whistle, stopping, yelling, running sprints, having him sit while the team ran sprints on a lot of practice, which I never do. But it was like we gotta get this guy to defend. And he came into my office one day and I just listen, we gotta figure this out, this isn’t working. And he was a really nice young man. He said no, coach, what’s going on? I started talking about defense and I didn’t want to have to do all the things that I was doing to extranetly motivate him and he kept saying I understand, I got you understand Real matter of fact, and after about the fifth time I started getting a little frustrated. I’m like I don’t think you do understand. And he looked at me like, and use the nicest kid, he looks at me and he snaps back coach, you don’t understand, I like, hold on a second, what do you mean? I don’t understand. You say, coach, what you don’t understand. Any pause and I think, thought about how to diplomatically say this. And he said coach, I’m lazy, I hate defense, I’m never gonna like defense. So all the things you’re doing, you do have to do them all to me and I don’t care. I know that I need. And so that was this light bulb moment, right for the young and friends. Motivation. Researcher, who was a little naive and idealistic, thinking Everybody’s just gonna love to run through a brick wall. No, everybody’s not. So that’s number one. Number two and I’ll go through these more quickly number two, I think, is recruiting guys. That you see a joy on their face, but the reality is everyone has both In transit, connect transit. It’s not an either or proposition. I think about a more on a two dimensional scale, and so it’s more about getting guys to enjoy. You guys work to jobs before where you know the salary and if you really dislike the job when you’re in high school or college, you figure out how many minutes does it take to make a dollar. What am I making? Permit 18 cents, I don’t like this job, and you count your way through the day. Right, though I think it was called, clock watchers are some movie back in the nineties, and so it’s our job to create an environment that isn’t going to be a clock watching one. Right? If they’re looking at the clock in the gym, I’m doing something wrong in practice. But I think the other part is accepting that everybody is motivated by different things and then trying to kind of blend those right. So I guys want to play professional basketball. That’s a great thing, getting them to see that, okay. But all conference awards and points per game frankly are not what professional scouts are looking for. They’re looking at Efficiency and scoring assist to turn over ratio, team success. Are you coachable? And so I think it’s trying to blend the extra and intrinsic, because the reality is there’s nothing wrong with extra motivation, but it does get dangerous if that’s what fuels you, because then you need more, more, more, whereas the intrinsic motivation almost perpetuates itself and you refuel it every day.

Dan Krikorian: 20:01

When it comes to team motivation. So we’re kind of talking about player motivation a little bit now, maybe branching out a little bit when you’re trying to motivate a team. This goes back ties into our whole conversation. But going back a little bit to your winning 30 plus 30 games a year, division three level man your first year, huge success. Division one winning 10, but trying to motivate them To win but also just to play within your culture, one, I guess. Now branching out to the group aspect of motivation, well, I think building teams.

Johnny Tauer: 20:27

To me it’s the greatest challenge in coaching. Right, there’s a lot of similarities. I’ve always felt that coaching and teaching a very similar. Coaches can learn a lot from teachers and teachers can learn a lot from coaches. Often times, coaches are amazing at building teams, but in a classroom we’re not necessarily always that great. It’s more individualistic. I think teachers can learn from that. Coaches, on the other hand, I think, are notoriously pretty good at building teams, but not always great at the educational component. Really thinking about Is 18 to 22 year olds is how am I helping them kind of navigate their journey, not just on the basketball court in life, and that sounds cliche, but that is our job. I think one of the greatest benefits of playing college athletics and you guys are an example of this the teammates and friendships and bonds that you have and you form in college. Oftentimes those end up being your closest friends, and that’s not always easy to see as an 18 year old, right, because you don’t know these guys that well. So often as an 18 year old, you’re feeling disconnected because you were the big fish in a small pond at high school. Everybody knew, you know. Suddenly come to college and, frankly, nobody on campus knows your teammates, don’t necessarily even know you, and so I think building teams is really, really complicated. It’s like a blend of a chemistry experiment, sociology experiment, psychology experiment. And you’re doing all of these things at once knowing that we got 15 guys on our team. They have goals and I know, going into the year, not all 15 are going to reach their individual goals right in terms of Time points, etc. Frankly, if everybody’s content at the end of the year, we probably didn’t have a very good year because our goals, our aspirations were high. We do talk about this a lot. So I said I don’t talk a lot about intrinsic motivation, but we do talk about team and our goals for players. Individual growth is a huge part of that. Team growth is another part. But getting them to see the big picture that some point in life the ball does stop bouncing and what it does, if you’ve created genuine relationships and friendships and connections, those are gonna serve you in a myriad of ways that you don’t know when you’re 18 to 22. But you guys know this. I know this. I think about my life for the last 28 years since I graduated from st Thomas most of the really great times and a lot of the toughest times, I’ve been surrounded by my teammates and so that to me trying to paint that bigger picture for them on a daily basis. Then you get down to the nuance of, okay, how do we play, what we value? We value passing a lot when we talk about recruits. If a guy doesn’t pass it, well, we’re gonna be sort of has. It doesn’t mean he always makes the right decision yet, but can I see, does he have the visual acuity to be a really good passer and he’s gonna be coachable. So that’s a long-winded answer. But bill in teams, to me is the most fascinating Part of our job, because every year you can get tired of teaching pick and roll defense, you get tired of teaching shooting form, but it’s hard if you’re coaching young men, in this case individuals, and building a team every day is a new challenge, and so that’s the part that, to me, is just beautiful about a profession.

Patrick Carney: 23:12

When building a team and setting team goals or trying to mold the players to fit into the team goals, do you spend the time, let’s say before season, to learn each player’s individual goals? They’re not all going to achieve them, but it’s important for you to know them so you can then help kind of mold, shape and develop the team goals.

Johnny Tauer: 23:30

That’s interesting, petra, because by nature I’m quantitative. All my aptitude tests as a kid said I should go into actuarial science. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what actuarial science meant. I wasn’t as good in my English classes and so I didn’t go into that. But I love numbers. Yet when talking with players, I probably stray away from numbers just because I think, going back to intrinsic motivation, when you’re thinking about numbers a lot, it impedes your freedom on the court, and that’s true individually and collectively, right, so we don’t talk about turnovers during a game ever. It’s not like we’re saying, guys, we’ve got five turnovers, our goal is to have nine. We got a problem. I’ve coached some guys over the years where they’re shooting well and then they dip below some standard that they think defines a good shooter. Let’s say it’s 40% from three and all of a sudden you can see in their head they’re trying to make five shots in one, which is impossible, right? And so I rarely talk with players about, I’d say, quantifiable goals, but more about their development and getting them to see. Here are some metrics that if you’re in this ballpark, good things are going to happen to you, both in your experience in college and then beyond college. I do think it’s dangerous because so many things happen during the course of a season that are unpredictable. We went a decade in Division III and during that time we won 10 straight conference titles, two national titles and not one guy averaged 15 points a game for us in a season over a 10-year period, and that was not by design. Some of it is probably how I like to coach, some of it is the depth that we had, but some of it was also that our players didn’t have. I want to score 18 points a game and be an All-American. We didn’t have very many All-Americans, frankly, because we had a lot of balance scoring and a lot of really good, unselfish players. So I think I talk with them about their goals, but it’s more about are you growing? And it’s so easy in today’s culture, I think, for players to want to speed things up and oftentimes those quantifiable goals, I think, create sort of unrealistic. We do do this at the start of the season ask players how many minutes they want to play, how many points they want to score. We asked them that once and we show them that. Well, that would involve 400 minutes of playing time. We’d score 215 points. It would be the greatest team in the history of college basketball. And then they sort of chuckle and they realize like hey, we’ve all got individual goals. But again I go back to that mantra you can have anything you want in life. You can’t have everything. If you want to be the leading scorer and be an All-American and win every game, well, there aren’t many guys in the country that do all of those things. So let’s just be a great teammate, value the ball, value your teammate. Those are the other two things that come back to you all the time.

Patrick Carney: 25:46

We talked at the beginning of this conversation just quickly about your offensive style and that not much really changed with your transition. I’d just like to flip it to defense and if anything changed or what you learned again in this, like what wins when you make a jump from league’s levels.

Johnny Tauer: 26:01

That’s an interesting question. I would say yes, probably more changed defensively. I’m really fortunate. I got a great staff. Mike Maker is our associate head coach. He recruited Duncan Robbins into Williams. Actually he was the Division III coach then who recruited Duncan and then he left for Marist Division I head job and so we’re really fortunate to have him on our staff at St Thomas. His wife Erica and my wife Chancey, who graduated from St Olaf College together the same year and Mike and I coached against each other in Division III kind of how two worlds collide. But he’s incredible. Offensively Worked with John B Line at West Virginia. Much of what we run stems from me falling in love with West Virginia’s teams back in 2005, 2006, 2007, when I was a young assistant. On the defensive end, kenny Lowe played at Purdue, was the two-time defensive player of the year in the Big Ten, and Cameron Rundles, who played at Wofford and led them to back-to-back national tournaments. They run our defense and I think over the last two years like, if you look at our defensive numbers the first year, there are 358 teams in the country. That year we were 357 or 358 in a lot of categories and that was not through a lack of effort. It was truly. It was just we were not able to guard individually, just our quickness. We were not able to rebound very well. So that year I’d say we had to play far more conservatively. Division III typically we were up tempo. We like to press, we wanted as fast a game as possible and we still do that offensively in Division I. But I think we’ve had to mitigate some of those athletic areas. Last year we brought in a recruiting class with some really good size and so I think we’re back to playing a little more normally defensively. But you know the game if you watch high school, college, the NBA. I think what changes is more vertical defense and horizontal defense. Right, certainly the length of players in the spacing, but the court doesn’t change. It’s more the three-dimensional. Some of the lob dunks that we gave up that first year. There was no way we were going to stop those one-on-one. So it was more what we did two or three steps before that to try to figure out, because once that ball was in the air they were catching it 12 feet and we weren’t getting to 12 feet, and that’s no knock on anybody, it’s just the reality of it. So, yeah, I think defensively, just trying to figure that out. And then the other part is I do think as we transition from Division III to Division I and we do recruit more athletic players and again I say that as no knock on the guys that I talked about earlier but as we do, our ability to switch more things, our ability to defensive rebound, like that, certain things that we had to play a little closer to the vest and still do a little bit. I think that will open up over the next several years because the way we play on offense is the way we’d like to play on defense, which is really fast and free in up tempo.

Patrick Carney: 28:22

Well, vertical versus horizontal defense. I like how you said that it was more vertical and you guys were probably, at that, more horizontal. What were maybe some of the tactical things you thought about so that the horizontal defense could win out over trying to play vertical defense?

Johnny Tauer: 28:34

Yeah, and it’s not easy, right, because at the end of the day it’s like, as the stakes get higher, in anything you’re going to win If you’re able to throw that ball above the rim. You’ve got to guide and go get it. But I think there were certain things that we would pressure the ball maybe more than we should in certain actions or even baseline out of bounds, certain things that we changed the way we guarded baseline out of bounds to just take away lobs, where we said, if we have to live with a decent jump shot from them on these actions or these out of bounds plays, we have to do that because otherwise we’re going to give up lobs at the rim. And so that would be one example that comes quickly to mind. I think the second one is just knowing what you’re willing to live with. And so there were times where we did switch more screens that first year and then just front of the post and over help from the backside, with the idea that we’re just not going to let them catch it, we’re going to make it difficult to catch. Now that led us to get beat up on the defensive glass a little bit more too. So there were no easy answers. But again I go back to trust our players all knew that and they understood it. So they weren’t not like they were pointing at our six foot six post player, parker Bjorklin, saying why didn’t you go get that lob? It’s like, well, because they’re seven foot five, center for Robert’s dit, and I think that’s some of what we’ve gone through, but really pleased. If you look at our defensive numbers from year one to year two, the improvement on virtually every metric was really really good. That, to me, is more important. It’s not where we are right now. Are we trending in the right direction? We made big strides from year one to year two.

Dan Krikorian: 29:53

A quick thank you to our newest partner here at Slapping Glass, one of the best tech companies in the world of sports, huddle. As many of you know, huddle extends an array of useful products to coaches, from their auto tracking camera, huddle Focus, live streaming tool, huddle TV, wearable athlete performance tracker, wimoo and their newest offering, huddle in stat, an all in one data powerhouse platform that combines advanced tagging with the global film library. For more information on all that’s offered with Huddle in stat, visit huddlecom slash Slapping Glass today. Thanks to Huddle for the support. And now back to our conversation. Coach, this has been awesome so far. Thanks for all your thoughts there. We could keep going and going, but we want to transition now to a segment on the show we call Start, sub or Sit. So maybe those listening for the first time will give you three options here on a topic Ask you to start one, sub one and sit one. We’ll discuss from there. So, coach, if you’re already, we’ll dive into this first one. Let’s go. This first question has to do with and you have written a book in the past on parents in youth sports and them potentially being over eager or whatnot, or over involved, and so this first start sub, sit has to do with why parents become over involved in their kids’ lives in the first place. The start here would be the main reason that you think that they become so over involved. So Start, sub or Sit. Option one is unrealistic expectations about their kids’ skill set. Option two is a lack of trust in the coaching. And option three is, we wrote, just blinding love for their children.

Johnny Tauer: 31:33

That’s a great question. I’ll start pretty unequivocally from that list of three the unbridled love they have for their kids. I’m going to sub expectations and I’ll sit trust or coach. Those are great options. The first one Love. That’s the reason I wrote the book, honestly. So why Less is Morphal Wasps, wosp, well-intentioned over involved sports parents. That is sort of. I had this triangulation of my research and intrinsic motivation my teaching, my coaching and then having young kids. Once I had young kids and I started looking around at two-year-old t-ball games and three-year-old softball games and parents screaming and I’m like what are we doing here? And then I’d go to camp and I’d have some parents who would tie their seven-year-old shoes for them and basically hold their hand and they were kind of overprotective. And then you’d see parents screaming at umpires at youth baseball games. And so I was seeing all these things in my life that we all love sports, we all know what good sports can do for us. And when you ask parents and we’ve done surveys of this what do you hope your kid gets out of athletics? And they will say things like character development, discipline, teamwork, unselfishness, learning how to compete, all of these things. And yet when you ask coaches. What are the emails you get complaining about the two words we hear over and over? And Dan and Patrick you know what I’m going to say playing time. It’s remarkable. So parents and I say that I juxtapose those because the title of the book I do believe most parents who are involved are really well-intentioned and we have thousands of studies from psychology that shows that neglectful parenting is not a good solution, but the other end of the continuum being overly involved, it’s not as bad as being neglectful, but it’s bad in a different way, because now, all of a sudden, are the kids learning how to actually navigate for themselves? And so I do believe and maybe I’m a little naive, but I do believe that most parents’ intentions are good but they don’t like we don’t and I have four kids we do not like seeing our kids in pain, and that’s a natural evolutionary reaction to saying how do we help our kids survive? We don’t want them in pain. The problem is, youth sports is actually a vehicle that can provide have done right an adequate amount of pain for kids to work through in a safe way and learn lessons that they’re going to need when they’re 22 years old. That’s the biggest motivation for writing that book was. I think we need to get back to that. How do we provide kids with the learning and the wins and the losses? Because I know the three best lessons I ever learned in sports were incredibly painful and yet those stick with me to this day and affect how I live my life.

Dan Krikorian: 33:56

Coach, before we get to the start of SIT, if you’re comfortable sharing one of those experiences that led to some change for you.

Johnny Tauer: 34:03

Yeah, freshman year in high school, randy Metzel nicest guy ever. He’s still at the same high school Crete and Durham Hall. And we’re now 36 years later. I was a freshman, played for him, started on the freshman team. I was probably 5’9″, 106 pounds. Probably the varsity coach never thought I’d play on the varsity. I could really shoot the ball. Mr Metzel, at the end of my freshman year, came up to me at an open gym and he said you’re the best shooter in the school. I was this shy freshman and I didn’t want to take the compliment. So I’m sitting there saying no, I don’t think I am. He’s like yeah, you are. That kid’s all stayed all conference. You’re a better shooter than all of them. I’m feeling kind of proud. Then the nicest guy I knew counters that by saying but if you don’t get stronger and faster and tougher, you’ll never wear a varsity uniform here ever. It hit me like a ton of bricks because I love basketball more than anything. I went home and for about three days I felt sick to my stomach, thinking why is he lying to me? Why is he being mean to me? And finally at some point I said wait, this is the nicest guy I’ve ever met, like he would apologize to us when we had to run sprints, because he said we should be grateful we could run. I still remember these practices as a 14-year-old and so at some point three days later I realized he’s telling me what I need to hear. I don’t like it, but it’s the truth, and it completely changed the way I worked in basketball for the next three years. Like I alluded to earlier, we ended up winning the state championship. I’m the captain of that team as a senior. I know I would not have been there without him telling me that, but that was really, really painful. And yet, if you trust somebody, I go back to that word again. I trusted him that what he’s telling me is what I need to hear. That would be one of those examples.

Dan Krikorian: 35:35

Thanks for sharing that, by the way, and I’d love to kind of go back to your three answers. And obviously these are all difficult types of parents in their own right and I guess just your learnings over the years on, whatever it is, that makes them become over involved how you, as a coach, navigate that relationship as you’re coaching their son or daughter.

Johnny Tauer: 35:55

And every level is different, right, I mean grade school is different than high school. I coached a U basketball for five years One is a division three coach and coached my son and a bunch of his friends, and so that was an interesting experience for me, even just seeing the world of a U basketball at the 13 U level and the 15 U level and 17 U and how different those are. Because, honestly, 13, 14, 15, you see parents and most are pretty good, but 16 and 17 U and I’m not talking about the kids I coach, just the teams and the culture you start seeing kids expecting to be recruited. So all of a sudden you go from the intrinsic to the extrinsic at 13. Yeah, you want to play, you want to have fun, you want to win, but you’re not thinking is this college coach coming to watch me play? Why aren’t there more college coaches watching me? And so I think for parents, we have a system which is it’s pretty messy On. I think parents go into it and they want their kids to have fun playing sports. The old adage that what’s the most common common from a parent when he drops or she drops their kid off at a sporting event have fun, Then they get in the car and they say how’d you do? And so think about that. You go from wishing you a great experience to basically saying did you win, Did you make baskets, Did you score whatever? So I think that’s part of it. I also think it’s a complicated web because when you start thinking about cognitive distance is when we start to justify our actions and we can oftentimes get in really big rationalization traps through the process of dissonance. And when you think about time and money, those are two huge things that we have to justify our lives. Right, If we spent a lot of money on a car, we are going to justify liking that car. We spent a lot of time with a friend, we’re going to justify I must really like this person, Otherwise why would I spend that much time? Combine those two things and think about the amount of time and money that parents put into youth sports and most of us don’t go into it. When we have young kids, recognizing like this is going to seem like another full-time job, right, when you talk to parents and not just travel for AU ball, but just a lot of times you’re driving across town and there’s a double header for baseball, so you leave work a little early 45 minutes in traffic, two games, and your kid might get four at bats, and they get walked in three of them. And then you drive home and you’re like what just happened to that? Seven hours, and now you multiply that by 100 days a year, by six years, and at the culmination of that it makes sense that a parent might think, okay, what’s the payoff for all this time and all this money that we invested? And if there isn’t one, I think oftentimes that starts to trigger certain frustrations. And so that’s a long-winded answer. But I think it’s complicated because I think parents start with the right intentions but over time, sort of that cycle of investment leads them to expect more. How I try to deal with that is level set and calibrate. Often. What are the goals? Not just with parents but with players. If the goals are character development, unselfishness, teamwork, having fun, then let’s make sure we talk about those on a daily and weekly basis and say are we doing that? Are we getting better, Are we having fun, Are we unselfish? Because that’s what we want to do. So when these guys graduate St Thomas, I hope they go on to play professional basketball. But whenever they stop playing basketball, which they are at some point in time. Whenever they do, I want them to have a skill set that’s going to allow them to flourish in other areas of life.

Dan Krikorian: 38:59

Now that you are recruiting at the Division I level and seeing these AU games from not the parent in it level but the coach level, I guess it would be your sit was the lack of trust and coaching. I guess just how coaches can work with parents if they don’t trust their coaching or playing them the right way or things like that. It’s kind of like a nuanced thing, player by player, but just to kind of take you out of the parent situation. Now you’re on top more as a coach.

Johnny Tauer: 39:25

As you just said, that I probably should have gone sub with trust and sit with the expectations. But I think they’re combined together and oftentimes they play off one another. I think it’s hard because a lot of parents don’t know sports well right. Nor should they, and, particularly as you get to higher and higher levels, understanding Division I recruiting and Division I basketball. There’s no reason that a parent would the same way. I wouldn’t understand what a CFO does in his daily work, and so I think a couple of things come to mind. One is parents teaching their children to communicate with them, and I’ll give an example, because I’ve had lots of humbling ones as a parent. My oldest son, jack, when he was 12, he was on a baseball team and he was a really good baseball player, and I just say that objectively. Like he ended up quitting baseball and focusing on basketball. He was really good at baseball, but he didn’t love it. Well, he comes home one day and he’s like I quit, what do you mean? You’re going to quit? No, you’re not going to quit. They’re having me bat 14, which is another issue. Wait, hold on. I thought only nine players got the bat. Well, everybody gets the bat. Okay, so he’s batting 14. He’s not the 14th best player in this team. He’s one of the top two kids on the team. So my immediate response is what’d you do to piss the coach off? Like what do you mean? I’m like, well, you and I can both agree You’re a good hitter. So if you’re batting 14th, your coach is doing you a favor and sending you a message right now. Something you’re doing is not along the lines of what they want and you didn’t want to hear it. So he comes back the next day. He’s like they’ve had me 14th again. I’m quitting. No, you’re not. You go talk to them and ask them why am I batting 14th? And ask it respectfully and figure it out. So, to be honest, it was a series of conversations with him that didn’t have this smooth ending. I’d love to give you a Disney tale that they ended up winning the league championship. He hit a home run on left. It didn’t. It was a year of ups and downs, frankly, but to me, the only thing as a parent that mattered was that he understood you’re not getting what you want and there is a reason for that. You know, when we asked players, kids at camp, who coaches favorite players, and they all say no because they want to say the politically correct thing. Yes, we absolutely. We favor the good listeners, we favor the hard workers, we favor the guys that are coachable, we favor the guys that shoot well, pass well. Yes, we absolutely play favorites and so getting kids to understand, like at some level, if you’re not getting what you want on a team, figuring out now how to do that and doesn’t mean the coach is always right I think it’s important and this is where trust comes back that if you trust the coach as well intention, some of it is figuring out what does your coach want? Because I say that to our players all the time you want better things in life. Give your boss what he or she wants. Right? My athletic director he wants certain things for me. If I just go do whatever I want, that’s not smart. My athletic director, vp of athletics, bill Estin, reports to our president. Well, what does the president want? The president reports to the board of trustees, and so in every organization I think there’s a model to teach young athletes that we all have bosses in life and we have to figure out what is it that they need from us on this day? Because what we need from a freshman at St Thomas might be different than as a junior, and so we talk about that a lot, how your roles can evolve. But those roles they tend to evolve organically. They don’t usually evolve necessarily when kids want.

Patrick Carney: 42:19

You mentioned at the beginning, the number one email or question coaches get is playing time for their kids. What advice or just the response coaches should maybe get to diffuse that situation? Like you said, parents often don’t really know the game well enough that you’re going to go into great tactical detail about why.

Johnny Tauer: 42:35

This is one of the most complicated questions because if you start with the premise that coaches, parents, kids, all want sort of the same thing, right. If you ask them what they want, the kids want to have fun, they want to play, they want to win, they want to improve, like those are pretty universal goals we can all agree on. Yet as you get older, it does get more competitive, right. And so, for example, if I’m watching a 17UAAU game and they’re playing in the EYBL circuit and they’re playing everybody equal time, well, I don’t know if that’s the right answer or not at that level. If a high school coach is playing people equal time at the varsity level, probably that’s not what people expect. Now a freshman team is probably going to be different. I give those examples only to say coaches need to communicate with parents early on and parents need to know what they’re signing up for. So if you’re signing up for an AAU program, understanding, here’s the playing time policy Is it everybody plays, but you’re going to play between 20 and 80% of the minutes? Is that across the season? Is it across the weekend? Because that’s oftentimes where I see really big blow-ups are where there’s miscommunications, where a parent expected one thing go back to the start, sub or sit. Now we’re back to what I said sit or said sub. And now I’m saying sit the expectations. Though if those are not accurate and everybody’s not aligned on those expectations, that’s when they become problems. And so I think, early in the year, letting kids know like hey, we got nine guys on this team, we’re going to play everybody the amount of minutes you earn, but everybody’s going to play some, right. Or you say everybody’s going to play equal minutes, whatever the policy, as long as parents know what they’re signing up for. And then I think it’s incumbent on the parents to put the onus on their kids, because at the end of the day and this is I’ll try to gently say that sometimes the parents, when they come to me, sort of upset is at what point are you going to allow or force or encourage your son or daughter to deal with their problems on their own? And I’m not telling you, I have the answer, but none of them will say when the kid’s 23 years old in a job interview. None of them. So then it better happens sometime, ideally well before that, because the kid needs practice at it, and doing that at 22, it’s not going to work very well and so, like most things in life, it’s not a dichotomy yes or no. It’s more gradually, I think, as a parent, can you give a little more responsibility and accountability to your kid, but also let them know this is a gift. It’s an opportunity for them to figure out things that they, frankly, aren’t going to like it in that moment, but 10 or 15 years from now they might come back and say thank you to their mom and dad because they learned how to talk through difficult situations with a coach a boss, etc.

Patrick Carney: 45:04

All right, coach, thanks for sharing great answers there. Our next start subset going back to the court has to do with split cuts, split actions and specifically the timing of it. So start subversive. The most important aspect to get in nailing the timing for the success of running a split cut, split screen. Is it the timing of the screen, the timing of the slip, when to slip, when to screen, or the timing when to pass?

Johnny Tauer: 45:30

This is what I was afraid of coming on this show guys. You know this is asking me one of those questions that’s almost unanswerable. I think I’ll sub the timing of the screen because, while that’s important, I think in this specific case I think that can be a little delayed or a little botched, even though I think the timing of the cut’s important. I’m going to sit the timing of the screen, sub the timing of the cut and start the timing of the pass. I knew you were going to stump me on one of these. The last one was nicer to me. Tell us about this thing you worked on for 15 years. That was easier. Go ahead, let’s play a war.

Patrick Carney: 46:05

I’m going to start with your start the timing of the pass, and what are you emphasizing? Why is that, in your opinion, so important when nailing the split cuts?

Johnny Tauer: 46:13

I think, first and foremost, it goes back to our predisposition to not wanting turnovers. If you talk about the most egregious mistakes in each of those three examples, you just gave us timing of the screen. You can live to fight another day. The timing of the cut, you can live to fight another day the passer screws up the ball’s out of bounds or, worse, it’s a run out dunk for the other team. You can’t To me. That’s why passing is so important. Think about the NFL. They pay I don’t know how many tens of millions of dollars to the best quarterbacks and some of them are unbelievable, throwing on the move, just like point guards and basketball. Others are more standstill passers and we talk about that a lot, like some of our best passers are not guards, but when they’re standing still they’re incredible passer. They’re not going to be doing it off the dribble on the move, and so to me, the start of the timing of the past some of it is what’s going to lead to a basket, but some would is just knowing, being judicious, and I’m not going to throw that pass Because of the timing the cut in the screen gets screwed up. A really good passers not going to throw the pass, and so I don’t think we can live to fight another day with that in terms of the timing of it. I think passing is a tough skill to teach because a lot of it is who anticipates things well, who sees broadly. So we talk more about concepts, we do passing drills every day, but I think we kind of go back and forth between kind of high rep passing drills and then we talk about what do we teach, emphasize and demand. And teaching passing is one thing, but I think emphasizing and demanding it where we actually like, without threatening, but it’s sort of like if you can’t pass, it’s going to be hard for you to play here. You think about the best teams in the world five unbelievably, prodigiously talented scores, none of whom are willing and able passers. They’re going to be a disaster of an offensive team. Take five great passers and one of them is a really good score. Those five players are going to find a way to get great shots. And so honestly, I don’t think we have any magic drills. I think we practice passing a lot, we talk about it a lot. We tried to recruit good passers, but then we also try to get them to see that the passes they should make should be relatively conservative. So the number I use is 98.3 percent. We should complete 98.3 percent of our passes. When they’re young and you’re like, what percent of your passes should you complete? They say 70. And then we go through the math and if you make 300 passes a game, 60 possessions, five passes a possession, we complete 70 percent of them. That means we have 90 turnovers. We completed 210. I mean you can’t do it. So then they’ll go to 90 percent. Well, that’s still 30 turnovers. So 98.3 means we complete 295 out of 300 passes and if we do that we’re gonna have a couple turnovers on live ball dribbling, whatever that gets into. What do we emphasize?

Patrick Carney: 48:40

What do we demand Passing anticipation. Is that a skill you can teach? Is that something you work on in your passing girls, or is it more innate?

Johnny Tauer: 48:47

Well, we do. I think some of it is just pointing out where their turnovers are coming from. Some of it is Individual skills sessions or film sessions, because I think if we’re talking broadly about turnovers, it’s trying to figure out what are the big buckets where certain guys most guys having Achilles heel right for some of it it’s just throwing risky passes. That’s actually not that hard as long as he’s coachable to kind of hey, look at 80% of your turnovers. There’ve been passes that you just you think they’re good passes, they’re 50 50 and the problem is a lot of the best players say why no, I can complete that pass right, sort of that unbridled Confidence. And they’re not wrong, they can complete it. There’s just not gonna complete it enough for it to be smart, I think somebody’s breakdown drills, like whatever sets or whatever offensive schema. Somebody runs Trying to create those situations in more Stationary three-on-three drills where maybe a guy’s at the wing and you’ve got a two-person screening action and it’s like getting him to see like okay, if that cuts, gonna open up at the room for a layup. It can’t be that you see him and then you say, oh, my god, he’s open and now the ball’s over your head and you throw it and suddenly it’s a turnover and he’s like I had him he was open versus you catch it and you know this is the first cut I’m looking at and if I see his lead hand, the ball’s there. If not, I’m past faking. And now my next read is there, right, and that’s where I think quarterbacks in football are so incredible. Their progression of reads and sort of knowing I’ve got a tenth of a second and peripheral vision is important, but it’s also it’s less peripheral vision and more about knowing what’s next, and so I’m only gonna look at this option For a sn and then I’m on to the next option and, if that’s taken away, what’s next? And so getting you know. In many ways it’s like playing chess. Right, if you play chess, you got to think a few moves ahead, and it’s hard to do in chess. I’m not a very good chess player. It’s really hard to do when you’re playing a sport where you’re sprinting up and down and sometimes you’re on defense, sometimes you’re on offense, and so you know. That’s how we try to do it.

Dan Krikorian: 50:32

My last follow-up in all this to kind of paint a picture for people. Listen, we’re talking about maybe some kind of action we’re hitting a player at the elbow and then running some kind of pin-down screen or something like that and I think a question I know we get a lot and we talked about a lot is just the relationship between Screening versus slipping any of those actions and teaching players when to do that. Basically in that relationship, and I guess, as you taught it how you think about when they should try to screen versus when they should slip it into space, things like that early on for players and I think off-ball and on-ball are slightly different.

Johnny Tauer: 51:04

Right, and you think about Bigs that it couldn’t pick and pop and pick and roll and ghosting screens and Getting mismatches some of that. Again, it’s a decision tree. This is a huge part of coaching is getting young players to understand, like, no matter what you like to do, right, a pick-and-pop big who wants to shoot threes, well, we all know he’s not very valuable if he picks and pops a hundred percent of the time, because now teams are gonna switch and he’s now a very average, probably perimeter player. He’s real elite when he’s got a six foot ten guy chasing him around or he posts a six to guard. But if he’s just a perimeter player and that’s what I usually ask those types of post players is if you’re just a perimeter player 100% of the time, how do you stack up on our team and the other eight perimeter players and they’ll usually be honest, make one not as quick, correct? So if they switch and you don’t punish them, then they’re going to switch every time and you’re a perimeter player and you’re not good, and then we’ll play five perimeter players with the example you’re given. Dan, I think probably a couple things. One would be air on the side of setting screens, particularly early in games. Right now you might have a set you’re running early in a game to get a layup but I think slipping too much becomes Easier to guard. So, number one air on the side of let’s use the screen and be physical and tough, because, like a lot of things in life, that’s gonna set something up for later. Right, but get the other team used to defending tough pearls, for example, and then later we can slip. The second would be Creating indecision. I think we talked about that a lot with our guys. Whether you have the ball on, you’re using shot fakes and pivots, but also on your screen, just have an act, create indecision. And when you see indecision, that’s where I want our guys to play freely, that every slip you make doesn’t have to lead to a back cut layup In fact it won’t, and so when you see a little indecision, that’s where you should cut. But then when you cut, cut viciously, cut definitively, like you can’t dance on a cut, and often times we’ll see that right, where a guy will go one way, zigzag and back, and and that’s always wrong. And so because, number one, you’re bogging down the offense. Number two, our spacing is bad. Number three You’re also going to confuse the passer, where that’s where turnovers happen a lot. So a passer really needs to know like, hey, if this guy slips, he’s going all the way to the basket. He’s trying to get a layup. Now it’s incumbent on the passer. Do I throw it or not? So I want our guys to play free, but I also want them to have a clear idea of okay, if this then that, if this then that coach, you’re off the start subberset hot seat.

Dan Krikorian: 53:19

Thanks for going through all that stuff with us and those are great answers. We appreciate you doing that.

Johnny Tauer: 53:23

Thank you. It was getting warm there for a minute for sure, really enjoyed that.

Dan Krikorian: 53:27

So we’ve got one last question for you before we close. Before we do, this was really really fun for us. Congrats to you on all the success and thank you very much for coming on the show today.

Johnny Tauer: 53:36

Hey, you guys are phenomenal. Been a pleasure.

Dan Krikorian: 53:40

Well, finish with this question we ask all the guests at the end here is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?

Johnny Tauer: 53:47

Yeah, I’ve had an interesting journey. When you combine the psychology and I also, I taught full-time. So my first gig at st Thomas, I was a full-time social psych professor for 11 years and the assistant basketball coach, and when I think back, that’s a unique path, right, there are a lot of guys that were doing grad assistantships early in their career, video jobs, and so I think really, when I holistically look at it and I’m gonna answer this as a social psychologist More than a coach has been choosing environments and people that are gonna help me be a better person, a better coach, a better parent. That’s a broad answer, but I grew up, I had two of the most loving parents ever, and so I was lucky. They’re very fortunate and blessed. They chose good schools for me. I chose st Thomas. So in social psych we talked about you become what you do. So cognitive distance I alluded to earlier. Be careful. There’s slippery slope in life. Somebody starts stealing a bag of Skittles when they’re a kid. It’s gonna be easier to steal something bigger a year later and a year later and a year later. Usually, when people rob a bank, it’s not the first time they’ve stolen something, and so the flip side of that is we become what we do. We become who we spend time with, and so my answer to you would be I’ve been fortunate and, I think, also selective at being back at st Thomas. This is an unbelievable school with the mission, the history. I’m obviously biased, but I’ve been here for as long as I have because of that, recruiting players and hiring assistant coaches that have the same values as I do. So I always start with passion, loyalty, knowledge, honesty those four things. I want to be surrounded by people like that. And then I look at my family. My kids, jack Adam, are Q&A. So my wife Chancey, who founded a charter school here in the Twin Cities there to me, surrounding myself with people at st Thomas and in my family, and some of those been blind genetic luck, right in terms of family members, but some of it has also been very intentional, and I think those are the things. And then you know, obviously I had mentors and coaching, but even mentors like I played for a guy was assistant coach. He was the ad when I was the head coach, steve Fritz. He’s been phenomenal in my life, but I also went out and learned from a lot of other coaches. Yet at the end of the day, what’s really the foundation for any young coach when I give them advice, it’s find a program, an institution, whether it’s a high school, a college, professional team. Find an institution you believe in the mission and find a head coach that you say I want to be around this person because he or she is going to make me better. And I feel the same way about head coaches when you’re looking for a job. Find an institution where you believe in the mission. Find a boss and administration team the athletic director, president that you really trust. And so you know, when I look at people who have been really successful in life, there tends to be a continuity and a longevity to their culture and that’s because the mission binds people together and people are bought into that mission. And I’ve been really fortunate. St Thomas is a special place, so I’ve been honored to be here and hopefully they think like I’ve added a little bit long to it as well.

Dan Krikorian: 56:39

All right, pat. So much in here about motivation and teams and parenting, split cuts. I mean, we’re gonna touch on it all briefly, but I’ll just throw it back to you to start on just anything that sticks out right away for you.

Patrick Carney: 56:52

Yeah, my first impression is this conversation really reminded me a lot of the conversation with Julie folks in the terms of just these coaches with high education backgrounds and I just enjoy the unique perspective that it brings to how they coach and, of course, how they view culture, how they view, obviously, with Coach Tower, motivation and Building teams. So that was my overarching takeaway Just I really enjoy these high education background coaches and their approach to coaching and the conversations that we have with them.

Dan Krikorian: 57:22

I really like what you said about Julie folks and similarities between her background and what Coach Tower is doing and how they kind of speak and think about the game. And what I think I took from him as well and this is what coach folks also did well at is, even though they’re both, say, quantitative thinkers as far as they like to study the analytics and the metrics and he talked about his math background they also had this understanding of that. When you are dealing with people, you have to know when to kind of leave that out or to Funnel that into things that are just helpful for you personally or make decisions. But then how good you have to be in motivating people and whatnot, that it has to have the human element to it and you know players aren’t that overly motivated by you showing them Shot charts and stats as much as they are. This other part of human interaction I think, like he talked about, has good understanding of that is like they use numbers. He loves it. But also there has to be this other side when you’re trying to really build a culture. And he went through kind of their pillars Well quickly, but that was one thing that stood out and the similarities I found to with those two coaches.

Patrick Carney: 58:27

I wrote that down to when discussing goals and measuring goals and the individual goals was the team goals and he said he really tries to avoid Quantifiable measurements because I mean, I think he said it kind of it breeds players being a little bit more selfish or putting anxiety On the players. Like he said this year, maybe dips and then he’s trying to press or the guy just points, but yeah, more with the team goals, saying to them how many turnovers there are. I think it puts on this pressure, this unnecessary anxiety, and more talking about like, are we growing, are we playing with effort, like doing the right things you know, like with all the good coaching, like getting it back to their culture pillars and not so much Worrying, stressing or over emphasizing the numbers, which is interesting. Tying it back to what you said, because I think he does think a lot about these things and when he was talking about the passing anticipation, they want to complete 98.3% of their passes because of just breaking down. If over 300 passing game that leads to a proper amount of turnovers, you know, or a reasonable about that they can win and not, like he said, a hundred turnovers or 30 turnovers, right.

Dan Krikorian: 59:25

Absolutely yeah, and I guess one more just piece that I liked in there was just how he talked about you know, really, some of the foundations of a coach is their team builders and their teachers. Talk about some of the similarities and differences, but when it comes down to it, I liked how he spoke about the complexity of Motivation. Now kind of hit on this for a second intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation and then Individual versus team, and how you kind of handle this, and what I think came through is I mean, he spoke so well, I he’s written about it and he studied it but just that it’s so complex, like it’s just a constantly evolving process, and that there’s not just a copy and paste one way to do it, because every year the players are different, the season is different, everything is different. It’s different every day. I think that’s probably why so many of us anybody’s still listening this deep into the podcast. Love about the game is that when you walk into the gym every day like it’s different than it was the day before. There’s nothing that’s rinse and repeat, and when it comes to building a team like you talked about, just you have to adapt.

Patrick Carney: 1:00:30

So I remember correctly he said you know it can get boring, or maybe he was over exaggerating, but teaching pick and roll defense, you know, can get the same as gonna be a little. He knows it every year. We’re doing it. But versus like, yeah, like you said, the culture of the team building. It’s something that every day is alive, changing, as you said, and I just like his perspective on the things too, that maybe even Teaching basketball in the court, why we all love it. We talk about it all the time. The true kind of challenge and never-involving Thing is your culture and the people you deal with, and you can tell that gets him excited. I think he loves the challenge of it.

Dan Krikorian: 1:01:03

Yeah, 100%. I think we love, you see, love talking tactical exes and those, but I think you truly understand that the best parts of coaching is not those things and it’s what brings the most meaning and value to Coaches, for sure, is beyond that stuff and also for players as well, beyond just the tactical parts building all those things on a side note Too.

Patrick Carney: 1:01:22

I think that’s why not within this conversation, but why coaches too also change their tactics, just to kind of reinvigorate them as well at times. Sure, let’s just press this year. I want to try it, you know. I mean, obviously they think you can give them success, but I think to also stimulate their teaching and them as a coach absolutely good side note there.

Dan Krikorian: 1:01:39

I think kind of ties in. So maybe we’ll go start subset for a second and Actually like to talk about the tactical stuff first with you. Beforehand we were talking about watching his teams in the past like they’ve run great stuff. I know he talked about playing up tempo, shooting a lot of threes, but also you know, when I’ve watched them They’ve been really good cutting teams and playing through some elbow action and things like that. Good to hear his thoughts on just that Dance of those three players and cuts and passes and timing and trying to teach it.

Patrick Carney: 1:02:04

I really enjoyed hearing him talk about that same here and when his start was his passing and it all made a lot of sense because throughout, even the first portion, he emphasized just turnovers and the role it plays and how they want to avoid it and how they want to recruit great passers. So and when we got in the conversation of passing, anticipation, drilling it, trying to give these guys Reads or progressions and comparing them to standstill quarterback versus the quarterback on the move, so just enjoyed his thoughts on the passing and kind of get an insight what he thinks about it, how he views it and why it is so important. Because he said, with the screening, the slipping, if the timing’s A little messed up, you can correct it, you can fix it, it or you can, of course, always move on. But if you start messing up the passing, that’s where it’s gonna lead to his turnovers, which is obviously something that everyone wants to avoid. So like those are kind of that’s why I was start cuz like those are the Mistakes you can’t really come back from at times just to add your point, I mean the overall thread throughout this conversation.

Dan Krikorian: 1:03:00

You can really tell a key fundamentals obviously is not turning the ball over for his program and though we all don’t want that, I mean you can tell it’s just emphasizing everything and with this kind of split action, 100% of the time your first four or five practices of the year you throw to that big man and he’s gonna try to thread a backdoor when it’s not there or something you know you do have to realize. I agree with him in this sense of his start of not Overpassing, not trying to thread stuff or just getting that feel. And sometimes they got a try to throw those passes in practice To feel what it’s like and to get the timing. I get it. But I think for him it’s the most valuable thing is the ball. So it’s got to be there and if it’s not we’ll get to some other action. And so just kind of working with your big on the timing and when to throw it. I think he spoke well on. As also too he followed up with kind of slipping versus Setting screens and how he prefers maybe to start with actually setting good screens so they’re tougher to play against.

Patrick Carney: 1:03:52

I like that too bringing back that 98.3% completion rate and I got the impression it’s something he tells his players be 98.3% sure. I always like with these conversations, these trigger words, these sayings that coaches use. I think it helps a lot in teaching and building what you want into your program and for me, I just really like the 98.3. It’s something maybe that would stick with me rather. Maybe I want to be 99% sure, which a little bit more cooshy, and but it’s like 98.3. I think it’s more of a, for whatever reason, like trigger, because it is a super specific number. But I’m sure he explains it to the players, of course, right, but yeah, I mean versus saying 99%, which maybe it’s like you know, coach talk, coach talk in one era, but it’s like 98.3. It’s like okay, you’re right, we know why.

Dan Krikorian: 1:04:31

I like that 100%. This second question for start subset he wrote a book on this and so in our research and all that’s like, we got to ask him something about this and Also, because it’s something that’s so Prevalence and all the different levels we were just in coming up with this question trying to figure out. I mean, we’ve all dealt with probably most of the parent, that just over the top and we got into how you handle a little bit. But I think it was interesting to explore with him, like why the parent gets that way in his research and what’s really really behind it. And in his opinion I love the start, which is just the love of your child and you know I get it, but how that can cloud your thinking and things like that.

Patrick Carney: 1:05:13

And so anyway, it was nice to hear him talk about this question, obviously, but in his work with why parents get to the point that they get to, and I enjoyed when he started talking about time and money and kind of understanding the parents point of view, like how much time they’re putting in of course, how much money and how that all adds up and Gradually they can probably become this over-involved parent and, as a coach, you know because I think it was in your question fall up as how, as a coach, can we kind of help or deal with these parents with everything. It starts from understanding, understanding your players, understanding the parents. They’re reasoning and over the course of years, months, the time and money that they’re all putting in and they want the best for their kid, and so it’s just understanding this and trying to work with them in that and you know where they’re coming from 100%, and I think coaches probably think about that.

Dan Krikorian: 1:05:57

On the other side, when they’re dealing with parents that are Problem parents, they’re spending too much time dealing with this problem for not enough money. Yeah, as well From the coaching side. So it’s two-way street at times the other point I enjoyed.

Patrick Carney: 1:06:10

We understand it. It’s difficult when the parent is over involved, but just depriving children of what he said paying for children to work through Sports is a good avenue for this or a good tool to give your child some pain. Work through adversity early on, and I think he said in a Safe, controlled environment versus you know, the first time it’s when they’re 23 at a job interview.

Dan Krikorian: 1:06:30

Yeah, and he also mentioned within there to another nugget about when you drop the kid off to go play game. You say, hey, have fun, and then the first question you ask when they get in the car after is how’d you do, how much did you score? Yeah, and you and I were talking briefly before we hopped on here. It’s like very similar a lot of things in, I guess, society where you go to school. It’s like, hey, go learn, go grow, but then at the end of it I will what were your grades? And we don’t have a fix for that at the back end of the podcast here. But it is an interesting thing where yet in some point it goes from the core values or core beliefs of just having fun and growing To like, well, what did you do? I don’t know that’s completely fixable, but just maybe as a coach recognizing you know those things are taking place.

Patrick Carney: 1:07:12

Yeah, the contradictions that are occurring at times.

Dan Krikorian: 1:07:15

Yeah, and then the ever present thing for coaches, especially college and up, of what you also do have to win to keep gobs and promote, like. So that’s there too within all this. So it’s definitely a complex thing, but it was a really fun question to ask him and detail his thoughts, moving on something I would have loved to dive in deeper on as we went through there’s a couple things, but my main one was he kind of touched on it and you hit on it, but in the first bucket him talking about losing and how that kind of affected him that first year. And I would have loved to ask maybe a couple follow-ups for him personally as a coach the growth from that year, d3 to D1 I mean they’re winning all the time at D3 and then all of a sudden you’re going in a situation where you’re losing more and it’s almost like expected you’re gonna lose more if you kind of take an outside look because of that big leap and just how he Handled that and has learned to handle that and grow as a coach. And he did talk about a little bit, but I, just for me, could have definitely talked to him another 10, 15 minutes about that growth in that kind of area of the game.

Patrick Carney: 1:08:22

For me it was within that first bucket. I had two misses that I would have liked to have asked about. When we’re talking about motivation he mentioned, you know you always have like the most talented player but the least motivated, and why do we see that? What is it? Not the science behind it, but knowing he studied it, like what he’s kind of seen there, and then when we talked about he always really Recruited, trying to recruit it and recruit players. I’ve really been interested lately and you know I know you’ll see them play, you can he said the joy in their face and you talk to coaches. You know that coach them. But when you get them on calls, what questions he asked, maybe to explore, find out if this is a player who’s intrinsically motivated or what he is intrinsically motivated about. I would have liked to have followed up with talk about recruiting for sure.

Dan Krikorian: 1:09:04

So once again, always a pleasure for us and we wish coach tower a lot of success and like say, he made some time for us in between his busy summer schedule, so we thank him. Pat, if there’s nothing else, we can start wrapping this up. Yep, sounds good. All right, thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to this episode.