Slappin’ Glass sits down today with one of the great young coaches in the game, Columbia WBB Head Coach, Meg Griffith. The trio dive into a wide-ranging conversation about energy as a coach, including how to re-energize mid season, along with playing with an edge, transition offensive concepts, and we talk peer-to-peer communication and peel switch rotations during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Inside the Episode
I’m a work hard, play hard, love hard person. It might be ‘yo, we need to go to happy hour today after work. We’re all going to sit down.’ Maybe we need to go shoot and play…I need to get into that space where we’re not talking to each other about our jobs, but we’re like competing or we’re having fun. We’re like letting our guard down and then also I can deal with the BS stuff I need to do…the jobs I don’t want to do, because I feel like when I’m connected to the people in the program I’m more willing to do that stuff. I’m ready to do that in a second.”– Meg Griffith
We were joined on the podcast this week by one of the great young Head Coaches in the game, Columbia WBB Head Coach, Meg Griffith! Coach Griffith has led a historic turnaround at Columbia, leading them to last season’s NIT Championship game and creating a sustainable process for success along the way. In this fantastic conversation we discuss:
- Coaching Energy – Who, What, and Where to put energy as a coach, along with how to re-energize yourself
- Transition Offense – Playing fast AND smart
- And we discuss “Peel Switch” Rotations and “Peer-to-Peer” Communication during the always fun “Start, Sub, or Sit?!”
Chapters
0:00 Energy and Vision in Coaching
7:17 Building and Sustaining a Winning Culture
12:40 Adversity and Self-Care in Coaching
17:21 Building a Successful Basketball Program
25:49 Zone Concepts and Defensive Switching Strategy
30:57 Teaching Peel Switching
36:36 Effective Peer-to-Peer Communication
43:15 Investment in Career
50:39 Post Recap
Transcript
Meg Griffith: 0:00
I’m a work hard, play hard, love hard person. It might be ‘yo, we need to go to happy hour today. After work.’ We’re all going to sit down, maybe we need to go shoot, I don’t know and play. ‘Yo Side, let’s go play one-on-one’. I need to get into that space where we’re not talking to each other about our jobs, but we’re like competing or we’re having fun. We’re like letting our guard down and then also I can deal with the BS stuff I need to do right? The jobs I don’t want to do, because I feel like when I’m connected to the people in the program I’m more willing to do that stuff. I’m ready to do that in a second.
Dan: 0:35
Hi, I’m Dan Krakorian and I’m Patrick Carney, and welcome to Slapping Glass exploring basketball’s best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today we’re excited to welcome Columbia Women’s Basketball Head Coach, meg Griffith. Coach Griffith is here today to discuss energy as a coach, where to put it and how to re-energize during the season, transition offensive zones, and we talk, peel, switch, rotations and peer-to-peer communication 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 in international sport tours. Beyond Sports Founder and former college and pro basketball coach Josh Erickson and his team of former athletes have built the 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 beyondsportstourscom and tell them. Slapping Glass sent you. And now please enjoy our conversation with Coach Meg Griffith. Coach, first of all, congrats on a great season and hope you’re enjoying your summer. We really appreciate you joining us today.
Meg Griffith: 2:15
Thank you. I appreciate you both connecting with me and inviting me on this show. I’ve been following and I’m a big fan. I love what you say about this ecosystem you’ve created, so I’m eager to get started here.
Dan: 2:27
Thank you, coach. I wanted to start off with this as you head into your next season and you are still a young head coach, but you do have now experience behind you and learning from these first seven years and you’ve built the program up to where it is and it’s amazing. I want to start with the concept of energy and where you decide to put your energy on a day-to-day basis, and that’s from both a physical and a mental side and what you’ve learned over the last seven, eight years about where you put your time, your energy, staff, kids, tactics, analytics all that goes into it so that you can be the best version of yourself for your team.
Meg Griffith: 3:04
I love that you asked that question, because that’s the first foundation and the first pillar of our culture. Right is energy, so we talk a lot about. We have an acronym that’s called EDGE. Right, we could say the Columbia Edge is sort of our mantra, our internal theme, and energy is again that first thing. I believe you need edges in life to get ahead. That’s something I’ve always believed in. But I think the energy you give and take is so powerful mentally, emotionally and physically. And I think for me, how I think about energy and why I love coaching in New York City is New York is such an energetic place. To me it’s synonymous with who I am as a person and that’s largely why I went to school here was kind of that immediate energy I felt when I was going through my recruiting process. It’s been a part of me. I would say that’s who I am. I love to give energy to things and I think how we define it is being a great teammate in our program. Our players know exactly what that means. But I think also for me it’s about how you invest your time, and not just how you invest it, but what that looks like. Right, what are the actions behind energy? Because I think energy can be a very broad term. So, in terms of where I put it as a coach, I think that in a lot of different places, I think that’s what you have to be aware of is what is critical to your mission until your vision is critical to your mission until your vision, but also what’s maybe not as urgent, but something that you need to keep stock of as well. If you have 100%, where’s your 50 going? Where’s your 20 going? Where’s your excess 30 going? It might be if the 30 is going to the team today it’s 15 to Abbey, 20 to KD. You got to think of it that way too. So I think energy is extremely transferable, but also, when you give energy, you get energy, and so that’s the thing I love about culture in our program is we talk a lot about being energy givers, and I believe that too, it’s like you know, if I’m filling your cup, I’m getting back as much as I’m giving out. What I’ve learned, too, is, you know, the emotional intelligence is something that we all are continually learning, growing, developing. I think as a young head coach, that was really hard to understand fully. I’m an intense person, I’m a competitive person and, I think, my empathy. Early on in my career, I didn’t realize how important that was to bringing energy. You can’t just be like on 10 all the time. I think you really have to understand people and that was a learning curve for me. Absolutely, you know, and I think that’s something that I’m proud to say I really worked on. I think it’s just as important to like the physical, mental, emotional growth for me and my team.
Dan: 5:31
You made a statement right at the beginning that said you feel like everyone needs edges in their life. Can you just go a little bit deeper on that?
Meg Griffith: 5:38
It’s funny, Like the way I grew up. My dad’s a self-made man. My mom is an immigrant from Asia. She came over from Hong Kong pretty much around 18 years old. They both just figured their lives out without a lot of guidance. I think especially my father, and I’ve seen him go through and again making himself who he was. Nothing was given to him, Everything was earned. And I think I learned at a young age he didn’t just do that by doing the baseline right, he did that by figuring out how do I get ahead here, how do I gain an edge here, how can I be different in my work, my life, whatever it is? So for me that’s always been a lesson I’ve carried with me, and I think, when it comes to coaching, you can have competitive edges and advantages in a lot of different ways, but if you’re trying to change something, you have to do things different. That has always stuck with me, because Columbia was not a very good program when I got back here. Right, I’m very comfortable saying that as an alum. We’ve had our tumultuous times, but we really needed to find edges that were reachable, attainable, and I thought that was really important to bring that multiple meaning and attach it to what Edge stands for for us, which is energy, discipline, grit and excellence. So it’s something we talk a lot about in our program. If you’re doing the baseline, that’s what everybody else is doing. Where are the edges that we’re going to find and get in our program?
Pat: 6:51
You also mentioned with your energy that you were given it. It’s critical to give energy to your mission and vision. I’d like to ask about vision it’s a conversation we’ve been having recently on the podcast with our guests but how you viewed forming a vision and what was critical to, let’s say, translating that vision or selling that vision to your players.
Meg Griffith: 7:08
Vision is really easy to talk about, but execution how you go about the mission right is like a complete different conversation, but they’re so importantly linked. I’m a big action-oriented person. It’s like we all have ideas, but how do you execute the idea? How do you carry it out? What does that look like? So I’m extremely detail-oriented. That’s something I’ve developed just like in my life. So I would say, in terms of execution, vision is something you want and you have to be authentic in your vision. It has to truly be who you are and you have to believe that you can do it. It can just be some BS yeah, we’re going to do this, this and this and then you’re like how am I going to get there? There needs to be some sort of an action plan or steps to it. So I always say the first way that we’ve been successful was like we had buy-in. Once we articulated this is very clear, what we’re going to do at Columbia, this is how we’re building this program, these are the action steps there was buy-in and then the next step was believing in that, not just buying in like, yeah, I’m here, I’m signed up for that, but okay, we can do this. We’re hitting adversity now, but we’re staying attached to that vision, and then I think culture really sticks when it breathes within the program. So it’s not just me or my staff, but I think that’s the third step to culture actually sticking, and that’s where your vision is manifesting itself into reality.
Dan: 8:21
I like to just follow up on this summer going into this fall now, because I imagine the amount of energy it’s taken to get the program to where it is has been a lot. And now you had success and I know there’s some carrot still out in front of you that you want. But how are you and your staff thinking about the energy going to this season after what you guys had last year, which was awesome, and going forward with this new group?
Meg Griffith: 8:43
That’s a big question. I think people always think that when you win, you’re like, oh yeah, you’re just going to keep winning. It gets harder, there’s more challenges, you have bigger challenges, you’re recruiting better players, there’s so many challenges that your expectations have now raised for you. So I think what I’ve really intentionally tried to do is our season ended on April 1st, which is one of four women’s teams playing on April 1st. We were spent after that season who wasn’t the kids, us? So it was like everybody needs to take time, because I’m like we can’t be at our best unless me and my staff are at our best. And I think we’ve done a good job at kind of compartmentalizing where we were this season, digesting it, and now it’s like, okay, refresh, sure that we can think about next year because we have a whole new team, we got a lot of new players and personnel. I think is just so important to get them on the same page. So we’ve spent a lot of time honestly just thinking about okay, how do we not reteach our culture, but how do we make sure it’s not like a dump, it’s not just like here, it is conform to it? But how are we getting them ready right now, so that when September hits and we’re on campus again, this isn’t all new. The language isn’t new, the way that we do things isn’t new. So we’ve been really intentional with just how we get our touches with everybody, because we have a lot of international players too and they’re like competing with their teams. They’re back home, they’re all over the world. So I would say that’s what we’ve invested the most time into, and then I’ve just been doing a lot of research with new personnel. What are we running this year? We’re going to have very different pieces other than last two years that have kind of largely done the same things.
Dan: 10:07
And our research for this. We watched a lot of your stuff and your post game press conference. After the Kansas game that you guys lost, you had a statement that said this has been one of the hardest coaching experiences of my life, Pat, and I thought that’s an interesting thing after coming off such a great year and just wanted to ask you, I guess, a little bit more what you meant by that and then how you’re viewing whatever you’re taking from that to this year.
Meg Griffith: 10:30
What goes into winning is immeasurable. I don’t think you can really put yep this is it Like. this is the much it costs. Here’s the toll, right, if you pay that, you’re going to win. And we touched on this a little bit about energy the physical, mental and emotional amount of energy you need to bring to winning, especially when you’ve never won. It takes a toll, and again it’s. I had an amazing group of people. I have a phenomenal staff. They are the best. They’re loyal. I trust them. They make me better. And then our players. I had a group of players that I grew up with. Right, a lot of these players were five years in my program. It was just a lot. You know, we went through some real stuff this year and it wasn’t always basketball is the most important thing. We just had to constantly be pivoting to say what’s the most important thing, with a very experienced team, and that was really challenging because it wasn’t just basketball, right, any good team it’s never just basketball. If you care about people, it’s so much more than that, and I think that’s why it was the hardest year for us, because and you had this roller coaster like at every turn is like we did this great thing and then it was well. We got the second seed in the Ivy League tournament. We won and over time we get the second seed. All year we were higher in the net ranking to get the first seed, except for that last week. That’s one disappointment. You go to the Ivy League tournament and you lose in the semifinals All right. We get to the WNT final. We lose in the final game. You know we had this amazing success, but there was this roller coaster not making an NCAA tournament. There’s so much heartache associated with so much success, and I think that’s what I meant by that, and it wasn’t just me, it was everybody Like they all felt it. So, as the leader, that was very challenging for me. How do we keep moving forward with all of the heartache and the ups and the downs? I just had an experience.
Pat: 12:07
Absolutely. During those adverse moments you don’t get the one seed, you don’t get into the tournament or you lose early in your conference. What are you, the next day, addressing with your team?
Meg Griffith: 12:18
You know, the first one is always it’s a little bit more of that shock, like the first disappointment or the first like heartbreak that you have. It’s like, oh, that’s what that feels like for this group. So I don’t think it feels the same every year. I think you have different personnel, different people. So I think once you have that experience and you’ve sort of dealt with it and you revisit your culture hey, this happens, we are going to be better for this because of this. And then how we prepare or respond or just re-emphasize the things that we need to get back to. I think you learn so much in that moment and those are really key. You need to have adversity in a season. If you go undefeated, or it’s sunny and 70 every day you’re not going to learn the limits of your team. So I would say the first experience prepared us for the second one, the second one, for the third right, and every time you knew a little bit more what your team needed. But honestly, the heavier it got, especially the NCAA tournament and not making it, because that was a huge goal for this program that was like, okay, are we all here? Like we just got to make sure we’re turning the page right now. We had a real heart to heart right when that happened and it took a week for everybody to turn the page and like we had to give the grace for everybody to get there. So I don’t know if I answered your question, but it was challenging. But you have to feed off of where you’re at right now. I think it’s hard to be like. This is how we do things every time there’s a setback and that’s what goes into, I think, leadership and human development.
Dan: 13:37
I love to ask about you personally and you mentioned a minute ago or two about how you’re doing everything 100% or you are an intense person and what you’ve learned about how you re-energize yourself personally. I mean, I think it’s coaches we all know late game. You get home late, your mind’s going till two or three am and then you got to get up in that small window where you’re back home. How you re-energize so that when you get back with your team you’re ready to give your best self.
Meg Griffith: 14:05
That’s a tough question too. I know myself. Now I feel like, you know, I’m 37 years old, now about to be 38. And there’s one thing that’s like a non-negotiable I need to get a workout in every day. I need to sweat for 30 minutes, whatever I can get honestly right, and it’s my outlet. It kind of calms me, it frees my thinking, it gives me clarity. So there’s that. And then I think, too, intentionality, you know, whatever that means, that day I need to have that moment where I’m thinking, without the distractions, without the computer, without the phone, without people, where I can just be centered, you know, just really being mindful about what I’m doing, what my intentions are for that day. So I would say, like those are like the two things that fill my cups, like physically, mentally, emotionally, that have been really important. And then too, like my family, I’ve really learned is super important to me, you know, my partner, my family, so that there needs to be genuine time carved out for that every day.
Dan: 14:54
The things that you know that are on your plate every day as a head coach that drain you more than give you energy, like you know the things you have to get done that you just don’t love doing. I guess what you’ve learned about how you handle those things that you know we’re gonna drain you, whether it’s delegate, whatever it is that you do with those things as a head coach.
Meg Griffith: 15:11
Delegating definitely gets easier the older you get in the profession or more experience, not even just older. You’re going in year 12. The stuff you were doing in year one you’re definitely not doing all that now Like. So I would definitely say that helps. But again, like, I’ve had my associate head coach, tyler Cordell. She’s phenomenal. She’s been with me for 11 years Like we’ve literally been working together. So I have that person that I can be like yo, this is where I’m at. I need your help today. So I would say that’s been a really stabilizing force for me in this profession, especially at Columbia. But delegating is definitely one tactic, I’d say. The other thing is just, I’m a work hard, play hard, love hard person. It might be yo, we need to go to happy hour today after work. We’re all gonna sit down. Maybe we need to go shoot I don’t know and play outside. Let’s go play one-on-one. I need to get into that space where we’re not talking to each other about our jobs but we’re like competing or we’re having fun or we’re like letting our guard down. So I think that’s helped me a lot really focus, whatever it is that we need to get done, and then also I can deal with the BS stuff that I need to do right, the jobs I don’t wanna do Cause I feel like when I’m connected to the people in the program I’m more willing to do that stuff. I’m ready to do that and attack it.
Dan: 16:18
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Pat: 17:21
You mentioned early on, when we were talking about EDGE, that in order to change something, you usually have to do something different, and I like to shift gears. Or at least, if we go now on the court and how, when you took over this program and even now, like you said, with kind of a newer team, you’re thinking about doing something different or changing more. So, building the program when you took over, how you thought about changing the program on the court?
Meg Griffith: 17:43
Great question. I love talking basketball. So we basically, when I first got here and I looked at our person now we were experienced in terms of years, a lot of juniors and seniors and we’d won really talented junior. So I was like, all right, I don’t think we can execute this vision that I have. I had this vision whenever I’m a head coach and I think here at Columbia because it fits, we’re gonna play this high up tempo, high possession game, again energy. We wanna play this game at a fast pace. But we just didn’t have the personnel to do that and so I didn’t wanna impose that on them. But I wanted to teach them foundationally what we could do. So we actually put in one of our second areas. That now is we started up doing our pinch post offense and had this one player. I mean, she’s so talented, she’s still playing. Her name’s Camille Zimmerman. She’s the all-time leading scorer in Columbia basketball history, all-time leading rebounder Columbia women’s basketball and she’s playing on the three-on-three of Team USA. Right now she’s playing professionally in Europe. So I was like, all right, we’re just gonna let her touch the ball every time it’s on the court. You know Like we’re just gonna play through this kid. So we kind of set the foundation for pinch posts and started exploring what that looked like and then, once we started being would have recruited to the personnel. I wanna be a team that thrives in the first, you know, 10 seconds of the shot clock. That was really key to us. So we broke down the shot clock by 10 second increments and it was pounce, patience, punish, right. So that’s kind of how we started building out our offensive philosophy and that took one being versatile all the way around. We were going to find players that could pass dribble and shoot at every position. Now didn’t mean that our fives were doing the same thing as our point guards, but if you watch our team, everybody can pass dribble and shoot right. So that was really key. So once we started to recruit more dynamic players, we were able to shift to playing in transition more and then playing one pinch post that we sort of instilled early, but then developing a lot of five hour and early ball screen offense. So that was sort of how we thought about it offensively and you know, defensively, to play fast, right, you need to be able to create live ball turnovers and play fast after makes or dead balls too, right. So that was the second part of it was all right. We’re going to be versatile in leading the break, so we’re going to switch a lot defensively and it’s not always going to end up in our point guards hand or a dominant ball handler. So we started switching a lot more these past two years, just kind of everything ball screens, off ball, giving our players freedom and flexibility there, cause our you know, our point guard now is 5’10 and our five is 6’2″. Right, so we have these players that are this unique size. Where our team can be, we can fly around a little bit, but we can be disruptive just by blowing people’s stuff up and making them try to get to plan B. So that was kind of how we thought we would get longterm. But right away, you know, you have to build foundationally with what you have. I think we were just limited more positionally cause we had true position. It was like we have a point guard, we have a shooter, we have a back to the basket player. So that’s where the pinch post philosophy really came in.
Pat: 20:26
You mentioned attacking or thriving in the first 10 seconds and you hit on it when you started recruit and you had more ball handlers, but the tactical approach to what you were trying to preach or build within these first 10 seconds so you could have success playing with pace in these first 10 seconds and not be a glorified kind of pickup game.
Meg Griffith: 20:43
Yeah, so that’s what it looked like at first. I remember when we got some of our athletes in and we got some more versatile players. We were just so young. You know what I mean when you’re young you just do dumb stuff. You have to live with it a little bit. So what we first did was all right, we’re turning the ball over a lot. So, especially in practice, what are we going to live with? So we just kind of gave them some guidelines and rules really early and then we started doing something called possession quality, which we stole from Colgate men’s basketball. Dave Klatsky, who you guys have probably talked to, is at NYU now. His sister played with me here, so we got a connection there. And then my one assistant coach, greg Rosnick he actually was on the D3 men’s side, he was at Colby came to us. I stole him away from the men’s side. He’s on the better side now, no offense and now he’s coaching at Blair Academy High School Girls Prep League. So he actually was like Meg. I think we should do this Boom. So, okay, let’s figure out. Okay, what turnovers are we going to live with? Number one and then two. Let’s start helping our players and helping our staff understand what are good possessions and not just outcome driven right. So it was much more about overall quality, celebrating choices and decisions unless, like, we’re living and dying by makes and misses right. So that was philosophically how we started attacking it, with our team helping them understand what’s a great shot versus an average shot versus a bad possession, live ball turnover, dead ball turnover highly contested too things like that. Once we decided what we were going to live with, I thought it made a lot easier for them. So the shot selection, possession quality and then again, what turnovers are we going to live with? That we’re going to play fast.
Pat: 22:11
What turnovers were you going to live with and how did you measure possession quality?
Meg Griffith: 22:15
In terms of what we were going to live with. We started tracking unforced turnovers and forced turnovers. So unforced would be dribbling off your foot, throwing something, trying to thread a needle, things like that. It’s not like the defense caused it, right? A forced turnover was defined by what the defense caused, so we tried to limit those. So the ones we would live with were the advanced passes that we were going to throw. We weren’t the most skilled players right away. There were young kids that we were playing with. We were playing with freshmen and sophomores, so it was like chemistry and then skill we just need to develop. So we just started doing okay, we’re going to be okay with those advanced passes, but once we turn it over, once we’re going to make sure that we’re being a little bit more cautious, looking to sideline advanced or slice the ball. Some other ones we lived with were some of the charges that we got early. We had some kids that we wanted them to attack the basket and, depending on how teams are guarding you, we were like all right, that’s an aggressive decision, we’re going to live with that. Post entry was another one. We’re never really a dominant back to basket team, but we wanted to get better at getting the ball in so we could play in, out or in easy score. So that was another one. So I’d say those three things were the things that we were living with, but the other ones where you’re trying to force supply or you’re over dribbling, or you’re just making a decision because you don’t know what to do, so those are the things again we just tried to limit. But possession quality, that’s one too where we have a scale, zero to five, that we use, and again we kind of stole this from our friends at Colgate. So and Dave, but zero is a live ball turnover, so one is a dead ball turnover. Two would be like, again, those highly contested twos. Threes would be like highly contested open threes or like open twos. And then four would be wide open catch and shoot threes or like anything that would be like a great shot in our offense, but maybe slightly contested. And then fives would be open rim layups at the rim, and we did it every possession. You’re doing it, so you know at the end of the game and what quality of possession are we getting which ended up leading to better outcomes for us.
Dan: 24:07
I love to ask about I don’t want to say broken breaks or transition scenarios where it’s not a nice, everybody’s in their spaces and running the corners and all it, because it happens a lot of steel or a long rebound and maybe some thoughts on, let’s say, your four or five happens to rebound it instead of a one or two, or they can’t get to the one, and how you think about still keeping that pace when you don’t have a perfect floor and you don’t have maybe the dominant ball handler with the ball to make that decision to throw it ahead or attack.
Meg Griffith: 24:34
I love that you asked this because this is why I think we’re really good in transition. We rebound and lead the break one through four, sometimes one through five. Our four was one of our best tempo pushers when she got it, when Katie got the rebound, it was like get the hell out of the way. Everybody runs like we either get one rim runner but we’re stretching to the corners. If you’re same side, it’s okay, just make sure we have proper spacing there. We’re getting into the perfect wing, we’re getting to the corner and we need a trail every possession right. So we sort of identified it that way If we can get our first post rim runner out, you’re going to run weak side ball. You want to stretch both corners and then we just want a trail or some sort of a trail behind the play, which would be naturally your rebounder who out-led it. But if we were beating people on the floor we’d flip it into like an automatic drag or something like that. So that’s kind of not. You know, spacing and timing is a big thing, but allowing the freedom if this is what your personnel is to push one through four has what made us really dangerous in transition, I think.
Dan: 25:26
I guess just teasing points for your fours and fives when they rebound and you are going to let them go with the break and definitely have had players in my day feel out of four or five go in the decision making or the rebound and they’re going through traffic. You’ve been a great rebounding team so that obviously helps to get out in your break. But any teaching points on those fours and fives when they start to push, how they are not out of control or whatnot in the break.
Meg Griffith: 25:49
We break the court down into zones. For our team so we talk about zone one, which would be baseline to free throw, line zone to free throw to half court. Three, half court to free throw, free throw to baseline is four right. So on the defensive side it goes one through four. That’s how we’re thinking about it right now. So if we get a defensive rebound in zone one we’re not throwing it to somebody in zone one. Our team understands if we’re below the free throw line we are getting out to it. We at least get to cross one of the zones before we either outlet or make a decision. So that’s where we know to like bust out for our fours and fives and then their next decision point is always we’re looking at if somebody’s ahead of the pack and we drill that like getting those kick ahead, those throw ahead passes. But the second part is if we can ever advance a zone, that’s a huge advantage for us. So once the ball’s at the half court area we’re not throwing those risky passes. That’s another one of those turnovers we’re not living with. We’re not throwing that advanced pass to half court because usually at that point one you’re going to throw it out of bounds and then two the defense has recovered. I hope at that point we kind of again that zone concept. We drill that early with our team so they understand advantages in transition, especially when security, offensive rebound. But as soon as that thing is secured our players know like we are busting out or finding space or running down wide. We had a four that wasn’t really a four. We had a four that had guard skills but was like a four because she was six. One in Super Athletics we really played four guards which helps.
Pat: 27:11
You mentioned part of playing fast or playing with temple is your defensive scheme that you went to switching a lot, what you’ve learned over the years when switching and kind of what you got to be aware of when you’re going to do a lot of switching and having success with it.
Meg Griffith: 27:24
Just like anything, it’s whatever your mainstay is. When you hit January, february, you got to be ready to pivot. You’ve got to have a plan B right. So I think anything that we felt like we’ve gotten good at conference just tries to pick you to a part right. Every team in your conference is watching all of your games. They’re like, okay, we’re going to do this, this and this. So I just think the longer your season gets, I think you’re going to get away with things but build good habits in the non-conference, but when you get to conference play, you better be sharp and ready to do something different. So I would say, with switching, we just saw so many more teams automatic slipping, ghosting it threw us off a little bit. So just making sure that we were prepared to have plan B or handle that and just be better communicating through the actions. We’re a no middle team, right, so we want to influence and force baseline. So when we switched, we started doing a lot more switching and almost like getting to that ice position a lot, which then you need to make sure your baseline help and rotation is hyper aware. So the off ball defense became more and more important the better that we got at it. In my opinion, what I’ve learned with switching is it can be highly effective if you’re disruptive, you’re moving on airtime and you have good communicators. If you don’t have those things, I think it’s really hard to be a good switching team over the course of a season.
Pat: 28:34
How did you look? To be disruptive when switching or to be effective? What were you preaching with disruptive aspect?
Meg Griffith: 28:40
number one with the team that we had going back to, like the zones of the court. We said on every dead ball, in most opportunities we were picking up in zone one. We chart zone one pickups on our team. Anything that was, you know, live or rebound, that was lose for tipped. It was like we have to at least secure the ball in zone two. So it was like we talked a lot about zone one, zone two. So that’s the first thing I think that helps to being disruptive is giving pressure, applying pressure early to the primary ball handler. A lot of teams that we saw had a primary ball handler, maybe two. So we took our defensive catalyst and boom, that’s your assignment, 94 feet, 40 minutes, and we had two players that kind of shared that responsibility. So that really helped, I think, was setting the tone and our team knew it too, like we talked about that openly Jada and Perry, you’re a defensive catalyst, it became their identity. So I think that helped a lot. And then, in terms of disruptive off the ball and again, this depend on personnel, but we really would try to blow up actions a lot. So we did up some top-blocking right based on who’s coming off of pin down, staggered zoom action. So we would start doing stuff like that off the ball again. Cover just changed based on people. But we started drilling those scenarios we thought we would see, or common actions way early this past year. We were doing stuff in September, october, versus like waiting till we saw a scout. Oh, this is what this team is running now. Right, we kind of put those things in every day or once a week in the early preseason and then the last thing I would say is on-balk screens. We switched up and we switched over. We’re gonna switch over the screen, we’re gonna switch up to the ball, which, when we switch, we’re being disruptive. Disruptive means taking away vision. So our players knew it’s, you’re switching up, you’re being aggressive. If you get beat, that’s okay. Now we’re peel switching again. We tried to send people backwards as much as possible. A.
Dan: 30:18
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Meg Griffith: 31:11
Let’s go.
Dan: 31:11
Okay, we were just talking switching and you just mentioned peel switching a second ago, and so we’re gonna go back to peel switching here for this first start subset question and this is tough to teach is the theme of this? So, of these three options with peel switching, what’s the toughest for you to teach your team here? So option one is when to go Right that kind of middle ground of one you actually go peel switch. Option two is the angles in which you switch on the peel, so making sure you get your chest in front or whatever, so getting that good angle. And option three is where the player who got beat rotates to and how everyone rotates With the peel switch.
Meg Griffith: 31:48
Oh, I love. This is good. This is good. This is a detailed one too. This is very specific. All right, start when to go sub where player rotates.
Dan: 31:56
Third would be the angles okay, I’ll go right to your start, and Pat and I have talked a lot of coaches about peel switching. We’re all three of us here lucky to know coach void We’ve talked to and that is something that’s always coming up as when do you peel switch, when do you go and how do you think about solving that issue with your team?
Meg Griffith: 32:13
I’m not right. Before I even talked to Will, I was okay, I’m doing my research, I’m listening all these podcasts, I’m like looking at diagrams, I’m like, all right, when they get to this point, this is when you’re. And then when I talked to will, he was like Megan, it’s so much more complicated that, because it’s hard, like, is the defender gonna give up at that point? Right? Is there pride in that? You have to have a very, no ego team? But we’re bought into this concept. It’s not about am I getting beat or not. Instead of picking a spot on the floor that people would get to, it Was more like if you feel like your teammates be, you just got to go. So once we helped our players understand that and you know, I think the cue we gave them was if you see Somebody is by that hip, right, you see the ball, a shoulder, it like. If you see that person by your teammate’s hip, you got to go. Now, again, the right kneeing spots on the floor is another part of it about how aggressive you’re peeling up or back in transition. You know you’re pressuring the ball, somebody beats you. That peel can be soft and you’re giving a cushion so that your teammate can recover. But if we’re in the half court, we’re talking about getting deep into the kill zone or piercing your defense, piercing middle. All right, that next gap defender, you got to go early again. We’re no middle team. We call the paint the kill zone. We’re protecting that kill zone as much as possible. And now there’s obvious. You know scout rules. It’s like all right, we’re gonna tilt the floor to the left. Maybe we’re not peel switching when people drive to the left, right. So there’s those rules, but we try to drill it where it’s. And this is where our players always have questions. Well, what do you should? I’m like just go, you just got it. You can’t think this is a drill right now, that where you got a Rapid, and help them understand the concept. That’s what I found.
Pat: 33:43
So as the helper who’s coming up the one communicating, and they make the call if it’s a switch or not.
Meg Griffith: 33:49
Yeah, so basically the help defender, the gap defender, however, you’re teaching it right. I want to limit the rotations. I think we were very good communicating team. It took time to get to that, but that’s something I take a lot of pride in and if you ever saw us in a practice, we’re talking literally from start to finish. Everybody’s talking. If you’re not talking, you’re gonna hear it from me, and I got a lot of that from will and also Villanova. I love what Jay right does with his teams. So the person that’s in the help position or the next gap, whatever it is that you call it, they go and they call the peel. So they’ll say peel, peel, peel, so that your primary on-ball defender is peeling off and they’re peeling to the person’s opponent that helped right. So that way You’re usually peeling to that line of that next pass. So you’re blind peeling, you’re not peeling with vision on the ball, and then we’re usually trying to step up to halt that drive. That’s how we try to teach them at. The rotations involve two people.
Dan: 34:39
I love to ask about the combination of peel switching with no middle or you know teams that are looking to maybe, like you said, tilt left or Force left and, in your experience with it, if it’s made it easier or harder to know where peels are coming from, because everyone knows where you’re kind of trying to force someone. That’s sort of like the first part of the question and the second part is when you’re forcing a direction, the balance of teaching players to still guard the ball versus funnel it somewhere and have that peel come from that area.
Meg Griffith: 35:07
Basically because we’re a no middle team. So anything through the middle of the floor, like that middle. Third, we’re always sending we, which is predominantly left, so usually we’re tilting that floor in the middle to the left. So that’s where we’re not as aggressive when we peel switch, unless it’s like a more threatening drive. Anything that’s going right Towards the middle we want to be super aggressive with okay. So that’s kind of like how we help our players understand it. Now, if it’s a clear direct path to the basket or always, no matter where you are right, left, it doesn’t matter middle, so it doesn’t matter, we’re gonna go the most threatening attacks we’re gonna be the most aggressive with.
Pat: 35:40
For my clarification If you’re the no middle and you get them driving baseline, where the help is gonna come from the low man, will you peel? Or, since it’s within the scheme of no middle, it’s fine and you’re gonna give the low help and she’ll recover?
Meg Griffith: 35:53
so we have two variations of our defense. We have midnight, we have blue. Midnight’s are more aggressive. We’re gonna go on that rotation, on that baseline drive we’re going, we’re gonna smash that with smashing. We call it’s trapping for us, like we’re gonna try to trap that drive. We’re gonna wall up and be there nice and early. If we’re in blue. We’re fanning out. We’re gonna like sprint, step, get ahead, show. We say sprint and show show your hands. And then we’re gonna fan out and just make sure we’re protecting cutters or the drift or whatever happening on the weak side. Again our more aggressive defense. We’re going on that even if it’s a baseline drive. Less so defense. We’re not going on that if it’s a baseline drive, especially going left. That’s where it’s a little different, but we use our color scheme.
Pat: 36:34
Yeah, coach, moving along, our next starts. Upset has to do with peer-to-peer communication. Three things that you, in your opinion, well, which would be the most important to effective peer-to-peer communication. Option one is the tone used. Option two is the message being delivered. And option three is the timing.
Meg Griffith: 36:51
Okay, so tone timing message. All right, I’m going to start tone sub message in timing. I will sip. Is this we’re playing or on the floor? Is this just like off the court? The answer would change for me.
Pat: 37:03
Well, let’s go peer-to-peer then on the floor in the game, in the game, this is what I would go. How are you working on tone with your players?
Meg Griffith: 37:10
then we talk a lot about name, command and control, right. So when you’re talking to your teammates, don’t just say vague statements, like you’re addressing somebody so it’s like alright, dan, the mid needs to rotate, I got your drop right. So it’s name what you want them, the command, and then that will allow the control for you to happen of that situation, right. So we talk a lot about that with them. We also talk about to. Body language is so important when you’re giving messages, whether it’s an intense, harsh message or you know you’re just loving up on somebody and supporting them. You know, whatever you’re doing, so for us I think it’s how you present that. I would say tone captures all of those things. If you’re not having eye contact, if you’re not looking at somebody with your shoulders back and you’re hunched over Whatever it is, you’re not receiving that message. You know. I think what you say with your body is just as important what you say with your words. So you know with tone. I would say that for me, would be part of that.
Pat: 38:02
Verbal, non-verbal communication is just as important are there activities that you do to help with this, or is it just the constant reinforcement, the message that you deliver?
Meg Griffith: 38:13
There’s a few things that we do. So we actually work with an organization called the program. You may have heard of them before, but it’s not all former military, but it started with former military people that kind of got together for a program that used military style training to teach leadership, mental, physical, emotional toughness. So I’ve worked with this organization for now five years I think. Because of how quickly they need to respond, think, act. It translates to whatever we’re doing, especially in the game of basketball the game is going, we’re moving, so everything is very succinct. They’ve really helped us kind of honing in our messaging. So the very first thing that we do every day is we’re warming up. We’re doing our dynamic warm-up. We’re talking about defensive focuses for the day. They’re literally talking to each other as they’re doing their warm-ups. They’re doing Frankenstein’s and they’re all right, abby, peel, peel, peel, okay, I got you married and they’re using names. They’re using. So that’s what we do every day for ten minutes before we even start practice. So we’re warming up our voices. That’s why I like to say we’re warming up. We’re also warming up our voices some other things we do. We have something we call one voice. So if somebody yells, one voice and practice like one voice. We recall it. So we say one voice and then that person has the floor. So now everybody’s attention is locked in on that person. It’s usually me or teammate or whatever. And then the last thing too. One of the other things that we do is in some drills, when we start drills, will have a callback, so it’ll be like ready, ready, attack. And then we start the drill. So that’s something we also got from the programs. You’re not just starting all balls in play. Well, like you know it’s, is everybody ready? Are we in this together? We have vision, in contact with each other. So again, it’s ready, ready, attack. And that’s usually how we start every defensive drill that we do in echoing calls.
Dan: 39:48
That’s another one echo everything if we were to switch it, because you made the Differentiation between on the floor during a game and off the floor, and that your answer may change. If we said this is off the floor now, what would change in why off?
Meg Griffith: 40:00
the floor. I’d almost flip it completely. I think you know timing message tone and why.
Dan: 40:05
What does it flip off the floor for you?
Meg Griffith: 40:07
Well, I think on the floor, those are intense moments. You’re in it, your adrenaline is going, you are charged, you have a pulse, you are charged and I don’t always think you can. This cipher went into how to say things. In those moments Off the court, when your blood pressure is down, you have more of your peace of mind and you’re able to articulate yourself. I think that’s when you can be really intentional with what you actually say and when you say it. If I see a player that has a final and I’m grabbing her before her final to tell her this really important thing, I’m screwing with her right. So the timing of when I do that is gonna be really key. If it’s an important message, no stress, she’s out of her final today. Hey Mary, come stop by the office. You have to really understand where people are at. When it’s not, we’re all at practice. No cell phones. This is what we do. It’s an intense environment.
Dan: 40:54
Both of these on the court, off the court, when you have new players in your program or freshman sophomore, the status of them not being as high up as your seniors, juniors or introverted players who just aren’t wanting to talk as much, how do you work with all of these players who maybe aren’t naturally into what you’re doing yet, and how they get up to speed so that they can have good communication with someone, say, above them or older than them?
Meg Griffith: 41:18
That’s the most challenging part, that is the key, right. I mean, you know, sometimes you’re just hey, if you communicate you’re gonna play, and then even that doesn’t motivate them to communicate. What you have to find out with every player is who are they and how do they operate, what’s important to them, where is their comfort zone and what is too far outside of their comfort zone to actually learn? Your comfort zone is here. That very small kind of circle around your comfort zone is. If you go outside of that, they’re not gonna learn anymore Now they’re just in discomfort. You have to understand what are people’s limits and your seniors, right, your older players, their capacity to learn. You know that concentric circle around the comfort zone is much larger than your freshmen. Your freshmen it’s this far from the comfort zone you know. So I think that’s where you have to build relationships off the court with them, so even just know where they’re at and be able to meet them there. Now that doesn’t mean I’m gonna coach you any less hard, but I’m gonna know how to talk to you in, especially in a teaching moment. Our senior, like that’s the oldest player on team Abby, I’m gonna be like I can get after Abby. She wants that, she seeks that. She needs that to grow. But you know, susie, who just came in last year, kid from England, won. She’s from a whole different country. She speaks our language. This is great. That’s a good start. We have a lot of kids that isn’t their native language, you know. You can see it if some of her freeze moments as a freshman that’s not every freshman, but so you have to be willing to be like hey, where are you at, what happens for you in those moments and break that down with her, which is hard. That’s not easy to do. The importance of building honest, authentic relationships that are true is really key with your young players and that’s the work we do before they even get here. To me it’s you’re recruiting your kids even when the job is done and they’re coming.
Dan: 42:55
Coach, great stuff there. You’re off the start subset hot seat. Thanks for playing that game with us. A lot of fun, coach. We got one last question for you before we close, before we do. This was really fun, learned a ton and we appreciate all your thoughts say so. Thanks for coming on the show.
Meg Griffith: 43:08
Thanks for having me. I had a blast and I love doing stuff like this, and I’m excited to learn from you guys too, so thanks again.
Dan: 43:15
Coach. Our last question that we ask all the guests is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career as a coach?
Meg Griffith: 43:22
I’ve been thinking about this a little bit. There’s two things that I would say, and I think they just came at different times in my career. When I took this job again, I was like 30 years old. I was really young. A lot of eyes are on you as a young professional. I think, right, and it’s what’s this person doing? What are they gonna do at every turn? And instead of work-life balance, I really invested into having work-life integration because I needed to be able to be authentic to who I was as I was leading this program. I would say that very intentional investment of making sure that the things that mattered to me weren’t hidden from the program and that doesn’t mean everything is out there, but it helps so much more when your players know who your parents are and they’re in the stands, and who your sister is, or who your people are, or this matters to me. I’m not just a robot. Oh, what do you do when you’re not coaching? I’m like what do you mean? What do we do? So I think just openly having those moments in the airport after practice. You’re just sitting there and you’re just who you are. You’re playing cards or whatever. Give people access to who you are. So I’d say that would be number one. Number two is three years ago I got an executive coach. The university backed me on this, our athletic director backed me on this. It was game-changing for me, absolutely game-changing. I had somebody kind of work with me through the course of the season, just helped me talk through things, any issues why things went well, what I felt like needed to change relationships with my staff and my team. That was a game changer for me.
Dan: 44:51
Our Pat great having coach Griffith on smart coach. Loves your players doing a heck of a job, so it was a really fun conversation today.
Pat: 44:59
Yeah, I really enjoyed it and getting into it. I’m glad where we started the conversation and our research and even just in our communication preparing, you know, scheduling it really came across that she just has a great energy about her. And it was even more so when we heard her talk on other stuff and Kudo CU, on just picking up on, I think, a cool place to start, you know, because we also know they play fast with pace, so we knew we could get the conversation to a lot of places.
Dan: 45:23
but just hearing her view on coaching with energy, balancing her energy and investing her time and what’s important to her, I mean you and I talked a bunch over the last couple of days about potential ideas to get into in the first half an hour here and all our research and talking to her we’re talking to other people it shines through right away just her energy, and I think you and I thought about how you get to be energized all the time, but like more or less where you put that and the ramifications of being a 10 all the time, like she mentioned, and when that’s good, when that’s tough for her, where she needs to delegate. I mean all the things that we got into and I think that you and I talked about. We thought that would be interesting just because of who she was and what she’s built, and I’m glad we did. I think there was a ton of takeaways for me in that first part and I personally really enjoyed hearing her talk about how she personally reenergizes herself and make sure that she can be the best version of herself, because I think that’s really hard. It’s anybody listening at this point in the podcast. First of all, thanks for sticking around to the end, but it’s not a job that when we talk about this a bunch that you just turn off at five o’clock and you go home and it’s over. It’s just ongoing, and I think that’s an art to great coaches, and ones that last a long time is being able to reenergize themselves in whatever way that they choose to do it, and so I enjoyed hearing her thoughts. I took those away from that part, definitely.
Pat: 46:48
And another important piece I think too to, let’s say, sustaining energy. That she hit on too was, you know, when she said you can be like being energy givers and how that put a big emphasis on obviously not only herself, but then with her players and that, looking at it, if I’m gonna fill up your glass, then you’re also gonna fill up mine, so it can be like constant as renewable source, and I like that approach, I like just thinking about that way too, that you’re giving energy out to also get some back.
Dan: 47:14
We recently had a conversation with the author Owen Eastwood and he wrote the book Belonging and I mean we thoroughly enjoyed that conversation and I felt there was a lot of similarities in just how much time she invests into making people feel like they belong, getting a set vocabulary, getting a pillars culture edge, which she talked about too, and then the benefits that that has coming back at you and that kind of compounding effect. I think too, like Energy is so contagious. And so the way she is, the way her staff is and what they do with them, it just builds and builds and builds. And I’ll just quickly dovetail into I love her talking about Edges and I know it’s a mantra of her program as well, and she discussed but just her backstory too, about her mom and dad. I thought was really great to hear and where she kind of comes from and how that drives her.
Pat: 48:04
From that conversation you know I wrote down to and you want to change something that, yet to do something different. I like that. That also led them to me able to change course of the conversation and get into a little bit more on the court stuff. And they play really fast, they play a fun style, no surprise. We enjoy talking tactics, yeah, and when we got into turnovers that they tolerate, that they live with, how they measure their possession quality and then, more specifically when they got in, like how they distinguish the zone areas on the court and how they build their break and always try to advance the zone when playing fast and with pace.
Dan: 48:36
Yeah, this was another area I think we were excited to ask her about because they’ve been analytically so good at this and then, like she talked about, being different is an edge for them and playing fast. And I agree, I liked the subtle details of the zone stuff I like talking about if a five or four rebounds it and they want them to lead the break some of the thoughts or rules for them. I thought that was great. The imagery of the zones makes sense to me and I’m sure for our players it’s easier to really pick up on good visualization.
Pat: 49:04
You know, when you just yell out like we want to push the ball, push the ball, but get it to the next zone. Advance the zone. Get to the next zone is, I think, a good way to help your players understand again the message.
Dan: 49:14
And I think I asked a follow up about the broken breaks or when the floors not evenly spread, because I think, just as we’ve been fortunate to talk to or study other coaches and especially, like in Europe, some of these teams, they’re so good at transitioning into their offense, no matter what the chess pieces look like on the floor, and so it’s just the pace in which they transition, the speed in which they get into that next action and the spacing they get, whether it’s two on a side or that perfectly two corners filled almost delay look, or drag screen look, I think. For me personally, it’s always interesting just to hear the teaching points on. Not every break is going to look pretty and perfect, but you can still gain advantage if your players know where they’re running, know who the personnel is and what kind of actions they want to get to early, and so I liked hearing her talk about the different ways they can still flow quickly, no matter who rebounds the ball and breaks out.
Pat: 50:07
It kind of goes always back to the control versus freedom discussion that we have and, of course, I think when you want to play more up tempo, you got to be willing to give them more freedom. Like she said, get more ball handlers living with turnovers and, of course, defining what are good and bad turnovers, but you probably have a little bit bigger tolerance or have to have more of a tolerance in terms of, yeah, we’re going to play with a higher possessions, we’re going to get more turnovers, what’s acceptable, what’s not. I think it’s always fun hearing coaches kind of work through that and where they end up on certain things where they have to give up some freedom and not try to control everything.
Dan: 50:39
Yeah, and it’s an important point that she made and it’s so true that not every turnover is equal live versus dead ball turnovers and what you’re willing to live with. I liked that she got into the possession quality and talking about that and I mean I think that that’s great where they’re going to live with some of these turnovers, because the benefit of playing that fast is going to be better overall. But narrowing in on the ones that are more controllable that they won’t live with is just so much more beneficial than just yelling stop turning it over. Of course we don’t want to turn it over, but a good play and aggressive play that maybe the ball gets thrown out of bounds is better because it’s a dead ball. You set your defense, then trying to thread a pass in traffic where now they’re going the other way and transition type of thing. So I enjoy hearing that part. You could kind of hear some of the analytics creep into that conversation. To a shot quality, possession quality, things like that.
Pat: 51:28
Yeah, much like with any defense, you have weaknesses, and I think the same with any style of offense. You know there are going to be pain points you have to willingly accept or no going in. Otherwise your energy is going to go into a lot of different places.
Dan: 51:41
The negative energy, flipping to start, sub or sit. These were two different areas that we were interested in asking her about. We’ve heard and watching her play and then hearing her speak at times about peel switching a little bit. Also, she’s really great at the communication stuff. So that was the back end on why we wanted to ask her and I’ll just throw it back to you on either one of these in your first takeaways I’ll start with the peel switch.
Pat: 52:06
Well, we could talk about the peel switch every time and get varying degrees of answers, but it’s always fun and the number one topic is always when and how do you know if that player is beat and she hit on it and what she discussed with coach void. You can’t think of it so much as like a mono, a mono one on one thing. When you’re trying to peel switch and just kind of understanding, okay, you know, if you’re beat, get off of it, and her having that clear communication or hopefully clear where it’s the helper is going to call you off, we just go. Then you know, and it’s not so much try to hang on, hang on, hang on it, I can do it. It’s a team defense. I more of the approach and this two on two approach rather than a one on one approach with it’s just like an emergency switch.
Dan: 52:45
You mentioned this question of when to go. I just know personally a player is going to ask you this within the first 10 seconds of trying to teach peel switching and they’re going to continue to ask and so it’s a player question that comes up when should I go? Because it is awkward for them. It’s a different thing for the most part, especially if you come up in a, let’s say, more of a pack line stunt, recover, you know, back to the corner, or you’re in a denial situation where it’s a little bit like taking the leap off that ledge, where it’s like you’re going and you’re taking the ball and you have to trust that your teammates going to peel off and this is conversation we have. A lot too is just defense tends to be more rule based, like we as coach, like we want to have rules, and offense can be more flowy where it’s a read base. But with peel switching there is a read involved in when to go and, like she mentioned, there’s some things they try to talk about. These, you know shoulders or buys and obviously that they’re beat. But sometimes it is a little bit of a read or a little bit of a scout as to how fast you go. But I would say for her and she talked about it when to go and just making the decision to be more aggressive is probably better than being hesitant. We threw in there to the no middle stuff, to that kind of is involved in it as well, as coaches are getting creative with adding these two different things together.
Pat: 53:59
Yeah, that’s what I like about peel switch. It can be tough to teach but it is a great addition. I think that can be mixed into really any sort of overall defensive scheme as a way to kind of put out fires.
Dan: 54:10
To your point. We just did a video with coach Joey Gallo from Merrimack College and they have peel switching built into their two three zone. Yeah, it’s just more of an overall concept, the health concept, rather than, you know, a strict rule all the time.
Pat: 54:24
Yeah, I’ll kick it to you to start this one about communication. Was you kind of who came up with this idea? And again, kudos, it was a really good conversation.
Dan: 54:32
Well, thanks, and I think you and I were talking before about different ways to get into a conversation with her about communication, and I think that one thing we’ve heard her speak on and I think is really hard for players is peer to peer and teaching players to speak correctly to each other. And boy, I really loved her answer here and I actually loved that she followed up with because we didn’t even give it to her whether it’s in game or out of game, and it’s so true, it’s so different, and so I liked her little addition and better in our question for us on air.
Pat: 55:04
Yeah, I wrote down name command control is the framework that she taught with her players and I really liked when we asked her about just kind of how they work on it in practice. I wrote down the one voice, the callbacks, the echoes and the warmups, how they’re just working on their defensive communication, again under the framework of the name command control and just like anything, building a habit that you’re going to emphasize Always fun to hear the methods behind these coaches ideas.
Dan: 55:31
I loved her point about just the circles, the concentric circles, and seniors having a larger capacity and the freshmen getting outside their comfort zone. It’s like pulling teeth, but obviously worth it and it’s part of the maturation process for those players. Hey, any misses on your end or things you wish we could have gone a little bit deeper on.
Pat: 55:50
For me, there was one. She mentioned the early part of the conversation about her developing her emotional intelligence and I think that it’s always an interesting conversation with not only hers, but then how you develop your players emotional intelligence. I know it’s a conversation we had in the past, but that was something I wrote down and just never came back to.
Dan: 56:08
Yeah, she’s so true. I mean, I think she spends a lot of time thinking about that too, so maybe we’ll have her back.
I guess I’ll just finish with her best investment answer was awesome and I specifically you know we don’t normally follow up on the best investment stuff but her getting an executive coach and investing in that and for other coaches out there maybe thinking about hiring someone or wanting some extra help themselves who’s outside of their staff, you know just what that’s been beneficial for on a deeper level and what they really do help them with and things like that. I mean I just think it’s an interesting conversation that maybe we would have followed up with her there just even more about that executive coaching, but it was awesome conversation. So we really appreciate Coach Griffith for coming on. Can’t wait to watch them play this year In the pack. There’s nothing else. We’ll wrap this thing up. Thanks everybody for listening. We’ll see you next time.