This week Slappin' Glass welcomes the Head Coach of DII Converse College, Nick Pasqua! Coach Pasqua shares a ton of valuable insights around the areas of difficult coaching journeys, combining Princeton and Euro Flow Offenses, and finding Efficient Players.
To join coaches and championship winning staffs from the NBA to High School from over 60 different countries taking advantage of an SG Plus membership, visit HERE!
This week Slappin' Glass welcomes the Head Coach of DII Converse College, Nick Pasqua! Coach Pasqua shares a ton of valuable insights around the areas of difficult coaching journeys, combining Princeton and Euro Flow Offenses, and finding Efficient Players.
To join coaches and championship winning staffs from the NBA to High School from over 60 different countries taking advantage of an SG Plus membership, visit HERE!
It was the only opportunity that I had If I wanted to remain a head coach. You're going to go there. So I accepted job, moved my family there. We had never been out of the state of Tennessee and I knew what I'm walking into. And so we're talking literally out of 375 division, two schools in the country. They were number 375. I mean, it was a year of just like is this really what I want to keep doing? We won two games my first year at SWOOT and if I don't have that year, I don't know if some of the success that has happened the last four years does happen. It changed everything for me.
Dan Krikorian:Hi, I'm Dan Krikorian and welcome to Slapping Glass Exploring basketball's best ideas, strategies and coaches from around the world. Today we're excited to welcome the head coach of division two, converse College, nick Pasquaw. Coach Pasquaw is here today to discuss the hard truths and learnings after being fired from his first head coaching job. Being comfortable in your own skin and we talk efficiency and transfers, and merging Princeton and Euroflow offensive concepts during an interesting start, sub or sit. Unique and absolute must the most helpful and highest quality coaching content anywhere. These are some of the comments coaches are using to describe their experience with SG Plus.
Dan Krikorian:From NBA and NCAA championship coaching staffs to all levels of international and high school basketball, sg Plus is designed to help curious coaches discover, explore and understand the what, why and hows of what the best in the world are doing Through our easily searchable 750 plus video archive on SGTV to our live coaches, social Las Vegas. Sg Plus is the assistant you would hire if your athletic director didn't already get the stipend to football. And now please enjoy our conversation with coach Nick Pasquaw. Nick, thank you very much for making the time for us mid-season, coming off of a nice win last night, I know. So congrats on that. It's a pleasure to have you here. Looking forward to talking to you today.
Nick Pasqua:Yeah, well, I really appreciate being on listening to all your stuff, huge fan of the site and really really just eager to share anything that you guys are willing to. Let me share today.
Dan Krikorian:Thank you, coach. Yeah, we appreciate that and excited to dive in with you as well. I wanted to start with this. I know that this is an important topic and one that we talked about before the show. It's just the interesting, sometimes difficult path to make it as a coach and in your past you've been fired let go from jobs taken, really tough jobs, to build as you progress through your career, which I know is still a long way to go. I wanted to talk about that and being able to bounce back from being fired and building through tough programs and tough years. I think it's an important topic. I know one that you know well, and so we wanted to start there. Dive in on just your thoughts on getting through the difficult times when building a career.
Nick Pasqua:I think it's something that has not nearly talked about enough is just how to persevere in the coaching profession, because it is full of highs and as many lows as there are highs, and I learned it the hard way. I was fortunate enough to get a head coaching job at 30 at a Division II school, an hour and 15 minutes from where I grew up, where my wife's family was. My family was just thought. This is going to be the next 10 to 12 years of my life. Go in, we'll win a lot right away. We'll get a program flipped and there's a reason a 30-year-old gets a head coaching job. They had eight or nine straight losing seasons and I was coming from a program which was an hour up the road. We had a ton of success. I was very, very fortunate to work for a mentor that had won over a thousand games. He was a high school coach in Tennessee one of the most state championships of any high school coach in Tennessee and I played for him, worked for him and we had almost a father-son type relationship. And then you know, you think, nine years of doing that as an assistant coach at the D2 level, where you're not making much money but you love every second of it and you've got your hands in literally every single category there can be that you're ready to take on that next job and it was a place I was really familiar with. So I think that gave me a chance. Didn't know the AD, just first job I ever applied for as a head coach and first interview I ever had for head coach. And it never really works that way. So the path got off to a great start First job you ever interview for, you get. And now all of a sudden, like you're making all these decisions and trying to build a program and we were in the South Atlantic Conference at the time and Josh Scherz, who's now at Indiana State and everybody in the country knows who he is now was the head coach at LMU and they were number one in the country. And then Bart Lundy, who's the head coach at Milwaukee, was the coach at Queens University in Charlotte. They were number two in the country. And then Chuck Vincenza at Carson Ubin there at top 2015 with an All-American and Lenore ride and all just you know really, really, really good Division II programs and I walk in and we win six games.
Nick Pasqua:My first year I did not know. In my first year I was so uncomfortable and just being myself I had worked and played for my mentor for so long I thought I had to do everything exactly how he had done it. And you know, he had won a thousand games, he'd won multiple conference championships, we'd made multiple NCAA tournaments and I wasn't him. And here I am he's in his 70s, I'm 30, and I'm trying to be him and it was just a mess. And I tried to do everything exactly how he would have done it and handle meetings and practice and practice playing in scouts and everything exactly how we had done it and had a lot of success.
Nick Pasqua:But it wasn't natural, it wasn't me, it wasn't my way of doing it in some ways. You know, when a 30-year-old acts like a 70-year-old who has done it all like it usually doesn't go too well with 18 to 20-year-olds, it's not going to work. But I can never figure it out. And we would be sitting there, me and my staff then at the time planning practices and going through things, and all I can think about is well, coach wouldn't do it that way. I can't do it that way and I just could never get out of that rut.
Nick Pasqua:I had all these ideas, but coach wouldn't do it that way, and so I never got out of my own way that first year and I was a bad leader, you know. I let one loss become two and two become three and it was just a downward spiral. And I don't think I had been on a losing team or a part of a losing team in close to 12 years. And it just broke me and I was the bad coach. I was a bad dad, husband, I mean, I was bad at it all that year and we were competitive. That was the hard part. We lost six games, six to eight games by five points or less, and so we were really close. But it was a lot of the things that I was getting in my own way that kept us from winning a lot of close games in year one.
Nick Pasqua:And obviously you've got people you talk through throughout the year. And year ones are hard, they're not easy, and especially when it's your first ever year one at a place, and all I heard from older coaches were just, you know, do what you want to do, set the tone for the program, culture, culture, culture, all that. And so you think you're doing it and then you get on the bus after your last game and you've got a text from the AD saying we're going to meet tomorrow, and that's usually not a good sign. When you just won six games, you know. If it's you just want a championship, yeah, let's be, let's figure out what we're going to do here. But when it's the other way around, it's not a good sign.
Dan Krikorian:Coach, thanks for sharing. Before we move on to some leadership and learnings and all that, at that point, where was your head at as far as next steps for searching for jobs, figuring out your life, all those things?
Nick Pasqua:I'm sitting there and I'm 31 now. I went six and 21 in my first year. What's next? What am I going to do? Am I going to go be an assistant again at AD 2? Am I going to go back to where I just came from? I mean, I felt like that would have been a hard thing to do and swallow your pride and go do that. Are you going to try to go the D1 route and beg for an assistant job somewhere and go that route? Or are you going to try to be a high school? I mean just every type of thought going through your head, or is this even for me? I got my shot. You know I worked hard to get here. Obviously it did not go well.
Nick Pasqua:The toll it took on me mentally, physically, with my family Is this something I even want to do? And so I had a two month break, you would call it, where I didn't have a job there and I'm just every single day going through the season over and over and over and going back and watching games and just seeing how I'm acting on the sidelines, I'm interacting with our players and the refs. This isn't me Like. What am I out here doing? Those two months were huge for me. Like I got to sit there and watch the train wreck that I kind of was and really do a lot of self evaluation in those two months and see what I didn't want to do anymore. The problem was like who's going to hire me? I just won six games in my first year. I didn't have every search firm in the country Like let's get together and talk and let's get you in front of these people and you just go sell yourself and what you've done and it's going to work. Those opportunities never came and I mean I had every hoop dirt alert set on my phone for every job that came open and I'm sending a resume out trying to spend. You know what we did in our first year. How can I spend it? To where it looks like you know it wasn't as bad as it was, and so I got down to we're almost the first of May at this point and I've got one potential job in the mix.
Nick Pasqua:It's at Southern Wesleyan University, which is a division two school 10 minutes from Clemson's campus. So they were in the conference that I was in before I took the job, where I got let go. We'd gone there and played. I knew they'd been really, really bad. They'd just transitioned from NAI to D2 and then they played in the smallest kind of dumpiest place you'd ever seen in your life and a place that you didn't think you would ever, ever, ever, ever want to be. But I got in the final two for the job and went down there and met with them and they told me what the scholarships were. They told the pay, the budget, all this and it was like, well, this probably explains a lot of kind of where they've been, but it was the only opportunity that I had If I wanted to remain the head coach. You're going to go there. So I accepted job, moved my family there.
Nick Pasqua:We had never been out of the state of Tennessee and I knew, when I'm walking into a decent research, they had won a total of 15 games in five years, and so we're talking literally, out of 375 Division II schools in the country, they were number 375. And so they had won two games a year. Before I get there the first weekend I'm, there are two supposed best players getting in a fight on campus with each other, and I inherit this whole group. They get a fight with each other. Least come, they're off the team. So we started the team that year. That team had 17 players at the start of the year. We finished the year with seven. I mean, it was a year of just like is this really what I want to keep doing? We won two games my first year at SWOO. Both of them were in December. We didn't win a game from December, probably seventh, eighth. For the rest of the year we went two and 26. If I don't have that year, I don't know if some of the success that has happened the last four years does happen.
Nick Pasqua:It changed everything for me. I knew going there we didn't have the talent, we didn't have the players, we didn't have this the way I wanted to play, the way I had grown up playing in this system with my mentor and everything else and what I tried to do at Tuscany. It just was never gonna work. We didn't have the depth, we couldn't press, we couldn't play a tempo, we couldn't shoot threes. So I gotta figure it out like I've got to try something new, I've got to be creative, I've got to find a way just to keep us in a game. I felt like if I could keep us in a game to the 10-minute market a second half. We did something tonight pretty good, and so that was on offense, that was on defense, that was on special teams, out about underside. How can we be efficient in what we're doing? We're practicing with seven players, we have no scout team, I've got a part-time assistant and that's it. We don't even have enough to have ten players in practice right now, and so the challenges of all that led to new ways of doing things, thinking through things, and it forced me not to be who I was in my previous job.
Nick Pasqua:It changed me that way, not just being humbled, but how can you change and adapt to what you've got? So we go two and 26th that year, my first year of swoo, so my first two years as a head coach. I am eight and 47, and there was a lot of soul searching. After those first two years, you get a job. I was the youngest head coach in the country, at 30. All right, two to five years, we're gonna get this thing going. Fast-track my career. You already see how it plays out and then it goes the complete opposite way of Everything that you had ever envisioned your career being, and so then you've got to make a decision Am I gonna keep going. Am I gonna give it one more shot? See how it goes? All those questions Can I even do this on my own or am I just a good assistant? Every question you could have ever thought in your head is going through, and then, kind of fate had it, the transfer portal becomes a Thing.
Nick Pasqua:At the end of that year we had the lowest amount of scholarships of anybody in the southeast region and division too, so 37 teams were at the bottom. We can't miss in recruiting and we go through that transfer portal cycle. We took seven transfers. We took one high school kid who became an all-region NCAA player for us and we go from two wins of the year before to win it. We won 20 games. We went 2011. The next year we won the league championship, made the NCAA tournament until COVID, the day before we're supposed to leave, shows up and shuts down the NCAA tournament. So we had the biggest turnaround in the country for one year to the next.
Nick Pasqua:I say all that just because Perseverance is huge and there's times that you're gonna get humiliated, humbled. However you want to look at it. It was especially in that year's where I knew I had to change. And am I gonna be willing enough to do the changes it takes, to try to have some success after that, to try to think a different way, to try to do it a different way, to be okay being who I was to be okay. You know, letting guys listen to music at the start of practice, that was a huge no, no, like we were never gonna do that where I was before. And am I gonna be okay doing those things and being a 32-33 year old head coach and not acting like I'm somebody who can't relate to him? Because I can. I was just choosing not to because I thought I couldn't do it that way.
Patrick Carney:Nick and assessing your first season in that two months, you know watching yourself and you said you're uncomfortable being yourself and that you were a bad leader. What you learn about leadership through those first two years and those struggles I shut down.
Nick Pasqua:We lose a game, mad at everybody in the world. There is no big picture. That was the worst thing that could have ever happened to us. We just lost one game, and so then I let one become two and two become three, and I can never get past it. I felt like I had so much to prove personally. I was so selfish in that I've got to prove that I can be a good coach. I've got to do it right now, and if I can't do it right now, everybody around me is gonna just feel how much it bothers me, and I don't think people respond well, and I learned this my first year.
Nick Pasqua:If you get up in front of a group and you start telling them I watch this much film, I stay up all night, I work this hard, they're gonna tune you out because all I'm up there telling them is I'm doing this, I'm doing this, it's, it's all about me and it's not. Until you sit down with players and start showing them film one-on-one in your office and you start talking through things with them in a calm, mature, reasonable, adult way. The world's not ending right now, but these are the next steps for us to get better. It was never one, or the next steps. It was like we just got beat tonight. We better come out and win the next game, or else, or run, run, run, do this. I'm gonna punish, you, punish, you, punish. I was awful in those regards and it's not my personality and that was the other thing that really bothered me. Looking back at it, I lent all those external factors change everything about how I wanted to lead and what I wanted to be at.
Nick Pasqua:Now, I mean, there's still like if we could be, I'm still not very happy about it, but there's a way to handle it. There's a way, then, to shape it with your team, to use it as motivation in a positive way. How can we reinforce what we need to do better? You know, after we get beaten out, we'll show more good clips than we show bad clips. We'll show more positive than we do bad, and it's kind of vice versa. If we win a game, we'll show more bad than we show good. I think there's something to some of that. I think they kind of expect you to come in and just grill them. I think if you look at the best coaches anytime you heard, if Alabama football ever lost a game, coach Saban was usually his calmest with the media or his players and giving them the most credit whenever they didn't do very well, and then, whenever they were winning and just blowing people out, he was going nuts about the smallest little thing. So I think there's something to it and it was just all bad all the time, nonstop.
Dan Krikorian:Just I think that's how I was a really poor leader Love to ask you about certain conversations in your life around the time when you got fired, the two months and then you decided to take, you know, one of the worst division two jobs in America and at that time I think, as you said, you had a wife and a family and you're moving to a different state. Mm-hmm, that's obviously probably a tough decision and conversations, and what were those like, and who are the people in your life that you talked to about? Hey, I'm gonna do this.
Nick Pasqua:They weren't easy. Oh, never forget the day I got fired. Three days Before that we found out my wife was pregnant with our second child. Talk about just getting smacked in the face. I mean, we had a son who was at the time probably a year and a half. So here you are, thinking I just moved, we bought a house, we renovated the house, I've got a kid now a kid on the way.
Nick Pasqua:All I know my only job has been coaching basketball. That's what I'm passionate about, is what I feel like I'm good at, even though the results don't show it right now. That's what I want to do. My wife is a nuclear engineer, so she's got all the brains and she had a really good job that made a heck of a lot more than the division two basketball coach. And so going home and telling her I got fired, I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means I don't go back to work and we keep falling your job because obviously that's a better moneymaker for us right now, and I'll never forget sitting down talking to her and it got down to. If I want to keep doing this For this coming year.
Nick Pasqua:I had college coaches I consider mentors. Tell me, don't do it. It's probably better if you to sit out a year and go there and coaches kind of go there and Nothing ever changes. They never change and you're gonna be stuck and you're never gonna win and that's not good for what you just came from like you need to really think about just sitting out of here.
Nick Pasqua:I can't do it. I got too much to prove. I can't just go out after what I just did and that two months going back watching myself like it. I can't go out like that. That can't be the last time I ever think about. That's how I did it and and credit to my wife. She said we're gonna do it, we're gonna go, and so we did it. Luckily there was a nuclear plant 15 miles down the road from us, but we had no idea at the time and we kind of went on faith and we're gonna give it another shot and see, and so she deserves a ton of credit for Allowing me to even think about pursuing it and going there and having that opportunity.
Dan Krikorian:Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at huddle and their latest product, huddle in stat. Whether for podcast prep, newsletter ideas or Putting together our weekly short and long-form video breakdowns, we rely heavily on huddle in stats advanced analytics, an extensive content library containing over 360 us and international competitions. For more information on huddle in stat, visit huddlecom. Slash slapping glass today. The season is here, but we know that many coaches are already looking ahead at international trips in 2024 and 25. Ourselves, along with a number of former podcast guests, cannot say enough great things about our experiences Working with Josh Erickson and his team at beyond sports. From handling flights, hotels, game scheduling, excursions, service learning opportunities and more, josh and his team provide unmatched service and support throughout the entire trip. To learn more about why more than 650 programs have trusted beyond sports, visit beyond sports tours Com and tell them slapping glass sent you.
Patrick Carney:Now that you decided to accept this position and, knowing that it's gonna be a tough position and there's gonna be some more losing ahead, how do you start to rebuild this program, or what is then the most important things for you when you get in that door and start to take over?
Nick Pasqua:I think the first thing is they have to understand that You're gonna do it a different way than they've done it. And it was really really hard for me that year because we had just only one six games but six wins that's who was triple what they had been winning. So I had something I could sell, so we stole that. We're gonna do it a different way. We're gonna operate how I think most probably good D2's, the low D1's, operate. We're gonna find a way to do it. We'll raise the money. We redid the locker room. We did all this stuff me and my father-in-law redid it all buy our hands, pay the four out of my own pocket, like. We did all that just to make them feel like you're at a D2 basketball program. And so I thought the first thing that was important was they had to feel some type of change. But then also I knew they were probably gonna test Every step of the way.
Nick Pasqua:Is this guy really gonna do what he says he's gonna do If you don't go to class or they're really gonna be consequences if you show up two minutes late? Is he gonna follow through with what he says he's gonna do? Is he gonna be like how it's been before and the players kind of ran to the thing and whatever went with now. So I also think you can't come in with a three-ring binder of a thousand rules and think it's gonna work. I think you have to have three or four things that you're gonna be on top of, consistent with as anything, and if you rule yourself to death Then I don't think you can lead either. You just fall in a manual and and I don't think that works either. So I think that takes all the personal Relationship part out of it. So I thought we had to have three to four very consistent things that we were gonna be about and then force those daily, whether that's on the floor or off the floor, and if you're not gonna uphold that, then you can't continue with us. And that's why we started with 17 and we got to seven, and three of those seven were back for the next year. And it's not like you're going in looking to kick every kid off by any means. But and that was never the intent but this is how good programs are gonna operate and this is how they do operate. And it was probably more players coming in to me and just saying coach, this is it for me. I just don't want to do this, and that was fine too, because something had to change.
Nick Pasqua:I hear it all the time, and I believed it for a long time too as an assistant Don't take a bad job for your first job. Well, most of the time, as an assistant coach to get a shot at being a head coach, you're gonna take a bad job unless you're inheriting one. They're not gonna come higher. An assistant coach with no head coaching experience to lead a top 25 team in the country, like it's just never gonna happen unless you're already there on staff and you inherit it. So that's really your only way.
Nick Pasqua:And I hear it all the time like if you get a chance to take a head job, I mean you got to do it, that's what you want to do, and then you have to work and work and find ways to build it, and I think that's where you grow and you learn.
Nick Pasqua:And that's why I say that at first year it was so important for me because I changed so much and Changed how I looked at the game and studied the game and everything else. But the young coaches trying to get that first job, like you're gonna have to take a bad one. You have to understand that you're gonna get humbled and you're probably not gonna go 25 and 3 in your first year and win the league. I mean, it may happen, it may not, but the chances of it happening probably aren't that great and you've got to be okay with it. And you've got to understand that there's a process to it all and those first two years you're forming so much that you Dots you knew that you don't. I feel like that's such a Misconception out there, like you got to wait for the right one.
Patrick Carney:Well, if you're gonna wait for the right one, you're gonna be waiting a really, really long time to what were your three to four Rules or things that you held important when you came into that first year?
Nick Pasqua:But I think the first thing was effort. We're gonna give maximum effort and then we try to say that's gonna be on the court, that's gonna be coming in on time, that's gonna be doing the maximum effort. And study hall Anytime. We had kind of watched we were played against them. It just didn't play for it. It just wasn't anything that motivated them. It seemed like and looking at what the team GPA had been, we're gonna increase our effort. We're gonna measure your success more this first year on effort and Effort is a huge thing to me.
Nick Pasqua:I mean we talked to our team if we're having a coach your effort, I we can't coach execution. Effort has to be a non-negotiable. If we're coaching your effort, you gotta play harder, you gotta rotate better, you gotta do those things. Then we can't come in a half-time and make adjustments or do anything like that. So effort was by far number one. We're gonna change the effort. If we change the effort it's gonna change the team dynamic. If we can change the effort, it's gonna change how everybody on campus use our program.
Nick Pasqua:I thought the second thing was we're gonna be respectful on how we do it, Like we're gonna be respectful to everybody in the dining hall, and I think it was more because of all the stuff. I was told kind of what had been going on. Like we're gonna respect people on campus, we're gonna respect officials, coaches, other players. I mean, like I told you like we had two guys on the team that got to fight an all-out brawl with each other. That goes from the gym to the residence hall, All I mean it's just WWE mayhem out there. And so we're gonna learn to be respectful and I think if we can be great at our effort, if we can be great respecting people and doing things the right way, those are gonna pay off.
Nick Pasqua:And then probably the third thing was just be on time. Just be where you're supposed to be. We had so many guys that were late to class. We had so many guys that were just walking right on time for practice. You're not gonna be ready for practice at three o'clock if you're walking in at 2.58. I mean just basic, basic things and like that's why I said we didn't come in with a thousand rules. It's just do these base things to give us a chance then to start working on some of the other things.
Dan Krikorian:We wanna transition now to a segment of the show that we call start, sub or sit. We'll give you three different options around the topic. Ask you to start one, sub one and sit one, and then we'll go ahead and flow from there. So if you're ready, we'll dive into this first one. All right, let's do it.
Dan Krikorian:We do wanna go on the core with you now, some of the stuff you're doing at Congress College. One of the things talked a little bit before merging different types of offenses together to create something unique and two offenses that I know you're a fan of, and merging. Some of the concepts are Princeton and some of the Euro flow motion stuff, and so we wanna ask about this first start, subset is what is it about merging those two offenses together that you find is most useful for the way you wanna teach offense? So, start, sub or sit, merging Princeton and Euro flow. Option one is the cutting concepts that exist between the two of them that you really like. Option two is the three man actions that can take place within both of those offenses, and then option three is just the alignments that you can play out of for both of them.
Nick Pasqua:I would start the three man alignment. So I would sub the alignment and then I would get the cutting and I would start the three man. Because you take your traditional Princeton type stuff, all right. And so if you're playing off of an elbow and you go to the high split and you got one in the opposite corner, you got three guys on that side. You can high split, you can skip it over the split, you can come for middle DHO so many different things that you can play off of that. If you go over the top to the ball side corner, the low split, all right, then that becomes a three man game with the five and the two cutters there. And so when you think about the ball screen motion, you've got usually your big lane line extended and then free throw line extended corner. So three man games right there.
Nick Pasqua:And so what we did at that transformative year that I had at SWOO my first year where I got fired and won six games we ran straight ball screen motion back, cut field over and over and over and over, and we were very continuity based and I liked the continuity of it, I liked the structure of it, but we're just too easy to guard and something's got to change. And I think guys that can teach us straight motion are incredible and how they get guys to do that, and I need some type of structure to where I feel like we can always come back to it to fix it, to teach it, to communicate it. I need some type of structure for my mind and so we took those three man alignments that year at SWOO. We designated a five man and a four man, so those two guys were kind of always together and then we had three guards. So if we got three guys on the side we called it trips, just like football. Three wide receivers on the side, so we're in trips. So we got this three man alignment and I was like we've got to find a way to not just back, cut and feel and then maybe dribble at the second cutter and send him back to where, like, we've got to do some other stuff. And this is where some of the crossover started happening.
Nick Pasqua:A lot of Princeton stuff is based on the look. When I look at you, you cut those things. And so if you imagine like a four or five's lane line extended with the ball and they look at the middle of the trips, who's free throw line extended. That's a guard. When I look at you, it's time for you to cut now. And as I'm right there waiting, I'm calling out my next action. I'm telling the big what I'm going to do.
Nick Pasqua:So now we're taking a bunch of different offices so we would back, cut and feel and then come sell UCLA screen for the big. So everything was sold by the back cut, back, cut, feel, back, cut straight up the lane line to set up UCLA, and then we would step out, look for the shot, look for the high low. One year we played to some middle ball screen either we go sit it if it was the four in the middle, or if our four cut off the UCLA. Then the five came in middle ball screen roll hold and that one that just cut off the UCLA replaced and we could keep the continuity still going, and so that gave us something different. I mean, I feel like little on big UCLA screens are hard to guard. They're really hard to guard when you don't know they're coming.
Nick Pasqua:And so if we had just gone back, cut on the first side and then another action we had was where the big would have it and we would come for a handoff from there. So if teams wanted to play more packed or if they were trying to point switch stuff, we would come for a handoff. We could either play to it. If he didn't get it, he'd finish his cut to the other side, creating trips over there, and we play a two man game on that side. And so now it's like we could go back cut, we could chase over the top next time.
Nick Pasqua:We end up setting the UCLA, and so we've moved you around side to side different ways and now you just had a guard of ball screen and now you're getting hit with the UCLA screen and you can't switch it and we're trying to finish our cuts to the other side so you can't stop in the hole and help. And so we ended up building in like eight to nine different things that those guys in the middle of the trips could be calling at any point, and so that gave us the motion part of it. I never knew what we were gonna be doing in the midst of those trips, but we knew we had seven, eight, nine different things that we could do. So that started giving the guys a little more freedom in it. It started freeing them up to feel like they were making some decisions in it, it started making it really hard to scout. So you may work on how you're gonna guard that UCLA, but when you don't know when it's coming.
Nick Pasqua:It's really hard to guard If we dribble at you like we really got good at back cutting or coming for a handoff, freedom defenders, things like that. So if you go straight, ball screen motion teams are gonna point, switch you high, low, switch, whatever you wanna call it nonstop and take stuff away by doing all that stuff. We never went against that because you can't do it, because sometimes it's UCLA, sometimes it's handoff, sometimes it's a back cut, and so we did that for two years. And then my last year at SWOO, our four best players were four really really good guards and they were six, two and under all four of them, it doesn't matter, we gotta put all four of these guys on the floor at the same time. So the ball screen motion pretty much isn't gonna look the same with four, six, two guys and one five. But I didn't wanna go just straight Princeton, we're gonna throw it to the elbow every time. We did some five out things too early in the year but we got really stagnant five out the driving lanes. The stuff just wasn't quite the same. So we went back to pretty much playing ball screen motion with one big and then we started tinkering with it. We let him be anywhere in the trip and so most ball screen motions.
Nick Pasqua:You're sitting that big right up the lane line and a lot of times that stops middle ball screens, like it's hard to put somebody, like if they're in, drop and you get to the nail with the bigs feeling right through there and it's just a mess in the middle of the floor. We started giving him rules. You can play in the corner, you can play in the middle of the trips, you can play at the top. Obviously, if you're playing at the top, we can do any of those actions we just talked about. If you're playing in the middle, we want you to slide to the pinch, all right. So right off the elbow, where the big catches it in the Princeton, all right. So if you're the top, we're going to hit you with all these ball screen continuity actions.
Nick Pasqua:If you're in the middle of the trips and the guards got it above you, you're going to slide right there to the elbow, and now we're going to be playing out of some Princeton concepts. If you're down in the corner, we're going to burn or we're going to cut the 45 in front of you and then you're going to sprint into a step up and we'll throw it to you and play to a get. If we're in an empty ball screen with the guard and the big on the side and we've got three guards in the trips over there and we would play to like some Princeton dribble at back cut post action, just back cut and drive it behind. We just had a variation of things there. So that's how we started then taking the ball screen motion, doing it with one big, implementing Princeton stuff into it, and then we just kind of morphed it there. But all those are kind of out of the three man alignment. That's a very long winded way of getting to your answer no.
Nick Pasqua:I loved it.
Dan Krikorian:You're on the right podcast with this coach, so no worries at all. A couple of places I actually would love to go, but one of them is that you said something kind of interesting about spacing not being great, when you were kind of in five out alignments at times, and I think a lot of times people think, hey, spacing five out, it just is naturally spaced, but, as you know, it's not always the case and I guess you mentioned a couple of things how you tried to fix that. But what is it sometimes about five out when the spacing gets bogged down, and what you think about needing to do to open spaces?
Nick Pasqua:If you're going to go five out and your five can't shoot it and they just play in the paint, it's a nightmare. If you don't have enough shooting around it, it gets even worse because you're just going to plug gaps. The thing about the ball screen motion is you're playing an empty side, you reject the ball screen, you get to the baseline, you teach your cutting action on the weak side or your stay actions or screen backs. Whatever you want to do, we're putting pressure on the rim. I just found it really really hard to put pressure on the rim five out because we had a hard time driving it.
Nick Pasqua:The defense was pretty much playing either up the line or in gaps, so they're fairly stationary and the guy that was, let's say, the balls on the left wing. If I'm guarding the guy on the right corner, I can really be heavy in that hole and we can exit out on the weak side or whatever on a skip and the closeouts aren't long enough. The ball didn't move quick enough. We're going from the top of the key to a slot like one dribble into a DHO which is fairly easy to navigate. All right, you want to go in down screen into like a double DHO and we can switch the first one and then blow up the next one or slide through it. So pace for me is huge.
Nick Pasqua:If we're not playing with pace, none of this stuff is going to work. We're going to give you simple actions, but we're going to do it at such a pace and be able to make those reads so quick and then attack you where you mess up before you can get back to it. But in the five out I felt like we had no pace. You had to be able to make tough shots and to be able to jab a guy back and then create space, and I wasn't into it. And that doesn't mean if you got the dues to go do it. I think it's incredible and really hard to guard, but we had to create advantages for our guys into our actions and I didn't think in the five out we were doing a very good job of that.
Patrick Carney:Coach, you mentioned the importance you place on pace in the half court. What are you routinely working on with your guys in practice and you mentioned a little bit on communication too that help you build pace into the half court and get through these actions efficiently and effectively.
Nick Pasqua:We're fortunate enough to get time in August, september, before practice starts in October with them. We'll start from day one. We have what we call three second break. On a make, we got to be across the half line into our stuff at 27 on the shot clock. On a miss, three seconds run for advantage and then we've got to be able to flow into our stuff. So initially with a 30 second shot clock, it's an advantage to be able to run more offense. You need to be able to take advantage of that. I see a lot of teams in college with a 30 second shot clock that don't initiate any offense until 17, 18 on the clock and you're wasting all the extra time that you do get. First we're going to get it up the floor and into our stuff, into our initial actions, as fast as we can and then within that.
Nick Pasqua:I'm not as big on making the right read. I think sometimes people get so caught up into reading their defender that they lose an advantage. I would rather you cut hard with pace and maybe it wasn't the right read, but we're continuing to keep our advantage then to sit and wait and let this defender catch back up to me, just so I can read how he's guarding me. If you're moving in at such a pace they can't keep up with you. So there's nothing really to read. You just start relying on the actions that you've been practicing since the beginning of the year, and so we do a lot of 3 on 0, 4 on 0 breakdown on the side. We'll give them 20 seconds in the half court. You've got to get four legit sides of offense in these 20 seconds, not just running around just so we can do a drill, but like scoring cuts, scoring cuts, everything's got to be a scoring cut. I was preaching it all week this past week. In practice we don't have enough scoring cuts Like our back cuts are just to run offense. I mean, we've been working on this since August and we're still preaching it now Like it's something every single day has got to be on their mind. If it's not a scoring cut, you know I'm not helping us. If I'm not putting pressure on the rim, I'm not helping us, and then we will also really spend a lot of time on fixing it in the middle of the possession. How do we reset? And I think that's where we can keep our pace a lot Like we said right now.
Nick Pasqua:We said, a lot of empty flares. An empty flair in the middle of a possession is a nightmare to guard. An empty flair, anytime, is really hard to guard. When you've got a shooter coming off of you, you're going to chase it, you're going to go under, you're going to do all this different stuff.
Nick Pasqua:But in the middle of possession, being able to fix it in an action that we know, instead of pulling it out and running a high ball screen and everybody knows it's coming and everybody's going to guard it the same way how can we fix it in the middle of possession? That's where our pace we feel like our pace in the beginning and then in the middle has to be as good as it was in the beginning, in the middle, right there, to keep an advantage. And we get more back cuts at the end of the shot clock. We get more slips on ball screens, baseline driestro layups I refuse to back it out from the high flash screen. We've got a term we use to indicate we're 10 or less on the shot clock, which means say we need to be thinking about getting to a ball screen to try to get downhill and get a paint touch and see if we can create something, but that doesn't mean we're backing it out and running a high flat one every time.
Patrick Carney:Coach, with the fix that you mentioned, get into an empty flair.
Nick Pasqua:We've got a hole and this is part of this whole three-man alignment again, like we've kind of morphed a lot of different things even the last year and a half. If we're coming down the right side, we got a five on the block and we got top of the key, so we're going to extend the corner on the other side, so we've got our trips built over there. We've got a whole series of actions that we can do from that empty side with the ball, whether it's a ball screen, and then we really got into this year. On an empty ball screen, how can we move the trips to take away tags on the empty roll and how can we move the nail? How can we move the hole? If we can move those two, then we're going to be able to use the ball screen, hit the roll, hit the diagonal on the roll. We spend a lot of time on that and then it's okay, we've got pretty good at that. What's something else that's really hard to guard on the week You've got a shooter coming off an empty flair and there's nobody in that corner. You can bump and fade it, you can wrap it to the rim. There's all types of different ways to attack it. So what we try to do is okay, we've got our empty alignment, we've got our balanced alignment where we've got two up top, two free throw line extended, one at an angle, like your basic Princeton type alignment, and then we've got just your trips alignment where we've got a five with the ball and then two guys underneath them.
Nick Pasqua:We work out of our empty alignment, our trips alignment and our balanced alignment and what we would do is they would run something, we would run a set or an action or whatever we wanted to focus on. They would shoot it and then I would just throw a ball to one of them and they've got to figure out, based on what that alignment is, what's the next action. And we did that for a month straight Once they got it. I mean, you're talking about three different alignments, so it's not like 10 or 12, three different alignments. All right, this is where I am, this is where the ball is. What's the next best action? And that taught them then how to play out of different alignments and fix it and do what.
Nick Pasqua:So if we get screwed up and then all of a sudden like we got an empty alignment, we're not screwed up anymore. If we're balanced, we're not screwed up anymore. If we got trips, we're not screwed up anymore, and so it just takes time to practice it. I mean, we would circle them up and just kind of throw it somewhere and they got to figure it out from there. Or we would run an action and I'd throw the ball to somebody and somebody else would get to rebound. A coach underneath the basket Get it. I just throw it to a random person. All right, what are we in now? And they got to figure it out like that and that's how we can keep the pace. Hopefully in the middle of possession we still have days where we don't do it nearly as well, but to me it's a lot more effective than just high ball screen at the end of the clock.
Dan Krikorian:We are always happy to work with companies, coaches and creators who add value to coaches and the industry. So we're very excited to announce our newest partner and the official presenter of Start Subbersit, just Play. Just Play is the premier platform for engaging your team and managing workflow within your organization. Just Play consolidates the platforms you use and integrates with industry leading video tools to help coaches win in four major areas teaching, opponent scouting, prospect recruiting and analytics. So for more information, visit JustPlaySolutionscom. Slash Slapping Glass today.
Patrick Carney:Coach, our last Start Subbersit for you has to do with. We call it transfer success. So, as you mentioned, with your time at Southern Wesleyan, your secondary brought in a bunch of new guys and you kind of pride yourself on being able to bring in some underlooked, underutilized transfers. So we call this critical conversations to transfer success. Which one of these three is the most important to the success of a transfer you bring in or want to bring in? Is it a conversation about the transfers, past struggles, past situations, or why he's looking to transfer? Is it a realistic conversation of the current assessment of where he's at, where your program is at, or is it the conversation about future expectations and future growth that your program can bring to this player and hopefully that player can bring to your program?
Nick Pasqua:Those are all good and everybody's got their own way of handling transfers and what they value. For me it's pretty easy to start with the future growth either of the program or them. The sub would probably be a current assessment. The step would probably be the past troubles. Everybody's transferring because there is some form of probably past trouble, unless you're at another level where it's NIO money and this and that, and then that changes everything. But at our level the past troubles don't affect my decision making a whole lot. I mean it's a new opportunity to be having a conversation with the kid. There's enough there for me to want to find out more. By looking at it I can probably tell what some of the past troubles were, at least on the court.
Nick Pasqua:But when I was at SWOO we took most of the transfers were D2 transfers that came from winning programs. If we were going to take something that just won two games, I can't go bring in other guys that just won six. It's not going to help us. We've got to change that. I mean it was a non-negotiable. My assistant thought I was crazy. I think probably at the time there was two or three kids that were real talented that we probably could have gotten the mixed four, but their teams won eight, nine games. This is one thing we're not going to bend on and I'm glad I stuck to it. And then that kind of led to is it better to take somebody? So we took a transfer from Lincoln Memorial, we took a transfer from Queens, we took a transfer from Carson Newman, we took a transfer from Lander. We took from the best D2 Southeast programs. That's where we took kids from. All right, the kid from Lander ended up that year. He had one year left and he actually registered during the two-win year my first year. We're not going to burn this for this thing Like we're not going to do it. I know you won't play, but you're going to sit so you can graduate. At the time he had to because the transfer rules were different. But then he averaged six points at Lander he averaged 17 a game for us. He was tournament MVP, he was first team all-league.
Nick Pasqua:We took a transfer from Queens, big kid that was really talented, undersized five, but physical because pass it, shoot it. He averaged like three a game at Queens. He averaged 12 and eight for us and was all tournament and tournament. And then the kid from LMU brought a dynamic of we're not going to lose. This is how much extra work you got to put in. This is what it looks like to be good.
Nick Pasqua:But if I'd been scared away with six points and three points and these things I also then look at and Synergy is so huge for us like when you evaluate this stuff too how efficient were they in the time that they did get? Not how many points did they average, but how efficient were they when they did get in. And so if they're playing 10 to 12 minutes a game, I mean they average five points. Average five points. I mean how much do you want them to average in 10 to 12 minutes? But how efficient were they in getting those five points a game? Are their points per possession near one or they point seven, eight If they're near one or in the nines, this is a realistic thing If they fit a need for us whether that size, position, iq, shooting, passing they fit our system. But how efficient were they?
Nick Pasqua:I don't think you can make a non-efficient player really efficient. I think you can make a guy that's pretty efficient really efficient by cutting out some dribbles, changing some shot selection, teaching them a little more on how we do things. I think sometimes those things. But you can't take a guy that's a point seven, five and make him a one. That's not going to happen. And also at Swoo we weren't going to get the best transfer guys, period. They're not going to come here Like we just won two games, and so you have to be realistic too on who you can get. You can still get good players if you look at efficiency over totals. To me We've kind of done the same thing here.
Nick Pasqua:I mean, we got a kid right now averaging 21 a game for us. He was at a D2 and average seven. We got off to a 91 start this year, and so at Converse this is only the third year there's even been a basketball team. There was an all women's school until three years ago and so we started out 91, we're number 22 in the country. And this kid he played maybe a total of 25 or 30 minutes of the D2. He was at before and he's a six five. Italian kid can shoot it. Playmate IQ off the charts. That's everything we need. He ended up tearing his ACL in that 10th game when we started nine and one. But he was averaging like 17, five and five, shooting mid 40s from three, didn't play at all at his previous school. And we've got another kid transferred here. That's ever 17 a game that was not nearly as efficient as he's been for us, just by changing a few things.
Nick Pasqua:So, I think, finding how they fit, selling that potential growth, and now we can sell that to other transfers. I know you average five points a game where you were before and that's all they really want. No, I mean, are we going to win and how many am I going to average? I mean we're not passing out in IO money here, so how many shots am I going to get? How many games are we going to win? Coach, well, looking at your efficiency, we can take you from here to here.
Nick Pasqua:I think, and this is what we've done with some of guys last three years. If you kind of follow what we asked you to do, this is what's going to happen for you. I'm not an analytical nerd by any means. I think some of it gets way blown out of proportion and you can spend way too much time and you don't trust what your eyes tell you. And if I hadn't trusted my eyes when I saw the kid that we brought up, like he wouldn't be here, just based off of numbers, you would have just blown it off. Nothing would ever happen. But you can look at video, you can look at, you know how efficient they are and tell whether they can fit what you need or not.
Patrick Carney:In prioritizing transfers from winning programs. What do you notice from a character standpoint? What those guys that are coming in that have been in a winning program prior to?
Nick Pasqua:I think they're just a lot more coachable. I think they understand the importance of everything you ask them to do. I think if you take somebody from a bad program and when I say bad program, it's not just necessarily maybe what their record is, but what they're allowed to do when they leave we had seven players on the president's list this past year. I think our GPA is a 3.2, but you have to target that stuff and these guys that you're recruiting. It has to be part of it, similar to making somebody that's not efficient. Efficient. You're not going to take somebody with a 2-1 and then they're going to have a 3-1 with you. It's probably not going to correlate. We're fairly intentional in all of those things too. But at good programs you go to study hall and there's a consequence if you don't. You go to the strength coach and there's a consequence if you don't. You're early to practice. You're not walking in right on time. You get your extra work in.
Nick Pasqua:We had guys in the fall and it's the first time it's ever really happened for me and it's taken a while to get there, but we had to bring a kid in and like, look, you're going to have to back off some of this extra work you're putting in. You're wearing yourself out and it's September. I love that we're having this conversation with you, but finding guys that is that important to them. That kid also has a 3.9 GPA and a biology major that I can't even comprehend, but it matters that much to them.
Nick Pasqua:I think guys that come from winning programs they understand the extra work it takes. They understand where coaches are coming from when they're on. They understand the importance of details and why this really matters. If I catch it a step off the free throw line extended or if I catch it a step higher, there's a difference in those two. If somebody coming from where that hasn't been as big a deal, this dude has lost his mind. He's worried over a foot right here. This isn't for me. I think all those things accumulate and build up into that Nick might follow up.
Dan Krikorian:That's to do with transfers and building new rosters. Every year Roll clarity with. We talked a little bit about realistic expectations and realistic assessments of their game of things, that they thought they were somewhere else and sometimes guys transfer and it's a clean slate. I think they're going to be someone totally different in a new spot For you really having those conversations, looking at where they were effective and getting them to quickly buy in to whatever role so that you guys can win games.
Nick Pasqua:We spent more time with player one-on-one meetings in that preseason Watching film. This is a bad shot because you took two unnecessary dribbles. You're taking a contested one. If you made an extra pass, then they drive it. You can probably drift right behind and get an open one. I like showing them those things. And then these are the shots we want you to take. At your previous school you shot this. Then we may have five clips of them taking terrible shots. All right, we cut these five shots out. You go from a 32% three-point shooter to a 38, 39% three-point shooter. You want to keep playing past here. You want a chance to play in Europe or wherever. You better be shooting 40 plus from three or they're not going to fool with you. There's so many guys that can shoot mid-30s. Quit taking bad shots. You quit taking a dribble before every shot. You quit dribbling into shots. Your game is going to change. You're going to be more efficient. We're going to be better. You're going to be better. Everybody will get along a lot better.
Patrick Carney:On that note, you said it's hard to take non-efficient players and make them efficient. You mentioned some habits just now. But what are habits of these, let's say, non-efficient players? You notice that are maybe too big of a hurdle for you. That would make you want to undertake them.
Nick Pasqua:I think if it's obvious that they're in love with the ISO James Harden, dribble three times, four times, five times between my leg and take a step back, and that you see it happen more than once, not just maybe five seconds on the shot clock. There's 20, 25 seconds on the shot clock and you choose to take this type of shot, no matter how hard I fight that battle or no matter how many guys we've got on our team right now that believe in what I'm asking them to do. That's going to be really hard for him to change. Maybe the structure that I want us to play within probably just doesn't fit him. Maybe he's really talented, but I don't know if I can live with that. I don't think our offense can play with that pace that I talked about we want to play with. If we've got a ball stopper and they're talented to me, then you're sacrificing on what these other guys we've recruited to fit all this other stuff they fit. Then you bring in somebody that is a ball stopper, somebody that's going to just probably come through the lane and hope for fouls, not be able to play off of two feet. You don't see any chance of changing. We're going to work on our pivot game. There are times to play off of one. Can they comprehend that? Or are they just going to put their head down and run through the line and charge and make bad decisions?
Nick Pasqua:I look at a lot of passing too, how well they pass it. Are they a willing passer or are they passing it on time? You would be shocked at how many kids at our level can't pass it with either hand. They can't pass it with the right hand and they can't pass it left-handed. If you're left-handed, they can't pass it right-handed, and we'll spend the first three weeks of our preseason teaching them how to pass with either hand. I mean, guys are still trying to make what the chest pass you learned in the second grade and overhead pass, and so I look at lot at passing and Are they able to pass it with either hand? You would think it would be an easy fix and if you're gonna run a timing-based Offense that's based on pace and cutting and movement and you can't pass the ball, your office ain't gonna work.
Dan Krikorian:Nick, you're off the start-subberset hot seat. Thanks for going through with that. That was fun getting on the court talking tactical a little bit. So thank you very much. We've got one last question before we close the show before we do really appreciate you coming on and Sharing your story, being so open and going through all this stuff. It was a lot of fun for us today.
Nick Pasqua:I enjoyed it as well.
Dan Krikorian: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?
Nick Pasqua:That's a hard one, you know. I look at that and I've kind of touched on it probably a little bit. I look at that second year where we won two games as being the transformative, probably year of my coaching career. It changed how I looked at the game. It changed how I treated players.
Nick Pasqua:If we lost the game I felt like I was the worst everything in the world, learning like if you're gonna go to in 26, you better find a way to be able to Compartmentalize some of that, to find new ways to be efficient when you've got seven players, to find new ways of doing things.
Nick Pasqua:And if it hadn't been for that year, I mean I would have hoped some of these changes would have happened, but I don't think they would have been at the speed they did happen at. And I'm really thankful that my wife was willing to Pick up and move to a place that not much was promised that you know she's not willing to do that. Then these next four or five years, whatever it's turned out to be, they don't ever happen. I'm just thankful for that transition process from getting fired, find something that was outside the box To going through that first year where it was a struggle every day to figure out. How do we have enough to practice, who's on the team, how can we be competitive? I can't even probably describe Every probably category of coaching got touched during that season.
Dan Krikorian:All right, pat, let's dive right into this. It's always great when Coach comes on, is willing to kind of just open up about things that can be harder to talk about in the career. But I think I mean you know, I know a lot of people still listening know, like how important it is to have these conversations about the hard decisions and the difficult paths that a lot of coaches have to take in this journey. And I thought Coach Pasquale was unbelievable today, disgusting his journey and opening up about some of the things that hurt him and then his growth, and so one of my favorite conversations in that first bucket for sure, I agree.
Patrick Carney:I mean I think most, if not all, careers are built off of mistakes At some point or the other and learning from those mistakes. So as you hit on, I mean we were grateful for him to come on and share, like he said. I think he was pretty open and honest about, you know, all the high hopes he had taken over that young, 30 year old head coach and just kind of falling flat on his face and Self-assessing and evaluating and sharing that he was a bad leader, bad dad, you know, bad everything, and which was obviously Interesting itself. But then I think what we're also excited about is how do you grow from?
Dan Krikorian:there. We talk about this a lot, but this is just a ridiculous profession that we all decided to undertake, but there's no degree you get to prepare you for all the things that take place and there's really no book or how to, because every team, every season, every game, every practice is so different and sometimes the biggest learnings take place when you just get punched square in the face. And I wrote down the Tobin Anderson Podcast myself as well, because when you got into taking a tough job and sometimes as an assistant, he talked about the decision to take that first one and people told him, hey, probably don't order the second one, probably don't take it. And Tobin Anderson had mentioned to a while back about how, when he took over one of the worst jobs or a really difficult job, that that's sometimes what you got to do to just get your foot In the door and start building and learning. And one of the universal takeaways I had from the first bucket was the difficult transition Most coaches have to make of when you do become the head coach, of being comfortable being yourself.
Dan Krikorian:And I think that's something he said right off the top was one of his failures early, was it? He was trying to be someone else trying to be. You know the coach that he coached under before you know Nine seasons in a successful program and tried to just rinse and repeat and that was one of the things Driving him to not feel like himself, not coach like himself. And that's, I think, a universal process that we all go through, because we try to emulate how we were coached or what we see on TV or reading a book, and then the evolution and process of becoming yourself is Really hard, yeah like you mentioned, the top.
Patrick Carney:It's just such a weird profession and but there being no one way to do it. So when you do get this first job, like you said, for the last, in his case, I think, the last nine years he only knew one way, one program and his one head coach. So it's easier said than done. Okay, well, now I got to be myself, but there's tendency, habits, that you're gonna fall back on that. Because of what you've seen the last nine years, you know it's like what references do you have at this point in your young career? Yeah, and it gets really hard and then, yeah, you kind of maybe you go too far down the rabbit hole, so to speak, and you're in too deep and you realize this isn't even me. But can you get out of this point?
Dan Krikorian:And he had a couple nuggets I like to about leadership. I think we're really good. He had the quote something to the effect of you really yourself to death, you don't think you can lead. So if you really yourself to death, you don't allow the Breathing room to lead through certain situations. I thought that was really good too. And I'll just add on top of that, my first year as a head coach, when I was back at the high school level really young head coach and you just think that if I just add more rules, yeah, I can control the situation or I can see like I'm in power, but then it strips you of opportunity to lead or to get situation on its own. And I know I 100% may have made that mistake myself. And, yeah, I hit home.
Patrick Carney:When he talked about that, he mentioned you lose the relationship piece of it when you have so many rules. We have so many rules. It's what really is important to you, but there's gonna be circumstances where someone breaks a rule with a legitimate reason. Are you just gonna start making exceptions to every rule? Or you know every rule has an addendum to the rule?
Dan Krikorian:And it is so hard because when you're young, you're trying to be in control, yeah, and have the power dynamic and have respect, and I think that the default is just if I make them follow rules and be tough and Don't bend on this, then they'll respect me. And, though that is maybe true in some instances and he mentions that he still does have things that they value, are important, but you just don't leave the room to handle a situation that maybe, like you just mentioned, someone late for a reason, or you know the million things that come up during the season that we all know he mentioned it too, which goes the leadership piece everything was based off of if we won or lost.
Patrick Carney:You know he lost sight of that it's a process and that if you're doing things the right way, the wins come, but more so just being so results driven that he never could get away.
Dan Krikorian:And my last thought on all this, before we move on to start subsit, I asked them about the family piece to and all this. And I know right now, as this episode's coming out, it's starting to be the offseason and jobs are coming open and the job is the job. But for him, I thought it was really cool to hear him talk about mentors. He talked to his family and taking those chances and those are like major, major parts of this whole thing too is how that fits into it and spring coming up here pretty soon spring and summer, where people are going to be moving, taking on different opportunities, and that's a major part for a lot of people Of this whole thing and I thought he just spoke well on that element, to my agree.
Dan Krikorian:So, moving to start subsit, we enjoyed discussing these beforehand, you and I, and talking with coach Pasqua before we came on. We knew that he loved Melding the we'll start with the Princeton and the Euro flow and talking offense and all those things, and that was a niche we wanted to scratch for sure. So we'll throw it back to you on the merging of Princeton and Euro flow and what ended up being his start, which was three-man actions and all that, but what were your takeaways there? I?
Patrick Carney:was also excited to have this conversation, probably because, again, like you mentioned in our research, to just how he connected these actions, which are things the conversation we've had a lot within possessions, how do you flow from one to the next, how do you connect?
Patrick Carney:He went obviously very thorough, starting with his trips and how they just build it. And you know, one of my takeaways too was when he went with four guards and then he had like really one big and not Confining him to just running one lane but saying basically their offense was going to be shaped around where he kind of ended up on those trips. At times I think he said obviously if it was in the slot position, it was the year of both continuity that we talked about, that he went through. But then if it was middle they'd be able to flow in a print and if it was in the corner, then they're getting those step ups, those get action, those blind pigs. So I'll throw it back to you because I mean I had a couple. I liked how we, when we got into the pace conversation but don't want to get too far ahead of myself.
Dan Krikorian:Yeah, two points that stood out that I think he spoke really well on for this question specifically, playing five out doesn't automatically mean your spacing's good. Sometimes I think you just feel like, hey, if we're all five out, there's spacey on the floor, and he talked about why that's not the case and I think that that's really important. And the cutting, the three man actions, the alignments of mixing these two things were great. But I liked hearing his thoughts on with the five out spacing that, especially with teams that play the pack line and really take away gaps and all that, if you don't have creative cutting spacing options, it is more difficult. And he mentioned that. And so I liked just hearing that because I myself find that to be true when trying to teach guys is just because you start out in alignment, it's five out, it's not actually great spacing, depending on how offenses want to play, and I think that was a really big takeaway for me.
Dan Krikorian:And then the other part that I really liked was the re-triggering, the pace of the offense, which you just mentioned, and what you just said too about how that five man in the kind of five out, depending on where they were at any point in the offense.
Dan Krikorian:They could just re-trigger things quickly because they didn't need him to just flow back up to the top and get back into another delay, set the reset but things could just keep flowing because, like you just mentioned, could be in the middle of the three man side, he could be on the bottom, he could be on the top and they just knew how to play out of it. So that was another good takeaway of just the re-trigger. The last thing too that I really liked that he said is that not worrying about decisions reading and that sometimes just making the cut or getting to the screen action is better than trying to be perfect and reading it. And that played into the pace and the speed of the offense and he would rather have someone make technically the wrong read, but quickly and not overthink it because it's still better for the offense to flow overall. So I know a lot of things there, but it was well said on those kind of more universal things.
Patrick Carney:And within the pace and the fix it conversation, I like the drill he mentioned. I mean, you mentioned two I can't remember. I think another coach had references where it's just basically they circle up, he throws the ball out, you go get it and we just kind of play out of what the formation presents. But then also, yeah, playing the possession coach rebounds the ball and he just immediately fires in another ball, short shot, clock and again keep the pace, find an action out of what alignment you're in. Really liked those drills.
Dan Krikorian:Yeah, those were really good. We'll have to, I don't know, maybe bug him to do something on SG Plus for us on some of those things.
Patrick Carney:Purple contracts are binding. Afterwards. He said he'd be back on for a breakdown, so you don't have to tempt us twice.
Dan Krikorian:Exactly my last little point following up on the decisions and the speed of it, which I just think it was really good coaching point it reminded me of this is a way back podcast Steve Donahue University, penn Head Coach. He had discussed on the podcast and he also did like a round table with us to about the higher up on the floor you know away from your offensive basket you are, the less he wants his players to worry about reading the correct action, that it's more about quickly getting into their concepts and making a quick cut or making a quick, whatever it is and don't worry, 45 feet away from the basket did I read the under or the over? Just make the cut, get the motion flowing and as you get lower on the floor then that's where the reads become easier. One if you're flowing faster, and then two like become more important, obviously post-ups reading the double or coming off the on ball lower and reading that guy, but earlier on, just get that flow, whatever it is, if you make a mistake.
Dan Krikorian:So what? Move on to the next thing. You have plenty of time and, like Coach Pascua said, they wanna get into their stuff within three seconds. That allows you plenty of time to fix things later if need be. So you could tell I was trumpet at the bit this conversation. One I guess miss for me was I would have loved to have fallen up a little bit more on the flares and the empty flares and resetting. I think you and I have seen that a lot in Europe with teams, especially late clock, setting those empty flares and I think it's a really like. He mentioned hard action to guard and I would be interested to hear more of his thoughts on it.
Patrick Carney:While we're on the subject, because actually I had two within this start subset. He mentioned he's trying to constantly think about moving the nail and the tag around an empty side roll. Would have loved to have gone down that rabbit hole. And then he also talked about weak side cutting or weak side action around the reject and that empty side too, and I think he of course I'm sure the cutting, and I think he said like their weak side hold, or he mentioned something that yeah, again, if we had unlimited time, I would have loved to have fallen up there as well.
Dan Krikorian:He dangled some stuff in front of our faces over.
Patrick Carney:Yeah, yeah, he was setting himself up for the callback, yeah.
Dan Krikorian:Yeah, yeah, we're not doing three hour podcasts at this point, but we could have went there.
Patrick Carney:Dan, moving to our second start subset, the question I asked about critical conversations with transfer success. I'll throw it to you. What were your takeaways there?
Dan Krikorian:He was great on this too, as he was on everything today, and I think the thing that stuck out probably for both of us, so I'll steal it was the efficiency looking at transfers and their efficiency in whatever it is that they do.
Dan Krikorian:I'll go back to his start here in a second, but I just thought that was a great way to think about recruiting, transfers, getting to what it is that you believe in. He also talked about big takeaway was getting players from winning programs was really important, especially as he was rebuilding and just smart recruiting, smart way to use the transfer portal and him discussing. It is a school that can be difficult for certain instances, but I think he was really good at turning what could be maybe looked at as a disadvantage into an advantage. And then the start was really good too talking about their future and the growth and bringing someone in and within the efficiency discussion. Talking about this is what we can help you do. This is how we do it, obviously, as a transfer is great to hear, and then they've been able to bring it to fruition, as you mentioned.
Patrick Carney:Yeah what he mentioned kind of going after guys from winning programs. I think from two aspects that, yeah, maybe finding some underutilized talent on some deep rosters that had success, but then also the character and the standards that those guys probably are coming from and that will bring into your program is, in his case, try to turn it around or build up from scratch. I thought was also just really smart and well thought out on his end when looking at like transfer portals and guys to bring in.
Dan Krikorian:I kind of mentioned one of my misses the empty flares. I know you did as well. Was there anything else from your standpoint, just going deeper on?
Patrick Carney:Looking at my notes, those were the two things that I think really stood out to me that I would have loved to have just kind of on the tactical side. I really dived in with him, but for another day.
Dan Krikorian:Absolutely well. We thank Coach Pasquale for coming on once again. Best of luck the rest of the way, pat. There's nothing else. We'll start wrapping this up. Sounds good.
Nick Pasqua:All right thanks everybody for listening.
Dan Krikorian:We'll see you next time.
Speaker 4:Thanks, Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure to visit slappingglasscom for more information on the free newsletter, Slapping Glass Plus and much more. Have a great week coaching and we'll see you next time on Slapping Glass.
Dan Krikorian:Would we have a name yet for this thing? I have like Slapping Backboard, slapping Glass, slapping Glass, that's kind of funny. I like that. Those are all Slapping Glass.