Losing is part of Winning -Basketball Podcast Outside the Arc with RJay Barsh

This is Outside the Ark with Coach RJ Barsh discussing the game of basketball with players and coaches from around the world of hoops presented by NBC Basketball Camps. This is Outside the Ark, I'm your host, Coach RJ Barsh. We are inside the locker room here in Lakeland, Florida, Southeast University, and today we have Coach Tim Hayes, the women's basketball coach here at Southeastern University, currently has one of the nation's longest regular-season winning streaks.

They're 60-2 in their last two years. He came from Colorado Christian, played in the tough armac. He's had over 30 all-conference players and all-Americans in his tenure as a head coach.

He's coached professional basketball, he's coached Division II basketball, he's coached Division I. And now he's at the NAIA level, elevating the women's game at our level to a place that I don't think anyone's really seen in Central Florida area. So we got Tim Hayes here with us. How are you doing this morning, Tim? Hey, good.

Thanks for having me, Coach Barsh. It's exciting to have you because in watching you build your program with transfers and some competitive high school players, we're going to get right into it. There's a lot of parents that are listening and some high school coaches who are getting ready to send their girls out on the circuit to play AAU, EYBL, and everyone's pursuing that dream of Division I full-right scholarship.

As a coach, when you're recruiting and you're watching a game, could you tell us two or three things you look for when you're watching the AAU game this summer? Yeah, the simple answer for most coaches would be, hey, they're looking for scores. They're looking for people who can put up numbers. They're looking for people who defend.

Our answer is simpler than that. Can we see a purpose in their game? Do we see a passion in what they're doing? What that boils down to is culturally, we believe you have to have a why to be excellent at something. We can see that on the floor in the way somebody plays.

We break that down and say, we have these three P's. We say passion, pace, precision, and it comes in that order. If we can see that somebody's playing with some passion on the basketball court, they're having fun, they have a smile on their face, they're high-fiving teammates.

They're on the bench waving a towel when a teammate hits a shot, even in club ball, especially in club ball, when it is so individualistic. We believe that person becomes a high-level fit from that. Then we look on the court and we go, okay, pace.

They have this passion. Do they have pace in the elements of the game that aren't statistical? Do they run the floor hard? Do they rebound intentionally every time down the floor? Are they diving on those balls? And that seems so self-explanatory that that would show this purpose. But so few kids do that in a club setting because they're playing three, four games a day.

But that passion and that pace thing proceeds then the skill set that we're looking for. Then we're backing up and we're going, okay, like everybody else, can this person handle the ball? Can they finish at a high clip? Are they taking smart shots? Are they precise in their decision making? Do they know how to set up other players on the court when they've drawn a double team? Because if they're one of the better players on the floor, they're going to draw extra help. They're going to draw the best defender.

It's not always about them. Their skill set needs to compliment somebody else on the floor. So those are things that we start out with as those three beats, passion.

Do they play hard? Seems self-explanatory and every kid that we get an email from across the country says, I'm the hardest worker on my team. But I don't always see that play out in terms of their joy on the court, the way they play the game, and are they playing with a why? Let's talk about the passion part just a little bit. There's a video right now on Twitter, social media, that's going viral from the final four with Villanova.

So a Villanova player falls down next to the scores table. And from the wide lens, you see every Villanova player on the floor running to pick up this young man who just trips on the floor. And in the fray, the first person to the scores table was Coach J. Wright.

And he's picking up that young man and you see all five guys, all four guys run to his aid. And I think that's what you mean when you say passion and pace and precision is understanding that's important to win basketball games. And so if you're a parent and if you're a coach and you're talking to a parent, how do you say for a seventh grader in a basketball game this summer, what does passion look like to you? Yeah, I think it's, again, it's predictability.

Is this kid going to show up every day? Yeah. Feeling good, not feeling good, bad day at school, good day at school. Are they going to come out and predictably be coachable? If coach says, hey, get on the line, we're going to run a suicide, champion, are they sprinting to the line to get going on that task? Whatever that task is.

And at the lower levels, it could be the most simple things, a layup drill. You know, are they running hard in a layup drill? Is that predictable that that kid's going to do that every time? And I think we look at that. Is it predictable that this kid's going to be coachable? And you talked about pace too.

For our listeners, let's give them some context of what you mean by pace. I mean, statistically this year at division two, you ranked where offensively? Yeah, we were in the top three in the country. I mean, most of the year right up there, one and two battling it out with a team that was scoring a hundred points a game was the one that ultimately got that number one ranking.

But, you know, efficiency wise is what I would look at. Number of possessions. You were, we were scoring it, you know, 1.2 points per possession clip.

So it wasn't even that we were taking 90 shots a game, 80 shots a game to score 85, 90 points a game. It was, you know, it was high efficiency stuff. So that pace though, played into that.

You know, we, we ran the court hard, but understood that if we don't have something that first eight seconds, we were, we were going to go into a secondary option. And so, and this is where I want our parents and our coaches who are listening to this podcast outside the arc hosted by NBC camps and US sports camps to understand the camp experience is more than just the commodity and the night programs. We want to talk basketball.

And when you're talking about pace and efficiency, when a young lady or young men's training to play in your system, if you're watching them train, do you want to see them jumping through a hundred hoops and 10, 10 different cones, like what kind of drills do you suggest young ladies do to prepare to play fishing? Yeah. I mean, that, that leads into this off season training stuff. Okay.

And we know that younger and younger athletes now are hiring trainers. They're, they're, they're looking for outside help. They're going to camps to try to elevate their game, which is awesome.

And the investment of time and money has never been greater than it is right now for young athletes, especially you know, but what, what I look for is this, do they do the simple fundamental things? Well, are they being taught to do that? Well you know, I heard a great quote from, from coach, right? You know, at Villanova are these, are these kids at a young age being taught to dribble a straight line. Well, attack, jump, stop, pivot, make passes with the correct hand. And if you watch Villanova win a national championship with that, they dissected some, some very athletic teams by doing simple fundamentals.

Well, they don't have to over-complicate the process. Yeah. I think a newscaster or a sports analyst said during the game, this is the jump stop national championship.

Yeah. Like you, you know, and I think when you watch the girls game and even like the high level, uh, women's and men's teams, it is those small fundamentals, those small details. And so would you suggest to a parent, uh, if they're playing AAU this season, say they're going from their sophomore year in high school to their, you know, junior year in high school, and they're playing on a competitive travel team, uh, how many hours a week should they spend with a trainer if that was your daughter? Is it, you know, two hours a day and a hundred dollars a week? You know what, cause you ballparks for some of the parents and coaches, you know, what a training scenario should, maybe should look like.

Yeah. I mean, the, the important thing to keep in mind is stage of development. I think if, if you're talking to sixth, seventh, eighth grader, they shouldn't be spending more than two, three hours a week in the gym, but it should be intentional, you know, and I think if it's highly fundamental, again, teaching jump stops, dribbling right, left hand, finishing right, left hand, uh, defensive fundamentals, which rarely get talked about because kids at that age, you know, maybe don't see that as the highlight, but it also makes them stand out as they progress in their development.

Um, but I think as they develop, you know, obviously we know that the competition gets high. Once you get to a high level, uh, middle school, high school, um, you know, and I, and I think, I think you can hope to invest an hour a day in fundamentals if you're, if you want to be a high level player. Again, if it's intentional, kids don't need to spend four or five hours in the gym a day, they just need to be intentional and their pace and their passion needs to be high in that training, in that training session.

I would look for trainers that, that honestly sell fundamental development, that it's not going to be about, Hey, I'm going to teach you LeBron's skillset. I'm going to teach you how to dribble between legs behind the back through people. I don't think at a young age, that's what you have to look for.

You have to look for someone who understands the fundamental game and can execute that, uh, and help teach them that and how to apply that on a day to day basis. Yeah. At NBC camps, uh, Fred Crow, the founder, he calls that the spinach drills.

Like, you know, the, you know, the drills that people want to avoid, but the drills you have to do, uh, to be, to be strong in the game. And what was the last thing you said, uh, you know, passion pace in the last few words, precision, precision. We talked about precision a little bit.

Yeah. You know, I think, I think now we talk about, okay, this is a team game individually. There's some precise moments.

There's, there's the precision of the fundamental, excuse me, the fundamental, you know, simple as being on balance on a jump shot, uh, jump stopping and fending off on a power finish at the rim. Uh, those are precision points for individuals, but then you got to put it together as a team. Uh, you know, the hardest part is having somebody who's highly fundamental, who, who does a great job in their skillset.

Doesn't know how to set a screen for their teammate. Doesn't know how to slip a screen when that's available. So precision then starts to come into play and this could be in camp.

This could be on a team in their high school or middle school, uh, where when a coach asked them to execute a certain thing, a certain way, did they do that every time? Yeah. And that's, and that's high level stuff. People don't see that as a high level thinking mentality because it's, it's now about five out create, driving kick, read, read, react, which is all good.

And it could be precise. Um, but are you doing the things your coach is asking you to do precisely? And that could be as easy as, you know, are you pivoting a correct way as opposed to diving to the rim? Uh, those types of things. And that precision is important.

And that comes out in camp elements. You know, if you're taught a drill a certain way, are you executing that drill exactly how it's taught? All right. So for the coaches that are listening, I mean, you've reached some things in your career that most coaches aspire to do, uh, coaching at the professional level, um, taking a rebuild at Colorado Christian in the tough RMAC and then being extremely competitive, attracting some high level recruits to that institution.

And then here at South Eastern in central Florida, where you're 60 and two, you've a back to back conference championships, conference tournament championships. I mean, we, we bought a ladder that we keep in the gym because we know you're cutting the nets down in March. How do you, uh, debrief from the season? So the season's over as a coach.

What do you do to look back and say, okay, we did this well. Do you have a process? And then once you answer that, maybe take us into how do you maintain that culture going into the next year? Because it's not easy to rebuild and to continue to rebuild, but once you're at the top and you're at, and you're climbing, you're at the top, what are some of the things you've done to stay there? So just talk to us about the season's over. Uh, um, you've won a championship.

You went to the national tournament, you know, how much time do you take off? And then what does it look like getting ready for the next one? Yeah. I mean, it first starts with the athletes. I mean, I think understanding the phases of the year for them, uh, you know, they need time off.

We, we gave them a solid three weeks where I just, as much as I love them, I don't want to talk to them every day. I didn't even text most of them for three weeks. They need that break.

They need to go back to study and you need to go back to their families and spend time with their families and, and hang out and do other things that they didn't maybe have a chance to do throughout the year. Cause they're so committed to the time that it took, uh, to be excellent. Um, so I think it's understanding phases.

Now we're starting our spring workouts. Uh, that's intentional. Okay.

We're, we're looking at what was it that we were missing as an individual skill set this year. Uh, what was it as a team, uh, as we analyze that we, you know, I, I worked backwards to the beginning. So I looked from last game of the national tournament, and then I'll go all the way through to the first game of the season.

So by the time we hit fall next year, I will be looking at what we looked like at the beginning of the season last year. So as a, so as a college coach, you're watching film on your team backwards. So if a high school coach has huddled, then it's a great opportunity over spring break to sit down and watch from your last game to your first and then evaluate.

Okay. And then what happens after that? You know, it's a complete building process. Every year that you invest in basketball, whether that's as an individual or as a team, uh, you're building up your standard and, and, and it should never stay sedentary and coaches that say the standard is the same every year.

I would challenge that and go, it's probably shouldn't because you're learning new things every year. And your, your, your group is getting more dynamic. And so, uh, as you add to it, you want to maintain the things that were good and you want to get rid of the things that maybe you hung onto a little too tightly that previous season that didn't help you.

Uh, and again, that's an individual thing. That's a team thing. Um, and the other thing is always, you know, having a passion forward, like what vision do you have for the next year? What, what dreams, what goals? And I think it's important to hang on to those big picture things.

Cause it's, it's why you spend the extra time in the gym. It's why you hire trainers. It's why you bring guest coaches in to, to help develop new parts of your game.

It is because you have this dream and you have this vision, you have this passion for the game. And I think it's important that you say, you know, your, your team takes it three weeks off, uh, because it's really tough as a coach to debrief when you're tired, right? You're going to miss things. So you take that three week break as a high school coach or a college assistant, and you go back and watch film, you're going to see some things that stick out to you that you either want to grow and you're going to see some things that, you know what, let's get rid of that.

You know, I didn't like that player. You know, I didn't like how we recruited this young lady and that didn't fit here. And then you just continue to build your program, uh, into a successful year.

So I'm glad that you really broke it down in, uh, in phases with, with pace, passion and precision and how you build your program. And I think people can understand that that's a winning culture and it attracts high level players. And so when I say attracts high level players, let's put some context in this.

You've got division one players on your roster and in players from international basketball. So could you give us a landscape of, you know, young ladies in high school and she's looking to go to college and she thinks D1 is the only avenue. Talk about some of the other avenues for college basketball.

Yeah. I mean, the, the, the simple thing for a high school student athlete to do, especially as a competitor, is to look at it and go, I want to play the highest level. Well, of course you do your competitor division one is the highest level for a reason.

There's the most resources invested universities are putting time and resources into coaching staffs, into training staff, into facilities. Uh, and so no doubt there is some quality to that. Uh, I think though, inherently with that comes the pressure of winning, uh, the pressure of time, uh, things that most student athletes don't necessarily anticipate when they signed the dotted line to go play division one.

And I've been a division one coach and athlete, so I understand the investment in it's, and it's really something where a student athlete needs to know what level of investment they're at. And it's not that this is a less or that's more, it's different. Uh, when we look at our NAI, uh, team right now, we have a mid major looking talented team.

Uh, it, we could go compete with mid majors, but what we're emphasizing is different. We're emphasizing relationships. Uh, you know, for us, time with the lower, you know, how, how, how are we integrating that in our team? And why does that matter? Uh, we're talking about professions.

Uh, how does your time in basketball sharpen your skills in whatever profession you go into? And it's not that division one teams can't do that. Uh, it's that we're looking at it from a different perspective because the limelight isn't on us, uh, with spotlight isn't on us. Um, and so we, we really think, you know, when we're talking to student athletes who are trying to figure out what level is appropriate for them.

NAI, division two, uh, those are comparable letters, uh, levels. I think there's, there's high level players and then there's players who stroke hard, uh, to get above maybe a junior college of D three level to play here. Um, you know, division three, uh, high academic level, you know, it's, it's where you can go and it's truly the balance of academics first athlete second, but you still have that chance to compete and play at a high level in college.

Um, you know, and then you look at division one, um, you know, so much of our team right now is built on division one transfers because of a lack of true satisfaction in the experience. They, they enjoyed the swag they got, they enjoy the gear they got, which there is no way I would ever sell that you're going to get more gear. You're going to get more stuff.

You're going to have a bigger locker room at this level. Uh, what you will get though, wholeheartedly is, is you get coaches who are here to serve student athletes. Um, and, and don't feel like necessarily jobs on the line with wins and losses every day.

It's the jobs on the line with student satisfaction. If, um, you're a small college coach, you're going to want to clip that last two minutes and you're going to want to send that to every recruit that you know and say, that's you talking because essentially what coach Hayes is explaining is the quality of life for student athlete at this level is a little bit higher based on your longevity of what you want to do when you graduate. 1% is playing professional basketball, NBA, overseas, G league, international.

So at the end of the day, 99% of athletes that we're going to coach me use about 100% at our level. We're going to coach are going to go professional in the incident of a slogan in something else. And so our coaching staffs are really built to, to nurture those student athletes and coach just in closing, um, you've been coaching for a while and you've had it, you know, immense success.

Can you tell us about your favorite failure and how that segued into who you are today as a coach. And if you want to tell it in story form, it's your show. I just want our coaches to understand that, you know, losing becomes a part of winning, but don't be, don't be a loser.

We want to win, but it's part of our story. So could you share with us your favorite failure and then, uh, and then we'll go ahead and go from there. Yeah.

You know, I think a very, very easy one stands out in my mind when I was a head coach at Colorado Christian, we were in year two of, of trying to rehab what was the worst division two team in the country. Uh, two years prior to that, they were one in 26, uh, and their only win was over a winless team, uh, in, in average losing by 40 again. Um, you know, two years later, uh, we're one game away from playing in our conference championship game, uh, which we knew meant an NCAA tournament in our league.

Uh, that meant an NCAA tournament and, and we're going, we're two years removed from being the worst team in the country. The ultimate goal would be for these seniors to get to play in the NCAA tournament. Um, now all year, all year, we had been preaching, do it the right way.

And there will be an impact on your life. There'll be an impact on other people's lives. Don't underestimate the fact that what you do and how you do it can impact the people around you.

Uh, so we get to the end of this game, we're winning the entire game, uh, against Colorado state university public. Uh, and we, and we know, I know this coach well enough. I know exactly what he's going to draw up for a game winning play.

We're up one, uh, and he's got the ball with 20 seconds left. I know exactly who it's going to. I know how they're going to get it to her.

So we sit there and I'm laughing. I'm going, this game is ours. We're going to be an NCAA tournament team.

These seniors had a dream and one senior even came back meeting a knee replacement, played the entire season on a bad knee, a completely, um, deteriorated knee to see her team get to the national tournament. She just wants to see that one time in her career. Uh, and so we're, we're, we're one play away from getting there.

And so we can feel that we can taste it. It's right there. Uh, we draw the defensive side of the saying, we know who we're going to trap the minute she touches the ball and we do, we, ball goes in exactly the way we thought we trap it.

It's 35 feet from the hoop with time expiring, girl throws up a hook, a prayer, banks it in, goes in game over there, they're, they're, they're running up and down the court because they knew it was a, it was a prayer. Um, the, the, the defeat itself immediately sunk me. I wanted to lay on the floor and die at that point for these girls, what they had overcome.

The fact that two years prior to that, they were the worst team in the country. There were one shot away from being one of the top 60, four teams in the country and playing in the national tournament. And in what I saw changed my life permanently, it changed how I coached permanently.

Uh, the girl that needed the knee replacement had sat there and all year listened to. It's not the event, it's the response. Event plus response equals outcome.

And we preached that all year and the ball goes through the net. She's the one I would have thought would have been the most heartbroken. I'm sure it was the minute that ball goes through the net time expires, buzzer goes off, their team's celebrating.

She sprints across the court to the coach on the other side who she had competed against for four years and gives him a hug and said, that was an incredible game. Coach, we're praying for your guys to success. Literally instant response.

Never seen anything like it. I'm watching this and I'm going unbelievable. Well, what happens is, uh, we go back to our locker room.

So we, so we prayed after games, Christian university, pray after game. We go back to our locker room. About five minutes later, the coach walks over in front of our locker room and says, I need to address your team coach.

And I know this is my last chance with my seniors, but I said, well, this is so unusual. Of course, you know, of course, uh, you know, and I trusted him. I knew who he was.

Uh, he walks in there and he goes, ladies, you got to get your heads up. You don't understand. There were two girls on my team that were struggling with life decisions that were struggling with their identity.

Their whole identity was basketball. If we lose this game, they probably go downhill in a hurry because they lose their identity at that moment. And he goes, the way you respond, the way your girls responded, that girls sprinting over, they were balling in the locker room after winning this game that put them into the NCAA tournament, uh, because they couldn't understand how someone could be so unselfish.

Uh, and I think the, the point there is this, the, the losses will come. I said this, uh, after we went 31 and one this year and, and unfortunately we played our worst game last game in the season. Uh, we go 31 and one, uh, and I walked in and I said, the losses will come, but the victory is already won.

We are, we are beyond that because of how we do it and what we do. Uh, your purpose is what you invest every single day. The outcome is in God's hands.

Uh, so I saw that at that time, I saw that even this year with how lives changed. And maybe if the outcome is different, if we get every win that we want, uh, we get every scholarship offer that we want, you know, maybe we don't grow in character the way we need. Uh, and I think that's what we saw this year.

And I think that was what changed my life as a coach, uh, when that girl did that after that loss. And that's really important because, uh, you build your culture around moments like that. And, uh, we all have great moments when we've won, but I think in those moments where we do feel the weight of that loss, God's teaching us a lot.

I hope you enjoyed this podcast. We're going to have some show notes in those show notes. I'll have, um, some notes from today's talk with coach Hayes, the pace, precision, and passion.

And we'll also put some of his favorite plays, some of his favorite drills for any coaches want to follow his program and we'll put all that stuff from the show notes. Once again, we had Tim Hayes here, coach of the year at Southeastern university, uh, 60 and two, the nation's longest regular season winning streak, uh, at our level and just doing phenomenal things in Southeastern university. If you're a high school coach, college coach, and you listen to this podcast, I'm sure you found some pure gold.

Go out there, win the day, win tomorrow and have a winning season. Once again, is outside the arc, coach R.J. Boris. Thank you for listening to outside the art for more information about NBC basketball camp visit NBC camps.com and listen to other outside the arc podcast episodes available on iTunes.  Visit NBC Basketball.