TJ Otzelberger

TJ Otzelberger talks about how he had to adjust when he first became a head coach. I think most of us have a vision of what we expect our program to look like and to be all about when we become a head coach, but what we don’t know is how the situation we are in is going to impact us.

Otzelberger took over at South Dakota State and envisioned his program looking like Tom Izzo and Michigan State. And his team was different than that. Showed a lot of foresight and self-confidence to realize he was the one who had to adjust as a young head coach.

From C.J. Moore’s article in The Athletic

“I went in there and wanted to be more like Tom Izzo and coach really hard. Defensive-minded and physical rebounding. And my team was a little bit different than that. They were more of a flow offense group.”

He leaned on what he’d learned about offense from Hoiberg and McDermott, because that type of style fit the Jackrabbits, who were the second-best shooting team in college basketball his third and final season at SDSU. Otzelberger also reviewed the film and watched himself on the sideline and realized he was too emotional. Immature. He was arguing too many calls and reacting to every little thing, and his team was following his lead. He decided that you’d never see him go after a referee again.

“It was really a reflective time for me,” Otzelberger says. “I felt like a hypocrite and that I needed to change more than our team did. And so I really tried to change my approach and focus on what we will do, what we can be, what our strengths were, and how I can lean into those as opposed to being frustrated or upset by the things that we were not.”