Explore an Uncommon
Approach to Leadership!
Tyrese Maxey
I liked this from Tyrese Maxey on the influence of his parents and being able to “sit at the table” and “converse with different people.”
Tyrese Haliburton
“He resonates with the older guys. He listens to everything they say. He fits into everything you’re doing. He takes coaching.”
“Man, I’ve watched him all practice,” the scout said. “He resonates with the older guys. He listens to everything they say. He fits into everything you’re doing. He takes coaching. His presence and demeanor are always positive, he always has energy. He’ll be your highest draft pick.”
An NBA scout to Iowa State Coach Steve Prohm after one of his practices. Halliburton was a freshmen at the time who had only played about 10 games.
“Great Players Don’t Get Tired”
“We are not here to coach your energy and your effort. That’s a given.”
Geno Auriemma on the difference between good players and great players.
You can just about always control whether you are in shape or not.
“Be Authentic”
“Your habits are really who you are.”
Steve Nash on what it takes to be an effective leader.
“Your habits are really who you are.”
What Does Your Instinct Tell You?
Whoever asks the most questions wins. Asking the right questions is a great leadership tool.
Phil Jackson used to say, “When in doubt, do nothing.”
As coaches we are expected to have the answers, and in general there is a lot of pressure in our business. So it’s natural to try and find a solution right away. First of all, that doesn’t necessarily give you the time you need to think the problem through. And secondly, you aren’t teaching your players to solve the problem. You are just giving them solutions. That leads to a compliant team - one where they always look to you to provide the answers. The problem with that is, in the heat of a game, they need to solve the problems. They need to find the answers.
By asking “What does your instinct tell you?” or a similar question, you force your team to think. You ask them to solve the problem. You get them away from relying on someone else to provide a solution. It also allows you to learn more about their mindset, what the root of the problem is, and how you can go about helping them.
Whoever asks the most questions wins. Asking the right questions is a great leadership tool.
Thought-provoking stuff from Admired Leaders:
Immediate answers to questions don’t allow those team members to develop their own insights and wisdom. To develop fully, team members need to wrestle with the issue before they listen to the advice of others.
After fielding an inquiry or request for feedback, good leaders start the conversation with a simple but effective question that asks the other party to think through the issue on their own: What advice would you give yourself?
This temporary pause doesn’t derail the discussion, nor does it suggest the leader doesn’t want to help.
What it does is to ask the other party to be their own source of insight for just a moment. This also tells them that the leader won’t always be around, and they need to think through issues on their own to develop and grow.
Other questions like, “What does your instinct tell you?”, “What has worked in the past?”, and “What have you seen others do?” are equally powerful.
Such questions slow things down and also allow the leader to gain more context before they offer their view. Interestingly, in many cases, the advice they would give themselves is exactly what the leader would offer, further cementing their confidence and insight.
Is it possible that you respond to questions and requests for advice too quickly?
You can help others, including children and those who are highly inexperienced, by asking them to share their own insights first before you respond.
Leaders develop people. They won’t always be there to guide them. Investing in others has a bigger payoff when team members have already invested in thinking through issues for themselves.
Their Voices
The best leaders listen more than they talk.
The Nuggets made the bold decision to fire Mike Malone with 3 games left in the season and the team holding a top 4 seed in the Western Conference. Assistant David Adelman took over. I really liked this from his first game as their head coach.
The best leaders listen more than they talk.
Wednesday night was a palate cleanser for everyone. The Nuggets jumped to a 10-3 lead and only trailed briefly early in the second quarter before cruising to an eight-point win in Sacramento.
Adelman said he made a point of encouraging the players to speak up in huddles and on the court. He wanted to hear their voices, not his.
"I think as far as communication goes, it was probably our best game of the year," Braun said. "Everybody was into it. We had players communicating to each other instead of relying on a coach to tell us everything."
Trust Yourself
“That’s what makes you walk into a room different for the rest of your life.”
Really good stuff here from Mark Pope.
“A bird can rest peacefully on a branch, not because of its trust in the branch, but because of its trust in its ability to fly.”
https://x.com/MVP_Mindset/status/1904908011405271415
“That’s what makes you walk into a room different for the rest of your life.”
Delivering A Tough Message
Far too often, leaders “think” their way through a tough message and create a mess in the process.
Get right to it. It’s never easy delivering tough news. But the best way to do it is to know what you want to say and get right to the point.
I’m not saying it’s easy. But it’s your job. Leadership isn’t easy.
Far too often, leaders “think” their way through a tough message and create a mess in the process.
From Admired Leaders:
Delivering a message others don’t want to hear isn’t easy for any leader, but it comes with the territory.
Good leaders deliver tough messages because it is inherent in their role as decision-makers.
Decisions and actions come with consequences. It is the leader’s job to communicate those choices and outcomes even when they know they will be unpopular for those negatively impacted.
If there is good advice about delivering a tough message, it goes like this: The bad news must come up front — in the first two sentences.
The first sentence explains the why, and the second sentence states the action or outcome.
This helps to keep tough messages simple, clear, and crisp. The idea is to create perfect clarity, not to get the message over with.
Stating the “Why” or reason behind the decision and then the action that follows doesn’t allow room for misinterpretation or a weakening of the decision.
This approach also requires the leader to know exactly what they want to say before they engage in the conversation. This clarity is essential for a resolution to whatever issue is involved.
Here are some examples of the “Why” followed by an action or outcome:
“We have found a better price and a more agreeable contract, so we are not going to re-order your product.”
“You’ve made some critical errors that have placed the project in jeopardy. As a result, we are taking you off the assignment.”
“Your skills are not a good fit for our team, so we are going to make a change and find someone else.”
“The coach doesn’t believe you are 100 percent committed to improving. That’s why you will be asked to sit on the bench this game.”
Far too often, leaders “think” their way through a tough message and create a mess in the process.
By knowing exactly what they want to say and communicating the heart of the message right away, the remainder of the conversation can be focused on how to implement the action or outcome.
In fact, good leaders move the conversation toward future implementation as quickly as they can.
After hearing of this strategy of stating the “why” and outcome in the first two sentences, some leaders believe this makes delivering the tough message even harder.
They claim it is better to “ease” into the message and allow people the room to debate or argue about the issue before landing on a decision.
This is true if a decision hasn’t been made or an action has yet to be formulated.
In that case, exploring the issue by listening intently to what the other party believes about the issue and what has occurred is the best course by far.
But that suggests a tough message is not required yet, although the conversation may portend one.
When an unpopular decision has been made for known and rational reasons, putting the message upfront projects integrity, candidness, and firmness.
It produces the clarity and deep respect that the other party requires.
Waiting to get to the point is akin to ripping off the band-aid slowly. It is usually much more painful for both parties.
Placing the bad news up front with the “why” followed by an action doesn’t prevent a leader from setting the stage for the message and helping others get prepared to hear something uncomfortable.
Telling others that this will be a difficult conversation before entering it is a wise approach. But then, good leaders get right to the point.
If the decision or action can’t be negotiated, then a leader’s integrity won’t let it unfold any other way.
Houston BLOB
“Joe's personal trainer was a blacktop court and a double rim."
What a great instinctive play by Houston’s Jo Jo Tuggler to go back to the inbounder with 2.8 seconds left.
"Nobody on our team has played on outdoor courts more than Jo," Kellen Sampson said. "And so the fact that was an instinctive play, that's him. We got a lot of guys that have personal trainers. Joe's personal trainer was a blacktop court and a double rim."
Great Minds
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
“Championship Level Effort”
“Eventually… it evolved to where everything mattered.”
Ben McCollum on what he learned as they started to win on a high level.
“Eventually… it evolved to where everything mattered.”
Wise People Are Present
“There is no finish line. The finish line is we need to be a little better tomorrow than we are today.”
Buzz Williams with a great approach.
“There is no finish line. The finish line is we need to be a little better tomorrow than we are today.”
Josh Schertz - Success
“The way the world defines success for you is like cotton candy. It evaporates quickly.”
“The way the world defines success for you is like cotton candy,” he says. “It evaporates quickly. Leaves you wanting more. You’ll never be fulfilled chasing those things. Your peace and contentment in life always comes from the relationships and the things in your life that are completely unconditional, that won’t be moved by who you are or how you did or how much money you make.”
Josh Schertz - St. Louis
Conflict
Conflict is an essential part of high-performing teams.
Conflict is an essential part of high-performing teams. Trying to avoid or ignore conflict will undermine your culture. What we do is competitive, it’s intense, and it’s hard. To be great, we have to confront the wrong behavior. It’s a natural part of developing an elite team.
Accept and embrace conflict and learn how to deal with it.
Kara Lawson on conflict:
Steve Sarkisian on Culture
“Culture is organic. It’s not a sign up in your building. It’s not a t-shirt that you wear.”
“Culture is organic. It’s not a sign up in your building. It’s not a t-shirt that you wear.”
https://x.com/TheHoopHerald/status/1861773660324803020
Culture is behavior. It’s not stuff you talk about. It’s what you do.
Geno on Game Day
Interesting thoughts from Geno Auriemma on the difference between coaching in practice and on game day.
Interesting thoughts from Geno Auriemma on the difference between coaching in practice and on game day.
Focus and Eliminating The Noise
Every team has to deal with outside noise and distractions. Not dealing with them will not be productive. Address the situation directly. You won’t be able to eliminate the noise, but you can minimize the impact.
From Admired Leaders on Focus:
Where we focus our attention significantly shapes our experience. Focus is a limited resource. Our perceptions and experiences are largely dictated by what we choose to pay attention to and focus on.
People achieve more when they focus on where they want to go and not on the noise that surrounds them. Both short- and long-term goals benefit from this forward focus.
Losing focus on the prize is what derails accomplishment and success. Distractions impede progress. While it is not always possible to block out the peripheral noise, the better we do at concentrating on the endpoint, the more we achieve.
Our actions follow our attention and focus.
When we concentrate on where we want to go and not on the obstacles and traps along the route, we unconsciously align our behaviors to move us forward and toward that goal.
We begin to see opportunities that might help us in our journey. Our heightened awareness reinforces the need to zero in on the details and milestones critical to success. Good things begin to happen.
As the impact of distractions lessens, our confidence rises. With a narrow scope aimed at a specific target, our execution becomes more fluid. With each passing milestone, the momentum of success builds and increases our commitment. All because we refused to direct our attention to anywhere else but on the end goal.
Focusing forward is a skill and a discipline, and the most productive and highly accomplished performers and leaders have mastered it.
The question for coaches is how do you teach your team to focus? How do you lessen the distractions?
I don’t think it’s productive to simply say “eliminate the noise” and ignore the distractions. The noise is there. The distractions are real. Trying to ignore them doesn’t allow you to address the impact they might be having on your team. I think it’s important that you talk about them with your team. You connect on the impact that outside influences can have if you let them. And then you talk about how to deal with them.
Every team has to deal with outside noise and distractions. Not dealing with them will not be productive. Address the situation directly. You won’t be able to eliminate the noise, but you can minimize the impact.
Jim Crutchfield
“He’s not swayed by conventional wisdom,” Spoelstra said. “He’s just a really unique, innovative thinker. He can get to a conclusion in such a more simple way than the majority of us would.”
Great stuff from CJ Moore in The Athletic about Jim Crutchfield and his system at Nova Southeastern.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Erik Spoelstra is always seeking out original thinkers. Four years ago, the NBA’s fourth-winningest active coach found one a 45-minute drive north of the Miami Heat’s facilities. Since then, Spoelstra has visited Nova Southeastern University regularly for an up-close look at the unique stylings of Jim Crutchfield, the Division II school’s 69-year-old basketball coach.
Nova Southeastern plays faster than anyone in college basketball — the Sharks’ 85.8 possessions per game this season are nearly 10 more than the fastest-playing Division I team — applies a full-court press constantly and plays every possession like it’s game point, while the man calling the shots is as quiet as a librarian on the sideline. Crutchfield, a former math teacher who never played college basketball and coached tennis before getting his big D-II break at West Liberty University, sees the game like a math problem and has created his own calculations.
“He’s not swayed by conventional wisdom,” Spoelstra said. “He’s just a really unique, innovative thinker. He can get to a conclusion in such a more simple way than the majority of us would.”
Crutchfield has won 86.4 percent of his games, the highest winning percentage of any coach with at least 10 seasons of experience at any level in NCAA history. He has turned two programs with no winning history into juggernauts. Spoelstra hoped Crutchfield could take him through his blueprints from those builds. But when Crutchfield makes as much as a practice plan — usually on graphing paper — he crumples it up and throws it in the trash after it’s used. Every belief he has about coaching and style of play lives only in his head. It’s what he considers basketball common sense.
“He just cuts to the obvious,” Spoelstra said. “Always just questioning, like, why? Why would people do it this way? And then when he explains it and says it, you’re like, yeah, why didn’t I think of that?”
Crutchfield doesn’t understand why big-name basketball folks — from Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla and GM Brad Stevens to recently-retired Miami coach Jim Larranaga and Michigan coach Dusty May — have met with him to hear about his methods. Whenever Spoelstra visits, Crutchfield asks him, “Why don’t we just go golf or play pickleball? I can teach you how to play pickleball. Pick my brain about that.”
But the results suggest Crutchfield has cracked a higher-stakes code.
In the last four seasons, Nova Southeastern is 112-4. The Sharks went undefeated and won the national championship in 2023.
With five new starters in 2024, they went 32-3 and lost on a buzzer beater in the title game. West Liberty had two 20-win seasons in its entire history, which began in 1924, before Crutchfield introduced his system. The Hilltoppers have averaged 27.3 wins per year since.
In a sport full of copycats, it’s hard to find anything that looks completely different. If you spend time in Fort Lauderdale, as most of those basketball luminaries have, you start to see how a coach most fans have never heard of is winning at historic levels.
“I’ve had the opportunity to coach against the best coaches in the country,” said Chaminade coach Eric Bovaird, who was Crutchfield’s first assistant at West Liberty. “We played Gonzaga three times. We played North Carolina. We have played against just about everybody. I’ve been around these guys. I’ve seen their practices. I’ve prepared for them. And, deep down, I’m thinking the best coach in the country is Jim Crutchfield from Nova Southeastern.”
Crutchfield’s Sharks are No. 1 in Division II and off to a 13-0 start. (Courtesy of Nova Southeastern Athletics)
The world of an average college basketball coach is foreign to Crutchfield. He barely watches any other basketball, and when he does, he caps out at about five minutes. He’s currently binge-watching “The West Wing”. His favorite show is “Dateline”.
Monday night in January: Big Monday on ESPN or “Dateline”?
“‘Dateline’. By far. Not even close.”
That approach can lead to some gaps in basketball cultural literacy. A few years ago Mazzulla and Stevens invited Crutchfield to a coaches retreat. When Crutchfield got back to Fort Lauderdale, lead assistant Jordan Fee asked him who had been there. Crutchfield went down the list of the attendees he knew and then mentioned there was one guy the group kept asking about defense. He described his appearance.
“It sounds like he’s some kind of defensive guru,” Crutchfield said.
“Coach, it’s Tom Thibodeau,” Fee responded.
Years earlier, Fee recalled, Crutchfield relayed that some “random guy” with the Spurs kept emailing him about trying to get Rudy Gay time in the Nova Southeastern gym: “He doesn’t have an email signature. It’s so strange. He doesn’t even put his full name. He just puts his initials.”
It was R.C. Buford, the architect of the Spurs dynasty and a five-time NBA champion.
“He loves basketball,” Fee said. ”But he’s not a basketball guy. He’s not trying to network. He doesn’t necessarily care to meet people. He just doesn’t care about that.”
When he graduated from West Virginia in 1978, Crutchfield wanted to be a high school basketball coach. A year later, he had given up, returning to his alma mater to go to law school. “Too big a dream,” he thought. He passed the LSAT and rented an apartment in Morgantown. Then he got a call out of nowhere, offering him the boys basketball coaching position at a small school in the state’s northern panhandle. He’s not even sure who recommended him. Crutchfield sold his law books, lost the deposit on his apartment and moved to Cameron, W.V.
Sometime during his 10 years as a high school coach, he went to a clinic in Wheeling where legendary DeMatha High coach Morgan Wooten was presenting. Wooten placed one player with the ball at half court near the sideline and another under the basket. When Wooten blew the whistle, the ballhandler was to go shoot a layup as fast as he could, and the other player was to take off sprinting the length of the floor and catch the ball when it went through the net without allowing it to hit the ground. Crutchfield thought there could be no way, but the sprinting player got there. He ran the same drill with his players, and they all caught the ball, too.
Crutchfield had no idea the point Wooten was trying to make, but it completely changed how he viewed the game. How much of the floor could his team cover if no one ever loped back on defense and gave the other team space to breathe? He wanted no emotion, just hustle.
As a high school coach, Crutchfield employed a zone press, with specific rules on where to send the ball and trap. Then he watched the 1987 NCAA Tournament. Rick Pitino’s Providence Friars made a run to the Final Four using a different kind of press, more helter skelter. Random. They forced teams to play at a different pace, and they racked up steals chasing ball handlers from behind.
Crutchfield tried it for himself playing pickup games at the high school. He told his teammates to play a box zone, waited for the offense to pass half court and then pounced, chasing the ball like a game of tag.
His experiment played out as he expected. He blocked some shots from behind. He got some steals that led to layups because he could leak out as soon as he tapped the ball to one of his teammates. But most importantly, his opponents were constantly looking behind themselves on offense.
“People are uncomfortable with people chasing them,” he said.
Two years later, Crutchfield landed a spot as an assistant coach at West Liberty, and he wanted to try out his helter skelter press. Problem was, he didn’t have the pull. The Hilltoppers were mediocre, and outside-the-box ideas were ignored. “Let’s try to lose by less than 10 and be happy,” is his description of the mentality.
After three seasons on staff, the head coach was fired. Crutchfield wanted the job, but the other assistant got it. He wasn’t going to press, either. So Crutchfield stepped down and kept his full-time job at the school, teaching racket sports and coaching the men’s and women’s tennis teams. He won 11 league titles over 15 seasons, but he was always thinking about basketball, even workshopping his system with his tennis team’s pickup squad, which made the intramural championship game.
In 2004, West Liberty’s basketball team won four games and fired its coach again. Crutchfield had rejoined the staff two years prior when the coach asked for his help, but the Hilltoppers still weren’t pressing. Crutchfield wanted the job, but…
Who elevates the coach who worked for the guy who just got fired?
“I wouldn’t have hired me either,” he said.
Crutchfield wasn’t even asked to share his vision with the administration. He was just the next warm body. His first order of business was driving to South Carolina to recruit Bovaird to be his assistant coach. Bovaird had played at West Liberty in the years when Crutchfield was just coaching tennis.
“He just totally believed in his style and his system, and he just knew that it was going to work,” Bovaird said. “He just knew it. And he transferred that belief to the players.”
West Liberty didn’t return one starter and was picked to finish last in its league. The Hilltoppers went 21-10. At first, Crutchfield would press the teams he thought had inferior talent and only sprinkle it in against better opponents. In his seventh season, convinced he had the personnel perfect for his system, he went all-in, pressing every single possession. West Liberty went undefeated in the regular season and made the Final Four. That started a streak of seven straight NCAA Tournament appearances.
At the height of that run, Crutchfield told his agent to start looking for a new job for him. This is when most look to move upward. Crutchfield wanted to go to a place that had never won before.
“I thought, was it a fluke?” he recalled. “Was I lucky? Were the stars all aligned? And I kept telling my wife, before I retire, I want to try to do it again.”
Nova Southeastern went 6-20 the year before Crutchfield was hired. He went 17-10 in his first year — the worst record of his career — and then 29-4 the next season.
“He knows how to build a program,” Spoelstra said. “He knows how to get people rallying around his vision that’s not documented and only he can explain it. But he’s like the pied piper. You just seem drawn to it. And then ultimately, he’s able to get that program to win. And he does it over and over and over.”
Crutchfield’s D-II success has not earned him many calls from higher levels, but Nova Southeastern itself may one day be a candidate for promotion. (Courtesy of Nova Southeastern Athletics)
Long before Mazzulla was an NBA champion, he was a young assistant at Fairmont State, studying West Liberty because Crutchfield was dominating the league. Mazzulla had read Dean Oliver’s book “Basketball on Paper” that highlights the four factors to success — effective field goal percentage, turnover percentage, offensive rebounding percentage and free throw rate — and realized Crutchfield had mastered every single one. He was light-years ahead of the modern analytics curve. “He thinks the game differently,” Mazzulla said. “He doesn’t get caught up in all the fluff.”
One of Crutchfield’s former players used to compare their style of play to breaking a horse. At some point in the game, his player would come over and say he could feel it; the opponent was about to break.
On the first Sunday in October, before they got off to a 13-0 start to this season, Crutchfield’s team played a scrimmage against Florida Southwestern. The game was tied at 25 with 7:22 left in the first half, but Florida Southwestern was clearly annoyed by the constant pressure. The Sharks even pressed after missed shots, trapping the defensive rebounder. The first sign of fatigue was Florida Southwestern’s point guard’s calf cramping. The Buccaneers started complaining to the officials about fouls.
With a minute left in the second half, Nova Southeastern led 100-60. And was still pressing.
Crutchfield watched quietly from the sideline. Occasionally he pointed to where he wanted someone to move in the press, but in a 40-minute game, he shouted out instructions twice. “He knows you’ve got to coach with a revolver and not an uzi,” Fee said. “He’s only got so many bullets in his chamber.”
Crutchfield also knows the numbers will eventually work in his favor. Before games, he typically writes two goals on the board: plus-10 on the boards and plus-10 in turnover margin. Every year the Sharks dominate in both. Last season, they got back 38.5 percent of their misses and turned opponents over on 26.8 percent of possessions. That led to 14.6 more shots per game than their opponent.
Film sessions are when Crutchfield gets his players to see what he sees; habits are formed. And there was one moment in particular he wanted to pinpoint the afternoon after the scrimmage.
Early in the first half, forward Tyler Eberhart trapped the ball in the far corner of the floor with his hands above his head. Weeks earlier Eberhart had been clocked to see how fast he could spin out of a trap from that exact spot, sprint to the middle of half court between two cones and proceed to the opposite free throw line. Every player does this drill twice, recorded by two stopwatches at each station, and the times are averaged together. Eberhart’s time, from trapping to half court, was 2.44 seconds. Crutchfield had clocked Eberhart on film that morning getting to mid-court in 3.41 seconds. Nearly a second slower.
“One second is 28 feet on the other end,” Crutchfield told Eberhart, which he already knew; it’s written on the white board in the back of the room.
“You could have gone all the way down here,” the coach continued, pointing at the paint.
A half-second pause could be the difference between blocking a layup at the rim and watching at the free-throw line as your opponent scores an uncontested layup.
“That wasn’t just a message to him; that’s a message to the whole team,” Crutchfield said. “‘(Coach) notices that stuff, and if I don’t run, he’s charting that and timing us.’ I’m not timing every guy, but I want the players to think I’m timing every detail.”
The white board at the front of the film room depicts what Crutchfield wants from his players.
“We call it the brainwashing process of trying to get guys closer and closer to what they’re capable of,” Crutchfield said. “You say things as a coach like, ‘Play harder.’ Everybody hears it, but I don’t know if it affects them. And I thought I need to prove it to them and come up with math.”
(C.J. Moore for The Athletic)
During the pandemic, Fee was asked to do a Zoom with a group of coaches who operate like Grinnell, the Division III team that gained notoriety when guard Jack Taylor scored 138 points in a game in 2012. Grinnell’s approach, like Crutchfield’s, is called “the system,” and the coaches assumed there’d be similarities.
“I feel like the biggest jerk in the world,” Fee remembered telling his audience. “But I’ve got to be honest with you, we’re nothing alike. Everything that you’re saying that you guys are doing is the antithesis of what we’re about.”
“There’s times when they’re giving up layups and they’re putting a time clock up offensively,” Fee explained. “They want to shoot X number of 3s. They’re so analytically driven, whereas we’re not as analytically driven and more about a mentality. We don’t care if it takes the entire shot clock as long as we get a good shot with guys in rebounding position.”
At a Nova Southeastern practice, you’ll see drills you won’t see anywhere else. One has a defender deny in the press with a coach inbounding. After five seconds, the coach tosses the ball toward half court. The denier must go retrieve it, score a layup, then deny again. This goes on for about 35 seconds, and it’s so exhausting that when Crutchfield put a Florida manager through it a few years ago at Larry Shyatt’s annual coaches clinic in Gainesville, the manager collapsed to the ground.
“Shyatt called it the transfer drill,” Crutchfield said, laughing. “Want a kid to transfer? Make him do that drill.”
Crutchfield’s secret is not simply “brainwashing”; he picks the right players who can endure what he asks of them.
“C’mon! We gotta be maniacs!” sophomore Eli Allen yelled at his teammates following a water break. “I need to hear you!”
“If you don’t play that way,” said David Dennis, who played for Crutchfield at both West Liberty and Nova Southeastern, “your teammates are going to look at you like, ‘What are you doing? Do you see how many games we win every year? Why are you going to be the one guy that comes in here and doesn’t play this hard?’”
Crutchfield is constantly evaluating how he can get the most out of his group. Every day he writes out his players’ names, ranks them and calculates out how many minutes each would get if they played that day. The data that helps inform his decisions initially comes from preseason open gyms.
The rules of those pickup games are simple. If it’s 7-on-7 — meaning two subs — the teams play to 140. If it’s 6-on-6, they play to 120; if 5-on-5, to 100. The players are divided differently every day, but one side is always pressing, the teams taking turns throughout. A chart with every player’s win-loss record and plus-minus from the pickup games hangs in the Nova Southeastern locker room. Dallas Graziani, a 5-foot-8 point guard who had just one other scholarship offer out of high school, was at the top of the chart with an 11-3 record and plus-147. He’s averaging 34.8 minutes this season, the only player on the roster playing more than 30 minutes per game.
By the time practice starts, the Sharks are the best-conditioned team in the country.
Why the system works is more psychological than anything else.
“People live by habits and basketball players live by habits,” Crutchfield said. “And there’s a certain amount of time you relax your mind during the course of a game, whether it’s walking the ball down the court to play against a zone or the other team’s not pushing it.”
As one coach told him years ago, “You wear people down mentally more than physically. You don’t let people relax their minds enough. And these kids, eventually it wears their minds down.”
Now for the obvious question: Would this system work at a higher level?
Crutchfield hasn’t had a ton of interest but says he was a finalist for a Division I job 12 years ago. He had one request: Instead of hiring three assistants, like every other D-I program in the country, Crutchfield wanted only two, with the salary of the third assistant spot to be split between those two.
That killed his chances.
“They said that showed them I didn’t understand the landscape of Division I basketball,” Crutchfield said. “Now keep in mind in 2011, we were 33-0 when we lost the national semifinals and averaging 112 points a game and no Division I would play us. (That school) was awful. We would have beat them by 30 points, and I’m in a rural, Division II school with one assistant coach.”
Crutchfield knows he’s a little unconventional. He wakes up most mornings and goes to the gym to get in a short lift and a swim, then sundries outside. He has an office at Nova Southeastern, but he never visits it. Instead, he works out of his townhouse across the street.
Breaks for pickleball and tennis — he estimates he plays five days a week — are a necessity. “The Japanese proved that when they started playing games and exercising in the middle of a workday, saying it refreshes your mind and body,” he said.
Spoelstra tells him he should never leave this place. He gets to play pickleball — soon, on courts he’s helping design on campus — and people love his program. It keeps him young.
Crutchfield doesn’t have any plans of stopping soon, but the window for taking over a D-I program may have passed. One possible wrinkle: Nova Southeastern moving to Division I and joining the Atlantic Sun has been discussed. Those in Crutchfield’s tree think Fee might be the one to test “the system” at the D-I ranks. He took over at Gannon after Nova’s 2023 title and led a team that won three games the previous season to a 32-3 record and the D-II Elite Eight, the largest year-to-year turnaround in NCAA history. Fee joined Florida Atlantic’s staff as an assistant this spring.
Crutchfield is content with finishing his career where he is, but what’s left? What still drives him?
It’s not winning championships. The only thing he ever wanted to prove was that his system worked. The thrill of this job, he explained, is seeing everything come together — when his guys are playing hard, sharing the ball offensively and exuding great chemistry and taking joy in each other’s success.
“It’s that capable line up there (on the board) that I’m never going to get to, because no one gets to that line,” he said. “It’s just how close you can get to it.”