Biola University Men’s Soccer – Coach Joey O’Keefe
On today’s episode, I speak with Coach O’Keefe from the Biola Men’s Program in California. We talk about the recruiting timeline he uses. He describes the unique campus feel being Los Angeles. Lastly, we discuss how he has a large staff of mostly alumni. Learn more about Biola University Men’s Soccer.
Matt: [00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to Discover College Soccer. Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Coach O’Keeffe from Biola University out in California. Welcome coach.
Coach: Hey, Matt. How’s it going? Good to be here.
Matt: Ah, thanks for being here. Uh, you know, I, I love getting, I’m, I’m east coast here in Florida, so nice to talk to some West Coast, uh, representation.
Um, Uh, but let’s start talking about recruiting. We’re just a few days, uh, past the, the June 15th date. So, uh, were you guys hot and heavy in calling class of 20 fives, or are you more focused on 20 fours? Kind of gimme a, an overview of what your normal recruiting calendar might look like.
Coach: Yeah, so I would say on on that day, just a couple days ago, we had a decent amount of emails go out for our class 2020 five’s, recruiting, um, all different types of stuff that we to invite out to.
A select group of guys to a, a camp coming up. And so we, you know, just, we’ve been on the hunt for a long, long time and recruiting never ends. And so our primary focus at this point is 2024. Um, of course 2023 is all wrapped up as it’s June of, of, uh, of 23. So that class is finished, but we’re hot and heavy in the, in the 20 fours, I would say.
But the 20 fives are always, always in.
Matt: So gi, give me an idea, ’cause I know on the women’s side it skews a little earlier, but when would you say, so like you said, you’re, you’re hot and heavy on the 20 fours. When would you [00:01:30] say you’ll have half of that class kind of wrapped up versus three quarter versus done and dusted?
Coach: Yeah, this year is, uh, quite unique from, for most years because, uh, we lost such a large senior class and Covid really skewed that senior class. So we had 10 guys graduate, uh, with a, and we had another three or four guys who still had eligibility who didn’t, had to choose one way or the other. Um, and so we had a huge, huge amounts of, of Exodus this year because of, because.
And because of that we have a massive recruiting class. And so this is the largest recruiting class, 2023 that we probably, probably will ever have. Fingers crossed we’re bringing in 18 or 19 guys. Um, which is quite substantial of course. And it’s the most that I’d ever want to bring it in One. It’s more than I’d ever wanna bring it in one year.
But it’s just the, the, the hand we dealt with the covid times. Um, So, yeah, I would say we’d have half of our recruiting class done as a division two school. You’re a little bit behind the Division one eight ball, um, because there’s a lot of those top talented guys, those N L Ss Academy, high level EEC l, those types of players who are waiting for their Division one offers and they’re not going to accept the division two offers often.
Uh, and so they can get those answers from division one schools. And so,
Probably until December, uh, about halfway and then until March-ish, March, maybe early April. Then we’re completely done.
Matt: Okay. Well now you mentioned, you know, such a big class and obviously Covid Hass thrown a wrench and everybody’s [00:03:00] plans are and things. Now I. I look at your roster, and it seems like you guys have been pretty hot and heavy with the transfer, with a lot of transfers, people have played other places.
So even though you’re bringing in such a large class, I’m guessing it’s a mix of first year, second year, third year type players, right? It’s not 15 freshmen, right?
Coach: Yeah. You, you hit, yeah, you hit the nail on the head. So with 18 incoming guys, we have, I wanna say six true freshmen, three gap year freshmen.
Nine transfers transfer and those nine transfers. So that’s gonna kind of end up being nine freshmen and nine, because those gap year guys, nine freshmen and nine transfers. And in those nine transfers you have guys who are red shirt freshmen. Um, at a Friday, a division one school across the nation. On the east coast, you’ve got guys who are coming to do their master’s degree.
23, 24 year old guys. Coming from other universities in the US after experiencing the US playing college soccer, or even guys coming from Europe who have never played college soccer before, but are gonna come work on doing their b a here at Biola. Um, and so you’ve got all different types of ranges and scenarios to community college guys right?
In our backyard. Uh, you’ve, you’ve got a huge, huge, vast variety of you guys.
Matt: Okay, well, when you’re recruiting, you know, are there events that are. Top of mind ones that you gotta hit every single year. Are you recruiting more, uh, locally, regionally, nationally, internationally? What, what does that kinda look like for you guys?
Coach: Yeah, [00:04:30] so our roster typically ends up being 30% international. So it’s, we’re the roster of about 32. We usually carry, we’re carry somewhere about nine internationals, I think is what we’ll carry this year. Uh, off the top of mind it’s, I know our roster set, but off the top of mind, somewhere between eight and 10.
Um, and with those international guys, almost all of them are going to be transfers typically. Um, typically we like to see the transfers actually be successful in the college game first, and it’s very common that, uh, Guys coming from abroad, when they come to the US they don’t end up in, you know, the prime state that they were wishing to end up in.
And so an opportunity to come live in Los Angeles and go to school is pretty, uh, pretty easy to recruit international guys. Once they’re here in the US already to get on the portal, they find out, oh my gosh, there’s a school in Los Angeles that’s a dream place to go to dream destination. So that makes it a little bit easier.
So typically our international guys, we only get as transfers because they’ve been conference player of the years sort of. But for as far as those guys who.
Division two budgets are different than division one budgets. Division two schools are going to go to less of the non regional, non-locally tournaments recruiting opportunities that you would as a division one. Um, so lots of division ones in Southern California. There’s probably nine division one schools or 10 in Southern California.
And. The same amount of 10 Division twos, probably 10 Division threes 40, if not 50 community colleges, probably seven or eight N A I schools all within a one and a half hour [00:06:00] radius of where we are. It’s a hub of swimming. It’s the LA Orange County area is massive. And so from where we are, we don’t need to leave our region too often.
And because we have the. College surf cup. We have E C N L showcase, m l s, uh, the m l s showcase. All those things are in our backyard right here in our area. The only thing we will attend is sometimes we’ll attend some, some camps that are gonna offer an opportunity for us to go out and stay there overnight.
We can have an opportunity to go see the talent that’s in. Often we’ll do Texas, often we’ll do Oregon or Seattle, Vegas, those type of areas that are still Western region. Um, yeah, that’s kind of where we’re, we’re mainly focused.
Matt: Well, you mentioned camps. Do you guys do your own ID camps? Are those important in your own recruiting process?
Coach: Yeah. I appreciate you bringing that up, Matt. I would say. Of our incoming total, nine freshmen, seven of them have attended our own Biola Id camp seven of the nine, which is incredible. Um, especially we have one we do every summer called the overnight ID camp. Uh, in our overnight ID camp, we do just one time a summer.
It’s a. Two day, or sorry, three day and two nights. And at that camp we, from this, from this recruiting class alone, we have five guys who attended that one. So we cap it at 30, 30 members and that could be, you know, incoming seniors, so it could be a rising senior, junior, sophomore at that camp. Um, and we cap it at 30.
So we have the opportunity to spend three days and two nights in the dorm rooms and that type of stuff. Just really getting to know these guys and bio is a very, very unique school in the sense that it’s, [00:07:30] uh, it’s a very strong religious Christian school. So every single student athlete, not just student athlete, for that matter, every single student that graduates from Biola is gonna get an undergraduate, um, minor degree in biblical studies.
So it’s 30 units of Bible they’re gonna take in the course of their four years, which equates to 10 classes. And so you’re really looking for a specific type of kid. A kid who really wants that education, wants that type of thing. And so when we’re looking for incoming freshmen, it’s certainly something we’re looking for in the recruiting process.
And we know that if they’re spending the money, spending the time and the investment of what it takes to actually get to get to bio and get to our camp, then we know they’re interested in those things upfront. We don’t have to.
The religious part of that, that aspect. Okay.
Matt: Well you mentioned, uh, the things that you’re looking for in that recruiting process. So what, what is that, the hierarchy of things that you’re looking for, whether it’s on the field, stuff, off the field stuff. What makes a player stick out to you or somebody you wanna bring to Viola?
Coach: I. Yeah. Um, and for, for every M l S Academy, international European Academy, high level, you know, bundes legal type player, we also have the guy who’s literally right in our backyard who’s never played what you’d call, quote unquote high level club soccer. So he is not an M L Ss or he is not an E N L player, but he’s just an absolute baller and on top of being a great.
Athlete. At the end of the day, your relationship with a student athlete versus the coach is incredibly tight bond. It’s incredibly tight. And as a coach, um, I [00:09:00] pour, uh, every coach who’s gonna say the same thing. So this is nothing unique to myself. Guys, we pour so much into you guys as student athletes.
And if we are going to be pouring so much effort, energy of our heart and our soul into you, we wanna make sure it’s someone that we can get along with, someone that we like, someone, someone that we wanna have a relationship with. Someone that down the road we could see still being connected with in 10, 15 years.
And so that character aspect is probably the number one most important thing that has led us away. From not signing players. We went to go watch United Club Tournament. They spouted off, cussed out a referee, got a yell card. They were disrespectful to their coach after getting subbed off. All those types of things.
And so character is gonna be the number one aspect we are looking for. If we have two players who are very similar in level. And one guy has, even, even if he has a little bit lower G P A, but his character is highly above, he’s gonna get the offer way ahead of a guy who’s just, he’s out for himself. It’s about his own ability.
And he gets frustrated with his teammates when he doesn’t get the ball and that sort of stuff, because that, there’s no room for that in the college game, especially not as an incoming freshman when you’re a very highly competitive program. Uh, the, the playing time for freshmen is not quite as where it would be at and maybe some other programs who are maybe not quite as competitive yet.
Matt: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Well, in terms of, uh, what us parents tend to tend to focus on sometimes when we’re, we’re looking at schools [00:10:30] is, is how much is this gonna cost me? Right? So, mm-hmm. I’m not, I’m not holding you to hard numbers here, but if you could just gimme a, a, an overview of what the rough cost of attendance is, especially for a student athlete.
Maybe what, what’s a scholarship situation, both academic, athletic, what does everything look like together?
Coach: Yeah. Awesome. So Bio University tuition’s about 46 K and you’re gonna add in about, uh, about $12,000 for your housing and your food, so that you call that, you know, your, um, what’d you call it? Your, uh, room and board at about 12,000.
So right around 58,000 ish is what you’re gonna go per year. And I would say an average G P A of our team outta high school is probably at 3.5, 3.6, which is gonna get you a $20,000 scholarship right off the top. If you have any type of fafsa, any type of extra opportunities from, from free money, hopefully you’re all signing up for FAFSA and doing those things because you never know what you could qualify for.
Not just loans, but grants and all different types of stuff. Especially if you’re in the state of California, if you’re in this state of wherever you are, I’m, I’m pretty sure it might be the same out in Florida, right? There’s a Florida grant for Florida residents going to Florida schools. Similar for most states, I’m assuming.
Yeah, and we’re a division two school, and so like, like all division one, division two schools, we do have athletic scholarships. We’re not a division one school, so not fully funded, but we are funded very, you know, we’re very blessed to have the, the amount of funding that we do have. Okay.
Matt: Well, let’s talk a little bit more about the school.
I know, uh, yeah, I’ve been to la lived, lived there a summer, but, uh, didn’t know about Biola then and, and have never been. Yeah. So, [00:12:00] uh, you have the unique perspective as an alum, if I’m not mistaken as well. So, uh, kind of give us what’s the, what are some of the great things about Biola that, and maybe some of the things we wouldn’t even know about going through the website.
Coach: Yeah. Um, there’s a reason why I’m an alumni and why I came back and the reason why five of my six staff members are alumni have chosen to come back from the ages of 50 to the ages of me who’s in his, who’s still in his twenties. We’ve had the opportunity to come back here to coach because we love not just the area where we’re living, which is Southern California, orange County, LA County, right on the border there.
So all year long 60.
So the weather’s obviously a big, massive thing, but what makes Bio so unique and so special is the people. We’re not a commuter campus. We’re not a place where people go stop by, go to class and go home. We’re a place where you do life. So everyone lives on campus, every single one, but maybe one or two of our student athletes on our team.
So 30 guys live on campus in the dorm rooms, and that’s across the board of probably the 4,000 undergraduates who live on. Almost all of them live there. And so campus life is phenomenal. It’s fantastic. No matter what time you leave, go outta your dorm room, you’re gonna find people walking around campus in the coffee shops, in the library, very supportive.
We have incredible support from our student athletes, so we get our, sorry, from our student population. Great support at soccer games, at basketball games. Doesn’t matter what sport. It’s great support for the sports on campus. Um, I think the small schools feel as well is really important [00:13:30] because, uh, class sizes are 30 or less, maybe 35 or 40 or less if you’re in, you know, some of the, the general classes in your freshman year, maybe a little bit larger.
Um, but that personalized feel you get at a private school is, is so unique and so different than you’re gonna have at a school with, you know, 30, 40,000 students and you’re, you know, that’s, that’s part of what kind of the cost comes with is, is that more personalized touch.
Matt: Oh, sounds great. Well, besides sports, right?
Folks are coming to get their degrees and, and academics are a key component. So how do your student athletes really balance the, the demands of both the classroom and on field activities and kind of what support systems does the school offer to ensure the success of, of the student athletes?
Coach: Yeah, that’s, that’s a really good question, Matt, because we are, we’re a very unique, uh, division two conference where we.
Our conference spreads so far and wide. We have three schools in Hawaii. We have soon to be, I think, five schools in Northern California, like six or seven, like two schools in Central California and a bunch of schools down in Southern California. So our travel is busy. You know, when we do these Hawaii trips, we’re gone for 10 days at a time.
And so having the ability to maintain high, high academics as being a student. It’s difficult, to be honest. It’s not an easy thing. It’s being a student athlete is not for everything. It’s very, very hard to balance both things, particularly when you have an incredibly demanding on field coach too, like myself, who, you have a 20 [00:15:00] hour ma, you are.
We max out our NCAA hours of 20 hours per week. So we are in the weight room three days a week. We are on the field six days a week. Even if we don’t have a game, we still have practice on Saturday or we have strikers finishing practice in the morning on game days. It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. We’re on the field a lot and when you’re not on the field, you’re, you’re either in the study hall room, which we’ve got study hall happening every week required mandatory for our student athletes.
So there’s tutoring options available on campus. There’s tutoring options available to have one-on-one private tutorings or actual small group tutorings, mandatory study hall for just our team, the captain and upper types.
So we. Sometimes we have games that are, you know, eight Wednesdays in a row, and that means if a student has a Wednesday night class, they’re gonna miss eight out of the 16 offerings that year. So they’re gonna miss 50% by rule. They flunk and they fail that class by missing 50% of the courses. But our professors are incredibly gracious to work with the student with the athletic department.
We have independent study programs for those student athletes. Uh, recorded zooms, like we’re on right here for opportunities for them to still be engaged in, in class, whether they can watch it live in their hotel room or they can watch the recording. If we’re in Hawaii and we’re a different time zone, they can watch it at a different time.
Or we’re in, you know, we’re in nationals in Texas, which, which is where we had to go last two years, unfortunately. Um, There’s always an opportunity to watch the [00:16:30] recording of the class and then you an answer a few simple classes to do to, uh, to get some things done afterwards to get your course credit.
Okay.
Matt: No, that’s great. Well, do me a favor. Kinda walk me through a typical week during the season when our classes practice times, meal times. I mean, you talked about the game being, you know, with travel, uh, what’s kind of the game cadence, what days of the week, that sort of thing. Yeah.
Coach: Yeah, really good question there.
So we typically practice in the mornings. We, we don’t, uh, there’s classes going on at all times of the day, and so we have to tell our student athletes, Hey, when you were choosing your classes, You’re gonna block off this time Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We’re typically in the weight room at, at like eight to 9:00 AM in the mornings.
So you, or nine to 10. So you’re gonna block off nine to 10 for that. And then we’re gonna train 10 30 to 1230. So you’re basically blocking off your 9:00 AM to 1230 for practice. Basically five days, you know, all those days of the week. And then you have your time before weight training where and before training where you’re gonna be in the, um, in the, uh, the athletic training room.
So that’s, Pretty much most of your mornings for our program, we run our practices. In the mornings, all programs are different. That’s just when we as a coach and staff prefer to get the guys when they’re most fresh is, is in that morning time. Um, and then most of the guys will have classes in the midday, afternoon, evening times.
Um, typically a student athlete at a student at pilot does not have class on Fridays. It’s not often commonly a thing, um, whatever reason or not. We’re gonna have opportunities to have online courses as well. In case, let’s say that you have an opportunity to take a, a Wednesday night [00:18:00] class that you think in your mind, you know, I really, what I’m now used to a good nighttime student, nighttime thinker.
That’s really important because ultimately you’re here to be a student first, so you’re not a good nighttime thinker. You might say. Um, you have an opportunity to take that course online. Pretty much every course has an online offering at week practice, Monday through Saturday.
And you’re gonna have film sprinkled in there at different times. We do film after and before every single match. And if we have an away match where we have to take a flight, which is everything in, you know, central California, Northern California, Hawaii, we’re always gonna leave. The day before we’re gonna leave at like, our flight’s gonna leave as early as humanly possible.
So probably 7:38 AM in the morning. We’re gonna leave Brighton early to get the airport to land wherever we’re going that same day on Wednesday. Play the match on Thursday, have the rest of the day on Friday to rest, play again on Saturday. And depending on game time on Saturday, we’ll either come home Saturday night or Sunday.
Okay. Yeah, that’s a typical week here, Viola. Awesome. Fair. Yeah. I’d say 20 hours a week of soccer and then 20 about, about that same night of time as you have in soccer for, uh, for school. And there’s not much time outside of that for relationships outside of your sports team as pretty much all student athletes.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I, I, I married a, uh, a fellow fall athlete, uh, from, from my college days now. She was volleyball, but you know, it, same thing. Spent more time in the gym than anywhere else. [00:19:30] So, um, well, let’s talk a little bit more about the, the soccer side of things. I mean, you, you, you mentioned the roster size and you mentioned you, your staff.
So how big is your staff? What role does everybody play? What kind of support staff is also there that maybe helps you out?
Coach: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really good question. I love talking about my staff. So we have six members of our men’s soccer staffs. That includes myself. I’ve got a full-time lead assistant coach, uh, two more assistant coaches and two volunteer guys.
And everyone beside my lead assistant is all an alumni from Biola. Um, I would say we have a, a, a, one of the assistant coaches, the one of the guys who’s paid is our normal goalkeeper coach, and we always have an extra goalkeeper coach who he has, he kind of carries dual roles and if so, there’s no matter what.
There’s, at all times, every session there’s one or two goalkeeper coaches available because that’s such an important part of the, the goalkeeper growth process is having that coach. And so that’s how, I guess our coaching staff works. Everyone has different responsibilities versus what they need to do be doing in the office on a daily basis.
Um, or it’s post-game preparation. So post-game, just happy. We need to review the film. We need to get the film ready to prepare for the next day, or our pre-game coming up, and we need to make sure our, our film is ready and updated to, to kind of, to give to myself so that I can develop a game plan for the next game.
Because you never go out the same way every single game. That’s. Kind of insanity. You always kind of prepare a little bit differently based off of what, what, uh, the kind of team you’re going to attack. So that’s always important, the film to prepare to, so that we can schedule it a few days before we can [00:21:00] spend a couple days training, getting ready for the next match.
Each staff member’s got some different responsibilities, but I would say my, my lead assistant, full-time guy carries a bulk of those responsibilities.
Matt: Okay. Well, how would you des describe your style of coaching and the team style of play?
Coach: Really good question. Uh, my style of coaching, I, I would say I’m a very relational guy.
I think that that relationship, because we talked about in the recruiting process, is so, so important. Again, I’m sorry about the dog here. He’s, he’s seeing a bird in the window or something. Um, uh, very relational. And so that one-on-one relationship is the reason why I got the coaching. It’s not the wins and losses for sure.
Um, no matter what title championship, we’ve won game, we’ve won game, we’ve lost. Nothing can ever amount to the relationships that are able to get built. So opportunities to go to guys’ weddings, opportunities to go to guys’ baptisms, opportunities to go to what, whatever, um, all those types of things. And down the road, hopefully it’s opportunities to meet their kids.
I’m, I’m too young to be able to have the opportunity to do that yet, but that was who my coach was when I was here at Biola. Um, was that guy. You can walk into his office, not talk about soccer for 45 minutes and then walk right back out. All you did was talk about life. A major decision, a minor decision, just to just to, you know, shoot the sticks and see what’s going on.
Just to talk about the, your data sort of stuff is the reason why I love coaching. Soccer just happens to be the sport. Um, and on top of that, it’s a co, uh, game style coaching style. I am very demanding as a coach, and so it’s important that, you know, the relationship between on and [00:22:30] off the field is there’s.
There’s respect, there’s humanity. There’s everything of how I see you, dignity. I love you as a person, as a, as a very important, the first time we ever have conversations with players and it’s, it’s face to face. We’re gonna have to deliver a big blow to them. Whether you’re not starting tonight, you’re not playing with any of those types of things, it’s.
I’m gonna separate you as the player and you as the person. You as a person, will never change how I I feel about you. Nothing you do on the field will ever make me love you more, love you less, but you as a player. These are the things where you’re making huge mistakes in, on the field for the team. It’s where you’re costing.
This is why you’re not starting tonight. All those types of things. That clarity is super, super important, uh, but a very demanding coach. I was very demanding outta myself as a player, and I, I don’t just do this for fun. I definitely want to win. So it’s a big part of what we do. You know, at the end of the day, every coach wants to keep their job.
So winning is is sort of important, but it can’t be the reason why you do what you do. If winning becomes everything, then the players become objects and the players don’t become humans, and it doesn’t become growth. It becomes how do I grow? And that that is just gonna lead you down a pit of misery and a pit of horribleness.
So I hope that helps a little bit.
Matt: No, I think that was fantastic. Well, coach, we’ve covered a lot of different areas and I really do appreciate your time and I always like to end these on the on with one question, and that’s, if you had one piece of advice, one nugget of information, something that you would love every parent, player, family, going through this college recruitment process to know, what would that be?
Coach: Yeah, I would say, um, the recruiting process is personal and so. [00:24:00] Emails we woke up to in our inbox this morning from the last five days. Um, it’s not, it’s, it’s, it’s a very personal touch that we need to. And so if you really, really want to, to go to those schools, I’m sure you’ve had a lot of coaches on here.
Say, Hey, map out maybe five or 10 of your ideal schools and chase those schools. Absolutely. Um, each and every email we get that says, hi, coach comma, and then it’s a blanket email. We don’t even get to the first sentence in the email. We just delete it and move on. Because that also went to schools and I, if you remember being, you know, when you were trying to, your, your, and the one.
I guarantee you, you didn’t send out 150 emails to different girls and figure out who stuck. Right. You found the one that you really wanted to, the one that was really to you. You just, I’m, I’m going after that one. Uh, if I, if, you know, if, if it works, it doesn’t, I’m going for that one. That’s how your recruiting process needs to be with about five to 10 schools.
Um, and it’s, it’s, I’ll also want to. Uh, it’s not for everybody. Don’t, there’s many ways you can play soccer while you’re in college that do not involve being a student athlete at that university. So whether you play on the club team at the school, it’s less demanding. You’re not, you know, required to be 20 hours per week.
That’s a lot of time guys. You’re not required to be as many hours every single team meeting, every single x, y, z. There’s so much extra that goes on outside of just practice alone, right? So there’s playing on an outside team. You can come to Bio University and play on one of the dozens and [00:25:30] dozens and dozens semi-pro teams of U P S L Premier all the way down, um, versus playing for the club team.
The place for Biola, for any of you guys out there, you need to understand that sacrifice is not like it is in high school. It’s not where you just go to school all day and you just stumble into practice. No. You’ve got 25 to 30 guys who are fighting for starting spots, fighting for scholarships. Every single player in our roster was either a captain, a number one player on the team they went from, and they’re all trying to come here.
And I know we didn’t
talk about this too much for the first time. I know we didn’t talk about the, the freshmen, um, playing time expectations and I think managing those is super important. Um, I’ll tell you that if you are, it’s super important that you play as a, as an incoming freshman. You need to either be an absolute stud, like in freak of nature, full ride player, go into your school and you’re, you need to have that open conversation with your coach or if you want to be at that prime school who’s a, you know, Clemson does not have many freshmen starting not many.
Um, teams who make the national tournament, not many freshmen starting. If you looked at our roster from this last fall, we had one freshman who started consistently, and that’s because he played three years for Inter Miami On the second team, he was a pro for three years already. He was an incoming freshman.
That’s usually what it takes to be a freshman, to start at the highest levels, whether it’s division one, high levels, division two, highest levels, if you’re a national tournament breaking team and itching toward that point. If you were a freshman [00:27:00] starting on your team, think about it. Drop your ego. What does that say about the team you’re going into?
If you are an 18 year old and you’re starting above all the 21, 22, 23 year olds on a team, that your stealing is only so high. But if you’re a freshman coming in, you realize, man, these guys are a little bit older than me. They’re better players right now, but I can grow and I can grow, and I can become that player and try to exceed that player’s expectations by the time I get there.
By the time I’m sophomore.
That’s where you’re most of your team. So you can find anywhere in the the the Sweet 16 National Tournament for division one, two, or three. You’re gonna find there are mainly starters of sophomores, juniors, and seniors with a rare sprinkle of a freshman here or there. So manage your expectations. There certainly is opportunity for everyone out there.
Every coach wants to win, so if you are better than the guy in front of you, there’s a good chance your coach is gonna put you in because they would like to win at end of the, you’re win. A good chance you’re gonna be in there. Uh, but I’d say managing that expectation is super important.
Matt: Absolutely. Great advice, coach.
Well, I really appreciate the time. Thanks for letting us know a little bit more about Biola. Wish you best of luck in the fall with all these new players you got coming in. And, uh, well, if, if you ever get across the country to Bradenton, Florida for any recruiting, gimme a shout and we’ll definitely get together.
Coach: All right. You got it. You guys have messy now, so I don’t know how close you’re to that, but I gotta make my way out sometime. Uh,
Matt: it’s, it’s a, it’s a good three hour drive, but, uh, but when they play Orlando, that’s a little closer, so, uh, we’ll have to see. Uh, but, uh, it’ll, it [00:28:30] should be fun for sure.
Coach: Awesome.
Matt, thank you so much guys. Thank you.
