So many hats to wear

DURHAM - As a college basketball coach, you are not simply limited to just practice and games with regards to your job each day. And with each year that I coach, the number of hats that each coach shares seems to grow each day. In addition to your daily coaching duties, you take on the role of recruiter, academic mentor, compliance liaison and scheduling-master to just name a few.

At the University of New Hampshire, we try to break down our daily approach with our team into a few areas each day. Team, academics, recruiting and program development are the areas that we concentrate the most on. When we meet daily as a staff, we discuss all of the areas to see if there are ways that we can improve or if there are things that we need to correct. Coach Herrion has a great pulse on all of these areas and each of our staff members(Chris Mohr, Jean Bain, Scott Weitzell and myself) are constantly providing dialogue on each of these key areas for New Hampshire Basketball.

Our work with our team is a daily process. Practice prep and game prep are keys as we are into the most important of our season. Coach Herrion uses his head coaching experience to properly prepare our team each day. His message and approach is very direct and quite simple. We practice hard each day with a goal of trying to get better each day. Our team knows what is expected of them. As assistants, you are always trying to see what you can do help our team members improve. Many of your younger players are trying to adjust to a new situation as a college basketball player. You try to be mindful of that and work with them to understand what they have to do be successful at this level.

It is our main mission at UNH for all of our team members to graduate with a meaningful degree from our institution. To that end, our coaching staff actively seeks future team members who can be successful here not only on the court but also in the classroom. We work in conjunction with our academic staff to make sure that we have in place a strong network of checks and balances for our present team members. Study halls, academic checks and class checks are just some of the things that we have in place here.

Recruiting. Recruiting. Recruiting. These three words are a constant for our program day in and day out. As a staff we try to be organized on a daily basis for some of the things that we need to pay attention to with regards to recruiting. Recruiting is the lifeline of all programs and is a daily effort for our staff. Whether it is phone calls, emails, adding new prospects to the ever-expanding list, recruiting is something that can't be ignored. Just as we push our players to work on their game, coaches have to work on recruiting. Modern-day technology has forced all of us to learn new ways to be organized and how to properly connect with today's prospective student-athletes.

Our last key area for UNH Basketball is program development. We believe that we can always improve our program. Throughout the year we look at ways to improve whether it be on the court or off. Is there something that we can do to better our team? It can range from anything from practice preparation, player development, team travel, and new recruiting ideas.

Bottom line is we are always working to improve what we do. This works well when you have a staff and team that are on the same page. We believe that we have that here at UNH as we head into the final week of our regular season. Winning three in a row also helps!

Go Cats!