A Coach's Diary

Marcus Paige was a star for the legendary North Carolina basketball program from 2013 to 2017. North Carolina is one of the top college basketball programs currently and historically, and Marcus hit one of the biggest shots in North Carolina history against Villanova in the 2016 National Championship game. North Carolina ended up losing on a last-second shot when Villanova leader, Ryan Arcidiacono, made a clutch pass to Kris Jenkins who hit a clutch shot from three, but Paige's shot elevated him into being in a position of being mentioned with the best of the best from North Carolina, including Roy Williams, Vince Carter, Dean Smith, and Michael Jordan. The video below is a clip of Marcus Paige's speech on senior night: Listen, Learn, and Pay Your Dues When Marcus committed to North Carolina, they already had an All-American guard who played his position. Marcus could have gone to other schools where he would have been expected to start immediately, but he was willing to go to ...

One of the hardest parts of sports is handling losing streaks! It's so hard to quantify the effect that one basket, one goal, one score, and one point can have on the players, the coaches, and the whole team. We have had games where we played really solid and just didn't make enough shots and lost. We have played games where we played terrible and won. Usually, the locker room after wins and practice the day after wins are so much happier than after losses, no matter how we played. There is a quote that says, "Winning heals everything." No matter how much we tell ourselves that the process is what matters, and play the game - not the scoreboard, and other great quotes that focus on how we play and not the outcome, at the end of the day, winning sure does cure a lot. But sports are a lot about managing moments , and we have to be able to manage, learn from, move on from losses  Cole Anthony just got drafted by the Orlando Magic in the NBA. He went to North Carolina las...

Be who you are.  Coach because of the relationships.  Have balance.  Pace yourself.  Don't be irrationally emotional.  Have goals, but embrace your path, stay committed, and don't measure yourself against anyone else.  Get over yourself and empower others around you.   USA Today Sports recently posted an article in which it asked some of the premier coaches in college basketball one simple question: "Knowing what you know now, what is advice you would give your younger self about coaching and your career if you could?"    As a relatively young coach, I took a lot of good gems from this article.  A couple of the lessons I was forced to learn early, a couple I was blessed to learn by having such a great staff, and some I am still working on now.  Read below as some of the greatest coaches, and leaders, in the world talk about some of the things they would have done differently if given the chance. Mike Krzyzewski...