Player Intro
Luke Herbert has been a coach at the collegiate level for eleven years. He began as an assistant basketball coach at Covenant College, then transitioned to become head coach at Crown College for the past ten years. He has worked at Crown as the Sports Information Director, the Head Basketball Coach, as well as the Head Soccer Coach, sometimes all within the same school year. In the 2018-'19 season, he led both the Men's soccer and basketball teams to their first postseason wins.
Coach Herbert's philosophy of coaching stems from his coaching environment in a small Division III program, which does not provide scholarships for student-athletes. Because of this, he focuses on flexibility and adaptation based on his personnel. He is unable to recruit by offering scholarships to players who fit the program, and so has played different formations throughout the soccer season, and altered offensive and defensive schemes during the basketball season to fit his personnel. He emphasizes being "brave enough to not make changes, even if you aren't winning," if he knows that the system will work long-term and only needs minor adaptation, as well as being brave enough to completely change directions when the personnel doesn't fit, and not being too prideful to admit that he and his coaching staff have made a mistake. He sums up his coaching philosophy as "Adapt or die."
Adapt or die
Coach Herbert takes away lessons from poor coaching he has experienced; for him, the "whole experience needs to be about the student-athlete." Though he feels that eighty percent of what he has learned has been from negative experiences, he hopes to bring positive playing experiences to his programs, so that players can grow as athletes as well as in character.
Every effort has been made to preserve Coach Herbert's original words and phrasing. Some editing and reorganizing has taken place to support clarity and flow of his narrative.
Gameplan
pD: What habits or traits have you developed through coaching?
LH: I work every day to put players first and care about player experience, including how I address them in practice and in the kinds of things you do for them and with them. It needs to be an all-encompassing deal. Especially at a Christian college, I can emphasize three things I want for them:
Coming in at third place, I want you to have a great basketball experience, and that's going to look different for every player. Not everyone is gonna be an all-conference player, not everyone's going to start, or be the team's leading scorer, but everyone can have a great experience. Whether you're our best or our worst player, you're going to be poured into, developed, and coached. And we're going to try to make you the best basketball player you can be. For some people, that'll mean being a career JV guy; you're gonna be a reserve on JV your whole career, but if you want to be a part of this program, you're going to be valued, respected, and coached just like everybody else.
The second part is that, we're at a college, and we want you to get your degree. College is a great investment, but it might be your worst investment if you leave here without a degree. If you show up for three and a half years, spend X amount of dollars, accumulate a certain amount of debt, and don't get a degree, that's a bad investment. Not to say that the degree is the end-all, be-all of college, but if you don't get it, it makes the other things not nearly as worthwhile. So we talk about graduating and being prepared for life.
At Crown, the number one thing I want players to get is that I want players to leave here prepared to live a Christ-centered life. For some guys, they're already doing that when they get here. For others, they have no idea what that looks like or how they do that. That process is different for everyone, so we decided to tailor how we work with our players, what we focus on, based on the individual. We want to meet people where they're at so that they can grow in the faith aspect of their lives.
What's been most important for me is the ability and skill for me to do my best every day. Every job, career, and life has challenges that make it difficult. It's no different in being a coach; there are times that your best player has done something stupid off the court. Two years ago, we had a really good team, we finished the season 17-10, won a playoff game, were in the semifinals in the conference tournament, but felt like we underachieved because two of our better players missed seven games because of suspension for different infractions. They had to suffer the consequences, and I know we lost a couple games because those guys weren't there and we were in a disadvantageous position.
Do my best every day
Sometimes you don't get the recruits you want, or you get money taken out of your budget. There are reasons to have a bad day, and you just can't have any bad days when it comes to pouring into your kids, whether that's preparing for an opponent or coming up with a good practice plan; even just as simple as how you treat your players, not bringing a bad day to practice with you.
I remember I had a terrible day, horrible from a business and work perspective, and we got to practice, and our guys messed up a drill in the first five minutes of practice. I flew off the handle, it was so bad, and I was so angry. It was a brutal practice, and it was unfair and unhelpful. It was lessons like that: regardless of the circumstances and how you're feeling that day, you have to do your best. It's not just about you, it's about those players. Should those players suffer because you had a bad day?
And it's no different for players; if they show up and struggled with a test and mope around practice and don't play hard, that hurts the team. One of your initial posts referenced the idea of control what you can control, and I tell our guys all the time, "you can control your attitude, you can control your effort. You can't control how athletic you are, but when you let go of a jump shot, it's literally and figuratively out of your hands. You can't control that anymore, but what's your next responsibility: getting back on defense, attacking the glass, re-evaluating your shot selection?"
I'm going to do my best in this moment
For me, the skill or habit, is "I'm going to do my best in this moment," regardless of how I'm feeling. It's not just you anytime you're part of a team. What anybody on that team does affects everybody else. I learned that lesson when we had a kid near the end of our JV roster, and he had a bad attitude. I didn't really address it because I thought:"Everybody knows this guy is one of the worst players on the team, and they're not really going to be bothered by this guy's bad attitude."
I found out at the end of the season, that our top varsity guys were like, "This dude just brought everybody down, and had a negative impact on everybody."
I thought, "That's my fault for not addressing it." As a coach, if I don't address it, I'm permitting it. Even a guy who's not part of the varsity rotation with a bad attitude can affect those guys and make it a less positive experience.
Sometimes it's compartmentalizing; I may be frustrated about one thing, but it has nothing to do with practice, so I'm going to go crush practice, because I can control that, I can have a great attitude and coach hard instead of moping around and being moody. It's not easy every day, but it's a skill you can develop over time.
pD: Tell me about how this habit of bringing your best to every interaction carries over into other parts of your life.
LH: I've been using this in the last year, more cognizant of what this means outside of work and coaching. For me, some days, you've had a tough, long day at work, coaching two sports, having fifty to sixty guys I'm responsible for on campus.
There are days I come home drained, and I would love to heat up a frozen pizza or hot pocket and watch TV for a couple hours before bed. But I've got three young kids in the home, and they want to hang out and play, be excited, with their dad; they want to tell me about a new Pokemon card or show me a drawing they've made that I have no idea what it is. But they're excited about it, and you have to do the same thing at home, saying "I need to be the best dad I can be for the next two hours before bedtime;" another thing is being conscious of plugging my phone in somewhere else so I can be present at home, even if I had a 12 hour day, because we had late practice and I had a meeting in the morning, and I've just been going for 12 hours. I've got an hour left with my kids, I'm gonna crush it.
I've got an hour left; I'm gonna crush it
Sometimes you don't have the energy or the desire, or you're just worn out, but do you want to, do you recognize the importance of, being the best dad I can be for the next two hours? Or it's a 5-hour road trip on Saturday, and I teach Sunday school every other week; the last thing I want to do is wake up early on Sunday and go wrangle eighteen 1st and 2nd graders. I didn't want to deal with that challenge, but you go and be the best Sunday School teacher you can be, because that's important, and because those kids don't deserve a grumpy teacher because you lost a game the day before.
What I've learned too, when you do that, you can shake off a lot of the frustration, a lot of the fatigue, a lot of the negative energy you were carrying, by saying "I can do a great job doing this, and I should, and I need to." I'll be darned if you don't finish that Sunday School an hour later, and you just feel better about everything in life. You might still be bummed that you lost, or thinking about how you can change as a coach, but it puts things into perspective really quickly. So doing the best you can in every aspect of your life, sometimes it's hard, but it's important, no matter what it is you're doing.
Doing the best you can is important, no matter what
pD: You've talked about some of the ups and downs of the coaching life. What's one of the biggest challenges you've overcome, and how did you do overcome it?
LH: One of the ways to put it is: there's a different challenge every day. Sometimes it's the lack of talent on your team, and you need to encourage these guys and develop them in the midst of a 3-22 season. Sometimes the challenge is being really good, but you've got some guys who haven't bought in or are ill-disciplined, and hurting the team that way. So that's a totally different challenge.
I had one player in particular, my challenge was just getting him to trust me. I'd say, "I am for you, I need you to see that," but this is a guy who had significant insecurities. He was insecure about people thinking he was a bad guy, because he had been suspended, been kicked off the team by a previous coach. He was labeled a "bad kid," and had this insecurity about it. Every time I would coach and discipline him, he would almost always jump to "Everyone thinks I'm a terrible guy."
At one point, he got a yellow card in a soccer match, and the referee was all over him, in his face. Less than 30 seconds later, he was jockeying for position, a normal soccer play, and the referee came over and got into his face again. So I took him out of the game to give THE REFEREE time to cool down, because I didn't need him to give this kid a second yellow for nothing, and all of a sudden we'd be down a player the rest of the match. This player was so upset with me to be taken off five minutes left in the half, he was saying "You think I'm a terrible guy, you think I'm gonna do this, you don't trust me." And I'm telling him "I don't trust the referee; what I'm seeing is that you committed a foul, that happens. You weren't angry or being cheap or dirty, then the referee, all he wanted to do was yell at you. He's going to send you off because he's having a bad day. I trust you, I don't trust him!" So that was a big moment for us, for him seeing his coach's perspective and hearing that trust.
The biggest challenge is that there's a different challenge every day. Even from the perspective that you can play the same way, but your opponent changes each match, and the referees change each match, so the things you could do in one game, you can't in another game. That's a challenge. As a coach, you have to adapt to that, and figure out how to exist in that game.
There's a different challenge every day
The other one for me has been time. College coaching is a busy profession, and the truth of the matter is, everyone thinks they're busy. I think if you polled random people on the street, I think 90% of them would say they're really busy and stressed. We have a hard time saying no sometimes, and we put a lot on our plates. So whether someone has only has 10% of somebody else's workload, they probably still feel busy.
So there are some fifteen, sixteen hour days when you get home and you have a pregnant wife who needs help, or young kids who didn't sleep the night before, whatever it is. There's always going to be demands on your time. So effectively managing your time and choosing how you spend your emotional capital, how you use your energy throughout a day, is vital; you can choose to find energy for a practice at the end of the day, or for a preschool Christmas program where your kid isn't even singing, they're just standing at the end of the line picking their nose; choose to find that energy, choose to not let the demands of your schedule affect your job and different parts of your life.
Choose to find that energy
pD: Finally, what have you seen in your time at Crown, that separates your more successful players from those who don't realize their potential?
LH: A couple things stick out. One of them was an excerpt from a podcast by a psychologist, who talked about elite athletes enjoy the things that average athletes hate about their sport. So he talked about an elite swim team who had these marathon, 2.5 hour practices that started at 5:30 am. Their practices are torture, going hard, putting in a workout when they practice, so this elite group of swimmers, show up at 5:30 am, laughing, full of energy, and excited. Maybe part of it is the sense is that everyone else hates this, and that's why we love it, because we know that this is what it takes.
A great athlete loves the work
So he said that's the difference between even a good athlete and a great athlete. A good athlete is willing to do the work, but a great athlete loves it: the weight room, extra shots, running four 16's back to back at the end of practice. It's a chance to assert their dominance, or push themselves, or set new goals.
When I think about some of our best players, one of my guys, a four year starter for basketball, 2,077 career points, all time leading scorer in our conference, back to back player of the year in our conference, which has never been done. He would just give it to people in practice; one year we had a freshman big, who was 6'6, a big physical wing, and this guy just went at him. Not verbally or being mean to this kid, but he just destroyed this kid all day in practice: ate him up on the glass, dominated him defensively, ran him up and down the floor, all over this kid. And I said "Tim, why are you abusing Joe so much today?" and he said "It's his turn!" And that was all he said, and he said it with this maniacal, relentless look.
An example of this comes from a story about Kevin Garnett's work ethic when he was with the Celtics. Doc Rivers (the head coach) once had to cancel a practice because he was trying to rest his starters. So he took Kevin Garnett out of a drill that he was doing alongside the guards, and KG said "No." Rivers subbed him out anyway.
So Garnett is on the practice court next to the main court, and Doc Rivers said that everything that the guy who replaced him was doing, Garnett would mirror. Every time he jumped, Garnett would jump. Every time he would run, Garnett would run. Every time Garnett would fake grab a rebound, he would fake put up a shot, he would fake play defense. And Garnett was just over by himself on the other court shadowing this other guy, and Doc is like "Dude, knock it off. I want to limit your reps today."
Be addicted to the work
And Garnett was that crazy, saying he would not rest. So Doc had to cancel practice, and say "Fine, everybody's done." He literally had to cancel practice because Garnett wouldn't stop being a crazy person. So you look at that, that's a different level, that's not someone who's just willing to do the work, that's someone who's addicted to the work. So we've had a few athletes that just embrace a few aspects of the game.
Also, some of my best players have been my smartest players; not bigger, faster, stronger, but just so much smarter. With intelligence comes a natural toughness. If you're not smart and you don't know what you should be doing, it's hard to be tough, because you don't know how to do the little things that it takes to be successful.
But the guys who know what it takes can be really tough because they know how important it is. Whether it's taking charges or boxing out, just being physical. We had a player a couple years ago that just defined that; he wasn't a great athlete, or overly skilled, but he was the toughness of our team.
One of my favorite plays he made all season, we were playing the top team in our conference, and they had a kid who was just a monster on the offensive boards, strong motor, he was 6'5" and physical, a good athlete, just crushed the offensive glass. I told this player of ours, "You need to keep him off the glass."
The first possession of the game, he was in help defense, and this kid was at the elbow; a shot went up, and this kid had the step on our guy, was gonna get the offensive rebound, and so Cole literally grabbed him in an arm bar and just tackled him out of bounds. And he clearly got called for the foul, and he looks over at me, and I think I had a crazy look in my eyes, but I looked at him and I leaned forward and clapped my hand and said "Yes."
And he just set the tone on that first possession: "You are not getting anything easy today. You are not going to affect the game the way you best affect it. I am not going to allow it to happen." I think the kid finished with seven total rebounds, and we ended up beating this team for the second time that year, and they ended up winning the league. Their only two losses that year in conference were to us, and we just dominated them, and it was a big reason why. This kid wasn't a better athlete or more skilled, but he was smart, he was tough.
The third thing I can identify is that the guys who have made a difference in our program are very coachable and humble. They work hard, they have that mean streak, and are addicted to the work, but they are humble enough to understand that coach has a different perspective.
Probably two of our best ever players could have been successful doing things their way. They could've broken plays off, not listened to coaching, and they would still have gotten a lot done because they were very skilled and athletic. But they unfailingly operated within what the team was doing. Tim this year is a perfect example; a lot of things we did were built around him.
They operated within the team
Unfortunately for him, pretty much everything the opposing team did was also built around him defensively. The start and end of their scouting report was "How are we going to stop or slow down Tim?" Now, he averaged 26 points per game in conference, he was 13th in the country in Division III for scoring. But everything he got this year was hard, and we basically had three distinct sections of our season where we did things completely different offensively because of it.
In the beginning of the year, teams figured out there were two players they just didn't have to guard, and literally just sat in help and would not let Tim go to the basket. We were doing a lot of dribble drive stuff, and when Tim gets downhill, he's impossible to stop, but he can't get downhill if there's always a help defender cutting him off early. They just literally didn't guard two players.
So we started running sets to isolate Tim, and that worked for a while until teams started to double even before he got the ball. Then we went back to a true motion offense that we played at Covenant my first year of coaching.
He would adapt his game
All through that, Tim didn't complain, he didn't say "I want to do this because it works for me;" whatever the game plan was, he would execute it, and he would be great in it. So that ability to be coachable and to understand "I can still be a really good, effective player playing this way because of who I am, but I need to do my best to play offensively and defensively to help my teammates and make their lives easier." So he would adapt his game to what his teammates and team needed, and still scored 26 ppg.
So our best players have always been very coachable, team first guys, who are still able, because of their intelligence, to succeed no matter what the team is doing.
Execution
Coach Herbert has kindly shared footage of a drill that his players run to practice the fundamentals of their offense. Check out their work and pick up some tips as you go into next season!
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