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3 Guys Before The Game - Mark Kellogg Visits (Episode 547) · 3 Guys Before The Game

• 0:12
  Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, what's up?
• 0:14
  Man? Welcome in. Look at that picture on that on that video screen,
• 0:18
  right, there's four people here. You might have to rename the show.
• 0:22
  It's supposed to be three Guys before the Game. But yeah, summer
• 0:26
  series. Man, this officially the first one. At least we had jaque
• 0:31
  in here. I think this is the first one. No, we didn't
• 0:36
  have to know we had an in a summer interview series. I don't know
• 0:40
  about it. I don't know if current players count as summer series. What
• 0:44
  do you mean. I don't think current don't. I don't think active eligible
• 0:47
  athlete counts as summer See you mean we have guidelines here. It's new regimented
• 0:52
  show. I mean you've been you'll skip spring. Well, we've been trying
• 0:57
  to get these times the show. We've been trying to get pontoon boats in
• 1:02
  the water since January. So yeah, it's summer night. Yeah, welcome
• 1:04
  in. Everybody. Are a very special guest on this edition of Three Guys
• 1:10
  Before the Game is WV women's basketball coach Mark Kellogg. We got we got
• 1:15
  a lot to get in because we went back and checked the records, checked
• 1:19
  the transcript, and we have determined collectively as this group and our staff,
• 1:25
  which is many many people that he he absolutely he uh, he possumed us
• 1:30
  on his last visit played possible, of course he did. He laid lows.
• 1:34
  Yeah, I don't know, we're just I think year one, we're
• 1:38
  just going to try to get the ball over mid court once in a while.
• 1:41
  I think that's it's kind of what we're just going to try to do
• 1:42
  exactly that. Then he then he comes out here and he just screwed up.
• 1:48
  Let's go, do you have the audio of any of that or we're
• 1:51
  just well winging it right there with AI we can make you say it.
• 1:57
  Three guys before the Game has brought to us by Comac's Business Systems, keeping
• 2:01
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• 2:07
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• 2:35
  We'll show you some pictures coming up, what's going on there at lou
• 2:38
  Wendell. I also just you know, I had a lot of things going
• 2:40
  through my head, you know, just believe it or not while I'm talking,
• 2:45
  and I was going to try to make a joke here believe it.
• 2:47
  Yeah, okay. I was also gonna say I was gonna give them the
• 2:50
  old and sponsored by the NCAA Women's Basketball's Officials Association. Now coach has been
• 2:58
  here thirty five seconds, So we don't need to have a fine issue.
• 3:00
  If you don't have one that you don't have one of our whistles. Now,
• 3:05
  we promise we'll blow it at the most inopportune and incorrect times. Thank
• 3:08
  you. You work for that one. Boom. The coaches, I mean,
• 3:13
  he has to be careful. I'm trying to get him in tru you
• 3:15
  get what, Yeah, right, statute limitations over tournament's been over for a
• 3:20
  month. Let's say whatever you want there should be it should be. It
• 3:23
  should be. It's kind of like when the NDA. When the NDA comes
• 3:27
  to an end, not just close your agreement. It's no longer. No
• 3:30
  longer. So you're going to try and predict what the behavior of the NSA
• 3:32
  would be in terms of the statute of limitations and good back to you in
• 3:36
  five years. Yeah, oh worry, buddy. We appreciate you coming out.
• 3:38
  We're doing great. Yeah, I appreciate you having me back and kind
• 3:43
  of half remember the first time I was here, but that was a while
• 3:45
  ago. Of course, are going about fifteen one thousand miles an hour,
• 3:49
  but no, we're we're doing really well and obviously had a fantastic season and
• 3:53
  onto the recruiting scene now and actually we have our last workout of the spring
• 3:57
  today with our team, so this is it for us. We got to
• 4:00
  take the next week off and then we go into finals. So we're on
• 4:03
  the we're on the back end of It never stops, does it, man,
• 4:06
  It really never does, no, And you know you're looking at the
• 4:09
  calendar, my wife and I and with the kids' activities and my schedule,
• 4:13
  and we hadn't had a vacation in year and a half. So we're trying.
• 4:15
  We got to find we got to find a date here. Coach Kellogg's
• 4:20
  starting to a little bit here. I need recharge, Yeah I do,
• 4:26
  Yeah, no doubt. So a good vacation for you involves what, Yeah,
• 4:29
  typically like beach, beach golf, dinners, you know, pickleball.
• 4:34
  I mean we're kind of an active, more of an active vacationers. But
• 4:40
  I can sit on the beach for a little bit. But no, I
• 4:41
  mean to still give me a ball or a paddle or do something that kind
• 4:45
  of guy. You don't sitting in the umbrella and read I do not do
• 4:46
  that, not one bit. You've got a family of four. What's the
• 4:49
  normal team assignment and when you do play pickleball as a boys against the girls,
• 4:55
  what are you doing on that normally? Well, no, now it's
• 4:58
  typically husband and my first children. Now that they've gotten a little older,
• 5:01
  we used to, you know, it would be mom with a kid and
• 5:04
  dad with a kid, and now it's typically always yeah, yeah, well
• 5:08
  still play some two on two basketball, and now it's always mom and dad
• 5:11
  versus the kids. Rank competitive levels of the four of you, Yeah,
• 5:15
  I don't. You couldn't because it's four of the most competitive people you've ever
• 5:18
  ever been around. Yeah, that would be a really really hard one.
• 5:23
  Anything anything ever breakout like that's a foul. No, Yeah, there's a
• 5:27
  little bit of that. Yeah. Oh, yeah, there's some arguments and
• 5:30
  uh yeah, no, we've we have plenty of those battles. Little spirited
• 5:33
  okay, yeah, yeah. Do you when you're playing these two on two
• 5:36
  basketball games, obviously in the past, you would have held back blocking particular
• 5:43
  people's shots. Do you go, I mean your daughter, like, if
• 5:46
  she steps back on you, will you try to swat it? Yeah,
• 5:48
  I mean yeah if I can. Yeah, I know, she's gotten pretty
• 5:53
  good. My son's more athletic than I am, you know, at my
• 5:55
  age now, so he's got or you can go get a rebound over me
• 5:57
  and do some stuff. So it's they're a little more repetitive all of a
• 6:00
  sudden. Yeah, and I've got to be a little careful when I even
• 6:02
  choose to play. Well, you gotta be careful too about potential injury.
• 6:06
  No, for sure, that's what I'm in hamstring, I mean stretching before
• 6:10
  you line up. It's real. Yeah, I know, I kind of
• 6:12
  got my knee one time we played and I was like, yeah, i
• 6:14
  think I'm done here, guys. Yeah, sorry, check it out.
• 6:15
  I'm going to this one. Ever, any incidents where when you're playing two
• 6:18
  on two where maybe there's an obvious foul, but nobody calls it. Does
• 6:23
  that ever happen? Yeah? Oh yeah, no, I mean I know
• 6:26
  it doesn't happen in a tournament play. It wouldn't happen there. I was
• 6:30
  just gonna say, you're baiting him in again. Don't do that. He's
• 6:31
  asked him A fair question, a question, protect great interview with coach after
• 6:38
  the tournament. All I did was I wrote a commentary about it. You
• 6:40
  and I talked about it. I wrote a commentary and I cited statistics and
• 6:45
  just asked the coach. I said, if you disagree the statistics, didn't
• 6:46
  I, yes, you did. I said, if you disagree with any
• 6:50
  of these statistics, if any of these things, just stop me. Coach
• 6:55
  didn't stop. Those were statistics, those were Those were black and white statistics.
• 6:59
  Fact. Yeah, that was that was easy. You know. You
• 7:00
  didn't set me up for anything on the presenting facts. Just talked about facts.
• 7:05
  You were hired as the head coach on April the third, We record
• 7:11
  on the eighteenth. So you've been here two years and fifteen days. Think
• 7:15
  about the year your family just had you come in here, you rock and
• 7:20
  roll, and you put together this year. It's one year. What I
• 7:25
  said, you said two years. Wow, I'm sorry, I was thinking,
• 7:28
  I'm a big question. Ye years, it hasn't gone by that well.
• 7:33
  If this, if this weren't live, if this weren't live to tape,
• 7:36
  I'd go like this three two one. Coach, you've now been here
• 7:42
  for one year and fifteen days. Think about the year that you guys just
• 7:47
  had as a family. Obviously, you have this incredible unexpected success in basketball.
• 7:54
  Not that you weren't going to be successful here, but no one I
• 7:57
  thought, no one thought that was going to happen this quickly. Your daughter
• 8:01
  wins a state championship at Morgantown High. I'm sorry to losers in the championship
• 8:05
  game. Your son wins the state championship at Morgantown. My point was,
• 8:09
  you both played for state. They both played for state championships in addition to
• 8:13
  everything else that's going on, Like this has been a year. It has.
• 8:18
  Yeah, And no, you couldn't have written the script, to be
• 8:22
  honest, much better. And I don't know that we've I mean, we
• 8:24
  would act like to think we dreamed of this, but I'm not sure that
• 8:28
  that was even ever in the cards. And you know that the stretch of
• 8:31
  the we had the three saturdays in a row is kind of what I've said,
• 8:33
  where Kayley played in the state championship the next saturday, Camden's team played
• 8:37
  in the state championship, and then we played Princeton in NCAA tournament the next
• 8:41
  Saturday. So we had a run in the kell Loogg household. That was,
• 8:45
  you know, kind of unmatched, and you know, never dreamed of
• 8:48
  something like that, but happy for the kids. You know, that was
• 8:50
  my biggest concern when I moved here. I think we maybe even talked about
• 8:54
  that when I first got here, was just how would the family adjust?
• 8:56
  And I was bringing a high school girl, you know, who had had
• 9:00
  these We were eight years at steven F. Austin and those were her friends.
• 9:03
  Sure, she had that travel team in Dallas, and you know,
• 9:05
  I think camd and I always thought was okay, he was ready for it.
• 9:07
  Kaylee I was a little more concerned with, but no, people have
• 9:11
  been great. Morgantown High School adopted them and made him feel really welcome,
• 9:15
  really quickly, and they battled through some stuff. But that's good. That
• 9:18
  makes them a little bit tougher along the way. It makes you enjoy it
• 9:20
  a little bit on the back end, and our team was special, and
• 9:24
  you know, we can talk about that more later, I guess. But
• 9:26
  that came together, as you said, probably quicker than anybody thought. So
• 9:28
  I don't think I was trying to downplay it a year ago. I just
• 9:31
  didn't know you had all the all the boxes unpacked for the most part.
• 9:35
  I mean there's a lot of boxes just still down there. They're in the
• 9:37
  downstairs. We'll get to that later, right that. We'll get to that,
• 9:41
  yeah, exactly. And if there's if they're still in boxes at this
• 9:45
  point, you don't need it. No, that's what we say. It's
• 9:46
  the only good thing about moving. If you hadn't touched it last movie,
• 9:50
  it does, we don't need it. Does it feel to you more like
• 9:52
  it's been four months or more like it's been two and a half years,
• 9:58
  you know, because there's a lot, right, there's a lot that's gone
• 10:00
  on in the year, honestly, both Like I could go probably both ways
• 10:03
  with that kind of I guess, yeah, like that argument, like I
• 10:07
  feel like I just got here, no doubt. But I also feel like,
• 10:11
  man, like this is like we've been going now and we do feel
• 10:13
  really comfortable. So it does feel like we've been here and even just the
• 10:16
  friendships and the you know, just being comfortable here and where we live and
• 10:20
  how we go about our business is. Yeah, it does feel like home.
• 10:22
  And so I guess it feels like it's been really quick and I just
• 10:26
  got here and we were just doing this podcast whenever that was and we were
• 10:28
  getting the house and all that stuff. And then at the same time,
• 10:31
  Yeah, it feels like it's been a comfortable and home was the biggest key
• 10:37
  to your success. The initial ability to keep all six of the players that
• 10:41
  you were inheriting here. Yeah. Yeah, that was win number one.
• 10:46
  That's kind of what I've called it. Win number one was keeping that group
• 10:48
  of six, and then we added seven, and then the big win was
• 10:52
  that group meshing together. That's Wally what I was the most concerned about.
• 10:56
  And we had our little kind of banquet celebration of the season last night.
• 11:00
  I talked a little bit about that that that I was just so scared that
• 11:03
  it was just going to be this and we're going to have these oh,
• 11:05
  the coach Kellogg recruits versus the ones that had been recruited by two previous coaches,
• 11:09
  and not one, but two previous coaches and how in the world could
• 11:13
  we blend it? But I mean, honestly, by the end of the
• 11:15
  summer, and it was a credit to our players and their togetherness and their
• 11:18
  connection. Like they were good. We were good by the end of the
• 11:22
  summer. They were connected, they were they were at the spot we needed
• 11:24
  them to be. That's easy for you to say that, but it's not
• 11:26
  that easy. You had to have you and your staff had to have some
• 11:31
  kind of a plan so that the marriage could take place, because if you
• 11:37
  didn't have some sense of feel or direction, then they would not have molded
• 11:43
  together like they did. So if you would step back, what was your
• 11:46
  coaching to your coaches as to how you wanted to approach it so that they
• 11:50
  would bond. Yeah, I mean I think I my job is to paint
• 11:54
  a vision, right and then hopefully they can see that vision. And so
• 11:58
  you know, my little bagline is be you align with us, you know,
• 12:01
  and so early on, like JJ, I think she has a tattoo
• 12:05
  that says be you. So from like the very beginning, like it was
• 12:07
  like I love it that resonated with her, right, And I want every
• 12:11
  kid to feel like they can truly be themselves, because I think that's when
• 12:13
  I get them at their best. I want the locker room to be the
• 12:16
  safe place where you can be yourself. If I want to get in this
• 12:18
  conversation with that group of teammates, I can. If I don't want to
• 12:20
  be in it, I'm perfectly comfortable being over here. They come into the
• 12:24
  facility every day, Man, I get to be myself. I got my
• 12:26
  little backpack on, I'm ready to go to work. And so it was
• 12:30
  just painting this vision and with the coaches and making sure the kids felt really
• 12:33
  comfortable being who they were. And I thought we had brought in really good
• 12:37
  kids with high character that obviously had a talent also, and there was talent
• 12:41
  here. So those six were talented. And then they just got along and
• 12:45
  we did the bonding stuff, you know, the mandatory bonding. We did
• 12:48
  the whitewater rafting and the jump houses and the retreats, and we did all
• 12:52
  of that stuff. But for them, they did it on their own too,
• 12:56
  And I think that's why we got the head start that we got.
• 12:58
  Where did your philosophy be you? Where was that created along your coaching journey?
• 13:05
  Yeah? Probably four or five years ago, maybe right, before well
• 13:07
  maybe right even app maybe not quite that long. It was right around COVID
• 13:11
  because us one of my former players got into sports psychology, mental performance stuff,
• 13:16
  and she used that with me and that just resonated with me. And
• 13:20
  I remember I got my team on a zoom so she could talk that through
• 13:22
  with them and they really liked it. And so yeah, it may have
• 13:26
  been four or five years ago that I've just kind of stuck with that because
• 13:28
  I just thought it meant so much. And with kids these days, they
• 13:31
  all, you know, they want to be themselves. Yeah, don't don't
• 13:35
  tell them or try to treat them all the same because they are not.
• 13:37
  And JJ gets here and she's already got the tattoo that says be you.
• 13:41
  Yeah. Yeah, so that had to be a little that had to be
• 13:43
  a little rah, you know. And even if if you're talking more about
• 13:48
  JJ, you know, I'm talking about steals and pressure defense, and you
• 13:52
  know, like the one goal she gave me when I got here was I
• 13:54
  want to be the all time steals leader at West Virginia. That was it.
• 13:56
  That was the goal, you know, And well, I'm gonna you're
• 13:58
  gonna press, You're gonna get off cortunity to get, you know, and
• 14:01
  she ended with almost like one hundred steals I think on the season, you
• 14:03
  know, And so she got the opportunity, but she just I think the
• 14:07
  philosophy just fit. Yeah, I've said it before on this show A bunch,
• 14:11
  not necessarily while you were here, but throughout the season. We had
• 14:13
  a chance to be up close with your team a lot. As I have
• 14:16
  a younger daughter that plays basketball. It's been all your camps and stuff.
• 14:20
  You did have a wonderful group of kids that not only were great players,
• 14:24
  but understood how to interact with those those youth and those kids. So that's
• 14:28
  obviously super important. That helped lead to that chemistry because you just had good
• 14:31
  kids that got it. Did seeing that group and how they came together and
• 14:35
  what that meant, did it change any of your approach to recruiting and things
• 14:41
  you would ask or things you would try and uncover about a recruit, or
• 14:43
  maybe just reinforce what you were trying to do or I guess meaning can you
• 14:48
  recruit culture? Can you recruit the right kids? When does talent outweigh personality
• 14:52
  and behavior? How do you judge that? Yeah? No, once you
• 14:54
  get a healthy locker room, you really really want to try to keep it
• 14:58
  healthy. And so is character to me? Right, we all the buzzword
• 15:01
  is culture and that sounds cool, but what was that? What does that
• 15:03
  mean? Like to me, it's what's inside you? What's your character?
• 15:07
  And then collectively, what's our character? And you know when you see him
• 15:09
  interact with the kids at camps or clinics and those things, well, that's
• 15:13
  part of who you are, that's your character. When you things are going
• 15:16
  really difficult, what how do you know do you have any resiliency about you?
• 15:20
  And that was our but our team word this year that they came up
• 15:22
  was resiliency and so how do you act when things aren't going your way?
• 15:26
  And you know, we had a player whose father passed away this fall and
• 15:30
  the team rallied around her, and you know, our player, you know,
• 15:33
  somehow, some way just was phenomenal through that process and how she did
• 15:37
  it. So there were things that happened throughout the year. And then we
• 15:39
  get them, you know, out in the middle of nowhere for our team
• 15:43
  retreat and they start talking about their goals and then we did a whole family
• 15:46
  presentation which I kind of stole a little bit from Neil Brown. If you've
• 15:48
  been in their facility, they have like the family wall, and I think
• 15:52
  some of that was off from the coal miners who have a family wall before
• 15:54
  they go down, and so I thought that was really neat. But we
• 15:56
  asked them to bring a picture of, you know, the most important people
• 16:00
  to them, whoever that was, and then they had to get up in
• 16:02
  front of the group and you know, talk about it like what does that
• 16:03
  mean to you? And who are these most important people? And so you
• 16:07
  got to hear some stories that you wouldn't otherwise hear, and so we just
• 16:10
  really really grew together. And so now when you get it as strong as
• 16:14
  we have it, it's pretty strong, and not that we would ever,
• 16:17
  we won't just bring somebody in that doesn't have good character. But also when
• 16:19
  it's this strong, if somebody maybe doesn't quite have that character, they don't
• 16:22
  have a choice when they come now, because you're either going to adapt to
• 16:25
  where we are or you're going to go and never be a part of it,
• 16:27
  you know, even once you get here. So that's got to be
• 16:30
  part of the discussion right when you're recruiting, is not just that person individually
• 16:33
  about how they mesh with those other kids, Yeah, no doubt. And
• 16:36
  we ask our kids, like we've been on the visits here lately and we'll
• 16:38
  ask them, hey, what'd you think how this kid interact? What do
• 16:41
  we say? And they'll tell us and I want them to tell us,
• 16:44
  you know, And we've had one somewhat recently that the kids are like,
• 16:47
  m I'm not sure, coach, I don't know about the fit. You
• 16:48
  know, you're like good, that's what we want to know. Really talented
• 16:52
  kid, but maybe not worth worth for us, you know, or we
• 16:56
  think maybe we see something different. We've known them a little longer than them
• 16:57
  through the recruiting process, so maybe we give it a try, and then
• 17:00
  we just know we have such a strong locker room that that kid will kind
• 17:03
  of fall in line and be okay. But if you don't have a strong
• 17:07
  locker room, you absolutely can't do that. If you have a strong locker
• 17:10
  room, then yeah, you may be able to take a chance here there.
• 17:11
  How do you know? I mean, how do you know? I
• 17:14
  mean you're doing your you're doing your research obviously, and you're talking to coaches,
• 17:18
  talking all the people. But you get to a point where maybe it's
• 17:21
  sixty forty. Okay, the character, okay, it's you know, it's
• 17:23
  good, but it could be better. But the talent is when it's a
• 17:27
  close call, what tips the scale? Talent? Talent always tips the scale.
• 17:34
  No, I mean yes and no, I mean you just do your
• 17:37
  homework and keep in mind. And here's what I've learned. This is what
• 17:40
  I've also said with like recruiting in particular. The difference here versus like at
• 17:42
  the mid major SFA is how many other people we have to talk to here
• 17:48
  before we ever even get to talk to Okay, and so by the time
• 17:51
  you actually even get to the kid, you have a pretty good idea of
• 17:52
  their characters. How many of you? How many have you talked to?
• 17:56
  How many kids or many like per kid? Like who do you have talking
• 18:00
  people that are in there helping? You could have a high school coach,
• 18:06
  AAU coach, skills trainer, maybe agent, business manager, mamager, you
• 18:11
  know what, I'd like that term we got yeah, you know, and
• 18:18
  then you and then you talk about you don't follow the Kardashians, what is
• 18:22
  your and and you don't have to go through the whole thing, but at
• 18:23
  each level, then what's your what's your elevator speech, what's your pitch?
• 18:27
  Well, I mean, it depends on which one of those, because it's
• 18:30
  kind of different for each kid, you know. But here's what else has
• 18:32
  happened to though, and this isn't necessarily gonna answer your question, but it
• 18:34
  might, is that Iowa game changed recruiting and how those conversations started that.
• 18:38
  Yeah, so like it used to be a ten minute Oh we're in Morgantown
• 18:41
  or have you ever even been to West Virginia? No? I haven't.
• 18:44
  What do you know about our team? Have you ever seen us play?
• 18:45
  No? I have not. Well, let me tell you how we play.
• 18:48
  Oh, man, we got some really good talent on this team.
• 18:49
  We got this all American guard like you would love to play with these kids,
• 18:53
  great character, locker room da da da takes ten minutes. Now,
• 18:57
  Oh, coach man, y'all, it's so good at Iowa. Those kids,
• 19:02
  y'all's defense is unbelievable. I would love to get to play in that.
• 19:04
  Man, what a great culture you have. Y'all handled yourselves with class.
• 19:07
  That officiating wasn't very good, but I love the what you said in
• 19:10
  the you know, in the postgame press conference. Twenty seconds later, I
• 19:15
  just got everything that I normally would take me ten minutes, and I'm just
• 19:17
  still painting a picture. And now they actually have the picture in their minds.
• 19:21
  So that's changed some of the elevator speech to go back to your original
• 19:25
  question, But it just depends on who you're talking to. We still pull
• 19:27
  it back to the same stuff though, in the recruiting is how does that
• 19:30
  kid fit our program? And then high school recruiting is way different than portal
• 19:34
  recruiting because it's obviously a timeline. But the portal kids they don't care about
• 19:40
  the football game anymore. And the pageantry and what your hotel room decorations look
• 19:45
  like, that doesn't matter. It's never like that again, okay, you
• 19:47
  know. And then the portal kids know that that doesn't matter. They just
• 19:49
  how do I fit? You know, more mature? How much can I
• 19:53
  What do you think my playing time is? Where do you see my role?
• 19:56
  What are my teammates like? Where do I live? Where do I
• 20:00
  eat? Eh? And some of them, if they're older, they don't
• 20:03
  care about school as much anymore. They're already graduates, and they maybe are
• 20:06
  just kind of hanging on because they get their coach year or something, and
• 20:08
  how much you're gonna pay me. Yeah, that's gets in there too,
• 20:11
  at some point, some earlier in the conversation, some you know not so
• 20:15
  much, and it still comes up, maybe not quite as quickly as you
• 20:18
  would think, but it won't be too many conversations in but it doesn't come
• 20:22
  up in the first twenty minutes or anything like that. I'm always interested when
• 20:26
  you make a transition, as you did in coaching from group of five to
• 20:30
  power five. Yes it's the same game, Yes it's EX and o's what
• 20:34
  changed for you or did you have any moments when you were coaching at this
• 20:38
  level this year that are significantly different or not just from the flat coaching like
• 20:45
  X and O side. I don't think that there wasn't a ton not nearly
• 20:48
  as much as one might think. I mean, really, coaching is coaching.
• 20:52
  Now, you got bigger bodies, you got better athletes, You change
• 20:56
  a few things schematically that we didn't have to do, maybe a little more
• 21:00
  creative, bigger staff, so you're probably scouted a little bit harder better.
• 21:04
  So I think as the season went you have to start getting a little more
• 21:07
  creative in some of the things you do because they've probably picked up on it.
• 21:11
  But again, we weren't a true like round robin schedule, so we
• 21:14
  were like we played some teams at the very end of the year, like
• 21:15
  in Oklahoma State who we didn't even see all year. So you know,
• 21:18
  it wasn't really that wasn't the situation there. But no, I mean,
• 21:22
  for the most part, like the way we coach, the way we play
• 21:26
  wasn't. I didn't put that in for West Virginia. That's what we did
• 21:29
  at steven F Austin and West Texas A and M and all the stops.
• 21:33
  I think you would agree, And we oftentimes talk about this. Those coaches
• 21:37
  at lower levels, they're like really really good coaches because a lot of times
• 21:41
  they have to do more with less and so they have to ex us and
• 21:44
  know their brains off. Yeah, you have to help your kids more at
• 21:45
  the lower levels because they can't go score on their own, right, Like
• 21:48
  I mean, the beauty now as you get a JJ Quinnerley is like,
• 21:52
  I don't have to get her a wide open shot. I just need to
• 21:53
  get her in the position, teach her how to play out of that.
• 21:56
  And there's the shot maybe we're looking for or the we want you to make
• 22:00
  but that kid's so good, Like I don't have to run her off fifteen
• 22:03
  screens to get her finally open, so she can get the open shot,
• 22:07
  Like we can just go stick her on a ball screen and then see how
• 22:08
  they defend it, and whatever you do is probably wrong because that kid's just
• 22:11
  more talented. So yeah, those things are kind of fun. That's the
• 22:15
  fun part is you get better athletes and bigger Even though we weren't necessarily bigger
• 22:19
  than our opponents, we were bigger than a lot of the teams that I
• 22:22
  coached are more athletic, those types of things. So our press was elite
• 22:25
  because of the kids we had in it. I've never had two like Jordan
• 22:29
  and JJ Like that's dynamic. That's as elite as it gets in the country.
• 22:32
  So that was kind of fun. Yeah. I don't want a fanboy
• 22:36
  you, but like I dig you on the sideline. You are you are,
• 22:41
  Like I love cool dudes on the sideline when the crap is firing.
• 22:47
  I love that guy or a lady for whatever matters that just is completely in
• 22:51
  control and chill and nothing seems to be overcoming to them. It's just like,
• 22:57
  Okay, we're going to do this. Now, I mean that just
• 23:00
  sets a complete communication pattern throughout your entire team, and that I think that's
• 23:07
  the way it's supposed to be done. Right. Yeah, the older I
• 23:11
  get, the better I've been at that. When I was younger, I
• 23:15
  was you know, I'd be in there like shaking them and and come on,
• 23:18
  this isn't good enough, you know, And we had a few of
• 23:19
  those moments, but not very many. But I've said this too throughout the
• 23:23
  year. I thought our team also allowed me to be that way because they
• 23:27
  were very straight lined, even keel like they It was just the personality of
• 23:30
  the team. And you know, they didn't say a lot. I want
• 23:33
  them to be more vocal and at times have more energy. And early in
• 23:37
  the season, you know, we get to practice and I'm trying to fight
• 23:40
  them on energy, like this is so boring. Why do we not have
• 23:41
  any energy? And you know they didn't always say it, but they're looking
• 23:45
  at you like what are you talking about, coach, Like we're fine,
• 23:47
  Like we're competing, like kind of trust us. And so you start to
• 23:49
  go through the season and course trust grows. Bank account is what I like
• 23:52
  to call it. The bank account just keeps getting in a row. Yeah,
• 23:56
  and the bank account just keeps growing up and going up. And so
• 24:00
  we had a couple of those, maybe halftime speeches, maybe a time out
• 24:03
  here and there, but there really were not very many. And then we
• 24:04
  got to Iowa in that third quarter media time out between the third and the
• 24:08
  fourth, and we had just gotten down ten. You know, we were
• 24:11
  playing them great. They go on the run to end the third and I
• 24:14
  walked into that huddle, and there weren't many huddles that actually honestly walked into
• 24:17
  where I felt like we communicated as a team enough before I got in there.
• 24:21
  But I went into that huddle and they had it. They were like,
• 24:23
  let's go, coach. We've been in this situation before, we know
• 24:26
  what to do. We're gonna go punch first. That's kind of our turn.
• 24:30
  We're gonna go punch first in this fourth quarter. And then we went
• 24:32
  on the ten oh run. And I don't know that I said a whole
• 24:33
  lot in that time at I mean, I'm sure I probably gave him the
• 24:36
  first play to go run or the defense of you know that we were going
• 24:38
  to be in. But then we go on the ten oh run and the
• 24:41
  games tied with five to go and they're like, yep, got your coach,
• 24:44
  and it was great. When a coach has a team that can self
• 24:48
  coach, you got it, Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, they can
• 24:51
  run the locker room and you know, self disciplined, self coach, then
• 24:53
  you've made it. We'll come back to that IO game here, mat because
• 24:56
  I want to dive a little bit deeper on that. But let's talk what
• 24:59
  you were referring to stylistically, and let's do a little bit of numbers.
• 25:03
  We're not still doing our our stats segment, are we? Are you well
• 25:06
  now? Which we say we're just gonna do it. I'm gonna give you
• 25:08
  a stated you know, like your talk stature. Yeah right, I gave
• 25:11
  you this, hang on a second, this is I think this is.
• 25:15
  I gave it three seconds so I still had that ball. Just really sure.
• 25:18
  Just just some basic numbers here. So let's talk offense and defense for
• 25:22
  a second. So about fifty six percent of your shots came in the lane
• 25:26
  thirty six percent roughly from three, and only about eight percent came outside the
• 25:30
  lane from two. So I got two part question, offensively, is that
• 25:33
  about where you want to be philosophically? And then number two defensively and you
• 25:37
  kind of answered this, how close was this year's version of the defense to
• 25:41
  where ideally you want it to be so to the offense? So we call
• 25:45
  that that your shot diet. So what's our shot diet? So rim mid
• 25:48
  range in three, So no, that would be pretty pretty accurate. A
• 25:52
  lot of us getting too the rim is in transition to which you naturally probably
• 25:56
  have a numbered advantage, So you better be, you know, getting there
• 26:00
  the threes we were, I mean it was a little at times. I
• 26:02
  thought we relied on it too much, you know, even in Iowa,
• 26:04
  like we should have, like we needed to drive some of those open threes
• 26:08
  when we were missing them. You know, we didn't have a tremendous back
• 26:11
  to basket kid that we could just dump it to at times. So there's
• 26:15
  times we're taking threes, probably should have been thrown it to somebody inside.
• 26:18
  So still got it to work on that mid range. Yeah, I mean,
• 26:22
  I'm an analytic guy. It's not like you can't do it, but
• 26:23
  I want to be selective with it. If you're a lead at it,
• 26:26
  which JJ's pretty good. I don't know that the numbers are elite, but
• 26:30
  she's above average at mid range, So you know, we rely on that
• 26:33
  a little bit. I think late game it becomes pretty important because it's hard
• 26:36
  to get to the rim the later the game goes, so sometimes that mid
• 26:38
  range shot is pretty good and you know she can get it off. From
• 26:41
  the defensive side. That was I mean, other than the rebounding, that's
• 26:45
  what we would look like defensively, you know, the ability to press,
• 26:48
  play man, play zone. You know, we played a lot of zone
• 26:52
  throughout the year, but against Iowa we didn't. We you know, only
• 26:53
  two possessions all game of zone, so we completely switched that up in that
• 26:59
  game. But yeah, just being versatile, making teams uncomfortable on defense,
• 27:02
  they'll be turnovers and you know, lots of offense from our defense. That
• 27:04
  will be our staple. Did that surprise you that the defensive system matched as
• 27:08
  well as it would I had to assume in first year you thought we probably
• 27:12
  can't do it exactly like I want to do it. Then you get here
• 27:15
  and you have that personality time. Yeah, I mean, it really all
• 27:17
  happened quicker on both ends. Although we I mean we were elite defensively,
• 27:21
  like I think top five or ten in the country defensively, just about all
• 27:23
  year, and I think we ended top forty or fifty in offense, and
• 27:26
  so you really I think, and I don't. You may know the stats
• 27:30
  more than me, but I want to say, like the national champions and
• 27:32
  men's and women's basketball typically are in the top thirty I think in both categories
• 27:36
  something like that. Yeah, you know, offense and defense. You can't
• 27:38
  just rely on one end, and so the offense caught up to us a
• 27:41
  little bit. Obviously in the Iowa game. You know, we were hanging
• 27:45
  on to our defense late in the year, which just means now possessions are
• 27:48
  coming down and games are a little bit closer. And I don't know that
• 27:51
  that was great for us, but that's typically what happens in the postseason,
• 27:53
  and so we got to clean up the rebounding. But stylistically, yes,
• 27:57
  what we look like this year should be kind of what it looks like moving
• 28:00
  forward. You when you prep for Iowa, did you watch tape and do
• 28:06
  the scouting report and think, oh, man, this is going to be
• 28:07
  a problem, or did you think, oh, we can play with these
• 28:11
  guys. What did you think? Yeah? And I think typically even if
• 28:14
  it wasn't Iowa, that like the first game or so that I watch,
• 28:17
  I think I always think, oh my gosh, like they're really good.
• 28:19
  And then when you start to you know, you keep going and keep going
• 28:22
  and dive in a little more like, oh okay, now I think we
• 28:25
  can attack that. Oh we can go do this. Oh here's a pretty
• 28:29
  good idea. And so yeah, I mean, going into that, we
• 28:33
  really had two coaches that were kind of scouting Iowa. Going into that,
• 28:36
  we had Princeton ready to go to We were not looking ahead to Iowa.
• 28:38
  That everybody liked to kind of think that that after my comment, that's whatever
• 28:41
  I was getting. And so way, I know, we quickly jumped to
• 28:45
  the Iowa game for aviausers. And that was a really good win over a
• 28:48
  talented Princeton team. We can't just dismiss that you won your first game in
• 28:52
  the NCA ternatow because the Iowa game was. No, the Iow game is
• 28:56
  getting all the attention, but yeah, you got to win the first one
• 28:57
  to get to that one. And Princeton had been really good, had won
• 29:00
  their first round game against Power fives the previous two years with I mean some
• 29:03
  really really good players. So no, that was a really good win for
• 29:07
  us. And we defended really well, had a great third quarter, you
• 29:10
  know, to get Princeton. But no, the more we watched Iowa,
• 29:12
  we really started to believe, and our players believe the whole time. But
• 29:17
  I was so proud of them because that was a crash course, scattered report
• 29:21
  and we literally we changed almost our whole defense for that game, and like
• 29:23
  out of bounds defense. We had never defended an out of bounds defense the
• 29:26
  way we did against Iowa the entire season, but we had to because of
• 29:30
  Kaitlin Clark and how good she is, and so we had to change stuff.
• 29:33
  And literally, like I said, we played probably fifty percent zone all
• 29:36
  year. Literally only played two possessions and that was just ended the quarters when
• 29:40
  Kaitln had the ball and they were gonna go high ball screen for him.
• 29:42
  Like, I'm not gonna let that happen, So We're going to go zone
• 29:45
  when they call that action. So those were the two possessions that we went
• 29:48
  zone. They didn't score off of either of those. So yeah, the
• 29:52
  more we watched, the more we thought we had a chance. But I'm
• 29:55
  telling you, we had film session after that after we beat Princeton. We
• 29:57
  brought him in kind of gave him just the little film. Next day we
• 30:00
  had a whiteboard session. We had all sorts of stuff up on the whiteboard
• 30:03
  on how we wanted to go. We came back and did like their plays
• 30:07
  and stuff. The next morning, went to shoot around, came back and
• 30:11
  we didn't practice practice like it was we were too late in the year.
• 30:15
  I was like, I can't. I mean, what we gonna do?
• 30:17
  Run up and down and do Katelyn Clark in the full court. I'm like,
• 30:18
  no chance. So we walked through it all that day and then obviously
• 30:22
  shoot around the following day to prepare. But our kids were dialed in defensively.
• 30:27
  You mentioned some tweaks there. You also, I thought, did a
• 30:30
  great job of picking her up, Caitlyn up early. So when they tried
• 30:33
  outlet that pass, it seemed like whoever was closest to her at the time,
• 30:37
  match her and find her and at least slow that down a little.
• 30:40
  Yeah, no, you're right on. So we called that the pickup point.
• 30:41
  So we moved our pickup point from you know, normally pickup point might
• 30:45
  even be almost down at your three point line, maybe toward half court.
• 30:48
  It was wherever she is or whoever she's guarding you guard her. So if
• 30:52
  she you were guarding me and I shoot, and you're Kaitlyn Clark, now
• 30:56
  I have you, so I'm staying right there next to you. And the
• 31:00
  luxury for us as we legitimately had five kids that we felt comfortable could guard
• 31:03
  Caitlin Clark, five of them, you know, and so we weren't overly
• 31:06
  worried about it in the open floor now a dead ball matchup, we were
• 31:08
  going to get the right person on her, but we wanted the littles on
• 31:11
  her. We wanted the bigger, stronger kids on her. You know,
• 31:15
  she has some tendencies that we were trying to take away. You know that
• 31:18
  I would have loved have practiced for a couple of days, but we didn't
• 31:21
  have that. And our kids, though they were good, I mean,
• 31:22
  we made a few mistakes, but for the most part, like so,
• 31:26
  that was a huge advantage because you used all five players at some point on
• 31:29
  her, even during the game. So you mentioned rebounding and maybe a lack
• 31:32
  of size for you all year, but there weren't many teams that played IOWA
• 31:34
  that had the ability to go all five defenders on the floor on Clark.
• 31:37
  No, there weren't, and everybody was talking about our game plan and other
• 31:40
  teams should have been stealing it, you know. As the tournament went on
• 31:42
  and you all defended them better than anybody, I'm like, well, yeah,
• 31:45
  yes, but I don't know that everybody had five kids that could defend
• 31:48
  like our five perimeter kids, Like that's part of it. Like that's I
• 31:52
  mean, it was the game plan, but like, let's give credit to
• 31:53
  our players, like they're the ones that actually had the talent to go out
• 31:56
  there and make her life, you know, a little more difficult. As
• 32:00
  they advanced into the tournament and they get toward the end, you're watching,
• 32:06
  I'm assuming and they say, you know, Caitlin Clark says that West Virginia's
• 32:10
  defense was the best that you faced all season. Does that piss you off
• 32:15
  more? Or does that make you, like, well, proud of what
• 32:19
  you guys were able to do? Now? Yeah, I don't know.
• 32:22
  I don't think it pisses me off a whole lot, probably more pride than
• 32:23
  anything, you know, the only thing the disappointing part for me was just
• 32:28
  that we weren't quite as good offensively as I would have liked to be,
• 32:30
  and they mixed I mean they played zone and triangle and two, and I
• 32:32
  mean they were trying to do anything and everything, and I thought we got
• 32:36
  a lot of open looks we just didn't make. So some of it you
• 32:38
  live with. Some of it. I'm like, man, I should have
• 32:39
  maybe got Jordan or JJ a few more looks because that's who in the triangle
• 32:44
  and two. That was the two, you know, And so I wish
• 32:46
  we could have done just a little bit more offensively to be a little bit
• 32:50
  better. But I thought we were elite defensively all year Yeah, all year
• 32:53
  long. I just thought we could defend even with our lack of size and
• 32:57
  lack of rebounding. I thought we did a phenomenal job defensively, and we
• 33:00
  made up for the possessions with our steels. So that's how we counteracted the
• 33:04
  lack of rebounding. We led the country in turnover margin. I mean we
• 33:07
  were number one, so and we weren't last in rebounding. So trade,
• 33:12
  you're okay with that. Trade, It wouldn't even trade. We were still
• 33:14
  ahead on that. You know, we're still ahead in that area. Three
• 33:17
  guys before the game is brought to us by Lou Wendell Marine Sales. As
• 33:21
  you know, Coach's office is over at the basketball practice facility, which is
• 33:24
  parallel to mon Mon River. And when Coach came down today, he just
• 33:29
  took the pontoon boat that Lou Wendell had sent down there, came right through,
• 33:35
  I took off and kedys. We're maybe unconfirmed at this point or at
• 33:40
  Spruce Street. So there was inside Lou Wendyl Marine Sales. They happened to
• 33:44
  be the premier pontoon boat dealer in the state of West Virginia. And right
• 33:46
  now, the supply of items that they have when it comes to your boat
• 33:50
  are at an all time season high. So as they say, get them
• 33:54
  while they're hot as trailer wheels in there. Different rises, you vests,
• 34:00
  you got life, I mean, anything that you want. I mean you
• 34:01
  probably got probably have a big selection of horns too, that kind of stuff.
• 34:08
  Yeah, Oh, they got fish finders. In fact, as a
• 34:09
  matter of fact, on the twenty twenty three Avalon Trituneventure eighty five, which
• 34:14
  is the Three Guys special, it's absolutely a standout boat. And oh there
• 34:21
  it is right now, and that baby is calling your name. So again,
• 34:24
  they've been in business for nearly fifty years. Lou Wendel Marine Sales located
• 34:29
  in Saint Albans. Check them out at lou Wendellmarne Sales dot com. Hold
• 34:31
  on one second, can we go back to pictures there? Back to the
• 34:36
  inside. There's like some some rafts and up two yeah the two care?
• 34:40
  Yeah? Can we can we talk to the folks that come I get some
• 34:44
  better pictures there. I might be in the market for one of those.
• 34:45
  What's that now, I'm in the market for one of those. I need
• 34:49
  one, like at least three passenger. Well they it's the Avalon boat.
• 34:53
  I mean they sell those are quality rafts and things of that nature, but
• 34:59
  also the avalon On pontoon boat manufactured here in the United States. And uh
• 35:04
  yeah, they could probably get you get your I want to see some of
• 35:07
  that. Yeah, yeah, it's fine after ours was heavy use of the
• 35:08
  summer? Were to handles it? Should you? Chuck might have one handles
• 35:13
  my neighbor, Chuck not use it? Not use it? Sell it to
• 35:15
  you? Did you ever water slop give me a better prices? Hey,
• 35:20
  I mean, I'll all due respect, Chucks. You're gonna give me a
• 35:22
  good deal. Oh yeah, a good deal. We'll talk fully before water
• 35:25
  skis. Oh yeah, oh yeah sa them. Yeah absolutely, And I
• 35:30
  don't kick it either. I can, like, you know, like that's
• 35:31
  what all that everybody does now they get up onto and then kick one.
• 35:35
  Yeah. No you get up on one count. Yeah, that's and that's
• 35:37
  hard to get up on one. That's yeah. We grow on that,
• 35:39
  we grew kick it, grew wakeboard, yeah, all that good stuff.
• 35:43
  I hadn't done it now in a couple of years. But hmm, I
• 35:45
  think I say I could do it. I'm assuming yeah, no that I'm
• 35:52
  thinking about it. It's been been a few years. Well, we'll be
• 35:54
  out of Cheat Lake Sunday afternoon with the coach. We're gonna get the boat
• 35:58
  fired up. Love video and that one next it sounds like sounds like coach
• 36:01
  might want to retract that shit, right, So I'm gonna go qualify it
• 36:06
  maybe. So if you'll walk through on that, if you don't see him,
• 36:08
  if you don't see him on the lake, chances are he'll be a
• 36:12
  Gomart and Gomart is the official convenience store of three Guys. Before the game,
• 36:15
  get your rewards card, you know, Mark, We're going out to
• 36:17
  Charleston here Monday for the scholarship dinner. We'll pass by about two hundred and
• 36:23
  ninety seven. It's about to say there'll be a few of those gomarts along
• 36:25
  the way. We might we just might pull over. Get ourselves moon pie,
• 36:30
  a mountain dew, six pound recye cup, and a slim gym as
• 36:34
  long as a fly rod, plus about ninety gallons of gasoline. Even if
• 36:37
  my if my tank only hill's thirty, i'mna put sixty somewhere else and you
• 36:42
  get your rewards card and save, Yeah, every fifteen miles or so,
• 36:45
  probably right, maybe, yes, you're gonna stop the world headquarters there in
• 36:47
  flywo its the double store center of the universe. Yeah, you know a
• 36:52
  year ago when you went to that scholarship dinner, like everything's new, Like
• 36:55
  it's the way now, you're gonna be like a rock star, Like you're
• 36:59
  gonna be walking in that people are going to be running up to you.
• 37:00
  You know that. I'm not, Oh no, but I do know.
• 37:04
  I remember last year and I hadn't been here obviously very long, and so
• 37:07
  this was my first and so it started with well I didn't know what to
• 37:10
  wear, so I you know, I get in with this was Rin and
• 37:13
  Steve Urius. I was driving down with them, you know, and I've
• 37:15
  probably got on something, you know, like slacks and like, you know,
• 37:17
  a shirt like this, and they're in full suit like suits. I'm
• 37:21
  like, oh, joke, guys, new guy, Like no one gives
• 37:23
  me the dress code. And they're like, well, don't worry about it.
• 37:25
  Hugs will be there, like you'll you'll be fine. You'll never be
• 37:30
  the you know, the worst dressed person in the room. Hugs will be
• 37:31
  there. But anyway, we were getting I came. So we walked in
• 37:35
  that night into the like convention center right where it was, and we come
• 37:38
  up at the higher level and you take the escalator down and it was kind
• 37:42
  of like the opening well, and there's already several hundred people probably there.
• 37:45
  It's kind of the social at that point. Well, they all start flocking
• 37:49
  to the escalator going down. I was like, where's everybody going? And
• 37:53
  I was like, oh, are they coming to say hi to coach Kellogg?
• 37:55
  And it's like no, I just walk right over here. I don't
• 37:58
  know a soul. And it was to get in line to talk to Bob
• 38:00
  Huggins. So I got a few stragglers over there who figured out you know,
• 38:05
  maybe who I was that wanted to have somebody ask you for a nice
• 38:07
  tea or something? Yeah, can you? Can you get me a tea?
• 38:09
  Can you? What? Hell? Your line'll be bigger this year.
• 38:12
  Yeah, I just know a few more people. I mean, line will
• 38:16
  be bigger. But at least you got and in the fact the course of
• 38:20
  a year and fifteen days, he also now is probably second in the department
• 38:22
  in seniority. Shoot, choot, there you go. Things happen, things,
• 38:30
  things are on the move out. So recruiting wise, as you said,
• 38:34
  you've had a man. You guys announced the recruit yesterday named Sidney Shaw.
• 38:37
  She'll transfer in from Auburn. What was your and what is your messaging
• 38:44
  to your staff as to what particular type of student athletes you want to continue
• 38:50
  to fill the roster with. What are you looking for? Yeah, well,
• 38:52
  we just have the holes that we know. We lose three three players
• 38:57
  Tavvy digs in the post and then Lauren and Jala Hemingway that kind of manned
• 39:00
  that three position if you want to call it that, or the third guard,
• 39:06
  you know, and so, and we didn't really have a backup to
• 39:07
  Jordan or JJ. I mean, it was really those four guards and occasionally
• 39:12
  we slid kaya Watson over there. Just a little bit only team in the
• 39:15
  country that started all five players every single game. Yeah, no, the
• 39:20
  continuity was fantastic for us. And so we know what those holes are.
• 39:23
  We just we need depth, we need we need talent, we need depth.
• 39:27
  We need to infuse it, infuse it with a little bit of that.
• 39:30
  We had two kids hurt, so hopefully they'll you know, they're on
• 39:32
  their way back, and so yeah, there's a lot of minutes there.
• 39:36
  It's kind of what the cell is. We have a third guard. We
• 39:37
  graduated both of them that essentially played forty minutes there, so somebody's got the
• 39:42
  opportunity to come in and kind of earn that. And then there's you know,
• 39:45
  JJ and Jordan played too many minutes. So if you just say,
• 39:47
  oh, they're gonna play thirty next year, like, well, they're still
• 39:51
  twenty at those two positions. So somebody needs to come in and fill that.
• 39:53
  So Sidney was one of those kids that could probably play all three of
• 39:57
  the guard positions. She was a big time crewed out of high school,
• 40:00
  went to dm E down in Florida, like top forty kid in the country.
• 40:04
  I believe could really score it. So you know it has had a
• 40:07
  good career at Auburn started the majority of her career in the SEC. Was
• 40:10
  just looking for, you know, something a little bit different. Do you
• 40:13
  need how much size do you need? Yeah, I mean we need it.
• 40:16
  The hardest part is just finding whereas Yeah, it's like, I mean
• 40:20
  literally, we had talked to a kid. This was maybe three weeks ago.
• 40:22
  Kid went in the portal six five average four points a game later to
• 40:27
  Power five school. In twenty four hours, she had fifty five schools contact
• 40:30
  offer how many I'm sorry, fifty five fifty five in twenty four hours she
• 40:35
  averaged for a game a game power did you see. It's just they're getting
• 40:40
  they're getting bigger. I mean you watched South Carolina. I mean they're just
• 40:44
  like giants. You know, it's just it's hard they are. Yeah,
• 40:47
  they are. I mean like in the Big twelve, I mean we weren't
• 40:50
  huge, but you know it's the Aoka Leese and the Audie Crooks and you
• 40:53
  know, there was what five five games that of the you know, of
• 40:57
  the league schedule. You're like, oh crap, like we don't match it.
• 41:00
  You know, the other ones. I never felt like it was just
• 41:00
  like, holy col sure, what are we going to do. But stylistically,
• 41:05
  though, you also can't just go straight big because of the style.
• 41:07
  You want to play right, So you've got to be able. You gotta
• 41:09
  be athletic as well as big. Ideally they need to move a little bit.
• 41:13
  But I mean we've we've had bigger posts that we can kind of hide,
• 41:15
  so to speak, or put him in the back, or even use
• 41:17
  like Daniel for Sarah Babu. You know, she can still function in our
• 41:22
  system even though she's not the fastest kid, and so her minutes may you
• 41:25
  know, come down just because of But you know, if they get in
• 41:29
  shape, no, we can. We can handle it. And we need
• 41:30
  some size, so we're trying to be in on it. If you had
• 41:34
  a six to four player, you to just yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 41:37
  oh yeah, no, we can definitely do that. Yeah, we will.
• 41:39
  We will adjust to some size of sizes. Got some talent. The
• 41:44
  television ratings were record setting astronomical. It appears as though women's basketball has reached
• 41:52
  a seminal moment that's going to uh continue in the sense that earlier this week
• 41:58
  the w NBA Draft through just this massive number. Obviously, it's the Caitlyn
• 42:02
  Clark effect. Put it into perspective, what you think what has just happened
• 42:07
  this season? You know, Caitlyn Clark among other things happening in the women's
• 42:12
  game. Where do you think the women's game is right now? And what
• 42:16
  do you see this leading to? Yeah? Well, and I think I
• 42:20
  would go back a year because you remember the Final Four a year ago kind
• 42:22
  of started a lot of this, or the NCAA tournament. That's where I
• 42:25
  thought women's basketball picked up the most momentium it had ever had, and then
• 42:30
  it carried into this year. And and Kaitlyn Clark is certainly probably front end
• 42:32
  center of that and the greatest scorer we've ever had. But you have the
• 42:36
  Angel Reeses and the entire you know, even Kim Moulky as a coach,
• 42:39
  Don Staley. I mean, you're getting Geno's been around and his team,
• 42:43
  so you're getting still some legends and and some just some new fresh you know,
• 42:46
  women that are that are dominating this. And I think Caitlyn Clark was
• 42:50
  the most recognizable college basketball name, male or female. Isn't that no question?
• 42:55
  I think that's question. I think that's fair like, that's the name
• 42:59
  people people. Oh, and so that's been great for our game. We're
• 43:01
  at Iowa in that environment, and you can see what she's done to you
• 43:06
  know, just to Iowa City. But I think I saw too that she
• 43:07
  sold out every game she played in all year home and on the road.
• 43:12
  Yes, you know, every venue she went to on the road sold out.
• 43:14
  And that is the Caitlin Clark effect. So yeah, I think it's
• 43:17
  a it's at an all time high. I hope we can continue this.
• 43:22
  I hope it isn't just Caitlin Clark though. I hope we're we are bigger
• 43:24
  and better than that. You know, we outdrew the men in their national
• 43:28
  championship versus the women's national championship. So yeah, I think we're at an
• 43:31
  all time high. I'll be interested to see kind of just what happens even
• 43:35
  from a you know, can we get these first games to a neutral floor?
• 43:37
  Are we there yet? You know some attendance numbers or do we need
• 43:40
  to keep them at sites campus sites? It's quite an advantage and that's what
• 43:45
  I said. Leaving Iowa City. I was like, all right, now
• 43:46
  I got to get this thing in Morgantown. Somehow, because man, that
• 43:50
  would be electric if we get oh you know, have our you know,
• 43:52
  round to thirty two, here to fame, if you had Iowa here,
• 43:57
  Yeah, no, you measure if you had Iowa and albany or on a
• 43:59
  neutral floor. Hmm, yeah, you know. But I want that for
• 44:01
  our fans because that was that was special. That was I mean, it
• 44:05
  was special for us to play in it, and they weren't even cheering for
• 44:07
  us. I could only imagine what it was like if they're on your side.
• 44:08
  She she glared at you during the time out. Yeah, she was
• 44:10
  staring me down going back to her huddle. I like that. I told
• 44:14
  her after the game and we got beat, Like, I'm good. So
• 44:15
  we're going through the handshake line and I was like, hey, great game.
• 44:19
  You know, Kaylen, you're a You're a heck of a competitor.
• 44:21
  And she was like, I heard what you said. I heard what you
• 44:23
  said. That's what she said to me twice. So she says it back,
• 44:25
  twice, I heard what you said. I was like, I'm sure
• 44:28
  you did. Like I'm not surprised. I'm trying to like give you the
• 44:30
  like you got us, like congrats, you know, and she wanted nothing
• 44:32
  of it. She was still in her like game mode. Yeah, she
• 44:36
  was still mode. Yeah, she was in competitor game mode. And that's
• 44:37
  okay. Like I wasn't, So what did you say to her? I
• 44:39
  just kept on going. I went to the next player in line. I
• 44:44
  was like, I don't all right, Like that's fine. She was there.
• 44:45
  I mean she was still in that yeah, you know, and I
• 44:46
  wasn't going to get through to her. You know, whtch I wasn't try
• 44:50
  to get through to her. I just wanted to know that. I wasn't
• 44:52
  really personal. I was just trying to fire up a fan base in my
• 44:53
  team, you know. And I take it that way. That's okay,
• 44:57
  explain that, well, yeah, it is what it is. But man,
• 44:59
  their fans were all over me for that. I mean I was stared
• 45:01
  at this too. I may have said it to Happy I can't remember,
• 45:02
  but like one fan went back to my face my Valentine's Facebook post to my
• 45:08
  wife to tell me I made the greatest mistake of my life talking trash to
• 45:13
  Caitlin Clark. Give me credit for digging back, man. You went all
• 45:16
  the way back to a Facebook post in February to let me know how he
• 45:21
  thought, you know, speaking of the women's game advancing it. Maybe I'm
• 45:24
  a prisoner of the moment here, but I've been I've been following this for
• 45:27
  a long time. It feels like this and you named some of them there.
• 45:30
  It feels like this is the most star based women's college basketball has been
• 45:37
  in a long time. So not quite to the NBA level where it was.
• 45:39
  It's so star driven, but it feels like there's a lot of great
• 45:43
  players. I'd count JJ in that in that mixture locally. Is that a
• 45:46
  fair estiment? I think I'm being a prisoner of the moment. I feel
• 45:49
  like there's more individual names at Juju Watkins of pagebackers. We can go right
• 45:52
  down the list there that individuals have seemed to step forth a little bit more,
• 45:57
  well, I think so. And I think some of that, though,
• 45:59
  is coming from social media and their social media following outside of sport,
• 46:02
  you know, like Kaylyn Clark's stay a Farm commercial so we all see her,
• 46:06
  you know, Paige Becker's has been doing that for quite some time,
• 46:08
  and now Juju's coming in, you know, and Angels and the Bayou Barbie
• 46:14
  and all of you know what she has and giving Beats to the men's team
• 46:16
  because she's got a deal with Beats. So I think it's the marketability outside
• 46:21
  of sport. But you're right, that's polarizing and that's what NBA is too.
• 46:24
  Yeah, and so that's what's drawing in these viewers, is these these
• 46:28
  women are polarizing, like these are polarizing figures. You know. That's would
• 46:31
  be my challenge to JJ though she she is a player close to that level,
• 46:36
  but she needs to grow her marketing social media outside of her sport.
• 46:40
  And that's what that other cast of characters, Hailey van List and those Cavender
• 46:45
  twins, you remember them, you know, like that's what they did,
• 46:47
  and that's the difference. That's interesting though. But that but that, you
• 46:51
  know, that goes back to what you were just saying before about the social
• 46:52
  media firestorm, about what you said that did create a little bit of a
• 46:57
  soap opera backstory to that game. Wouldn't have been there necessarily, right,
• 47:00
  That was certainly overblown based on what you said and where you said it.
• 47:04
  But that adds to a little bit of the national narrative too. That helps
• 47:07
  driables. I did, I mean you pulled up ESPN after I said it
• 47:10
  and it was Wu's kelog and it's right there, like on the third line,
• 47:15
  you're like, okay, like great now, but we got great cut
• 47:19
  Like for a loss, we got as much out of all as you could
• 47:22
  probably get. Agree, it was you want agree because the narrative isn't Iowa
• 47:27
  one or you lost, It was you played great. You played them as
• 47:30
  tough as any better in the official Scroogia. Yeah, that was the narrative.
• 47:32
  Right, you want you want everything except the game, right, you
• 47:37
  know, in the national exposure and yeah, I mean that you can't ask
• 47:39
  for anything better other than to win the game. Would you normally are not
• 47:44
  in a situation to get that? Or you did? Yeah? Man,
• 47:45
  if you and the reality of it is, if you're in West Virginia and
• 47:49
  you ever lose a game, because the official Scroogia, you got a statue
• 47:52
  coming your way, right, that's bottom line, Like that's perfect, perfect
• 47:57
  Back in twenty twenty four, I listen, in ten years, Clark got
• 48:00
  every call. Ten years from now, you're gonna find out, Holy ki,
• 48:05
  I forgot we won that game. Oh that's how it's gonna go.
• 48:08
  I'll tell you what, coach, And also, welcome to West Virginia.
• 48:12
  West Virginians never forget. So you'll be I mean, you might come back
• 48:15
  here after retirement. You'll be ninety years old. You'll be sitting there in
• 48:19
  the sun with an African over your knees and sway, say, coach,
• 48:21
  I remember when you got screwed in Iowa again, Yeah, that's what happens.
• 48:24
  Yeah, it'll happen. It'll be like And what happened was they both
• 48:30
  teams went in the locker room. West Virginia won the game, they were
• 48:34
  celebrated, and the officials went in and they told them they had to take
• 48:37
  three points off. Can you believe that happens? I believe it happened.
• 48:43
  Last thing on that and we'll move on from that experience wise, And again
• 48:46
  I know, I know programs and your business isn't built on moral victories,
• 48:50
  as we just outlined there, but I would think your players walk away from
• 48:53
  that year's down the road and remember that experience in front of a sold out
• 48:58
  building on the road, and that there had to be some joy taken out
• 49:01
  of that as well. And I'm certainly that grows as the years gone.
• 49:04
  Yeah. Fair, Yeah, no, it's extremely fair. Yeah, no,
• 49:07
  it was. It was a great environment. It is something we will
• 49:08
  remember, you know, forever, and as they get together or talk and
• 49:13
  years later, they're going to remember it. But yeah, as Tony's talking
• 49:15
  about the stories in Bellish Overtime too, and so we'll probably tell it a
• 49:19
  little differently than how it actually happened. But no, it was. It
• 49:22
  is what college basketball is all about and if you can get it to feel
• 49:27
  like that, And again that's what motivated me, I guess from there was,
• 49:30
  Man, I just want to create that here, Like I think we
• 49:31
  could do that here and how much fun that would be. I'm glad our
• 49:36
  kids got to experience. I just want them to get that same experience.
• 49:37
  But for the game, if you take a snapshot of that moment in time,
• 49:42
  that was the story and you all played a big part in that story.
• 49:45
  For that moment, there was some historical perspective I think to this run
• 49:49
  in that moment that you guys were right smack in the middle of, which
• 49:52
  I think is pretty cool to walk away with. Yeah, no doubt.
• 49:53
  I mean, we've gotten some good stuff and we've clipped it up off ESPN
• 49:57
  and you know, all the different coverages talking about our elite defense and the
• 50:00
  clips and you know, different commentators talking about it and Pat McAfee saying I'm
• 50:05
  a dog or something like that, you know, came out. So we've
• 50:07
  got that clipped up. So there was just some really good stuff that that
• 50:09
  came from it. And so again, yeah, that's this momentum that we
• 50:13
  have. We just need to try to continue to captivate it. Tony,
• 50:15
  were you here when the women's team was way back when Rosemary historic when they
• 50:19
  went to the site. Yeah, beat Clemson. Beat Clemson. Jody Runner
• 50:22
  hit a shot right the circle lined up. I think not, you know,
• 50:28
  coach, that might have been the balance out because West Virginia might have
• 50:30
  got a call or two and might have would say that they did a perfect
• 50:34
  job all the time line. It was exactly fair. No, that was
• 50:37
  a good game. Hey, this is what I think. My prediction is
• 50:40
  that what you guys did this season will propel the WV women's basketball program into
• 50:46
  next season at a level of interest that has never been seen before in program
• 50:52
  history. I truly believe that. I think when when you guys put the
• 50:54
  ball up for the first time next season, you will continue to live off
• 50:59
  of your performance from this season. I think it'll do this all season.
• 51:02
  No pressure, I really do, no pressure, truly. I mean,
• 51:05
  yeah, it's okay, that's what we want, though, like I don't.
• 51:07
  We don't look at it as as pressure necessarily. It's it's what you
• 51:08
  wants as a coach and a program. And you know, we got done
• 51:12
  with the year and we had the second highest attendance in school history. I
• 51:15
  thought, man, well then let's like let's go then, Like I do
• 51:16
  think there's some momentum. And and that was even before that, obviously the
• 51:20
  Iowa game and the Princeton win, and so I think ticket season ticket sales
• 51:24
  are already higher than they've ever been, you know, off of that.
• 51:28
  So I think we're on our way. You know, there's still plenty of
• 51:30
  work to be done, and we don't want to settle and let this be
• 51:32
  the what we're defined by, right, Let's not be defined by this.
• 51:37
  I hope we talk about a lot of other wins and sure close games and
• 51:39
  you know NCAA tournament wins as we get going. But up to date,
• 51:43
  yeah, this is pretty fun to talk about in year one. So you
• 51:45
  had your banquet last night, so that's kind of old school. Do you
• 51:51
  do anythings like cheapest kid on the team, best dressed kid on You do
• 51:54
  that stuff too, No, we don't, we don't. We're not.
• 51:57
  Kind of we do like blueper reels kind of like the behind the scenes and
• 52:00
  then we do like the true like on the court, like airballs and dribble
• 52:02
  off your foot like kind of have fun with them that And you know,
• 52:05
  I don't give out like a million, you know, I don't do MVP
• 52:07
  and offensive MVP, but we like we take, we keep We have a
• 52:10
  chargeboard so we keep track of charges. So that's something most people wouldn't know.
• 52:15
  So Jordan Harrison dominated that one and screen assists. Let's go, we're
• 52:21
  getting good now here we go screen assists so you know, kind of like
• 52:27
  even in a hockey where you know, like multiple people can get an assist,
• 52:30
  like you you know, so if you set a screen and we score
• 52:34
  and that helps get us open, we want to recognize the person that did
• 52:37
  that, right, that's really important to us, So we keep track of
• 52:40
  screen assists. So we really had a three person race all year, and
• 52:44
  this is usually one for the post players like they tend to set more.
• 52:47
  So Kylie and Tavvy and Deannell were in a race all the way through and
• 52:52
  Danell actually like the last couple of games separated. So Danell got the Screen
• 52:55
  Assist Awards. So that's something we like to recognize thing that just you know,
• 53:00
  you may not people wouldn't know that and they don't talk about that.
• 53:02
  And then we give up out an academic award, so our top person in
• 53:06
  the classroom, and then we do a Mountaineer Award as the last one,
• 53:08
  and that's just the kid that truly represents us in every way, you know.
• 53:12
  Obviously they have to have a talent on the one who won that.
• 53:15
  I was going to say that we had her on the show. She's really
• 53:17
  really good, She's fantastic. Yeah, she loves this place and loved the
• 53:21
  program and just had invested so much in it, so we thought that was
• 53:24
  certainly well deserved for her. And then I mean, Jordan and JJ got
• 53:28
  all of their hardware and j couldn't even carry it in one hand, but
• 53:31
  they got all of that. And then of course she recognized the seniors and
• 53:35
  we give them a really cool kind of poster that we do for them.
• 53:37
  So yeah, it was it was a great night. JJ blossomed this season,
• 53:43
  not only on the court, but off the court, she went my
• 53:45
  perception, she went from very timid slash uncomfortable to doing media too. And
• 53:52
  I texted you the after that Baylor game. She went right up in there
• 53:58
  and then I just look at her in these postgames. Is NC double a
• 54:00
  stuff? It's just like she did a one to eighty. Do you agree
• 54:04
  with that? I do? And obviously I didn't know her before a year
• 54:06
  ago, but she's in a year she has completely come out of her shell.
• 54:09
  You know, can communicate and there's still another level to get to for
• 54:13
  her. But man, yeah, she's come a long way. And why
• 54:15
  she gets to be yourself? Right? You showed up to youth games.
• 54:19
  She was a big hit when she show up to youth games on her own.
• 54:22
  She loves kids like JJ will truly like she will invest and hang around
• 54:25
  the kids, and of course, you know it's the you love them,
• 54:28
  they love you back whole you know kind of thing. But you will hang
• 54:30
  out at the country road gates after one of our games, she's probably about
• 54:35
  twenty or thirty kids waiting on JJ Quinnerley. I'm gonna steal that screen assist
• 54:38
  for the hou household. Yeah that's good. Well, Kendall house stats.
• 54:42
  So then she gets bummed out sting get the ball right, big, sometimes
• 54:45
  little don't get the ball enough. We'll have a little chart on that screen
• 54:46
  assist. I'm taking all screens down, credits getting the way. Yeah,
• 54:50
  you don't have to credit me take it. It would else be kind of
• 54:52
  neat. Hoppy is if you've got to be you tattoo, that'd be kind
• 54:55
  of neat. When you think Brad because he's self actualized. He keep keeps
• 55:00
  telling us he's self actualized. Why don't you get to be well? Because
• 55:02
  I'll tell you why because I got this far without any ink. You know,
• 55:07
  I'm just gonna run it. I'm just gone coach on to be What
• 55:12
  do you? How do you handle it when you stressed? Be you?
• 55:15
  You're an individual? Be you, but don't be that much you. I
• 55:19
  mean, I imagine that comes up from time to time. No, it
• 55:22
  does a little bit. I mean some of the characters too, the ones
• 55:24
  that have personality, they got to rein it in at the right time.
• 55:27
  So it's like when can you be yourself? And there's times like the other
• 55:30
  part of that is aligned with us, so like yeah, okay, yeah,
• 55:34
  hold down and align with what we're trying to do here. Please it's
• 55:36
  not about you at this particular time, and be you as you fit into
• 55:39
  the right. Yeah, we still play a team sport, so you got
• 55:43
  align with what we're trying to accomplish here. So it does a little bit.
• 55:46
  And you know, like even like Zion Nugent who came with me from
• 55:49
  SFA, who had gotten hurt, and she's all energy and all personality and
• 55:52
  if you saw her on the sideline all year, you know like she is.
• 55:55
  You know, she always finds the camera somehow or the camera finds her.
• 55:58
  But she's one you have to kind of like, all right, Zia,
• 56:00
  like it' stop being you like a line, please like slow down here
• 56:05
  a little bit. Let me go back to officials for a second. What's
• 56:07
  your go to with officials when you're going up to the line, not going
• 56:12
  going up to the line to try to get an officials attention. And I'm
• 56:15
  not talking about bad officially, I'm talking about just how you get your point
• 56:19
  across what you go to. Yeah, I mean there's a couple like so
• 56:21
  I learned a while ago to if you don't want to be intimidating Neil and
• 56:25
  have a conversation as you're like you can never get it makes sense below them
• 56:30
  physically if I'm down here, like I can say whatever and put my hand
• 56:34
  over my mouth, but I'm down and they're standing up like you're good okay.
• 56:37
  So like that's a little strategy that I'll inter use from time to time
• 56:42
  because they don't want to be shown up. Yeah, they don't want to
• 56:44
  be in you know. And I'm not that tall of a guy. So
• 56:45
  I really learned that from a coach that's like a big guy, you know,
• 56:47
  and so he was like, I have to make sure like that,
• 56:51
  I like get down low right sense like intimidating figures. So I'm not that,
• 56:54
  but I just I was like, oh no, that's like that's pretty
• 56:57
  good though, Like let me get you know. So I'll be in the
• 56:59
  neil or the stance or whatever and then have that conversation, you know.
• 57:02
  Other times it's just simple stuff like I know, you didn't like that call,
• 57:06
  Like there's no way, like do you like that call? You know,
• 57:08
  and just kind of messing with them a little bit, and some of
• 57:10
  them be like I know, I don't honestly, coach, I don't,
• 57:13
  you know, Like I was like good, Well, then get me back,
• 57:15
  you know, give me, give me one back, you know kind
• 57:15
  of deal. You know. Other times it's like you just don't think they're
• 57:19
  very good and you got to let them kind of write it. Or you
• 57:22
  don't like the way your team's playing, and so you're trying to you know,
• 57:24
  so if if you don't think somebody's very good, but you got to
• 57:28
  be careful there, what do you say there? Well, and it's really
• 57:31
  you're I'm never as we know, you're never changing the call, you're never
• 57:35
  changing their mind. You're just trying to set up the next right, That's
• 57:37
  all you're trying to do. And so then you know you'll bark or whatever,
• 57:40
  and then you go down there and they you know, you're like,
• 57:43
  okay, now I'll let it roll. But you know, if they just
• 57:45
  keep going and it's so lopsided, and that's my only issue, Like you
• 57:49
  don't know if it's going to be called one way or the other each game,
• 57:51
  but it just got to be that way on each end. That's all
• 57:53
  that you ever want. So a lot of my gripes are that way you
• 57:57
  called this against us, like they just did the same thing, Like let's
• 58:00
  get it then or let it go and we'll be fine, we'll adjust,
• 58:01
  but it can't be. And then it's always about the crew because you'll get
• 58:06
  one that calls it a certain way, but the other two won't get on
• 58:07
  the same page. And now we got to miss as a crew. And
• 58:09
  so a lot of times plain about one to the other one, right,
• 58:13
  yeah, like I need you all talk about the yeah, like you at
• 58:16
  this time out. I need to see you three talking about this, like,
• 58:20
  oh, really, go do that please, because I don't want to
• 58:22
  sit here and do this all game long where I get one of you in
• 58:24
  front of me and I got to have that conversation and then we go over.
• 58:28
  And sometimes it's a strategy like hey, like you know, we're gonna
• 58:30
  go press as soon as if they win the tip, like we're going at
• 58:32
  him like I just want you to be prepared, you know, or late
• 58:36
  game like we're not trying to foul. We want to jump ball here.
• 58:38
  Okay, don't just go blow it because you think we're not trying to foul.
• 58:42
  We have the position area. Does Does that work? Yeah? You?
• 58:45
  I mean they'll at least they won't just go boom on the whistle,
• 58:47
  but they know what they're looking for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 58:50
  no, no, that's you know, that's sometimes they'll come by and
• 58:52
  say, hey, coach, you want the time out. I sit there
• 58:53
  and stare at you, you know, and I'm like, don't look at
• 58:55
  me like I'm not calling it, Like yeah, don't go over here,
• 59:00
  like we're gonna go here real quick, We're gonna you know, like so
• 59:02
  yeah. I mean there's games that you play. I guess with them,
• 59:05
  you know, But for me, it's just kind of how you navigate it.
• 59:07
  I've been like a one technical foul a year guy, but I didn't
• 59:09
  get one this year. Close. Yeah, And now I will tell you
• 59:15
  this though, at this level you can say stuff there ain't no way and
• 59:17
  heck you could ever say at the mid major level, oh really, no
• 59:21
  way, really no, absolutely not. Yeah, well it's the first badge
• 59:23
  you got screwed there. The other game you should have been able to just
• 59:27
  absolutely cascade them. Yeah no, but I've seen it from you know,
• 59:30
  obviously, the other benches and other coaches like holy crawd, like y'all just
• 59:34
  like you can say that here like that really I can do that, Like
• 59:37
  I'd have been tossed at the mid major level being close to doing that kind
• 59:42
  of stuff. So yeah, it was a little different. Yeah, I
• 59:44
  had to get used to it. That's good. Three guys before the game
• 59:46
  is brought to us by Coomak's Business Systems. You know the Mountaineer women's basketball
• 59:51
  teams out recruiting and they do not stop. So they got a business system
• 59:54
  right there. I'm not sure if it came from Comacs not one line to
• 59:58
  a thousand lines, because they're calling a lot of people. Sometimes you need
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  one thousand lives. If you're a business owner and you need a new phone
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  a free estimate. As I said, from one line to a thousand lines,
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  state of West Virginia. They also can manage your business data to keep you
• 1:00:16
  safe and secure. Visit them at COMAXWV dot com. Last time you were
• 1:00:22
  here, did you stay for textual healing? I've got very limited textual healing
• 1:00:28
  today. Would you know what that is? It behalf? Can I be
• 1:00:36
  your handler on this? Yeah? I think I think he's comfortable staying for
• 1:00:39
  this role. This isn't the obscene amount of texts we normally get. We
• 1:00:43
  can manage that. I think coach has another seven or eight minutes with us.
• 1:00:47
  Be fine, But by no means do we want to stop the recruitment
• 1:00:52
  of a student athlete. So you're good for right now? You don't have
• 1:00:53
  anyone's like waiting on the door to go. How many recruits here? We're
• 1:00:57
  they're doing their last workout right now. So my assistant your goods. Okay,
• 1:01:00
  so let's do this thing. Let's go text you and healing. Here
• 1:01:04
  we go. Textual healing is brought to us by episode eight hundred dot com.
• 1:01:37
  All right, please cut to the shot. Hey look what we got
• 1:01:38
  there? Hey hey, we actually sets up pretty nicely right now. That
• 1:01:44
  is really happy we're looking at that. That's pretty good. I've been telling
• 1:01:47
  you about this. Did you hurt your back lifting that though? No,
• 1:01:51
  that's Mavie Olympic athlete. You know it's not a hole. No, it's
• 1:01:55
  cement, cement, cement it's made out of It's made in West Virginia.
• 1:02:01
  You will say that's true, that cement. So if you could, Austin,
• 1:02:06
  can you bring that shot in a little bit tighter or show a picture
• 1:02:08
  of that thing. So that is obviously the state of West Virginia. And
• 1:02:14
  there's these folks in Pharamont that make these bad boys, and that thing is
• 1:02:16
  sweet. You got your Northern Panhandle, you got your Eastern Panhandle, you
• 1:02:22
  got all the central all the way down, southern coalfields all the way down,
• 1:02:24
  you got every file valley, valley, and so they make these things.
• 1:02:30
  And the reason island the reason I brought that out here, Dad,
• 1:02:37
  Sorry, Black East Bank to West Virginia, packs eleanor Gary. All right,
• 1:02:54
  So anyway I think these things are I have one. I have one
• 1:02:59
  at home on my porch, and uh, they're really neat. So my
• 1:03:04
  thought on this was we might put these on episode eight hundred dot com to
• 1:03:07
  sell them. I got no idea how much it cost. I got no
• 1:03:08
  idea how much. I mean, we might so we don't know. If
• 1:03:10
  we're doing this stuff. People want how they make them in Fairmont. Got
• 1:03:15
  some guys cement plant down there in Phairmot. That's what it is. The
• 1:03:17
  company is we some guys guys I know, I know people hobby and anyway,
• 1:03:25
  so you can you can they have these. They have these in different
• 1:03:28
  colors, they have the I like the black one. I think the black
• 1:03:30
  one stands out and weighs like twenty five pounds. And you can put it
• 1:03:35
  in your on your patio, could put it in your garden, you can
• 1:03:37
  put it whatever you want. Put it in your man cave. I think
• 1:03:38
  this would look nice in Coach Kellogg's house as well. We are selling these
• 1:03:43
  at episode eight hundred dot com or work. No, this is what I'm
• 1:03:45
  doing. We're after hearing this is what I'm doing. I'm doing market research
• 1:03:49
  like live right now. This is research live where we go? Kerchival just
• 1:03:52
  saying stuff that we don't have plans for here we go. As you know,
• 1:03:55
  we have a lot of people, almost half of our audiences from outside
• 1:03:59
  of the state. So if you're a transplanted mountaineer and you'd like to have
• 1:04:03
  a little mountaineer pride, send me a text and say, hey, I'd
• 1:04:06
  like one of those that's all about pride. It's uh, it's what's our
• 1:04:11
  line? What is the text line? What is it? I don't know.
• 1:04:15
  I don't know you zero four four or four forty eighty three? Thank
• 1:04:17
  you? Three or four four or four forty eighty three? Would you get
• 1:04:20
  up now and get rid of that thing, so I'll get it. No
• 1:04:24
  no, no, no, no no no no no no no, you'll
• 1:04:26
  fall down twice. You're not able to pick it up. A man at
• 1:04:29
  your age, I can get that. No no, no, that's it's
• 1:04:32
  the size of that thing. Why I know it's heavy cement. It's made
• 1:04:39
  out a cement. Yeah, I don't help you with that. Here we
• 1:04:45
  go. Here comes a hernia and whyt to watch a hernia hoppy. Listen,
• 1:04:53
  they've told you when you leave the home in the morning at the assisted
• 1:04:56
  living to stop picking up heavy things. Thank you, Brad. All right,
• 1:05:00
  Mark, you're wondering what the hell's going on? Here we go.
• 1:05:01
  First one, Hello, this is Mitch from Buchanan. I thought I should
• 1:05:08
  point out a long running misnomer that you speak consistently on your show. Here
• 1:05:12
  we go, criticism right out of the gate. You know, since we're
• 1:05:15
  all about making corrections on the show to avoid confusion, it should be noted
• 1:05:18
  that you are not getting an actual bourbon barrel, but a bourbon barrel lid.
• 1:05:24
  Still a very cool item, but not an actual barrel, and that
• 1:05:28
  is confirmed. Anyway, carry on with the regularly scheduled food podcast. So
• 1:05:32
  yeah, you're right. I'm thinking I'm glad Mitch that you pointed that out
• 1:05:35
  to us. We do sell a bourbon barrel. Lid. You're right,
• 1:05:39
  I'll say lid. And by the way, Mitch, since you want to
• 1:05:41
  get into correcting things, you're from Buchanan, how about one of the greatest
• 1:05:45
  greatest forgeries of all time. Not all the strawberries in the Buchanan Strawberry Festival
• 1:05:51
  are grown in Buchanan. They have to bring them in from Florida. Don't
• 1:05:56
  start now and get us in a big You don't have to throw down when
• 1:06:00
  he just attacked the strawberry. Now we're gonna have to go be parade marshals
• 1:06:01
  as a strawberry festival. Well, I mean, if he wants a big
• 1:06:05
  skin strawberry festival and Buchano it was right. He just made a correction,
• 1:06:10
  Acknowledge the correction and move on. You don't have to throw down an up
• 1:06:12
  they any here, Well, I would say this. He probably also has
• 1:06:15
  to acknowledge that they bring the strawberries in from Florida. Jeez, strawberry have
• 1:06:21
  to speak on behalf of that because he because it's tony, because he's thin
• 1:06:25
  skinned. I'm self actualized. No, you're not. You're not. I
• 1:06:29
  want to see my bu tattoo. You're gonna get one? Heck yeah,
• 1:06:33
  you win a natty I will. Okay, there you go, There you
• 1:06:39
  go. How about final four? You got one? If he goes to
• 1:06:41
  Final four? Dot bait May Junior AJ in Pennsylvania writes, I suspect that
• 1:06:47
  you know the correct pronunciation is xavier, not egg xavier. Maybe making a
• 1:06:54
  connection with hoppies exploding a. You're merely having fun with your audience the same
• 1:06:57
  way that you guys pronounced ahia. Sense of that. Oklahoma, keep up
• 1:07:01
  the good work. PS. You wouldn't believe how hard it was to get
• 1:07:03
  the spelling bee that I wanted. In this day of auto correct, it's
• 1:07:06
  still my correctest self when I hit send. Hey, Mark, have you
• 1:07:11
  ever heard of anyone putting an actual egg inside of a microwave oven? I
• 1:07:15
  have heard of that. Yeah, well, thank you. Coach. Our
• 1:07:17
  boy did it over there? Yeah so damn near killed himself. Didn't go
• 1:07:20
  well, oh it didn't huh? Door the door blew open? Oh yeah,
• 1:07:26
  yeah, here's another coach. Can you cook? Do you cook?
• 1:07:30
  I know I grill occasionally, Okay, checking what's your favorite food? Mmmm?
• 1:07:35
  Well it probably like Mexican food really. If not, I'm yeah for
• 1:07:43
  sure probably and then I would be like a steak potato guy. Have you
• 1:07:45
  found any have you found any? And then we're not going to impugne anyone
• 1:07:49
  hard that certainly. Have you found any place that you'd like to eat around
• 1:07:53
  this area like Mexican futer? Yeah? Anything? Yeah? Pretty good?
• 1:07:57
  Yeah? No, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. Options. So
• 1:08:01
  you're from, like you're where you're from? Is Richmond? Is that right?
• 1:08:04
  Richardson? Richardson? Which is that right outside of Dallas? Right?
• 1:08:08
  Yeah? Just a suburb. Yeah, I think I told you. My
• 1:08:11
  son went to North Texas, Yeah, and lives in bass Drop. Now
• 1:08:15
  he's in bass Drop. You know bass Drop, I know Bastrop, Texas.
• 1:08:18
  Right Hey, here comes a third third tax third correction. Wow,
• 1:08:25
  I was on the rolling. I was on a roll. Last show they
• 1:08:28
  got the person, says Charles Wesley Godwin is touring with Luke Combs, not
• 1:08:31
  Luke Bryant. You get that wrong all the time, all the time,
• 1:08:34
  said Luke Bran. Luke Combs. Yeah, I made a mistake. Apparently
• 1:08:40
  wouldn't be the first. After I told Mark he was here for two years.
• 1:08:43
  That would be a pretty good concert. By the way. Yeah,
• 1:08:45
  those guys, he's a yes, Charles friend of the program. Yeah,
• 1:08:49
  no, I need to meet him. And we kind of met back and
• 1:08:51
  forth a little bit on social media, but oh, we can take care
• 1:08:54
  of that. Yeah, I need. I need to meet him. And
• 1:08:56
  I saw he was touring with Luke Combs, and my kids want to go
• 1:08:58
  to Luke Combs this so now I even got two reasons to the probably get
• 1:09:02
  backstage. Where's he playing? And we're close to here? Yeah, I
• 1:09:06
  think they are. Kayley was looking it up the other day. I don't
• 1:09:09
  know what she said. She had it kind of figured out. Probably be
• 1:09:11
  able to effort that, don't you think efforting? Yep? Thanks guys,
• 1:09:15
  Brad and Tony. We enjoyed talking you at the game last night. At
• 1:09:17
  the baseball game, great conversations, little backyard brawl. Brad calmed my anxiety
• 1:09:24
  regarding the basketball transfers and hoping to see all of you guys at the three
• 1:09:28
  Gates. Three guys tailgates this year, Brent and Morgantown. Why chat with
• 1:09:31
  Brent, Hey, so let me get your take on this. So Darren
• 1:09:34
  is in and he's putting his staff together, he's putting his players together.
• 1:09:40
  Uh. People getting nervous. Uh, you give it a headshake out just
• 1:09:44
  for last. Don't be no reason. It's a process. It takes time,
• 1:09:48
  and you want to get it right. You'd rather much rather wait and
• 1:09:51
  be a little patient to get it right than rush to fill the immediate satisfaction
• 1:09:56
  of others. Do you know him? Had you met him before he got
• 1:09:58
  hired? I did not know. I did not know if you guys talked
• 1:10:00
  yet. Yeah, we've had a couple of three or four interactions, for
• 1:10:02
  sure. And that's basically what we told brand game the other night. Just
• 1:10:05
  everything everything is far. He'll he'll be all right. Do you get any
• 1:10:10
  baseball games yet? You're too busy? Not this year. I'd had a
• 1:10:12
  chance. We gotta get you over there. I would love to get Yeah,
• 1:10:15
  the pit game, that was unbelievable. Sure. By the way,
• 1:10:17
  I think we got a picture from that game. Oh yeah, we had
• 1:10:20
  a great time. Talked to a lot of celebrities. We ran to Oh
• 1:10:24
  look it is that'd be past three guys participating, Garrett Green and off to
• 1:10:30
  the left, that's the young man that scored the first touchdown in the Duke's
• 1:10:33
  Mail Bowl. That's trailing Ray down the left sideline. I watch out for
• 1:10:36
  trailing Ray. Yeah, there was enough, kid, There was enough football
• 1:10:41
  players at the baseball game the other day. You absolutely could have practiced.
• 1:10:45
  Donaldson stood with us for a long time. Rodney offensive line, you could,
• 1:10:50
  you could appro Johnny Williams came over. There's a ton of them.
• 1:10:53
  Yeah, support. I bet you could field a pretty good baseball team with
• 1:10:57
  gart just those two too. You put and Ray and Garrett Green out there.
• 1:11:00
  No question Garrett was here. Remember what you said. He said I
• 1:11:03
  would have been I could have been a professional baseball player. His dad's a
• 1:11:06
  the bullpen coach for the Brewers. Oh yeah, Hey, Tony, here's
• 1:11:12
  a foodie question. I'm standing here watching my garden seedling start to take off.
• 1:11:16
  It's got me yearning for my favorite summer meal, a tomato sandwiched sandwich.
• 1:11:20
  Have you ever experienced this delicacy? You slice one tomato, a little
• 1:11:25
  mayo Duke's Mayo, of course, salt pepper, two slices of toast,
• 1:11:28
  and you've got yourself a meal that Gordon Ramsey can't beat. If you're looking
• 1:11:30
  for a kick, snap off a hot banana pepper to garnish. I'd be
• 1:11:33
  all in it. Put some hots on that, yeah, put some hots
• 1:11:36
  as he suggested. Yeah, absolutely, that's good. You got to get
• 1:11:40
  the good tomatoes, fresh, good deal. You're out. I'm out reason
• 1:11:45
  tomato, all of it. Specific. Part of that was with bread,
• 1:11:51
  with bread crunch, spahetti. But you could you'll do cook tomato like a
• 1:11:57
  spaghetti sauce. Are you not a big saw guy? Yeah, yeah,
• 1:12:01
  I don't know about that. Wait a second, I want to say something
• 1:12:02
  to us. No, no, no, no, I'm good there.
• 1:12:05
  I like it. I'm just not a Yeah, I don't know. I
• 1:12:09
  just didn't she's no meat. We're just going No, it would be a
• 1:12:12
  tomato you all enjoy next door. I'd take about ten of those days right
• 1:12:20
  now. Do not drop off a bag of tomatoes at the Kellogg household.
• 1:12:26
  But because that's a big thing, right, got him in the garden,
• 1:12:29
  got him in the garden, brought these in. I'm stealing that a lot
• 1:12:31
  of people bring them in. I'm using his line forever. And I said,
• 1:12:34
  you guys go and joy, you guys, enjoy that. That's what
• 1:12:36
  I'm gonna start using when people start bringing me some stuff. I know,
• 1:12:39
  I'm good. Thank you all right. Jeff and Sandyville. Jeff from Sandyville
• 1:12:45
  in Venice, Florida. I'm watching my eleven year old granddaughter, also known
• 1:12:48
  as Breezy, with her softball pitching coach. I asked the coach where she
• 1:12:51
  played in college, and she says, in Salem. That's in West Virginia.
• 1:12:56
  You've probably never heard of it. I said, well, actually it's
• 1:12:59
  an hour from my home. Always a West Virginia, always morning scope senator
• 1:13:03
  and part timer. They call him part timer Mark because he often misses.
• 1:13:10
  Yeah, any word on Josh Eiler or the former staff's next opportunity or will
• 1:13:15
  any be retained? That at this point, it doesn't look like any of
• 1:13:20
  the staff members from last year are going to be back. Mike and Nashville
• 1:13:28
  are last one. Tony A quick thought that occurred to me this off season
• 1:13:32
  of WV sports. I grew up in Morgantown, attended Morgantown High I graduated
• 1:13:38
  from West Virginia. My family had basketball season tickets in my childhood. I
• 1:13:42
  attended every game of the Classic Catlet years. I remember listening to your post
• 1:13:46
  games on the long car rights home from the coliseum, and I wish my
• 1:13:49
  dad would turn off this boring tony guy who droned down about how many rebounds
• 1:13:54
  Damian Owens had. Damian Owen reference probably steals too from Damien Owens. Now
• 1:13:58
  decades later, I live in Nashville and I miss West Virginia every day.
• 1:14:02
  One of the things that helps me feel connected is tuning into Three Guys and
• 1:14:06
  your sports Line podcast. I guess you aren't as boring as I thought.
• 1:14:10
  Thank you for what you do. From Nashville to thank you very much.
• 1:14:17
  I put you to sleep as you know what. He remembered listening to you
• 1:14:23
  talking about Damian Owen, so you must have registered with him. But you
• 1:14:26
  know what that reminded me. I forgot. We used to do a long
• 1:14:29
  postgame basketball and you did it. After MSM was over. We would do
• 1:14:31
  another postgames right in that little room off the Jerry West Une. Yeah yeah,
• 1:14:39
  yeah, yeah, Hey, dude, we can't thank you enough for
• 1:14:41
  being here. Appreciate it as always got no, man, this is this
• 1:14:43
  is good. We I hope we, I hope we accurately communicated to you
• 1:14:49
  how thrilled we were about what you guys were able to do. This year,
• 1:14:55
  and I think we can easily speak for the collective out here, not
• 1:15:00
  the not the nil collector, but the collective, the collective of people of
• 1:15:05
  what of what it meant? And as I said, I think this thing
• 1:15:09
  is doing this And how much fun your team was to watch. Yeah,
• 1:15:12
  that provided a lot of entertainment to a bunch of people this year, a
• 1:15:15
  lot of fun. One all right there he is Mark Kell. Yeah,
• 1:15:18
  you can't wait the next episode. Hoppies got that bu face tattoo right on
• 1:15:23
  his forehead. Three Guys before the Game brought to us by Comac's Business Systems,
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• 1:15:55
  from the guys, Guys in fairm those guys that make those in Fairmont semnt
• 1:16:00
  guys in Fairmont. Yeah, just remember Hoppy. Yes, the River's deep
• 1:16:04
  cementa is cheap. It's an organized crime thing anyway, See you again next
• 1:16:11
  time. Three guys before the game.