A SPECIAL EVENING FOR A SPECIAL PERSON RETURNING TO A SPECIAL FAMILY

For all of us that coach, including our spouses, it is a profession of highs and lows -- a continual roller coaster ride.  For those that stay in it long-term, it is because of the love we have not just for the game, but more importantly for the young people we have the ability to impact. With it however, comes criticism, adversity and setbacks. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is ever easy in this job.

But then there are moments like yesterday.

When a coach realizes a dream because of countless years of hard work and paying his dues.  When a coach reaches that which he has sought and deserved because he pushed through the criticism, adversity and setbacks...because he has labored to master his craft...because he shows patience when necessary and class when many wouldn't.

For all of us in the LSU men's basketball family, yesterday evening created a watershed moment.  It will be an evening we will long remember because of our love for the LSU men's basketball program and especially because of our love for Johnny Jones.

I often speak of the honor I had working for Coach Dale Brown, but I also had the privilege of working along side Johnny.  From those many years forged a relationship that has altered who I am.  Johnny Jones is the closest thing I have to a brother. He introduced me to cigars and Sammy's Bar and Grill. He refined my love for jazz music and gave me lessons in Louisiana culture.  He taught me a lot about recruiting, teaching and how to treat people.  He certainly taught me the importance of long-term relationships and friendship.

Following Coach Brown's retirement, our career path's took a fork in the road, but we have always remained close and in contact and supported each other through the good times and bad times.  Nothing good or bad has ever happened for me that I didn't immediately get a phone call from Johnny along with sage words of advice, or thoughts of encouragement.  But what makes Johnny special is all the phones calls that come for no reason except to check on me and my family. 

Ironically, Johnny and I spoke via phone a half of dozen times in the past two weeks in part talking about the possibility of his return to LSU but also as I sought his advice for an important career decision I was about to make.  We all have (or should have) a couple of "go-to-guys" that we can count on that can be honest with us when we need advice -- Johnny is one of mine.

Johnny is a unique person that genuinely cares about everyone he comes to know.  It is that characteristic that makes him a marvelous recruiter as well as a quality teacher.  And it is that reason that all of us in the LSU men's basketball family were rejoicing last night.  It was an amazing evening talking to Tiger alums via text, facebook, and phone all night long -- celebrating a perfect union -- Johnny Jones and LSU Basketball!

One of my favorite things after he left LSU would be to meet Johnny at Sammy's Restaurant on his visits to Baton Rouge.  Having moved to Orlando last summer it's been about 7 months since we've had a chance to break bread.  Being scheduled to speak at A Step Up Assistant Coaching Symposium later this month in Dallas, the first thing I did was call Johnny and make sure we could get together for dinner.  In true Johnny Jones fashion the next thing out of his mouth was "you're staying at my house too."

The last conversation I had with Johnny right before he was offered the LSU job, we spoke about how if he was to land it, he wouldn't be in Dallas for our dinner.  He said, "I love ya Bobby, but I sure hope I'm not able to take you to dinner."  We both laughed.  And right now I'm sure glad we won't be meeting in Dallas.

Congratulations Johnny!  And congratulations LSU Men's Basketball!

THOUGHTS FROM LSU'S TRENT JOHNSON

1. Two things he learned most important:
a) Communication
b) Don’t assume anything

2. Know your staff, personnel, who you work for, and who you work with.

3. In high school, he sent letters to player’s parents.

4. Open door policy with players.

5. Don’t tell players they can’t do stuff!

6. Assistants base suggestions on FACTS and RESEARCH.

7. Big on Loyalty, Commitment, and Trust.

8. Treat everyone the same – janitor, coaches, and players.

9. Better the player – more communication.

10. Best players need to be hardest workers – hold them accountable, don’t kiss their butt!

11. Catch words:
a) HUMBLE, HARD WORK, HONESTY
b) FAITH, FAMILY, FRIENDSHIP

12. The 5 A’s:
a) Attitude – positive but nasty in competition!
b) Aggressive
c) Adjust
d) Accountability
e) Academics

13. Basketball is only sport you can work on your game by yourself to get better at all parts of game.

14. He is not into false motivation or mind games.

THE HEALTHY TIGER

For those that are not following on twitter, here is an example of something that I tweeted about today that normally wouldn't make my blog.

Tweet: From the Healthy Tiger blog (operated by our LSU training staff) Top 10 Nutritional Tips for Athletes (Part 1) http://bit.ly/SPQew

Tweet: From the Healthy Tiger blog (operated by our LSU training staff) Top 10 Nutritional Tips for Athletes (Part 2) http://bit.ly/N2cTN

By the way, http://healthytiger.blogspot.com/ is a blog operated and supervised by the LSU Athletic Training Staff. We have a tremendous group of professionals working on our team at LSU and this blog is an outstanding reference in a wide variety of areas.

Mark the blog -- share it with your staff and team.

As I said, I often post a link and quick comment on twitter without it making it to my blog. If you want to follow me on twitter (as well as a host of other coaches and resourceful people), head to: http://twitter.com/LSUCoachStarkey

THE LADY TIGER WAY #5

Our Team Notebooks are a very important part of our success. In fact, we will have a short team meeting today to discuss out the notebook and how we expect the players to maintain it during the season and esecially to explain how they can best utilize it. In this meeting we always talk about the importance of notetaking. After a discussion with Lason Perkins a few weeks ago we decided to detail some guideline for good note taking to give to our players. We met with some key professors on the LSU campus and did some additional research. We will make sure that we talk to our team in terms of not only will this help them be better players but there are guidelines that will help them in class and beyond. Here are the guidelines that we will give our players today:

TAKING NOTES

Goal: To create a tool that makes information meaningful

Thoughts: In a study of Fortune 500 CEOs, one of the primary common denominators was that they were note takers. Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart and Sam’s Club never went anywhere without a yellow pad and pen.

There are 2 phases of successful note taking:
Phase 1: Take good notes
Phase 2: Review those notes (this is where many fall short)

Keys to being a good note taker:
◄Be an active listener (don’t just hear — listen!)
●Be prepared to listen (come with a “want to learn” attitude)
●Listen with a questioning mind (why is this relevant?)

◄Don’t be affected or distracted by the speaker or speaker’s mannerisms

◄Prepare before hand when you can
●Review previous notes or materials you have received

◄Listen to everything but don’t try to write everything down.

◄Leave room to add to your notes later when you review.

◄If speaker repeats something, that’s a cue it important.

◄Review notes afterwards as often as you can

◄Listen for cue words or key phrases:
“The following factors…”
“The most important thing is…”
“The key is…”

◄Words, phrases, stats on boards or screens are worth noting

◄Pay attention to:
●Details & facts
●Definitions
●Lists
●Quotes

◄Review information with 24 hours
●Edit and correct
●Highlight key thoughts
●Note that you took but didn’t understand?
—Ask the Coach what they meant

◄Utilize symbols to help
* For something important
? For something you don’t understand

◄Always maintain eye contact with speaking (except when writing)

◄Focus on content, not delivery
●Don’t get caught up in the fact that the coach is criticizing you

...be caught up in what he/she is criticizing

— that is what you need to know to improve.

◄Ask yourself questions
●Why is this important?
●What is the primary point to this?

USING RECITATION AS PART OF THE REVIEW

There have been studies done over the years that shows evidence that learning is improved immediately following a lecture but that significantly declines around 24 hours later. The key is that they study also shows that the decrease of recall is greatly reduced by those who utilize a short review following the initial lecture or reading material.

Studies also show the best way to prepare for a test is the utilization of “recitation.” Recitation is the acting of repeating/reading aloud. In fact, one study showed that you can improve by as much as 80% by utilizing recitation.

“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diliegnce."

-Abigail Adams-

“The wisest mind has something yet to learn.”

-George Santayana-

“Learning is not a spectator sport.”
-D. Blocher-

CORNELL 6-5 NOTE TAKING METHOD

The Cornell 6-R Note Taking Method breaks the process down into components, but it is really an ongoing, dynamic process. The value of taking notes this way is that it organizes information and prepares you for tests from the very beginning, and saves time.

Record
Write down important facts, names, dates, concepts, theories, procedures and other information in the column on the right.

Reduce
Summarize the main ideas with key words or questions and write these in the column on the left.

Recite
Cover the details section, and ask yourself the question in the main idea column, or formulate a question based upon the concept phrases in the left column. How well could you remember what you wrote down? Keep track of what you need to learn.

Reflect
Reflect upon the ideas in the notes, including how they are applied, the implications of conclusions or data, and the meaning of examples or cases discussed. Search for connections between ideas. You give meaning to what you are learning by reflecting upon it. Record your thoughts, observations, questions and unresolved issues in the lower section of the page for the summary.

Review
Review your notes again immediately after taking them. If the notes are from lecture, fill in any blanks, clarify any missing or partial information. Recite and reflect again to test yourself. Plan spaced time for review of your notes each week.

Recapitulate
Summarize what you have gone over in your notes again. Write a summary of each page of notes in the lower section of the page. This will help the information to be stored in long-term memory.

GREAT VISION IS THE ART OF SEEING THE INVISBLE

Once I was driving to work and listening to radio guy interview Miami of Florida legend Ron Frazier. He was the legendary baseball coach that guided the Hurricanes to national prominence. It also had the help for many years of an assistant named Skip Bertman. Skip would later leave Miami and build LSU into a collegiate basketball powerhouse.

The radio guy asked Coach Frazier, “When Skip came here they had never won. No one attended the games — they may have had a hundred fans per league game. No one talked about them and no one cared. Now they lead the nation in attendance each year and have won five national championships! I mean who would’ve ever imagined that?

Without any hesitation, Coach Frazier replied, “Skip Bertman.”

I was reminded of this story reading about Walt Disney in the book “Tiger Traits” by Nate Booth who wrote:

“Walt Disney died before Disney World in Orlando was completed. His brother, Roy, Came out of retirement and finished the project. On the opening day of Disney World, a young reporter came up to Roy and said, “Isn’t it a tragedy that Walt never got to see Disney World?” Roy Disney replied, “You’re wrong, young man. Walt did see it. He saw it in his imagination first. That’s why you’re seeing it physically her today.”

Remember, great vision is the art of seeing the invisible.

WINNING THE RIGHT WAY

I greatly enjoyed watching the LSU baseball team compete this year. They did so at the highest of levels and maintained that effort all the way through to win the National Championship. One of the qualities that I most admired about this team is that they just played the game. That sounds like an over simplification but if you coach you know what I mean. The score had absolutely nothing to do with how we played. This is why so often we could take a 2 or 3 run lead and stretch it to 7 or 8 runs. It is the reason why we could be down 2 or 3 and still win by 5 runs. Now some teams can do this on occasion but it was a common feature of this championship team. They were not into the result -- they were all about the process. The score had nothing to do with a good at bat.

The second quality that I admire about the LSU baseball program is the leadership -- starting with Coach Paul Mainieri. For those that say nice guys finish last, well you need to take a look at Coach Mainieri and his track record of success. In today's society there are a lot of different ways to win. Unfortunately you can cheat and win. Many of us, purist, don't want to admit it but it's out there. That's not to say that it sometimes doesn't catch up with the cheater but they do sometimes win. Sometimes you can win with players of poor character. They don't go to class...they get in trouble...they don't care about their school or community. Not so with LSU baseball. There are not just outstanding baseball players but outstanding people. Why? Because that is the philosophy of Coach Mainieri -- he recruits quality people and he leads them in a quality way.

Thirdly, they are great examples of excellence. Last night we have open gym scheduled for our players. None showed! They were all together parked in front of the television cheering the Tigers at they play baseball. That tells you that our players respect the baseball team. One of the things that LSU does is create several venues where the athletes from all sports get to interact. It pays off because I think our team will be better observing the baseball team. That camaraderie is shown by Les Miles and Trent Johnson making the trip to Omaha to support the team.

Finally, sometimes as basketball coaches we think we can only learn from basketball coaches -- nothing could be further from the truth. As an assistant basketball coach at West Virginia State College I was also an assistant sports information director and my sport was baseball. Each spring I joined the baseball team, coached by legendary Cal Bailey to keep his book and his stats. We shared dinners, bus rides and conversations in the dugout. I learned a tremendous amount about teaching, motivation and player development from Cal who to this day is a friend and a mentor.

Skip Bertman, the baseball coach for many years was another great example for all our coaches in the way he ran his program. After he became the Athletic Director at LSU, he went out of his way to coach the coaches -- to impart even more of his wisdom on us. For some reason Skip took a liking to me and I was the beneficiary of many phone calls and trips to his office to learn of ways to be better at my craft. Again, to this day I still lean on Skip for advice.

So find coaches that are successful -- no matter the sport or the level -- and learn from them. I've no doubt had a little more of a slant towards LSU in this blog entry so forgive me. I've tried to keep this blog about coaching, teaching and motivating but today I'm truly proud to be a Tiger because of our baseball team -- not jut because they won the National Championship but more importantly because of how they won it and the fact that they share it with the rest of us.

THE ULTIMATE COACHES' CLINIC: PAUL MAINIERI

In 2008, Pat Williams, the GM of the Orlando Magic and a tremendous motivational speaker put out a book, "The Ultimate Coaches' Clinic." It is a fascinating book because of the style Pat utilized. He surveyed over 1000 coaches and administrators for insights to what is important to successfully do their job. From time to time I will share a few but it is a great book to own and I highly recommend it. At LSU, our baseball coach is Paul Mainieri. He not only an excellent baseball coach but a great person and not only leads our baseball program but has helped us all be better coaches by his example. Who better to study today coming off his first National Championship last night!!!

His thoughts include:

1. Be yourself and not somebody else.

2. Don’t believe players are self-motivated. You have to motivate and inspire them every day.

3. Motivate them on an individual basis, not a group basis.

4. Always remember, it means a lot more to you as a coach than it does to the players. Know that, accept it, and live with it.

YET ANOTHER REASON WHY I LOVE LSU FOOTBALL AND RESPECT COACH MILES

A lot of coaches profess to care about their student-athletes on an individual basis. They all talk about doing what is in the best interest of their players. LSU Head Football Coach Les Miles talks about it as well...and he walks the walk!

Two of his starters look for opportunities to shine in sports other than football and Coach Miles gave them their blessing. The result?

Jarred Mitchell, a receiving on our football team turned in a great season on the baseball diamond and is currently playing in the college world series where he is looking for a National Championship to match the one he's already receiving playing for Coach Miles on the football field. But the effect goes well beyond that as Jarred was taken in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft last week.

Speedy tailback Trindon Holiday missed out on spring practice as well to compete with the LSU track team where this weekend he finished first, winning his first career NCAA title in the 100-meter dash on Friday night, while also anchored the Tigers to an NCAA runner-up finish in the 4x100-meter relay.

No doubt Coach Miles and his staff would have loved to have both of these talented athletes in spring practice, but Coach Miles sees the big picture -- not just on the team level but in the dreams of each of his players.

Benefits? There's a reason the coaches in other sports respect him...there's a reason his players play hard for him -- they know he cares.