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00:00 Go ahead, Brad.
00:01 All right, Jordan, so, well, I mean,
00:03 take us back to the beginning,
00:04 not way in the beginning, but coaching beginning.
00:08 Start with the spring.
00:10 You planned for one thing to coach here, then it changed.
00:15 So, walk us through your thoughts of how that went,
00:17 the nerves of if it was going to work for you.
00:21 So, it started my time here, coming back to coach.
00:24 Yeah, so, I mean, from the beginning,
00:27 obviously, I had reached out to Coach Huggs for,
00:31 you know, advice in terms of how to get into coaching.
00:33 It's been something that I've wanted to do for a long time.
00:36 I started to think about it as a player.
00:39 I have an obsession and a passion
00:41 for the game of basketball that I knew
00:43 I never wanted to do anything outside of this game.
00:45 So, when I reached out to him,
00:47 the thought process was either he can help me get somewhere
00:52 or there's positions opening up
00:54 amongst all coaching staffs around the country,
00:56 and I knew that, and just kind of reached out,
01:00 see what I could do, maybe as player development,
01:02 just get my foot in the door,
01:03 something that I take pride in for myself in my playing career
01:08 and how I could kind of pass that on to people
01:11 who are given a little bit more God-given things.
01:15 You know, I figured if I was 5'10", fairly unathletic --
01:18 well, unathletic, not fairly --
01:21 guy who could play in the Big 12,
01:23 what could I do with somebody who's 6'7"
01:25 with a 40-inch vertical and has a lot of natural ability
01:29 and try to instill some of the work ethic
01:32 and some of the nuance that I took upon myself
01:35 in my own player development.
01:37 So, that was what I was going to try to do,
01:39 and I moved out kind of on a handshake with Coach Huggins.
01:43 There was no contract in place,
01:45 just trying to figure it out as we go,
01:47 and then, obviously, things happened, things changed.
01:49 I was kind of left here.
01:51 My fiance and I bought a house.
01:53 We were in Morgantown and not sure
01:55 if I'd have a job in Morgantown,
01:56 so had to adjust on the fly and kind of get your feet
02:02 wet in the coaching world,
02:03 which is always changing very quickly.
02:05 So, it was an eventful time for me,
02:10 nerve-wracking at times, chaotic for sure,
02:13 but I've always kind of thought to be somebody
02:16 who thrives in chaos
02:18 and just finds opportunity throughout that.
02:19 So, I was blessed enough to have somebody like Coach Eilert
02:23 give me the opportunity to be an assistant coach here,
02:27 and we had many conversations about what it might look like,
02:31 and he had me pause some things
02:34 that I was working on behind the scenes
02:35 as I didn't know who was going to be the coach here,
02:38 and there was a point where I was potentially going
02:41 to a Big Ten school to do player development
02:43 and recruiting there, and Coach Eilert said,
02:45 "Well, there might be some news in the next couple days.
02:48 Let's just wait," and I had plenty of faith in him,
02:50 so I did that, and now we're here.
02:54 You said fiance. Do you have a date?
02:58 Well, the weddings are expensive,
03:02 which I'm finding out very quickly,
03:06 so I told her we may need to wait a little longer
03:09 in terms of doing what she wants to do.
03:11 So, we'll see.
03:12 May 2025 is kind of our target date right now,
03:15 give ourselves a good year and a half
03:18 and be kind of settled more at that time,
03:21 but, yeah, the rock's on the finger, so that's good.
03:25 Thank you.
03:26 She's a West Virginia girl.
03:28 Yeah, she's from Weirton.
03:29 Okay. Yep.
03:31 Now you're into the coaching. You wanted to do it.
03:36 Is it what you thought different than what you thought?
03:40 Well, I always thought as a player,
03:42 you know, I always used to sit there and think,
03:45 "Man, coaching's so easy."
03:48 I don't know why they're always upset or grumpy or whatever,
03:53 and now I see the flip side of that,
03:55 and you realize, well, as a player,
03:57 you have to worry about yourself,
03:59 and that's pretty much it.
04:00 Make sure you're doing your job well.
04:02 Point guard's a little different.
04:03 I don't want Kirk Creaser to think he's just got to think
04:05 about himself.
04:06 He's got to think about everybody else,
04:07 but that's what a coach does.
04:08 He's got to think about all the moving pieces
04:11 within an organization, within a team,
04:14 and every decision affects every one of our guys
04:16 right down the roster, so that's an adjustment for me,
04:22 trying to think that way.
04:24 I like to think I did that when I was a player,
04:27 especially when I wasn't getting time,
04:28 trying to take the focus off of myself
04:30 and trying to still help us win,
04:31 even if not on the floor as much as I'd like to be,
04:33 so I think that's going to be a huge help for me
04:36 in this adjustment as a coach,
04:39 so that's been probably the biggest learning curve,
04:42 and I don't think I realized the time
04:46 that's required and spent inside the office.
04:50 You know, we get here at 6 a.m., get a lift in,
04:53 and then we don't leave until the sun goes down,
04:55 typically, which is an adjustment for Olivia,
04:58 my aforementioned fiancée, so we're both getting used to it,
05:02 but I tell her every day, and she asks me a lot,
05:04 you know, "How do you feel?
05:06 You think you made the right decision?"
05:07 because I thought about going to play overseas
05:09 and trying to climb that ladder.
05:11 Every day I tell her and anybody else who asks,
05:14 best decision I've ever made in my life
05:16 is getting into coaching.
05:17 Absolutely in love with it, obsessed with it.
05:20 Don't see myself doing anything for the rest of my life.
05:25 Like you were saying earlier, most guys
05:27 who get into the profession start off scouting,
05:31 or they start off, you know, director, player personnel.
05:34 Sure.
05:35 They don't just jump right into being an assistant coach,
05:38 so, I mean, that's kind of the situation you're in now.
05:41 Make you, you know, thoughts or nervous
05:44 that it happened kind of quickly for you?
05:48 You know what? No, I wouldn't say nervous.
05:51 I think it increased my focus level for sure.
05:54 When you step in and you get your foot in the door
05:56 at certain positions, your responsibilities are just less.
06:00 That's the only difference, and I was kind of curious
06:04 when Coach Eilert gave me the job,
06:05 would it just be a pseudo-assistant coach?
06:08 Would I just be kind of helping out with,
06:11 you know, the other assistants
06:12 and trying to fill in gaps and holes where I can,
06:16 which I would have been grateful for, but that's not the case.
06:20 You know, I'm blessed to have a full-time role
06:23 where it's scouting, it's recruiting,
06:25 it's a lot of things I've never done before,
06:28 but I played basketball my entire life,
06:30 so this is nothing new to me, and, you know,
06:33 I'm really trying to lean into how to be a better leader
06:37 for a small group of guys
06:38 that I may be in charge of on a day-to-day basis,
06:42 but more important than being a better leader
06:44 is how to follow a leader,
06:46 and we have a great one with Coach Eilert,
06:47 so learning how to do that on a daily basis.
06:50 I asked so many coaches when I got the job, you know,
06:53 how can I be a great assistant coach,
06:56 and the common theme was lift up your head coach.
06:58 Everything you do, lift up your head coach.
07:00 Make him look good, and it's pretty easy.
07:02 He's a handsome fella, so, you know, he always looks good,
07:06 but he's done such a great job
07:09 in giving us assistant coaches an opportunity,
07:12 especially myself, Coach Ruoff, and Coach Butler,
07:15 Coach Johnson already being here,
07:17 to step in year one and try to prove our worth,
07:20 and I think he saw and delved deeply into who he was hiring
07:25 in terms of what they could bring
07:28 and took a risk, for sure, in my position,
07:31 being, I think, the youngest assistant coach
07:33 in the Power Five.
07:34 You know, you're going to get funny looks,
07:37 but he put his faith in me,
07:39 and I don't take that for granted
07:41 any day of my life and my coaching career
07:44 from here on out.
07:45 On the recruiting trail,
07:47 I mean, you were just a player last year.
07:49 Yeah, yeah. That was interesting.
07:52 I went to my first AU event
07:55 and stood behind the ropes as a coach,
07:58 and that was typically the first thing
08:00 that any coach would say was,
08:01 "I just recruited you, like, six years ago."
08:04 It was sometimes awkward forgetting
08:06 if I remember them or not.
08:08 It was a little weird, but it's been good,
08:11 you know, getting out there, evaluating talent,
08:14 looking at kind of what we've done here
08:16 at West Virginia in the past,
08:18 things we want to keep the same,
08:19 things we want to do differently,
08:21 talking to a lot of coaches on the recruiting trail.
08:24 Everybody says networking.
08:25 I just, you know, try to be myself and talk to people.
08:29 I think networking happens pretty naturally
08:31 in our line of work, so it's been great.
08:35 Got a chance to do a lot more travel than I expected,
08:38 like I said.
08:39 You don't do that as player development typically,
08:42 and I'm just trying to take advantage
08:44 of every opportunity I get.
08:46 During along those lines, how young you are,
08:50 how important was it to build relationships
08:52 with the players over the summer,
08:54 and did you feel that you had to earn their respect in some way?
08:58 Yeah, absolutely. I think every coach does,
09:00 but me more so than anybody else.
09:03 And like I said, I've reached out
09:05 to a lot of different people.
09:06 Talked to Fran Ferschilla for a long time
09:09 when I first got hired.
09:12 He was a young assistant coach,
09:14 and another person who gave me --
09:16 Fran gave me a ton of advice.
09:17 I got a booklet full of advice from him.
09:20 And then there was another coach who --
09:23 his name's Coach Carter. He was at Rick Carter.
09:26 He was at DePaul. He recruited me there.
09:28 And I reached out to him.
09:30 He and I had a conversation,
09:32 and I expressed a little bit of concern there
09:34 because it's obvious.
09:35 You know, the elephant in the room is I'm maybe a year
09:38 or two older than some of these guys
09:40 who are in their last COVID year,
09:42 whatever it may be, right?
09:43 So I'm their peer, and I knew that,
09:46 and I wasn't going to change who I was
09:49 just because there's a title change.
09:52 I didn't think that was the right route to take,
09:53 so I called Coach Carter, and we talked for a while
09:56 and eventually got around to it where I was like,
09:59 "Yeah, you know, I'm trying to carry myself
10:01 in a certain way where, you know, I still maintain
10:04 and earn the respect from players
10:05 who are that close in age."
10:07 And, you know, I'm not -- I've never really been a yeller
10:11 or anything like that, so I didn't think
10:13 that would get through to players my age.
10:16 So I told Coach Carter, you know,
10:18 "I'm at a crossroads here. Like, how do I approach this?"
10:20 And he said, "Well, you just look at it like an NBA model."
10:24 And that really struck home with me.
10:26 He said, "It's not me telling you what to do
10:29 because I know more than you because I'm a coach
10:31 and you're a player.
10:32 We're both two men trying to solve a problem together
10:36 on more of an equal playing field."
10:38 Now, that changes as your career goes on,
10:41 and coaches approach that differently.
10:43 But from my position right now,
10:46 I think that's where I can have a lot of value
10:48 is bridging that gap between player and coach
10:51 and trying to work on a problem at a lateral level, in a sense.
10:57 And I think that's where you earn and get that respect
11:01 from players when you take that approach.
11:03 The last thing you just talked about,
11:05 you come over here, you get a premier point guard
11:08 to work with who has played a lot,
11:11 played successfully, played in the tournament and the likes.
11:14 And, you know, you're working with him.
11:16 I mean, how did you approach that?
11:18 And all of a sudden, he gets suspended.
11:21 How are you working keeping him from dying of depression?
11:25 You're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:27 No, Kerr's done a really, really good job
11:30 all the way through the offseason.
11:32 I had -- Funny thing is, he gave me a call.
11:36 I've never met Kurt Carissa prior to my time at West Virginia.
11:41 This can't get me in trouble because I wasn't working
11:42 for West Virginia at the time. There was nothing there.
11:45 He called me just as a, "Hey, we're similar build,
11:48 similar play style, pass first, this and that."
11:50 You went to West Virginia and left.
11:53 I'm thinking about going there.
11:55 Is there anything that you can kind of,
11:56 you know, key me in on so that I can,
11:59 you know, round that corner quicker?
12:02 Or is this a good fit for me, I guess, is the real question.
12:05 And, you know, I told him how much respect
12:07 I had for Coach Huggins at the time
12:09 and kind of let him make his own decision.
12:11 And, you know, what I think for Kerr as he now transitions
12:16 from Coach Huggins to Coach Eilert
12:18 is he's going to be put in a position of offensive spacing
12:23 that might be a little bit different.
12:25 You know, it's not a secret.
12:27 Coach Huggins has had his way of doing things,
12:29 and it was very successful.
12:30 There's a reason you're in the Hall of Fame.
12:32 But for a point guard like Kirk Carissa,
12:35 we're trying to put him in space to make decisions at a fast pace
12:37 that most point guards can't do.
12:40 And his European background,
12:42 it shines through every single practice.
12:44 He makes plays and passes
12:45 and moves guys around in a chess-like manner.
12:50 So now, yeah, he's dealing with a nine-game suspension,
12:53 and he's handling it with grace, which I respect.
12:57 He's a competitor. He wants to be on the floor.
13:00 But for these nine games, he and I will continue to work
13:04 and take practice with the approach that it's his games.
13:08 He can't have a fall-off.
13:09 He's going to have to -- he's got a challenge.
13:12 He's going to be coming back when we're in the thick of things
13:14 and getting ready to go into the best league in America.
13:17 And he's well aware of that and up for the challenge.
13:20 But now our job as coaches is to keep him ready.
13:23 And it's really, really easy to do that
13:25 with somebody who loves basketball.
13:27 I mean, he eats, breathes, sleeps.
13:29 He lives basketball.
13:31 And it's such a joy to be around.
13:32 It's a lot of fun watching how he does it.
13:36 He does it differently than I do it a little bit.
13:38 As much as he loves it, he and I have a different approach.
13:42 He's got more of that, "I'll just walk out here
13:44 and just do it."
13:46 So we're trying to make sure that he's in the gym
13:48 as much as we can.
13:49 But he's so naturally gifted and smart.
13:52 I don't want him hearing me say that really right now.
13:55 But I do love him. He's great.
13:57 And Kerr's style of play,
13:59 do you see a little bit of your style?
14:02 Yeah. Yeah. I'm just better than Kerr.
14:04 That's all. I just happen to be coaching now.
14:06 No, Kerr's way better than I ever was, ever could be.
14:09 He's at a different level of IQ
14:12 than any player in the country, in my opinion.
14:15 I think he's going to be so much fun to watch
14:18 for the West Virginia fans.
14:20 And he's really stepped up as a leader, too.
14:26 I always laugh at him because he's got the language barrier,
14:28 but he handles that great, too.
14:30 He doesn't have a language barrier.
14:30 He's got an accent.
14:32 And he does well leading our guys with his accent.
14:34 He's very good at that.
14:36 He maintains a lightheartedness and a balance
14:40 that we need to be a very good team
14:43 because at the end of the day, this is just a game.
14:45 And he keeps that perspective within our guys and our staff,
14:50 too. When you take things too seriously,
14:52 you don't perform at the highest level.
14:54 There's a perfect balance of being relaxed and locked in,
14:58 and Kerr does that every single day.
15:00 It's a joy to watch. He's extremely talented.
15:03 So, excited to get him back when we can.
15:06 Talk about the elephant in the room being your age.
15:08 What would you say some advantages are to your age,
15:10 though, being in this position?
15:12 Well, there's a couple.
15:13 First on the fact that I can kind of bridge that gap
15:16 between player and coach.
15:18 Our coaching staff as a whole is young.
15:21 But me being the youngest, I can go to Kerr,
15:24 and we can have different conversations
15:25 that he may not naturally have with other coaches.
15:29 And that's, I think, part of being a good assistant,
15:31 as well, is the head coach wants something done,
15:35 and he's going to communicate that in his own way.
15:38 And it's not always going to be received
15:39 or whatever by the whole team.
15:42 As well as it can be received from a separate conversation
15:45 he may have with an assistant coach.
15:48 And where I drive that point home that Coach Eilert makes,
15:51 I think I can really ingrain Coach Eilert's philosophy
15:55 in our guys and get them to buy in.
15:57 We talk about buy-in all the time,
15:59 and it's something that I feel that separates good
16:02 from great teams in my career,
16:05 even looking back into high school.
16:07 The best teams that I've been a part of have full buy-in.
16:11 There's a full trust, and it sounds so easy.
16:14 But I always like to say it's simple.
16:16 It's a simple concept, but it's not easy.
16:17 It's simple, not easy.
16:19 So that's where my youth kind of becomes a plus for me.
16:24 And then the other thing is I can still get out there
16:26 and move around with them, as well.
16:28 It's one thing I won't be able to do it
16:29 forever in my coaching lifetime,
16:32 but for right now I can get out there
16:34 and not just tell them what to do,
16:36 but show them what to do or what I'm asking.
16:39 Same thing with Coach Ruoff, Coach Butler, and Coach Johnson.
16:42 We've all heard the stories of open gym.
16:44 We get out there and compete.
16:47 Jordan, a lot of times when a guy transfers,
16:49 bridges are burned, even from the beginning.
16:53 Huggs' talk didn't sound like that was with you.
16:56 Most guys that transfer would never come back.
16:58 So why did you not burn the bridge?
17:01 How'd that work?
17:03 Well, I mean, it was natural to not burn the bridge.
17:07 And like I said, when Kirk calls and asks me about,
17:10 you know, what he's kind of getting himself into,
17:13 I was completely open and honest with him,
17:15 just like I was open and honest
17:16 when I transferred out of here to Coach Huggins.
17:19 We sat down and had an emotional conversation
17:23 after my junior year here, after we lost to Syracuse.
17:27 And I told them what my goals were
17:30 and why I didn't think I'd be able to reach them
17:33 here at West Virginia
17:35 and how that had nothing to do with him
17:37 and more to do with me and the fit
17:39 and all this stuff we could get into, right?
17:42 But the undertone of the entire conversation
17:44 was how much I loved them.
17:45 And I love this state.
17:47 I love this university.
17:49 And it'll always be home.
17:50 And I said that, but I meant it.
17:53 And when I got an opportunity to come back,
17:55 like I told you in the beginning,
17:56 I did it on a handshake.
17:57 There was no paper signed.
17:59 You know, we moved back to Morgantown, West Virginia,
18:01 bought a house and planted our first roots.
18:03 So this will always be a special place to me.
18:06 Jordan, your other two-point guards you have now,
18:09 what do you think of Kobe, Jeremiah,
18:10 and how do you make it work when they're not Kerr
18:12 but they're who's on hand right now?
18:14 Yeah, absolutely. And they're different players.
18:17 They have different skill sets and attributes than Kerr does.
18:20 And, you know, we'll start with Kobe.
18:24 It's been a joy to watch Kobe and his increase in confidence.
18:28 And it happens first in practice,
18:29 and you watch a buildup in confidence,
18:32 and then it restarts in a game.
18:33 When the lights turn on, it's a different ball game.
18:36 But even in that first game against Missouri State,
18:41 I felt very confident in the fact
18:43 that you could see Kobe playing with emotion.
18:46 And when there's joy in the game of basketball,
18:48 once again, for a player, it's a special thing to see,
18:51 and you know there's good stuff coming.
18:53 So I think that's where we're at right now with Kobe.
18:57 He's extremely talented.
18:59 He's a big physical guard, like you said, different than Kerr.
19:03 But that's great for us.
19:05 We are going to have an opportunity right now
19:08 to get Kobe back to a level that he was at
19:11 when he first arrived here at West Virginia.
19:14 And for whatever reason,
19:15 he wasn't at that when we got him, doesn't matter.
19:19 We knew where we had to go with him,
19:20 and that was to get him back to enjoying
19:23 and loving the game of basketball,
19:25 which is what we're starting to see on a daily basis here.
19:29 And I think it's invaluable,
19:32 his nine games that he's going to get right now for us,
19:35 to lead us, and he's going to do a great job
19:36 like he did against Missouri State
19:38 in a game where we hit adversity, obviously,
19:41 and trying to keep him building on momentum.
19:45 We talk about momentum a ton and how to create it
19:49 and how to continue it.
19:50 And now Jeremiah is a different player than those two as well.
19:56 Never played a game of college basketball
19:59 until Missouri State, limited experience,
20:03 and quite a learning curve for him this summer
20:06 to where he probably didn't expect how much he would be
20:10 relied upon, if at all, this first year for us.
20:14 But he's versatile, he's dynamic,
20:16 6'5", 6'6", whatever he may be, and athletic.
20:21 There's a ton to work with there.
20:23 And my biggest thing with Jeremiah right now
20:25 is staying in the gym, is consistency.
20:28 Once again, going back to simple, not easy.
20:30 Getting better in basketball is simple, it's not easy.
20:33 It's simple in the fact that all you got to do
20:35 is go in the gym every single day.
20:37 It's hard, it's not easy in the fact
20:39 that you have to go in the gym every single day.
20:41 You're going to be sore, and there's going to be good days
20:43 and bad days, you're going to play some days,
20:44 you're not going to play some days.
20:47 You might be banged up, whatever it may be,
20:49 but going in the gym every single day
20:51 is what he's really taking a step in,
20:53 and he's seeing it pay off.
20:55 He did a terrific job on our opener
20:59 and taking care of the ball.
21:01 And once again, it may be a small thing for the casual fan,
21:06 but the way I look at it as a coach is something
21:07 that we can build off of and create momentum off of.