Building a Culture of Playing Towards Each Other with Ryan Gensler

This is the Transforming Basketball Podcast. This is the podcast helping coaches and practitioners change the way we think about basketball performance. Our goal is to provide the ultimate resource for making sense of applying contemporary skill acquisition ideas within basketball. Within this podcast, we unpack how an ecological dynamics framework impacts our perspective of the game.

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So welcome to the Transforming Basketball Podcast. On today's episode, we have Ryan Gensler. He is the head basketball coach for the women's program at the University of Akron. His coaching journey has taken him through programs like St. Bonaventure, Dayton, Florida, and Illinois. before taking over the Zips.

At St. Bonaventure, he was first introduced to concept-based offense under head coach Joe Crowley during their 2012 Sweet 16 run, an idea that continues to shape his approach today. Now at Akron, Ryan is leading a program built on principles of play, modern player development, and a commitment to teaching through the constraints-led approach.

Ryan, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. This is an honor to be on here after listening to so many great podcasts and reading the book.

Awesome. Let's get into it. So you've coached at some incredible programs. Looking back, what were some key points, key inflection points in your coaching journey that shaped your philosophy? Maybe one or two habits or details you've carried with you into Akron.

For sure. I think you hit it on the head with Coach Jim Crowley at St. Bonaventure. You know, we ran a 5-out offense back then that was different. Everyone had done traditional 4s and 5s as post players and He was truly concept-based and just having what we now call triggers.

He had 3 or 4 of them that we just went to and got really good at understanding coverage solutions and, you know, had really, really good pieces to find success. I mean, for a school that size to go to the NCAA tournament, go to the Sweet 16, it was incredible.

You know, loyal to Maryland. Next stop, had a head coach there that was really good at showing relationship-based coaching with his players and, you know, learning them and them learning him to get the most out of them. University of Florida, Amanda Butler, who's now an assistant coach at Louisville.

She was incredible at culture building and helping understand on a larger scale how to recruit, how to find that kind of niche piece in the recruiting process and to build to a culture. And then that was at a really high level in the SEC.

And then going to University of Dayton with Shawna Greene, who then became the head coach at University of Illinois, you know, spending time with her, it was kind of like the best of all worlds. It was a culture was in place and she was heavy on player development and You know, we were able to recruit at a really high level and compete against some other, you know, power 4 schools.

And so putting that player development with really good players that wanted to work, you know, in a great environment allowed us to kind of catapult. And then at Illinois, that was a program that hadn't won in 20 years and gone to the NCAA tournament.

And we got them to the NCAA tournament in year 1. So it was taking kind of some of that to Illinois, inserting a few new players there that were built on the principles that we had known and liked. And then infusing it with some players that were just hungry to win and do whatever it took to win.

So that afforded us the opportunity to come take bits and pieces from all of those.

So you had the best of all worlds, transformational coaching, building cultures, the actual X's and O's with the principles of play, the triggers, coverage solutions. How are you taking all that you've learned and now applying it to Accra?

As I wanted to prepare to become a head coach, I read Michael Lombardi's Gridiron Genius. And there's a section in there that described how, as a general manager, he would interview a head coach. And so I kind of took a little bit of inventory of what was important to me and kind of outlined 3 qualities in folks that I want to gravitate towards.

So we can always identify really good basketball talent, but I wanted to identify kind of core values in people that I hired and also recruited to. And so those were simple and they were, you know, they're everyday things of doing the right thing, showing people that you care.

And Ultimately, I think if you have those 2 things, you're going to have a group that wants to play for each other. And I think as we started to talk X's and O's, that play for each other concept ended up becoming what we built on the court.

We wanted to get someone an open shot. We wanted to create for someone and that it would come back around within the offense of having 5 viable players on the court all at once. So I'm a relationship-based leader and that's kind of my approach to players, meet with them.

once every 2 weeks from the minute they get to campus to understand them, to know how they tick. And I'm slowly gravitating towards, you know, understanding I need to be a little bit more task-oriented, but all those kinds of pieces have kind of culminated to this upcoming season, which I'm really excited for.

Yeah. It's so interesting. You talked about, you know, the foundation is playing for each other and rooting for each other. And then you have everything else, the X's and O's on top of that. It's like, I remember just off the top of my mind, something that comes to mind was And last, I think it was last year's playoffs and it was Kyle Anderson from the Timberwolves set a hammer screen.

I think it was, maybe it was the year before. And I think the hammer screen was for Karl-Anthony Towns. And he hit the 3-pointer and he was having a bad game the whole time. And it's like, coach didn't draw that up, right? Because it was an iso, they got the mismatch with Edwards.

And that was like a selfless thing that he did. But again, one of those things that you don't, it's not a play that you're drawing up, but it's a selfless thing that you're setting a screen for a teammate to get open. To score the ball.

Those are the beautiful ones. You know, I've always been a big believer in charting screen assists, you know, to help perhaps a post player that isn't going to necessarily be a Jokic and create like that. So helping our players understand, you know, it's those kinds of impactful plays, like a screen assist like that.

And to help someone get open, it will come back around. And if the ultimate goal is winning, like everything in life is better when it's shared.

Yeah. Well said. I want to fast forward. So you spoke about I know when you messaged me, it was like the 5th highest percentage of your offense last year was the cutting. Can you explain what that means, what that is and why it's important?

Yeah. So it's funny, you know, in our recruiting process, when we sit down with players and talk about style of play and how they would fit in some of those things, we literally take the synergy screenshot of like just the kind of topics of how you're scoring and it's spot up, it's transition.

For us, it was pick and roll. As a ball handler. And then actually it ended up being the 4th highest. I surprised myself was cutting. And last season we had probably 2 of our players that were really good off the dribble at getting paint touches and rim pressures by way of bounce in the ball screen had season-ending injuries.

And so this was like a couple of weeks after seeing Alex Sarama and the Cleveland Cavaliers practice in December. They were kind enough to allow us to watch them. And this kind of triggered some things in my mind about, you know, his book and how we were playing.

And We ended up having to get a walk-on from our volleyball team. And as a former basketball player, but as we were indoctrinating her in and understanding some slide right, move right concepts and just overall movement, she started to score a couple baskets in practice and she wasn't able to self-generate scores.

And it dawned on myself and our staff and said, hey, like we can get really good at cutting because everyone is created equal as a rim pressure. By way of their cuts to the basket. And I think that was a really empowering moment.

And I think it's always kind of the biggest problems and biggest checks to work on and to get those cuts in practice along the baseline for us. It really was pretty cool for us and it helped us throughout the rest of conference play, you know, compete to the best of our ability.

No matter what kind of threshold of player that we had on the court, despite being a little hurt.

How did you teach that? How do you teach cutting? And how do you get players to cut more often? So what kind of small-sided games are you doing? Just the whole, you know, how are you working with that?

Yeah. You know, it's funny because like we think of transforming basketball and some of these ideas of small-sided games is like pretty revolutionary. And it is because it gets away from just the drill work. But like, I think back to being kind of blessed through some really good coaches in my career.

And I go back to my high school coach, Buddy Wiklinski in Syracuse, New York at Christian Brothers Academy. We would always play 4-on-4 full court. And, you know, like it was always 4-on-4 in the half court. Once it got over, you had a new 4-on-4, but it was no dribble.

And so you had to learn how to pass and move without the ball. And so we brought that back to us and there's like, that would be our small-sided game last season to get better ball movement this year. You know, in our summer and our fall, our assistant Jess Jenkins and our staff has done a really good job of doing some dribble limits or to just understand that only one person on the floor can dribble.

Those have been some really good ones for us, but we generally just taught a little bit of some of the Cleveland Cavs stuff, some of the WNBA concepts that are emerging on the move right, slide right, and just helping them understand that. And then just helping them understand, hey, a rim pressure brings 2 to 1 person and that 1 person is created equal, whether it's your leading scorer or, you know, someone who isn't your leading scorer.

A rim pressure is great. You have to have them. And I joke because You know, when Juwan Howard was at Michigan and they started doing some of the cuts to the rim on baseline drives from the slot, I call it a Michigan cut.

And so we, we had been kind of teasing that for a long time. And, you know, we would have a dunker in the dunker spot and the dunker would, you know, look at me and be like, well, she's cutting on top of the rim and I'm cutting.

And I said, listen guys, 2 cuts are better than none.

Yeah.

So I said, we'll always take 2, 2 are better than none. And so like, I think it helped them understand, hey, we got to help each other out by way of cut. And that cut's going to lead to something that's going to be open.

Yeah, I think it's super interesting if you have someone in the dunker and they're still doing, you know, whether it's the cut and slide or the slot cut there on the baseline drive, it's like, how do they work together? And how can you as a coach maybe create the small-sided game and put them in those environments where they can practice those situations so they don't get in each other's way or they don't allow the defender to guard, one defender to guard 2 players, because then that kind of defeats the purpose of the cut.

But then to your point, it's like, let's keep trying it until we figure it out. 2 cuts are better than none, as opposed to just, ah, forget it. It's not going to work. Right.

Yeah.

No, yesterday in practice, we did that as a small-sided game and we actually gave the dunker the option to say, hey, if it makes sense for you to push out to the corner, go ahead and push out to the corner. You get a couple of 3-point shooters in there that have found their way to the dunker and pushed out to the corner.

Great. Do that. And we'll still have the rim or the cut to the head of the rim. And then, you know, we had a post player that was down there and we had someone and, you know, they dropped it off to the post and they missed the layup and we had an offensive rebounder, you know, so like an additional offensive rebounder that they couldn't account for.

So, you know, I think giving them that option was what we ended up deciding on what we wanted them to do. And I think it was kind of cool for them to try to figure it out through, you know, a little bit of differential learning on like what made the most sense at the right time.

Yeah. I love it. And how have you balanced that? But I would imagine like, you know, I grew up in a traditional background. So, you know, the way I got taught basketball when I first started coaching. So how do you balance the traditional methods that you were taught and grew up through to now learning about the constraints-led approach, ecological dynamics, and applying that all together?

Yeah. So, you know, it's just so funny how they like, they go hand in hand and how little problems become the solutions that we needed. So for teams that I've always coached that have played below the rim, We've always had a challenge of being consistent with our layups.

Right. And so we had a couple of players that kept hitting underneath the rim on their layups or just sneaking it in. And so I would jam a basketball in between the backboard and the rim. So they had to finish higher. And so then it became in our individual workouts with our post players, like they would find if I'm just high off the glass, you know, sometimes Yulce was in the way and we just had to go around it.

So I think as we always wanted to put an emphasis on player development, player development for us was like, Hey, one-on-one, you know, we wanted a coach and a player to get a high volume of reps. And then what I think, what I found after kind of adopting this philosophy was, well, we need a little bit more one-on-one.

We need a little bit more, you know, contested shooting. We needed a little bit more of that. And so we've tried to kind of pair some players to, or maximize our grad manager to be able to play a little bit more live into those concepts of what we would normally work on.

And so removing those now becomes a little bit more, whoever was coming off of kids camp this summer, I had our 2 post players and they literally played dribble knockout in the circle at half court. And it had the constraint was that they had to use their offhand.

And so they're playing dribbling knockout. And so they're hip to hip and they're pushing each other out of the circle and, and then trying to, you know, shake free the ball. And then whoever got out, the person who won had to go full court or into the half court, post up, and then make a post move on the coach.

So I think being able to incorporate both, you know, some of the traditional stuff with a little bit of constraint-led, it can be beneficial both ways. You just kind of have to challenge your mind to think of it a little bit differently from the traditional, hey, Mike and drill normal, you know, or Mike and drill versus a broom.

Like, shoot, stick a ball in there and see, or give them the heavy ball, give them a volleyball, give them a men's ball. You know, all those kinds of things have been, I used to frown on that stuff and now it's just like, Shoot, but we might as well, if the science is telling us that's going to benefit us, let's let the players be educated.

This is why we're doing it. And we have a lot of really smart players. And if they're saying, hey, the science, I think that's also just giving them an extra ounce of confidence of saying, hey, there's some science behind this. Coach just ain't crazy on this thing.

We're doing it and it's making a lot of sense for us.

I used to love like just going into the locker room or where they keep the equipment room and like just different balls. Volleyballs, handballs, netballs, whatever was in there and giving it to the players and be like, all right, so let's say we're doing DL shooting or finishing or whatever it is, even if it was contested finishing, like you're going to be doing 2 shots with the regular basketball and then you're going to be switching to this ball and you're going to be constantly changing.

And I used to just love like just throwing it out at them because to your point, that's what the science tells us is going to help them. So maybe a lighter ball might help a player that doesn't have good touch around the rim.

you know, might help him finish or find different finishing solutions. So I found that's like firsthand really benefited my players. And then obviously you have the literature there as well that tells us that it does. And I want to ask as well, so you mentioned a few practice activities there.

I don't know if you'd be willing to share, but are there any practice activities that you really like, you're really fond of?

Yeah, one in particular. So when I was a grad assistant, I worked for Phil Seymour. He used to work for John Beilein. John Beilein's just, you know, a fundamental pro as far as a coach and Especially in youth development. And he was very big on footwork and his waffle pivoting and inside pivots and everything.

And he had a drill. The drill would start with a player in the corner. It'd go corner, wing, top wing, and it was ball transfer. So there'd be defense. You had to step over the defense, pop with an outside hand and make a pass and make it around the horn and it would be continuous.

So the last person would go and make a drift pass. And so we would take that, that would used to be kind of our warmup to get our passing, outside hands, all those things. And so we added an element of scoring and added just our basic movements with it.

So as we went around and the ball worked to the wing on that baseline drive, we added either a help side rotation. And then, you know, you're hitting that, what I called that Michigan cut, right over the head of the rim. We still had the drift pass option, and then we still had the curl behind option coming on that to make sure that on that last drive to the basket, that last rim pressure, we had all of the movements that we loved.

And for me, it was good at first. And then what I ended up doing was saying, hey, there was 15 players. We needed 15 points or no hit the floors. So to help us also understand offensive rebounding elements, if we kicked it out for 3 on that curl behind shot or that drift pass, we ended up going crash the glass and not let the ball hit the floor.

Or we just needed to get the 15 points of making those open 3s, making the open layups, and not turning the ball over. So something as simple as just around the horn passing became an element of score within our concepts, within our rebounding.

And like, that's been something that our kids really get excited for that does some of the fundamental things, but incorporated everything all at once. And then that kind of challenged us to look at some of the other traditional drills that we had and said, hey, how do we make these more in line with and trigger some other things mentally, time and score?

Our concepts and then the things that we really believe on in taking care of the ball.

And you mentioned you had that weak side help defender as well, right? And that's awesome because now they're having to make the decision whether they're going to shoot or they're going to pass behind.

Everyone is guarded. And so on that last one, it's, you know, if you can get all the way to the basket, go. If not, that first person, you know, in line, their help side defender's either coming and now you're reading Michigan cut, you're reading the curl behind if they drop, you know, and then And then we'll try to do it based on, you know, the opponent that we're playing of where you're going to see that help from in the 2 days of prep, you know, leading up just to kind of hammer home that coverage solution

for the upcoming opponent.

That's great. And it's a new game. I haven't actually heard that one before. So I appreciate sharing. I want to pivot a little bit, talk about player development. You mentioned, you know, different things that you already do with the players, depending on maybe you have a, you know, you had your 2 post players working on ball handling in the middle.

So what are some other things that you're doing with player development on the court? And then as well, what are maybe some things that you're applying and trying to help them out off the court?

I think on the court, the biggest thing has just been contested shooting. I think that's one of the bigger things that I think, you know, you can get on the shooting gun and just go until you're blue in the face, but you've got to have some contested shooting elements too.

We challenge our players in the summertime to make 1,000 shots.

How do you constrain it? So like, for example, I know So one of my challenges early on was like, it was too contested. So, and then it was like, oh, it wasn't contested enough. But like, I still want them to have to make a decision, but I don't want them to have to shoot too contested a shot because they're bad shots in games.

How do you find that balance?

We would do the 2-for-1 shooting or 2-on-1 shooting. I think that was a good one for us. And that helped make sure that it was at least goldish or silverish, you know, on that. And it also, you know, we're, we were big on just one more.

pass. And so just getting them to communicate one more, one more, you know, when they can see it happening, you know, live in front of them. So that helped a ton. And then just in some of our normal drill work of when we're playing to advantage, we're switching differently this year.

And so as we're playing to advantage, you know, there's some people that are flying out as shooters now. And so getting those contested shots, but I think you can't lose sight of like, you know, shooting comes from confidence and that's just repetition. And then So you got to have that part down first.

We added an element in our, you know, everyone likes to have shooting goals. We had to make 1,000 in the summertime and I tried to reward our team. There's a special prize if you had the most assists in the summertime. And what I meant by that is like, if you went to bring a friend to the gym and they assisted for you, they got all your makes.

So you talk about like catching differently. You know, like you're learning how they need to be. They like the ball, right? You want to get out of the gym. If you got to make 1,000, you're making 200. Like you don't want to just like half-heartedly make that pass.

You want to give them good passes or sometimes they do and you've got to track it down, but it's still peer-to-peer. Like, you know, managers are great. Coaches are great, but like there's nothing that can replace a peer-to-peer teammate element of that. And I've been so pleased with how much we've gotten in the gym together to include those assists.

And that was our highest volume of prize. They got Chipotle for a week if you had the highest volume of assists as opposed to the highest number of made shots. Because I think again, it goes back to, can I do it for someone?

Can I create for someone and get accustomed to what that looks like?

No, that's a great point. I think like instead of focusing on like, let's try and get the— because we're going to get better if we make X amount of shots, let's try and focus on building this culture as well. So like the selfless part that we talked about at the beginning of the episode.

So that's great. I'm definitely going to be stealing that one going into next season. So I appreciate it. And what about things off the court? What are you guys doing off the court to develop the players there?

Yeah, we're really lucky. We have a really great athletic director, Andrew Goodrich, who just got here. And one of his first initiatives was, you know, establishing an athletic department culture. And so he brought in this group called Focus 3. They're out of Columbus, Ohio.

Former Navy SEALs, but they talk about a simple formula that can help our athletes kind of press pause, if you will. And so they say event plus response equals outcome. And I'm sure we've heard this, you know, in different capacities, E plus R equals O, but they do a really good job of breaking down the responses of, you know, pressing pause, you know, and everyone's kind of in different maturations of their emotional development and emotional intelligence of those kinds of things.

And so It really helped our athletes kind of take an inventory of like, hey, like we can always say we want to be positive and, you know, all of those things, but like really, how do we generate the most optimal outcomes of any event, whether that's bad play, a good thing off the court.

So we kind of bring everything back to those things to help them understand just the complexities of life and complexities of, you know, a season and games and referees and just factors that we can't really control. Let's focus on the things that we can.

And it's been a really good way for us to have a common language to discuss it.

I love it. In terms of your practical steps to get players aligned with that team vision, what does that look like? I don't know if you've done it already this season or if you're going to be doing it. Yeah. Yeah. What does that look like?

We did an offsite retreat, very fortunate to have a great supporter of our program, Bud Wentz and his Fear the Root Collective, take us offsite down to Georgia and We did some team building down there. You know, we always kind of do a section where I have what our culture should be, right?

But it's only as good as what our players have. So, you know, we'll kind of do an inventory on some sticky notes to like, all right, everyone writes down what our behaviors are, what are our actions. Here's what our actions are and here's what our outcomes are.

Right. And so it was good to hear, you know, 14 different voices of it. Some of them were similar, which was great. And then If there are some that aren't in line of behaviors or actions, behaviors or outcomes, then like, it's a really good way for us to kind of reel it in and allow them to kind of cultivate some things that make the most sense for this team, Team 52, right?

Every team's a little bit different. And so they touched on all those things and gave them a little bit more of an identity piece with that. And then good old-fashioned, like, hey, who's your hero? What's your hardship? And give us a highlight and allow them to open up and kind of share an experience.

Or shared hardships or players.

I always find it so interesting how just by— I remember Don Showalter a few years ago now, we were doing a coaching workshop with him and his first question was like, you know, tell me something that no one knows about you or that most people don't know about you.

I had to think hard and I was there with a group of coaches and I told, you know, something that most people don't know about me. And then other coaches told other things that some were a bit more, you know, personal. And I just remember, and to this day I still remember who was in that room just because it was just, you don't necessarily share that information.

So having a chance to, whether it's coaches, players, you know, whoever it is, but just having a chance to have that voice in a room with someone like Don, you know, to me it made me like, okay, I'm part of this journey with these guys.

So I agree. I think those are excellent examples that you gave. So I appreciate you for sharing that. And just to wrap up.

Awesome.

I do want to thank you for your time. It's been an excellent conversation. Really enjoyed it. A lot of practical takeaways. Before I let you go, I do want to ask you one final question. So it's our transformative tip. If you could give coaches one piece of advice that will instantly change their practice environment, what would that be?

Yeah, I would say one, trust your assistants, right? A lot. And my example of, and what you think your players can't handle. They really can. I think oftentimes we're like, well, that's too much for them to handle, or their minds would explode. And it's like, they'll be able to handle it fine.

So like that cutting stuff, like we had seen Alex at the Cavs practice in December, but I was like, I don't know, guys, we can't change that right now. It would be too much for them to do. And then we had those 2 players get injured and we had to do it.

And you know what? Our team picked it up in like a day and a half. And I was like, I was kicking myself being like, I wish I would have done this. 2 months ago, and the staff was telling me to do it 2 months ago, but I just fought it because I thought it was too much.

And I think just trust that your players can handle a lot. They're really smart people. If they've gotten to the levels that they've gotten to that we're coaching them at, they're really smart. They're invested in the game. They can handle it and allow them to handle those things, you know, all at once.

I think you'll have the most opportunity for them to grow when they can handle that.

Great. Just to quickly add, I think it's remarkable how quickly players can pick stuff up, like principles of play-wise. Even at the camp, we put in new principles every day and they picked it up every day. And then by the time the last day went around and they played, they played games, you know, without instruction, they were just playing.

It was so cool. Like, don't get me wrong, they weren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but all the principles that we worked on, you could see it, right? And this was in 4 days that we worked on this. So if you're at a team, you're having film sessions, you're practicing, you're reinforcing it.

In your small-sided games, you know, it's— I feel like, to your point, players are very smart and they can pick up anything you throw at them. Yeah. Brian, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure, and I wish you all the best.

Thank you so much, George. Good luck this year.

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