How to Be a Great Defensive Player

Tobin Anderson is the Men’s Basketball Head Coach at Iona University. He’s in his first year there, and you may recognize Tobin and his name from last season when he was the Head Coach at Fairleigh Dickinson University in their Men’s Basketball program. They shocked the world; they beat #1 Purdue in the NCAA Tournament, they actually won a game before that to enter the NCAA Tournament, and Tobin and his team became a Cinderella story, sort of the sweetheart of college basketball last year, having only been the second team to win as a 16 seed over a 1 seed. Tobin is a basketball lifer; his dad was a high school basketball coach, he’s coached at every level (Division III, Division II, and now Division I). And we’ll talk about the different levels of basketball in this conversation, and you’re going to find him pretty transparent, genuine, authentic, while we also get into the politics and the political nature of basketball. We talk about pressing and his defensive philosophy and his style. If you’re not into basketball, this conversation may be a little over your head, but if you’re a hoops head like me, you’re going to love Tobin’s energy, his curiosity, his creativity, his willingness to try new things, his willingness to grow, to change, to evolve. He’s highly competitive, he’s highly enthusiastic and energetic. This conversation flowed for me, and I hope it will flow for you as well.  

Tobin had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“The backbone of our program has always been competition and competing” (5:35).

“The most important thing is we compete on a daily basis” (5:50).

“Let’s not get caught up into so much teaching and X’s and O’s and that stuff, when at the end of the day if we’re competitive, we have a chance to be very successful” (6:10).

“Our worst practices are on the days when I overthink things as a coach and I try to do too much, try to teach too much” (6:40).

“We improve every day” (7:20).

“To have a chance to be very successful, you have to get better every day” (8:10).

“When you’re on a good team, you have to sacrifice for your teammates” (12:05).

“The two things that really help you are shared success and shared suffering” (15:00).

“Winning begets winning” (15:30).

“The hard days, the tough days, the uneven days, those are the days you build a team” (16:35).

“Sometimes the best you is the best us” (24:45).

“Can you blend in to help us all be successful?” (27:55).

“If you screw it up, then figure it out” (29:20).

“The best practices to me are the sloppy ones, the crazy ones” (30:15).

“I try to step back more now and let them screw up, let them make mistakes” (31:50).

“Scared goes home” (33:40).

“Even when you’re the top dog, you’re trying to create that underdog mentality” (38:00).

“Belief is a moment-by-moment situation” (40:55).

“I love what I do, so there’s not a job component to it” (46:35).

“You don’t know what you don’t know” (53:00).

“It’s about after the good things, after the bad things, not letting yourself react either way” (58:40).

“We’re not a big adjustments team. We want teams to adjust to us” (1:04:45).

“The game in December is just as important as the game in February” (1:12:34).

“I share everything. I’m not trying to hold anything back” (1:17:25).

“It’s not about what you do, it’s about how you do it” (1:17:30).

Additionally, you can follow Tobin on Twitter.

Thank you so much to Tobin for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.