The Basketball Podcast: EP189 with Bart Lundy on Bootcamps and Creating Margins

RELEASE DATE : 10/11/2021

In this week’s coaching conversation, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee head coach Bart Lundy joins the Basketball Podcast to discuss how to run bootcamps and to create margins.

Bart Lundy is the new head coach of the Milwaukee men’s basketball team, becoming the eighth head coach since Milwaukee’s 1990 move to NCAA Division I.

Lundy arrives following a very successful nine-year run at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, posting a 30-4 record during the 2021-22 campaign. He took his program to the NCAA Division II Tournament for the seventh year in a row last season, advancing all the way to the Southeast Regional Championship game. Lundy is the winningest coach in Queens basketball history, posting a record of 333-103 (.764 win pct.) and a career coaching record of 429-190 (.693) in his 20 seasons as a head coach in NCAA Division I and Division II.

Lundy’s resume is especially impressive over the past six seasons, posting 30-plus victories in four of them while registering a 163-30 mark (.845 winning percentage) in that stretch. His run of three consecutive seasons of 30-or-more victories from 2016 to 2019 (32/30/31) was matched only by Gonzaga across all NCAA levels in that timeframe. His team complied a 17-game winning streak this season – which was snapped in a last-second loss to No. 1 Augusta to close out the 2022 NCAA Tournament run last week – marking the eighth straight winter his teams have gone on winning streaks of at least eight games in a row.

Queen’s University reached the NCAA Division II Final Four in 2017-18 and the Elite Eight again in 2018-19, as well as advancing to the Sweet 16 on two occasions (2017/2022). Lundy had his team as the top seed in the tournament in 2017 and 2019 and the No. 2 seed in 2019, 2020, and 2022. His overall record in the NCAA Tournament is an impressive 13-6.

Lundy returned to Queens after a one-year stint at The University of North Texas (2012-13), where he served as an assistant to first-year head coach Tony Benford and helped develop first-round NBA draft pick Tony Mitchell. Prior to North Texas, Lundy coached at Marquette University where he assisted head coach Buzz Williams for three years (2009-2012). In that time, Marquette made three consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances and two-straight Sweet 16 appearances with a roster that featured eight future NBA players including All-Star Jimmy Butler and Jae Crowder of the Miami Heat.

Marquette hired Lundy from High Point University where he served as head coach for six seasons from 2003-2009, taking over the program at the age of 31 making him the second-youngest Division I head coach in the country. His 96 wins are the most by a coach in High Point’s Division I history and the fifth most wins in Big South Conference history. He also established school records for conference wins, road wins and highest RPI ranking.

Bart Lundy

Bart Lundy Quotes:

“Our preseason has less to do with basketball and more to do with learning about each other, helping each other learn.”

“There are tons of rewards in boot camp, I think people think boot camp and they think, ‘Oh, it’s a beat down.’ But really it is a rejoicing of what they [the players] can accomplish. It’s less pressure than it is reward.”

“When we start with the individual workouts that build us into boot camp, it is all basketball. It’s really just fundamental basketball, just a time and a score.”

“There’s discipline, and there’s great culture all around us. And I think our guys observe that and digest it.”

“Part of [bootcamp] is that you learn that you have more in your tank. And, because of the collaborative nature of it, it brings that out. You don’t want to let your teammates down.”

“We sit them down and we say. ‘Here’s why we do it . . you guys are learning how to work . . it’s going to be different than going with your trainer and a ball and going through some cones.’ And we tell them, ‘It’s up to you guys and your leadership on whether you embrace this or you don’t embrace this.’”

“We want to have margins, we think margins are really important. We have four categories. I think every coach has to decide what categories they want to try to create their margins. Our first margin is on the offensive glass, the offensive versus defensive glass.”

“We want to shoot threes, we want to attack the rim; we’ve got to create a system that is going to accomplish those goals.”

“We’ve had 28 guys in eight years sign professional contracts. We take a lot of pride in them moving on from here. We want to teach you to be the expert in your own game.”

“We have enough resources, we have enough high level folks around our university that we are going to give you everything that you need to develop as a player, as a student, as a man.”

“We put speakers in front of them about personal finance, about the pitfalls of being a college athlete. A lot of that goes into our preseason as well. We try to have at least a speaker a week to have some type of improvement.”

Bart Lundy Breakdown:

1:00 – Bootcamp
5:00 – Shared Suffering
7:00 – Around The Horn
9:00 – Modern Version Coping Strategies
13:00 – Idea of Setting an Intention
17:00 – Competition
20:00 – Leadership and Habits
25:00 – Rite of Passage
30:00 – Biggest Challenges in the Bootcamp
34:30 – Analytics
38:30 – Goals to Accomplish
43:30 – Understanding the Margins
45:00 – Post Game Analytics
46:00 – Succeeding Off The Court
48:00 – Conclusion

Bart Lundy Links from the Podcast:

Buzz Williams

Bill Self

Jimmy Butler

Dr. Joe Carr

Please Support the Podcast

As we build our podcast following please take the time to support the Basketball Podcast. Our goal is to openly share as much useful basketball coaching info to stimulate your coaching. 

  • Tell your friends about us.
  • Give us a shout out on social media.
  • Give us a five star review wherever you listen to podcasts.

How to leave a podcast review at iTunes

Go to the iTunes page of the Basketball Podcast.

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-basketball-podcast/id1398261897?mt=2

  • Click the View in iTunes button.
  • View in iTunes.
  • At iTunes, click the Ratings and Reviews tab.
  • Select Ratings and Reviews.
  • Rate the podcast using 1 to 5 stars.
  • Submit a brief honest review.