The Basketball Podcast: EP399 with Mike MacDonald on Coaching Backwards with Success

A fixture in the college basketball coaching fraternity, Mike MacDonald is entering his 29th season as a collegiate head coach. He was named the ECC, NABC District and BCANY Division II Coach of the Year last season after leading Daemen to a 28-1 record. He was also the recipient of the Clarence “Big House” Gaines Award given to the top coach in all of Division II basketball by College Insider MacDonald has led Daemen to a 232-84 record over his first 11 seasons, including eight 20-win seasons and five NCAA tournament berths. He enters the regular season just 11 wins shy of 500 for his career.

Mike MacDonald has led Daemen University through one of the most successful stretches in program history. Under his leadership, Daemen has emerged as a power in the NCAA Division II. The Wildcats are coming off the most successful season in program history when they posted a 28-1 overall record, won the ECC regular season and tournament championships and qualified for the NCAA tournament for the fifth time. Daemen rattled off 28 straight victories to start the season, earning the distinction of being the last remaining unbeaten team across all three levels of NCAA basketball. Along the way, they ascended to the No. 1 ranking in the National Association of Basketball Coaches Division II poll for the first time in program history.

With previous stops at Canisius University and Medaille University, MacDonald has worked across all three NCAA divisions. Before arriving at Daemen University, Mike MacDonald spent eight transformative years as head coach at Medaille College (2006–2014), where he turned a struggling NCAA Division III program into a regional powerhouse. Inheriting a team that had gone just 4–46 over the previous two seasons, MacDonald led the Mavericks to an average of 18 wins per year and six postseason appearances. His final five seasons were especially dominant—Medaille recorded 101 wins, the most of any Division III program in New York State during that span, and ranked 17th nationally in total victories. He was named Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference Coach of the Year four times and left as the school’s all-time leader in wins (149) and winning percentage (.671).

Prior to Medaille, MacDonald spent 18 years at Canisius College, including nine seasons as head coach (1997–2006), where he guided the Golden Griffins to 108 wins and earned BCANY Division I Co-Coach of the Year honors in 2000–01. He also served as a longtime assistant at Canisius, helping the program reach the NCAA Tournament and two NIT appearances under head coach John Beilein.

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Mike MacDonald Quotes:

“The longer you do this, you develop your philosophy defensively and you kind of figure out who you are. A couple of words of advice I always had was one, recruit to the school or the university that you’re at. And then you also have to figure out what you are good at and coach them to their strengths.”

“Are you a big team? Are you short, small team? Are you quick? Should you be playing in the passing lanes or should you be playing more in the gaps? I think you have to figure out the guys you have and what are they good at and where can they play.”

“I’ve learned that through the years  you can play a game to one, play a quick game, one point, losers have got to run or something,  Then,  all of a sudden, they know who they’re going to get the ball to. Do you have a big kid who’s really good who they want to throw the ball to? Do they want to set up a guy for a jump shot? Do they want to set ball screens for their point guard who can get downhill? Because they know the game is to one. And it’s even better if you have 15 guys and the team’s got to come out, they can’t play if they lose.”

“We’ll do assist games where . . every basket has to have an assist to really encourage passing. We’ll do no dribble basketball. We call it ‘ultimate basketball’ based on ultimate Frisbee. And we’ll play a game to five, sometimes half court, sometimes full court.”

“One of my favorites is a four on three series where we play four versus three half court, four versus three full court and then four versus three in half court again . . There are different ways they can score . .  it put the defense at a disadvantage. But we might roll the ball out and it’s 10 seconds on the shot clock and the offense can either get a layup or a three pointer.”

“Guys have to be able to think on their feet and figure something out during the course of a game while they’re playing. Those are your best teams, right? Your best teams are the teams where the players coach themselves.”

“You know why we were number one in the country? We had good players . . They were good players who were incredibly unselfish and cared about the team.”

“We always want to take care of the ball and we want to get good shots. And good shots for last year’s team might be different than good shots for this year’s team. That’s just the way it works. One thing we talk about all the time is ‘ball moves, scoreboard moves.’”

“You can’t be afraid to challenge a team early. You can’t be afraid to play some good teams, you’re going to learn from it.”

“Trying to sustain is sometimes the toughest thing. The biggest thing we talk about all the time is step by step, you can’t skip steps . . I always use the example, I was a graduate assistant, I became a full-time assistant coach and I became the top assistant, then became the head coach all at the same school. But there was a progression and I think coaching is a progression.”

“Last year was unbelievable. It was the nirvana of coaching. We had three seniors who just wanted to win. Like John Beilein’s quote, ‘Freshmen want to play, sophomores want to start, juniors want to score, and seniors want to win.”

“Every year there’s going to be some ups and downs and you’re going to have to deal with it. And if you can deal with it well and you do a good job with it, you can be successful in your own right and we can have our own form of success . . we want to try to be one of those teams that overachieves.”

“You have to celebrate the wins. You have to make sure everybody enjoys them . . Everybody wants to play perfect, but the other teams are good, too, and the other teams give scholarships, too, and the other teams want to win, and they want to compete, too. So, when you win, you enjoy it.”

Mike MacDonald Breakdown:

Mike MacDonald Selected Links from the Podcast:

Mike McDonald
Don Silveri
Pete Lonergan
Tom Donahoe
Gabe Michael
John Beilein
Jake Reisdorf
Brad Stevens
Jay Wright
Joe Raso
Gerald Beverly
Arif Mehmetaj
John McCarthy
Brian Dux
Bill Maher

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