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The Basketball Podcast: EP411 with Ryan Cottingham on Player Support and Team Culture
In this week’s basketball coaching conversation, Spring Arbor University Ryan Cottingham joins the Basketball Podcast to share insights on player support and team culture.
Cottingham shared insights into his approach to building and sustaining a successful small college basketball program. He discussed the importance of creating a strong team culture based on core values of integrity, toughness, and unity, and highlighted various initiatives such as “Fun Week,” leadership teams, and individual player meetings to foster this culture. He emphasized the role of player-led initiatives, regular recognition of individual achievements, and the involvement of parents in team activities to create a supportive environment. He also connected the program’s success to its emphasis on developing players’ decision-making skills and resilience, while maintaining a competitive yet respectful approach to the game.
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Ryan Cottingham Quotes:
“Bigger is not always better, right? You can have a first-class program no matter where you’re at. And it’s about being able to fully invest in the present moment and not always thinking ahead . . I was able to raise my family in this small community and they were able to be a part of it.”
“We’re so much about just cultivating relationships . . We want to be transformational as opposed to transactional. And I think small college allows you to do that . . we get to pour into young people. I get to take them out for lunch and for dinner and have them over to the house. And so, all these things that you get to do in addition to just coaching because I always say if you’re just doing X’s and O’s, I think we’re missing the mark.”
“Winning is always our goal, never our purpose. And so we just want to have clarity on who we are. We never want our identity to be, um, in the outcome of a game or our stats . . we want to focus on those things that we can control and who we are as human beings.”
“Our core values, we talk about integrity, we talk about toughness, and we talk about unity. And when we think about integrity, we’re talking about doing what’s right. Your yes has to be yes and your no has to be no, and you honor your commitments.”
“That perseverance piece is what we think is absolutely critical. And then the unity . . we’re always going to play teams that have better talent, but if we have great unity, we think we can overcome a lot.”
“Learn how to be selfless and what it means to put others ahead of yourself, because adversity is coming and it’s going to come often and it comes in waves and you’ve got to be prepared to handle that adversity and it’s got to pull you together, not rip you apart.”
“Every day, come and prove yourself and work hard and make our program better because you’re a part of it.”
“We talk about unity, but also the toughness piece. How much are they willing to endure and push themselves? It’s amazing how much farther you can go than you think. It’s what are you willing to give? The body’s extraordinary if the mind will stay with it.”
“We have our team strategically broken up into groups of four, typically with upperclassmen and underclassmen, because we want that connection, we want that communication. We know our new guys are going to be getting homesick. And so, we just want touches. It’s not always going to be from the coaches, but we want it to be intentional from player to player. And so we have our iron teams getting together, checking in and checking in with each other . . maybe they’re going out to lunch together, running into town together, but it’s being together, it’s holding each other accountable.”
“We do leadership teams. We have recruiting teams . . we’ve got guys that are good on social media and they have good people skills . . they’re on our recruiting team. They’re helping reach out to recruits for us. And then we have our basketball guys, our diehard basketball junkies, that are making sure guys are getting their basketball workouts in. Our academic team is checking in on guys. Are you getting to class? And then our strength and agility guys and nutrition. We’re placing them in all these different little teams, giving them a chance to lead but also to be accountable to one another.”
“We’ve got 18 to 22-year-old men. And they’re dealing with all sorts of things in life and we want to be able to walk with them in that. The issues that are going on in our culture, whether it’s political or religious. We’ve got all kinds of stuff that’s happening. How do we create safe space for guys to be able to have conversations?”
“I learn so much from my guys all the time. So, these culture meetings, we bring in speakers, we bring in people that just will challenge them in a variety of ways that may see things different than them . . but we’re just trying to get people to pour into our guys and for them to just to stretch and to think outside of the way that they’ve always thought about things. It’s really cool that we are able to do that.”
“We want them to play free on the court, knowing that their identity is not wrapped into the outcome . . We want to be intense, we want to be passionate, but you’ve got to play free. The guys understand how to be free in the moment. They’re not worried about missing. They don’t think about that. They’re just doing their job and playing at a very high level.’
“Speak positively about yourself and to yourself. We naturally have negative thoughts and we’ve got to replace them with positive thoughts, positive words. Let’s again continue to encourage, to lift each other up.”
“We meet with our guys individually every week. I’ll meet like this week with the upperclassmen. Coach Stowe is meeting with the underclassmen, and next week we’ll, we’ll swap. We’re just getting touches. Typically it’s in my office . . sometimes I’ll meet them somewhere else on campus.”
“It’s that relentless pursuit of excellence every single day in everything that you do. You’re trying to create these habits, these lifestyle choices in basketball or in the classroom or wherever you are. And so, we try to identify what they’re doing well and growth areas.”
“It can’t be just getting shots off the gun because shots off the gun doesn’t translate to somebody guarding you or you guarding and having to make decisions. It’s about decision-making. We’re trying to help guys increase their decision-making under pressure.”
“At the end of the day, how can we use what we’ve been blessed with and give back to other people, and especially those that are less fortunate? We didn’t control the families we were born into. Neither did other people. And some people have had a much tougher road than us. So, we’re always looking for ways to pour into other people.”
“Our ‘Teammate of the Week’ has nothing to do with playing time. It’s all about what does it mean to be a great teammate? Every week, the guys vote . . and whoever gets the most votes wins . . . This is our teammate of the week pail. The winner gets to sign it . . They get to sign it and then they keep this pail in their locker for the week. And the pail is symbolic of pouring into other people.”
Ryan Cottingham Breakdown:
Ryan Cottingham Selected Links from the Podcast:
Ryan Cottingham
Ted Stowe
Dean Lockwood
Pat Summit
Matt Van Pelt
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