The Basketball Podcast: EP433 with Aarika Hughes on LMU’s Championship Turnaround

Loyola Marymount Women’s Basketball Head Coach Aarika Hughes shares the coaching philosophy and leadership principles that led LMU to its first outright West Coast Conference Regular Season Championship since 2004.

Coach Hughes breaks down the habits, systems, and culture shifts that transformed the program, including simplifying scouting reports, implementing a “Joy Drill,” developing players through constraints-based coaching, and creating a solution-focused environment where players can thrive. She emphasized the importance of “stick-with-it-ness” and patient administration support throughout her five-year journey building the program. Hughes explained her coaching philosophy of keeping things simple and consistent, including simplified scouting reports, focused practice plans, and her solution-oriented approach to coaching, particularly in handling mistakes and developing players’ decision-making skills.

The conversation covered Hughes’s defensive strategy changes, including positionless rotation and high-pressure defense, as well as her approach to player development through customized training and constraints-based coaching. She guided LMU to the West Coast Conference regular season championship—the program’s first outright title since 2003-04—with a 15-3 conference record, the best in school history. The team recorded 21 overall wins, tying for the second-most in a single season, and completed a nine-game winning streak, the longest since 2003-04. For her leadership, Hughes was named WCC Coach of the Year, only the second coach in program history to earn the honor.

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Aarika Hughes Quotes:

“When you do it the right way, it just tastes sweeter. I know a lot of people that have been in my position have talked about there’s nothing like your first one. Let me tell you that is true, but even more so doing it the way that we did it and knowing behind the scenes how we stuck with it the entire time and having that support meant the world and magnified the accomplishment that we were able to achieve last season.”

“With the landscape of recruiting and how we are attracting talent, the details and all of the different things, it was really hard to teach kids as you’re restructuring at that point every year. So how could we find a system? How could we simplify it?”

“We showed a written scout in film one day before the game. That is very different than anything I’ve ever done . . This year, they only had to remember us. They weren’t as worried about the other team. And we saw a huge improvement in ability to produce with the skill set that we recruited these Individuals for. Especially the ones that we only get for eight months.”

“They [players] have been exposed to a lot more information earlier on in their careers. They know to ask questions. Why not meet them with what they need, which is short, condensed teaching sessions where you’re engaging and keeping the time frame of asking for their attention shorter, which meant whatever we were trying to convey had to be condensed as well. It makes you a more efficient coach . . how you have to get your point across without rushing, no matter what you’re asking for. Recall, not memorization.”

“Practice is ours, the games are theirs. I made a huge adjustment in my coaching style and I also made and implemented something called a joy drill . . So, our players got to pick five minutes. The coaches had to get involved. And it had, it could do with basketball. It could be knockout, it could be freeze tag. I think we played probably 16 different versions of games that they found on social media that were just fun and it let everybody laugh. It let everybody have fun. We started every Monday practice that way.”

“In college, you have players that really want to be great. The pressure of that lives right in between their ears more so than the skill set that they have.”

“I control how I address the team. We’re consistent.  I give myself 10 minutes to say whatever it is I need to say with my staff, whether that’s upset, reactive, whatever. And then, after that 10 minutes, it’s stop, let it go. What are the solutions?”

“What’s the next step? Do you have an idea of how you can solve that problem? . . We need to be aggressive. We don’t want you docile but we also don’t need you to a point where things get out of control. So a lot of that is emotional control, when we think about what can we focus on and how can we be solution-oriented and problem-solving because that’s life. That’s also basketball.”

“I wanted to match an aggressive mentality that also is going to build resilience in young people with the way that we also approach basketball. So it translates the mentality you have to have and the feeling and confidence that you get when you know that you are going to hit first.”

“I want you to leave here after your 4 years, 2 years, 8 months, however long you’re here,  with the feeling that you have the ability to do hard things. And the best way to do that is to take action and take a first step.”

“The first two days [of practice], I want to give you a couple rules, I want to give you a couple breakdowns just to see how you move. I ask a lot of questions. I’m not trying to talk a lot in practice. I want to watch you play. So, a lot of these players that we’re getting have played college basketball before . . It’s ugly as you, as you can imagine, but it’s also awesome to watch them figure each other out. How do they communicate, how they deal with losing? . . what do they go to naturally? We’ve seen a lot of areas that we’re really going to have to work on, but we let them tell us where we need to start . . we all know athletes want to play. That’s the reward if you come in in shape for us.”

“For us, the, the three things that we’re really looking at are how many threes are we giving up on defense, how many times are they touching the paint with a middle drive, and how many times are we fouling? So those are the measurable things for us that we want to take away.”

“Towards the end of the six weeks of are we getting better? Are those trends kind of happening with different combinations, different times of practice? The ‘why’ not just what the stat is, but how are we getting there? And then offensively looking at ball movement . . So, three different goals that we can measure throughout six weeks . . By the end, we’ll know what that looks like and where we need to meet them at. And that will then give us the baseline and how we start and where we pick up from when they come back.”

“I love when you find out a better way for us to get here. The best part of my job is when I have a player come up to me and we’re on the same page . .  when I see that you are taking that next step to be solution oriented versus on train tracks, I get to do my job, which is oversee the overall game while letting the athletes, who have given everything to us in practice, to go out and execute and play 40 minutes of really fun basketball.”

“The freedom of being able to contribute and for athletes to ask questions, that means that you have an athlete that’s already committed and internally driven. For us,  culture, character, and skill set are important, position is important. But more so, how are you driven?”

“We had to know how to close out games. As much as I was hopeful that we would be able to have a spread, as I’m sure every coach does, a lot of these games were going to come down to the end and be close. So, we dedicated time to it. Once we felt the overall system was at least at a baseline, we made time without adding time to practice.”

“It’s been the same thing for six years. We’re going to get 1% better every single day and figure out how are we collaborating with this new group? How are we going to get the best out of them? And how are we going to grow as a staff to truly impact what they’re doing, not just in basketball, but also figuring out what’s the dream and how can we get them there?”

Aarika Hughes Breakdown:

Aarika Hughes Selected Links from the Podcast: