Doug Gottlieb’s Diary: What I Learned from My First Year at Green Bay

One of the biggest things I learned — or re-learned — over the past 12 months is that any job is about who you work for, not what you’re doing or how much money you’re making. Every coach is going to tell you, “My president and athletic director are the best.” And then behind closed doors, they’ll be quick to criticize them. I can assure you that with every loss, with every tough decision, my president Mike Alexander has been there for me. He knows that we’re doing it the right way. When I benched Anthony Roy and we lost to Cleveland State, Mike came into my office and said, “I just came in to give you a hug and give you support. You’re doing the right thing. You have to hold kids accountable.” You name the situation, Mike has listened to me and given me great advice.

My athletic director, Josh Moon, has also been outstanding. There were plenty of solid doubles we could have hit in the process of rebuilding our program and probably felt good about it. But Josh wants to do something truly special and dynamic at Green Bay, and he trusts my vision to make that happen.

I’ll reiterate: Who you work for is everything. You could love the position, the school, the town and the paycheck, but if you’re not sure about the athletic director and the president, don’t walk away, run!

On a personal note, I learned that I should probably say less at press conferences and to the media in general. My desire is generally to be an open book, but I think there does come a point where if you talk enough, something can be taken out of context or you can overexplain something that doesn’t need to be explained. People don’t need to know everything that goes on in your program.

In terms of building a roster, I learned that people really matter. The right kind of people are going to give you a better chance at the right kind of result. I believe that the way to win at Green Bay is with great people. Any guy we’ve kept from last year, we have no question about him as a person and a student. And the people we’re bringing in, we’ve made sure that they’re OKGs — Our Kind of Guys. They are guys who live in the gym, who want to win and who have chips on their shoulders. We have leaned into the adage at San Diego State when my brother was there: Character over talent. That doesn’t mean you can’t have talent, but as a general rule, we always lean to the side of character. 

I learned that no matter how good you think you are offensively, the reality is that every one of those teams that played in March — with very few exceptions — was able to defend. You have to be able to defend the rim, defend the ball, rebound and not turn it over. You could have a really good sense for how you want to play offensively, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t stop anybody. So with every player that we signed, we watched the defensive end of the floor first. The number one attribute that I asked my staff to find on the recruiting trail was toughness. It wasn’t size, it wasn’t skill, it wasn’t positional versatility. I said, “Go recruit the toughest kid on the court. Let’s start there.” 

I learned that scheduling matters. It’s not just the level of competition that you’re scheduling, it’s the travel. You can’t really understand it until you’ve gone through it. We can’t put ourselves in a position to lose games on the plane or on the bus because the travel is too exhausting. We’re not going to the West Coast or the East Coast this year. If you want to play us, it’s going to be in the Central Time Zone — with the exception of Campbell, which we have to play in North Carolina, and the MTE we’re playing in the U.S. Virgin Islands. 

What people have to understand is that at our level, you’re going to be an underdog in pretty much all of your non-conference games. So you have to prepare for that mentally, understand how to coach that and not over-schedule. We’re trying to remedy some of our mistakes by staying in our time zone and finding matchups that make sense. By next year, we’ll get to a better scheduling model. This year, it’s still probably going to be exceedingly difficult. 

I learned that you really have to use the summer to teach. We have several guys who have never played Division I basketball before, so we can’t just rip and run. Everybody will be on campus during the summer. We have eight weeks together and we need to make great use of it.

MORE OF DOUG'S DIARIES

Doug Gottlieb’s Diary: Why I’m Still Optimistic Despite a Long Losing Streak

The Green Bay head coach is confident his team is trending in the right direction

Doug Gottlieb’s Diary: Inside the Decision to Bench Anthony Roy

Roy, the nation’s leading scorer, did not play against Cleveland State after missing shootaround

I learned that your coaching staff must work together at all times. If you’re not working together, you’re working against each other — and your team will fail. As head coach, you have to map out what each staff member is responsible for very clearly. You can’t hold people accountable for things they don’t know they’re supposed to be doing. 

I would say the hardest thing for me to process last year was the pressure of coaching at home. It’s daunting when you realize that the people who spent money to put everything together are sitting right across the way. You want your guys to perform for them so badly, but the harder you try to make that happen, the worse it’s going to be. It’s got to be about practice. It’s got to be about preparing your players and trusting them to execute. I love the pressure of the game. I love the pressure of the big moment. But I don’t love the internal pressure that I put on myself because of my desire to show donors and fans that we’re doing a good job. I’m getting better at processing and managing that pressure.

Overall, it’s crazy to think about how much I’ve learned and grown in just one year — especially a year that seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Yes, it was challenging, but it was also so incredibly gratifying. And I’m so ready to run it back.