Before we get into this week's story, I want to say something directly.
Registration for Inner Alignment, the five-week live masterclass I've been building toward all month, closes Monday, April 7.
I've sent a lot of emails about it. I've told you about the framework, the five weeks, the community, the cost. So instead of saying all of that again, I want to tell you just one thing.
Here's what you walk away with.
You walk away with a coaching philosophy that actually reflects who you are, not something you borrowed from a coach you admired, not a collection of quotes on a whiteboard, not a mission statement you wrote in a workshop and forgot. Something you built from the inside out, using your values, your strengths, and your honest answers to questions most coaches never sit with.
That philosophy becomes the thing you return to when the season gets hard. When you're exhausted and second-guessing yourself. When a parent is in your inbox and you're not sure how to respond. When you win in a way that doesn't feel right, or lose in a way that somehow does.
Coaches who know who they are lead differently. That's what five weeks of this work produces.
Registration closes Monday.
Now, onto this week's story. It's about what happens when a coach trusts his players enough to hand them the wheel. Tommy Lloyd and Arizona just gave us a masterclass in it.
Also, please check out a great coaching opportunity at the end of this week's issue.
From Compliance to Ownership: What Tommy Lloyd Did at Halftime That Most Coaches Never Would
Issue #132- Jason Payne, CMPC
Down seven at halftime. Elite Eight. Final Four on the line.
Arizona, the tournament's top seed, had been dominant throughout March Madness, until Purdue built a 38-31 lead in San Jose. The Boilermakers were lights out from three, Braden Smith was orchestrating everything, and for the first time all tournament, the Wildcats looked rattled.
What Tommy Lloyd did next was as courageous as anything a coach can do in that moment.
After associate head coach Jack Murphy showed the team a few brief video clips of what had gone wrong, Lloyd told his players to stay steady. Then he said something most coaches in that situation never would:
"Guys, the coaching staff and I are going to leave right now. You guys need to figure this out, and let's kick their ass in the second half."
And they walked out of the locker room, with five minutes still remaining before the second half.
No fiery speech. Minimal whiteboard adjustments. No raised voices. Just a coach who turned the moment over to his players , in an Elite Eight game, with a Final Four berth on the line, and trusted them to own it.
Arizona's veterans did exactly that. Jaden Bradley, Tobe Awaka, and Motiejus Krivas led the conversation. They told their teammates they had been through adversity before and couldn't let themselves get too high or too low. No panic. No finger-pointing. Just players holding each other to the standard they had built together all season.
The result was staggering. Arizona held Purdue to just nine points in the first ten minutes of the second half and outscored them 48-26 after the break, winning 79-64 to reach their first Final Four since 2001.
After the game, Lloyd said it plainly: "The most powerful thing in a team sport is a player-led program. When you can get the players to kind of own these moments, you are just so much better."
The Shift Most Coaches Resist
For a long time, the coaching hierarchy was simple. You held the position. You held the power. The whistle around your neck was all the authority you needed, and athletes performed because that was the deal, if they wanted to play the sport they loved.
Coaches still hold a lot of power. The relationship dynamic is just far more complex today.
Not because today's athletes are fragile, and not because standards have to drop. But there is a fundamental difference between an athlete who complies and an athlete who has an ownership stake. Compliance is what you get when athletes do what they're told. Ownership is what you get when athletes feel like a part of the program. And those two things do not yield the same effort, resilience, or performance when the pressure is highest.
A coach who relies on the hierarchy alone communicates one thing: follow me because I said so. That produces compliance, at best. An athlete who complies will do enough to stay on the right side of the standard. They'll run the play. They'll show up to practice. But when things get hard, and it will. When the season turns, when adversity hits, compliance doesn't hold.
Ownership is different. An athlete who owns their role doesn't just follow the standard; they live it. They've invested something of themselves in what the team is building. It doesn't belong just to the coach. It belongs to the team.
That's the shift. Not from demanding to permissive. From compliance to ownership.
What Collaboration Actually Means
This is where many coaches get tripped up, so let's be precise.
Collaboration does not mean every decision goes to a vote. It doesn't mean athletes alone set the standards, design the practice plans, or determine consequences. It doesn't mean you trade your expertise for the illusion of harmony.
What it means is inclusion. It means athletes have a genuine voice in the process, even when they don't control the outcome. It means they understand the why behind what you're asking of them. It means the environment you're building has room for their perspective and they know it.
There is a meaningful gap between a coach who says, "This is how we do things, end of conversation," and one who says, "Here's where we're going and why — what do you think?" Both coaches can hold the same standard and be equally demanding. Only one of them is building ownership.
I try to give athletes the opportunity to make a strategic or tactical decision. If I disagree with their read, I'll say so and then, in the right situations, I'll let them run it anyway. What happens next is telling. They don't just execute the play. They pour themselves into it. Because it's theirs. They want to prove their call was right. The effort isn't just physical, it's personal. Then we unpack it all post-game.
The coaches who are thriving with this generation haven't softened their standards. They've raised the bar in a direction that's harder than running sprints. They've built environments where athletes don't just tolerate the demands, they drive them. Where trust isn't assumed based on a title but earned through consistent inclusion. Where the question isn't whether they will comply, it's do they own this?
When athletes genuinely own their program, the demands land differently. They're not performing for you. They're performing with you. And that is a different level of competitor entirely.
Before You Walk Out of the Locker Room — A Word of Caution
Lloyd's halftime decision looked bold in the moment. But it wasn't impulsive. It was the product of months of deliberate work building exactly this kind of environment.
The Arizona staff did not try this for the first time in the Elite Eight. They had given their players ownership progressively throughout the season, letting them lead conversations, make decisions, and hold each other accountable in low-stakes moments before the stakes were as high as they get. The team had responded well each time. Lloyd wasn't handing his players control out of desperation. He was executing a tactic he knew they were ready for.
That sequencing matters enormously. Here's what to keep in mind before you try to build this in your own program:
Remove the Emotion. If your athletes sense you are not in control of your emotions when you give them control, their interpretation is that you are quitting on them, or you can't handle the moment. This destroys all the hard work you have put into building relationships. Coach Lloyd was calm and confident that his team would figure it out, not desperate.
Start small, earn trust. Ownership is not given, it's developed. Begin by giving athletes small decisions: how to end a practice, what the team needs this week, how to respond to a loss. Watch how they handle it. Build from there.
Don't skip the why. Inclusion without explanation is just chaos. When athletes understand the reasoning behind your decisions, they can extend that reasoning on your behalf when you're not in the room. Lloyd's veterans didn't improvise at halftime — they articulated what the staff had been communicating all season.
Develop their decision-making deliberately. A great way to do this is to run game situations in practice with your athletes in the coach's role. Let them call plays, make adjustments, and feel the weight of decisions. You see their IQ in real time. They build confidence in their own judgment. When the moment arrives in competition, they've already been there.
Don't confuse permissiveness with ownership. Athletes can smell inauthenticity. If you suddenly open everything to collaboration because you read that it works, without having built the relationship and trust that makes it meaningful, your athletes will see it for what it is. Ownership is built through consistent behaviour over time — not a tactic you deploy when you're down seven at halftime.
Maintain your standards. Lloyd's players didn't need to be told what was expected of them in that locker room because the standard had been set clearly and consistently all season. Ownership without standards is just noise. The two work together. Your job is to make the standards so clear and so internalized that your athletes can uphold them without you in the room.
What It Builds
What Lloyd did in that locker room was not a coaching trick. It was the visible result of a season's worth of invisible work — building relationships, developing leaders, creating genuine psychological safety, and earning the kind of trust that allows a team to lead itself when it matters most.
That is ownership in its purest form. Not a coach abdicating responsibility, but a coach who had invested so deeply in his players' development that he could trust them to lead when the stakes were highest.
The whistle around his neck gave him the authority to control that locker room. He chose to hand it to his players instead.
And they responded not with compliance — but with exactly the kind of effort and resilience that only ownership produces.
The question isn't whether your athletes will comply. It's whether they own this.
Start building toward that answer today.
Keep coaching from the inside out.
— Jason
Come to Canada and Coach at the Global Game Camp
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Past coaches have included skills trainers Joerik Micheals, Rikki Broadmore, and Coleman Ayers, shooting coach Peter Rajniak, and Canadian college coaches Chris King and Len Harvey, among others.
This year we're opening spots for new coaches who want to be part of something special.
If you coach basketball and you want to spend five days in Regina, Saskatchewan surrounded by some of the best minds in the game, August 9–14 is your week.
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Thanks for reading and have a great week.