| Jason Zimmerman played for Bob McKillop at Davidson and coached under him, then had one more assistant coaching job before getting hired at Emory. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com |
By Patrick Coleman
D3sports.com
One thing is for sure: Jason Zimmerman has never coached an NCAA Tournament game in April.
Not that this should be taken as some detraction — after all, this isn’t something that any active D-III coach has done. When the Division III basketball season extended into April the last time, back in 2013, the teams were coached by people who have since retired: Dave Hixon of Amherst and Ken DeWeese of Mary Hardin-Baylor.
So the Emory men’s basketball coach, who is preparing his team to face Mary Washington in the Division III men’s basketball national title game on Sunday, April 5, at 4:30 p.m. in Indianapolis, could be excused if he only recently came to the understanding he dropped into an interview back at the Final Four in Fort Wayne.
He said, “When you get to this time of year, you quit screaming so much.”
Ahh, yes. And not just because your voice gives out after six months of coaching every day.
Is this new? Some revelation based on his 19 years as a Division III head coach? A well-timed suggestion from a colleague or a loved one? The wisdom of 338 career wins?
Perhaps all of the above, or some mixture.
“As the season progresses, especially when you have veteran teams, you trust them. Not that you don’t trust them when you’re screaming at them, but when you’ve been through 30 games, when you’ve been through 19 years, you hope you can trust what you’re doing.”
There’s been a lot of reasons to trust this group, not just because of All-America guards Ben Pearce and Jair Knight. Ethan Fauss will be playing in his 80th career game in the national title contest, and should be making his 44th career start. AJ Harris will be playing his 84th game and making start No. 57. Mario Awasum seems like a relative newcomer in comparison, with what will be his 59th career game and 30th start.
“Hopefully the guys understand it,” Zimmerman said, “they trust, they see why it works and then they can help lead. And it doesn’t take four years.”
After a handful of seasons in which Emory’s NCAA Tournament runs in heartbreaking fashion, last year saw the Eagles make their run to the Elite Eight, and this year break through to the title game. It’s a big moment not just for the couple of dozen people currently involved with the team, but hundreds of alumni who are actively following this program, which only made the jump from club status to Division III in the 1980s.
A sports familyJason and Traci Zimmerman’s kids are both college student-athletes as well, with son Trevor Zimmerman a senior pitcher on the Centre baseball team and daughter Taylor a volleyball player at Division II Florida Southern. “As soon as we’re done in Indianapolis, we’ll be at Centre the next weekend watching the baseball games,” Jason said. That means the fall is spent, as much as possible, in Lakeland, Florida, the winter in Atlanta and UAA cities all over Division III, and the spring in Danville, Kentucky. “My wife, literally, she goes to sporting events from the fall to the winter to the spring. God bless her, she’s the saint. “She lives on a constant stream of anxiety. Did we win? Did we lose? And then when we win or lose, that toally affects ths house.” |
Zimmerman has coached just about half of all of the men’s basketball teams that have ever taken the floor at Emory.
That means when a big tournament win happens, the phone blows up with hundreds of text messages. Some of those are from guys who played in 2008 and 2009, Zimmerman’s first teams at Emory. Guys who are pushing 40. A couple dozen of the younger set, graduates from the past 10 years, plan to cram themselves into two places rented on airbnb in order to cheer Emory on in the national title game in Indianapolis.
That passion for Emory men’s basketball comes from the top. From a man who was taking his first head coaching job, coming to a program without an extended history of success, or even much history at all. From someone who could never been expected to spend the better part of the next two decades at his school.
”All of these guys are pretty invested,” Zimmerman says, “and it is pretty neat to a guy who graduated in ‘08 that you can talk about the same things — here’s some of the same things that our guys hear now, and I think that’s what’s special about being able to be in a place so long.”
As a group, what Emory men’s basketball players have heard across those year is their mantra of T.C.C.: Trust, Commit, Care. It’s a common thread that binds just about anyone who has played for Zimmerman.
“It’s really more than just three letters, three words,” senior guard Tyson Thomas explained in Fort Wayne. “It’s trust in your coach, trust in your teammates, trust in your colleagues as just friends and guys that you’re going out there and competing with, and caring about everybody and committing to something that’s bigger than yourself.
“There’s something more to this run that we’re going on than just myself, so how can I add value? How can I lead in a different way that’s going to bring something to the table that’s more than myself?”
“The core of who we are has not changed,” Zimmerman explains. “We’ve adapted and changed with strategies, with personalities, with things like that. But the core has not changed. Our guys who played here a long time ago — I wish I was the coach I am now, 15 years ago. All those guys have helped me become that coach.”
That’s a connection all Division III student-athletes can have with a coach. But, at the expense of sounding like marketing copy or coachspeak, at some places it just means more.
Every Division III school plays games on the road. But not every program flies to games. Even in the University Athletic Association, not every program gets in a plane for every road trip — even Emory’s travel partner is in Rochester, New York, which is another plane trip.
All those hours on the road, all those hours in literally the busiest airport in the world, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, all those hours — especially lately — waiting in line at TSA … if you don’t have a good culture within your team, it can break you. Instead, what most UAA programs do, and Emory does in full force, is bring together guys from the New York City area, the Cleveland area, from St. Louis, Oakland, Dallas, Minneapolis, Raleigh and, yes, Atlanta, and get them all on the same page.
Eventually, you can do that without the screaming. You just can’t do it without a passion for the program, a passion for the game, a passion for coaching.
“I’m pretty animated, I guess,” Zimmerman admits. “I wasn’t really animated in Fort Wayne, but I’m pretty animated on the sidelines. (DePauw grad, former Butler coach, former Boston Celtics coach) Brad Stevens, he doesn’t say four words, you know? That was the ‘in thing’ for a while.
“You have to be genuine to yourself, right? If that’s who you are, you should do that. And if, if you’re a quiet guy, that doesn’t mean you’re not passionate. You’re just showing it in a different way.”
There are a lot of different ways to show passion. Knight, Ethan Fauss and Harris are super vocal about it. Awasum is just a sophomore, so he’s growing into it. Ben Pearce, the 2026 D3hoops.com Player of the Year, the one who Zimmerman proclaimed as the best player in the country after his game-winning shot in the national quarterfinals against Illinois Wesleyan, is quieter.
“Ben, you wouldn’t know if he’s happy or sad. You wouldn’t know if he made a shot or missed a shot, doesn’t matter.”
At this point in the season, and after nearly two decades, Trust, Commit, Care is engrained in the program.
Emory doesn’t need to yell it. Everyone already knows.