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ON WHY HE DIDN’T SUB MORE VS. BAYLOR IF HE THOUGHT GUYS PLAYED TOO MUCH: “Well, let me just tell you, one thing I know you’ve never done is coach. (Alan Cutler: Sure I have, unsuccessfully). Right. You’ve been fired more times than I’ve been fired. (Cutler: Actually, we’re about even). We’re about even? OK. You just, you get into a game, in the heat of the game and you forget. I’ve forgotten – there are times I forget guys are on the bench, and I look down and I go, ‘What are you doing? Get in.’ So it happens.
“Sometimes it’s the flow of the game, and you’re just trying to get out of the game, which is what happened there too. You know, we get up, we’re ready to blow them out, I don’t want to make changes, I wanted to keep going. Like I told them after, we didn’t play enough people. So, we’re going forward with the idea that, ‘Look, some of you guys got to play, and we’re going to buy time and hopefully you’re going to play well because you deserve to play well because of how you practice and you deserve more minutes.’ And we’re go from there.
“But, that had nothing to do with them outrebounding us by 18, had nothing to do with their physical play vs. our lack of physical play. That happened early, not just the last four minutes. So, there were things – I don’t know if I could have subbed when we missed those first six free throws. We were 0-for-6. So… But, I come back to, played guys too many minutes. They’re not ready for that. And that means they go in and that’s when they stop play and they try to get – you know – so they can make it all their minutes.”
ON IF THERE IS A BALANCING ACT BETWEEN DEVELOPING COHESIVENESS AS A UNIT AND PLAYING TOO MANY MINUTES: “Yeah, yeah. That’s one of the reasons you play less people. But, what we have is some guys that were playing with no real intensity that did not deserve to be out there that long or were just getting pushed and shoved. Then you don’t deserve to be in there. So there is a fine line, but there’s also – you can’t play that way and stay on the court.”
ON IF HE’S EVER SURPRISED AT THE EXPECTATIONS FROM FANS FOR A FRESHMAN-HEAVY TEAM AT THIS POINT IN THE SEASON: “I don’t, I don’t – it’s my own expectations. I don’t, none of it, no one else’s expectations I even listen to or look at or read. It’s my expectations. This team, what they seem to do is they get it going and do it right and then they get arrogant and then they step back. Like the first five minutes of that game, had no pressure on the ball, none, no talking and just got shoved out of the way. You know, it’s just, where did we go from where we were? How did we step back? Well, that’s what young teams do. Look, the way we do it is really hard. The way they’ve always played has been really easy. Now, which way do you want to do it? The real hard way or the easy way and every chance you can revert back to see if it’s still works you do? It’s just how it is coaching young teams.”
ON VOICING HIS DISPLEASURE AFTER THE GAME AND WHETHER HE DELIVERED THAT MESSAGE AGAIN IN PRACTICE: “No, we just talked to them about, ‘Here’s where we are right now.’ And probably went longer yesterday because we just, look, the bottom line is: We don’t have enough time to teach these guys everything they don’t know or we’d have seven-hour practices. So we have to narrow into what’s really important for us as a team. And we can’t even really worry about the next game; we gotta worry about us. The next game we play, Boise’s 8-0; they’re the second-leading scoring team in the country; they shoot threes at a high clip; they run the dribble-drive better than we ran it; they spread the court with four guards. They have four guards. So somebody is going to guard a guard that’s not used to guarding a guard. That’s just how it is.”
ON WHETHER HE BELIEVES THIS WILL BE A GOOD DEFENSIVE TEAM: “We need to be. It’s, you know, I don’t have any other thoughts. But we need to be a great defensive team. We don’t have team confidence right now. Team confidence. And the reason is because they’re not relying on each other, they’re not talking to each other and we’re not a great defensive team. When you become a great defensive team and a rebounding team, and you take great pride in it – we’re not taking great pride in it. When you take great pride; like when we played Providence, Aaron took great pride and he guarded that kid and all the sudden the game changed. When you take great pride in your defense and your rebounding, you have confidence. You know, ‘We’re fine. They can make a couple crazy shots. We’re fine.’ We haven’t built that yet. And we’re just trying to get them to understand: That’s the only way you build it. They’ve never needed it before because, ‘I’m just going to do my thing and I’ll be fine.’ Now you have to change. So these are all habits they have to change.”
ON HOW UK’S STOPPER IS: “Well, you have – Aaron has shown he can do it; James Young has shown he can do it. But you need a team full of guys who are guarding. I mean, it starts with your point guard. If he can’ t pressure the ball, then someone else has to be playing; that’s just how it is. It starts with your interior defense. Is Willie the only guy that’s going to block shots? Some guys just stand there: ‘I’m not involved in this.’ Well you can’t. Then the other thing is, as hard as we try to play offensively, then we gotta rebound the ball defensively the same way, because if we do run, we can get out and run. We’re not getting any easy baskets. When the other team gets that many offensive rebounds, why? Because they’re down ready to go and anxious to go get the ball and you’re like, ‘Well, I hope somebody grabs this.’ That’s all stuff we’re just learning.”
ON HOW MUCH CREDIT WE SHOULD GIVE BAYLOR: “Yeah, they played. They played. They weren’t in awe of our team. They just said, ‘We’re good, too. Let’s go see what happens.” And they played physical. I think the whole game plan was beat ‘em up a little bit. And just about every team I’ve had here, that’s been the MO. And until you can withstand that, you’re not going to have confidence. It’s like going in the (boxing) ring. You’re real confident until the first shot to your nose, your eye, your chin and your ear. You’re not so confident anymore. Now, if you give him a shot to the eye, the ear, the chin and the nose, you’re very confident.”
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