Opening Statement

Much like our last home game, a much better effort in the second half as we continue to try to find solutions, remedies for the turnovers and whatnot. But overall, I thought we played with good spirit. We got out in transition, we played at a much better pace. We were much crisper in the second half. So, once again, we're moving incrementally in the right direction.

On the response to taking out all of the starters in the first half

Well, with us, I think we have a lot of different guys that could be in any lineup, and sometimes it might just be simply different guys playing well with each other. I just thought we didn't have much spark. We looked a little bit dazed, and so we just wanted to throw some guys in there and see if they bring some fire and spark, and they did that. Every game, we all have a different role. Our jobs might be a little bit different night to night, and that second group did a nice job of giving us a spark.

On having multiple scorers tonight and how helpful it is

I'll be honest, it's tough. We want to play with such pace. We want to play with such great tempo. When our guys do crash, we want to get five on the glass, and then we want to spur back in transition and be stingy on the defensive end. And so it's tough to play 35 minutes, especially when our staff, we're not controlling each possession. We're not holding it up, giving our guys six or seven, eight seconds to catch their breath while we run a set. And so we typically play more than most teams do, but we're stretching our rotation now as we're trying to figure out who's going to be in the rotation and who's going to be more of a specialty guy, where tonight they need this, so I might get some minutes, but I have to stay ready. We're trying to figure it out, but we do have a lot of weapons, and as you see night in, night out. I thought Nimari Burnett was sensational tonight, and the second half, Trey Donaldson, he really jumped out. But yeah, we have a lot of guys, like I said from the beginning, we have several players that could be our best player on any given night.

On Trey Donaldson's night

Just him pushing tempo. We haven't created well off the bounce. We've driven into bad spacing at times. We haven't opened up gaps well enough. We're still trying to figure out the best way for us to play, but I thought Trey was able to get to the rim. I thought he played on balance. He's strong enough to finish through contact. I just thought his decision-making was very sound, as you see. Four assists to one turnover, and he had the ball in his hands a lot, and I think he led us in minutes as well, so very, very sound effort by him tonight, but most importantly, when he's pushing tempo at that pace, it's tough to match up with us because we have so many shooters and our bigs can put pressure on the rim as well.

On what excites him the most about this team and what keeps him up at night

I think the thing that excites me and our staff the most is that we don't feel like we're playing very well up to our standards. We don't feel like we're playing anywhere nearly as well as we're going to, and so that's what makes it exciting that we have such a high ceiling with this group, and so we've got to push different buttons, better buttons, and what keeps me up at night is the same thing. It's been the theme from day one. They only got eight offensive rebounds tonight, and with our size, we're the sixth biggest team in the country, so we have to be a dominant defensive rebounding team, and if we just don't give them easy baskets because of our turnovers and our pace will improve, our decision making will improve. We just got to stay the course and be patient, yet being aware of what needs to be fixed.

On whether he sees chemistry forming between Nimari Burnett and Trey Donaldson

I think so. I thought Roddy found some creases in the second half. I don't know if it's those two found chemistry or not. They're in together. They're both playing really well. I think if you put either one of them in that other group, they'd probably be playing very similar. They've obviously complemented each other very well. The three point efficiency, they go seven for 11 combined. They're looking for each other. They're making the simple play more times than not. That's usually a recipe for success if you have a talented roster. There's times when you just don't have enough forces, and you need a guy to go take some chances and make some plays. With our group, I think we can simply take what the defense gives us every night and find enough baskets to be competitive and be in position to win.

On pulling the starters and whether it was an effort thing

It just was a feeling. It was just, hey, let's get these next guys in there and give them a shot, see if they can start a spark. It wasn't as if all five of the first five were not playing hard or playing lazy or anything like that. It was just the feel, the urgency wasn't there. Sometimes the second unit, their job is to come in and simply provide that spark. Obviously, there's five players on the court at times, so sometimes one or two maybe have a miscommunication and the other three are affected by it. That's the beauty of our team. We have unselfish guys. I think they trust each other. They believe in each other. I thought everyone contributed this way.

On the turnovers being traveling violations and whether he sees things being called differently

By the book, by definition, they were traveling. That's also part of, in college basketball, you have to adjust each night to how the game's being called. A couple of those, you move your pivot foot an inch or two, and it's a difference in a turnover or a basket because you have the backdoor cut. Those are the ones we can live with. There's a few of them. Even the throw-aheads to Vlad, we didn't convert them, but if he catches them, they're layups or dunks. Those are always going to be the ones we're going to go and live with. The ones where we hit them in the chest, hit the other team in the chest, those are the ones we have to fix immediately because that's not a recipe for success.

On the team's identity and whether things are where he wants them to be

It's funny you said that because I was speaking to a coaching friend, a very, very successful coaching friend slash mentor this morning or last night, I can't remember, and I told him that. I said, I don't feel like we have an identity yet on either side of the basketball. His response was, you're not supposed to. You're four games in. You have a new team. You have to win in the margins now. You have to figure this stuff out. You may not have an identity until conference play. What do we want it to be? A team that takes care of the basketball that really, really plays for each other. They cut for each other. They scream for each other. They pass to the open man. They play with incredible amounts of passion and tenacity. Usually, we're easy to please if we're playing extremely hard and we're very, very connected as a group. We can live with the mistakes. Maybe we can't live with them. As we're getting to the point, maybe we can't live with them. We're going to keep fighting the good fight and keep getting better every day. No team is going to be perfect this time of year. Once again, it comes down to can you fix your issues and solve the problems? If we're still doing this in January, February, then we haven't done a very good job as a staff.

On what he's seeing from Sam Walters and Justin Pippen

Pippen really hustled. He's starting to get in game shape. He's starting to look more comfortable. As far as Sam, they're glued to him, so it's tough to get him a shot. He's not strong enough to knock guys off of him. We just challenged him to be a screener and a rebounder and do the dirty work. He did. He had two or three straight possessions where he impacted the game other than shooting the basketball. When he's on the court, he's simply helping the other four players because he's being face-guarded at all times. The help is different. We're essentially playing 4-on-4 when he's in. When they're playing him like that and we can't get him open, then he has to be a good screener and try to get his teammates some easy baskets. Hopefully, over time, it'll loosen up for him.

On Danny Wolf's turnovers

Tonight, I thought the first three, and this is just off memory, I thought the first three weren't really his turnovers. Nimari cut and was wide open and just didn't look at the right place. If Nimari looks up, and Nimari had a heck of a game, other than that, I thought he was really, really good. If he looks up, Nimari catches it and has a dunk and it's a great play. We're still figuring that out. I can't remember what the other two are. One was a pass to Vlad. I don't remember if it hit the net first or went through Vlad's hands or whatever the case. Those two decisions were exactly what we've asked him to do. He's looking at the right things and now we just have to clean a few of those areas up. We've got time for a couple more. The ones in the second half, though. I'll let Danny answer for those.

On whether he's seen improvement on penetration

I thought we made progress tonight. I thought there were only a few times when we dribbled into bad spacing. We've improved and we're becoming more aware of it. Part of it, too, is we're still trying to figure out what is our competitive advantage in half court once the game slows down. As a staff, we'll do a better job of putting our guys in position to be successful as we learn these guys better and see what they can do in certain situations. Once again, it's a queue of effort. The staff, the players, we all have to do a better job of being more conscious. There are times when we simply just don't meet the passes and our fundamentals aren't sound enough. The way I look at it, if there's one guy doing that, it's on him. If it's several not doing it well, then it's on me and us. That's something that we're going to fix because there are several guys not meeting passes. That's something that we obviously haven't stressed or worked on enough and we will going forward.

On LJ Cason's bounceback performance

Yes. I thought he did some really good things. For him to get 11, 3, and 2 in a positive plus minus in 16 minutes. He's learning also when you're playing against these high level shooters that you have to close out with much more urgency than maybe you've had to in practice at times or whatever the case or you had to in high school. It's part of the learning process. He's a good player. He does a lot of things that coaches can't teach. He's got a great feel for the game. He's one guy that can create off the bounce and get in scenes. He has a different element to our team. There's just certain things that you just have to learn by going through it. As you follow college basketball, the teams that play a lot of freshmen, typically these things happen. He wants to get better. He'll be in tomorrow to watch his film and work on his game and everything else. We want to fix it all tonight, but that's just not realistic and I'm not a very patient person by nature, so I'm working through that.

On why the team was able to get out to a run in the second half

I thought we were much more determined on the glass in this thing. We had Vlad got several rebounds out of his area. Danny Wolf is running in there. If they don't carry him over our heads, we're so big. Like I said, we're the sixth biggest team in the country, so if they're not low on rebounds, we should get 90-95% of them in our minds. I think it's just a much more determined effort. Once we got a few baskets to go in, we felt better about ourselves. We know that if we grab that rebound, we're tough in transition. As you see now, it's starting to become a theme where we make a transition three and the other team burns all their time out simply trying to stop our runs. That's something we've faced a lot the last few years, so it's a credit to our guys when we do rebound how quickly we change ends of the floor. Now there were times when we didn't change ends quite so fast on the defensive end, but the game was already out of reach at that time.

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