Opening Statement

Well, we're at an interesting point. It's the longest period we have had to practice in season since games have started. Unfortunately, finals, our guys have finals, projects, exams, whatnot. So we're trying to be strategic, but also addressing some flaws with our team. But we had a really good practice yesterday and excited to get back after today.

On playing for March right now

Yeah, once you get into league play, everyone's roster is so new right now. And so we're not as familiar with Oklahoma as we would in a normal year when you see them play year after year. We're all changing, our systems change, our personnel changes because of the new climate of college basketball. So I think once you get into February and March, we in the league especially, and even that's a little bit different because you're not playing everyone twice, you're playing a few teams twice, but we know each other a lot better in February and March. And once you know everyone, and that late in the season, it's hard to install a lot of new things. So you know each other a lot better and you have to be able to read, react, play in the flow at that time of year if you want to win big, in our opinion. So right now, we could probably joystick a little bit more and you would think be more successful today, but we just think long term, our guys are making progress. There are some things we need to philosophically fix, but for the most part, we just think we're moving in the right direction to be a really good team when it matters most.

On assessing the loss to Arkansas

Looking at the film, we didn't feel great about it. We made too many mistakes, self-inflicted. And credit Arkansas, they played well. They made plays. They have some really dynamic playmakers. So first tip of the cap to them, but we felt like we made a lot of self-inflicted errors. And in that environment, if you do that, you just shrink your margin of error and we felt like we did that.

On Rubin Jones'

I thought he made some really nice passes. The ball was moving. It's tough. Whenever your shot's not going in, you want to contribute to the team, just like everybody else. And sometimes, I heard Coach Daigneault say this the other day, that people get so drunk on the stat sheets. And we can't be intoxicated based on our stats, our numbers. He's got to take the right shots. He can't be hunting shots when we have such good percentage shooters, but we're very confident in him. He's going to knock down shots. We do believe water finds its level. He shot over 40% last year on a good team. He's a career good percentage shooter. So, I think guys go in shooting funks sometimes, but yeah, he's done a lot of other things to impact winning for us.

On having a week break between games

It gives us more time. It gives us a few days to spend on us. I think if you're typically playing every three days, you get back at 5 a.m. and then you obviously can't practice the next day. So, we would be preparing for a game probably tomorrow, and so you would shift all focus towards where now we're focused on us, but also taking the lessons from last game and then start applying them to how it relates to Oklahoma. But yeah, we needed this week of practice, even though our guys are busy outside of the court stuff, but we needed this to be able to really put a lot of, I guess, teeth into fixing a few things that need to be fixed.

On putting games away after having big leads

Yeah, the focus part, and it's tough because sometimes it's a foul. I think it was 36-21 was kind of a pivotal play against Arkansas, and we had another one of those. There's five of us, there's one of them, and somehow the ball just squirts to them. Trey Donaldson fouls, Trey had just hit a three, and the complexion of the first half probably would have looked a lot different if that loose ball would have went in a different direction. We have a tendency to usually let them go with two fouls. We wanted to get them out just to regroup, and then we ended up putting them back in. But I don't have a great answer. Sometimes I think even when we made our run late against Arkansas, I felt like the shots they took were the same shots. The shots they were missing at that point were the same shots they made to go on the run. They weren't going in, and part of it was just because of our intensity level, our sense of desperation. I felt like it kicked in, and we played the greater urgency, and that probably impacted their shots. But we have to stay focused longer. We have to continue to fight when we have a lead with the same, I guess, level of urgency.

On trusting Roddy Gayle

We trust Roddy a lot. He's a good player. He's a smart player. It's unfortunate because we didn't execute that perfectly, but we executed it well enough that the defender falling down just sticks a fingertip out and gets a piece of it, and that's the difference of winning and losing. The layup, I guess, in golf terms would have been just say, let's get it in somebody's hands and then go make a play. That would have been a safe play. We thought we had a beat on something based on previous information, and the timing wasn't perfect. The spacing wasn't perfect, but I do think that we trust those guys to make those types of plays time and time again.

On what Gayle will add to the program during Big Ten play

You talking about Roddy? Yeah. He continues to prove. He's shooting the ball well. We need him to rebound better. He's just a real sound, solid player, and like all of our high usage guys, we have to minimize our turnovers, especially from the guys that are in playmaking positions, and so like most everyone on our team, he's got to cut his turnovers. He's got to continue shooting the ball well, continue being a real solid player for us, but he does a lot, and there's every game, there's a different matchup, there's a different rhythm to the game, there's a different competitive advantage for us, and so some games we'll lean on him to create more, and some games we'll lean on him to floor space and cut and run the lanes more than others.

On how to stop big runs

You know, the second half, you know, you wish you don't fumble the layup out of bounds, and then, you know, there's a miscommunication with Namari and Danny, and you know, that's the stuff that happens. I mean, as far as the burn all your timeouts every time they score two in a row, or every time you have a turnover, I think Arkansas called their timeout when we cut it to 16 from 18, and then we proceeded to go on probably a 14-2 run. I mean, I know at home the magic formula is the timeout, but you know, we called a timeout in the middle of that run, and then the run continued. We have to play better basketball. We can't turn it over. We can't throw the pick sixes that lead to easy baskets, and those are energizing plays. So, yeah, I mean, obviously the pace we play at, the style we play, we're susceptible to runs, but also we're capable of stretching leads and coming back from deficits as well. So, there's a give and take with every style of play.

On how playing tight games early will help down the stretch

Well, I don't like it. We need to have more separation. We can't be in a lot of one-possession games because you're playing against opponents in one-possession games. You're probably going to win them 50 percent of the time, you know, if you look at math at all. And so, we need to have a little bit more separation. We need to shoot free throws better. Obviously, the turnovers are glaring and the defensive rebounding are the two most important stats we need to fix, but we're doing a lot of things really, really well. We're offensive rebounding. Our percentage from two is elite. Our percentage from three is pretty darn good. Now, we probably need to get certain guys a few more shots and whatnot, but yeah, it's not ideal, but we are learning to play in those high-pressure, one-possession games, and we're going to be in them whether we want to be in them or not. And so, it's part of this group learning to win together.

On what he knows about the roster now that he didn't a month ago

What do we know now that we didn't know a month ago? I'm not sure there's anything that I think we anticipated what we were going to be pretty well. I mean, we had a good foundation and most of our guys on our roster, we're familiar with them. I think Trey and Roddy shooting the ball as well as they have give us a different weapon and allows Danny to have more space to create and help those guys get great looks. And then defensively, we've shown glimpses of being as good as anyone in country on that side of the ball, and we think that our turnovers are a little bit deflating. We think that those runs do, we don't respond well enough defensively when the offense has its woes. That's when we need to tighten the screws a little bit, tighten the screws even more. But I can't say that we've learned a lot about our team other than we do respond to failure pretty well. When we lost to Wake Forest, we came back with the mindset that we were eager to fix what needed to be fixed. And it seems like after our second loss, we're in the same mindset.

On what the focus is during the long stretch of practices

You know, you have an extended period of time and you have two things that are keeping you from being your absolute best. And so obviously we're trying to be creative, fixing those things. So practice really looks like, I mean, obviously doing your things, but just attacking those things. Attacking those things, relentlessly attacking them in film, attacking them in individual work, attacking them in team concepts, full speed ahead. Everything we have in the tank to fix these things.

On the solution to defensive rebounding

You know, like I said, there were I think four rebounds when it was one on four or one on five. And I go up to grab it and someone starts to grab it and he kind of pulls his hand back. And as he pulls his hand back, he gets a pinky on it and it squirts to the guy all by himself. So you know, and when you're dealing with the possessions, like you get those four and your defensive rebound percentage changes drastically. You factor in their misses. Now you add four defensive rebounds versus four offensive rebounds. So once again, you're never that far off. I do think we've got to be quicker to the ball. Our guards, our wings have to be quicker to the basketball. There's so many threes now. You see it in the NBA, you see in college. There's so many threes that are caroming towards the elbows. It's more important than ever that your guards are good rebounders. Do we need to be more physical around the rim? Absolutely. We have to embrace, we have to be the hammer versus the nail when the shot goes up around the paint. But we also on the perimeter have to do a better job of reading the ball and get into it quicker. We got to get to the ball quicker on both sides, to be honest. I mean, that's it.

On what he's seeing from Oklahoma

Extremely well-coached basketball team on both sides of the ball. You talk about getting to the ball, being aggressive to the basketball, deflecting basketball. I mean, they're tough. I mean, they're tough. They have a very good system on both sides of the ball. They play aggressive. They play with physicality. They have great self-awareness or team awareness where they play to their strengths. There's a reason. I'm not going to assume they're going to beat Oklahoma State. It's a rivalry game, but if they win Oklahoma State, they're probably going to come in seven to 10 in the country and undefeated after winning the battle for Atlantis. So it's another great test for us. It's why we did this schedule. You look at the amount of, if we have the longevity, the mental longevity to do this season, as long as it is, we've put ourselves at a competitive advantage by being in all these different environments and being able to prepare long-term for the elite turnover teams and elite transition teams. And then you have the different style that TCU plays. And so we'll be familiar with anything that we're going to see during the year because we played this schedule. And you just hope you get through it where you're not mentally beat down because every possession has been so big.

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