Opening Statement

Well, we're excited for a really, really big week for our program. Coming back home to play a great program like Oregon is exciting and a great opportunity for us. So, we're ready to go.

On what he's learning about his team in Big Ten play

Well, as a lot of teams in our league are finding out, it's very difficult to play high-level basketball for five consecutive months, which is college basketball. So, there's peaks and valleys, and some of it is simple as making shots, missing shots. Some of it is match-ups. Some of it is, this team does this really well, and that's your weakness. So, I like where we are. As far as if you would have said we beat eight and two with six games on the road, I probably would have been a little bit surprised, even though I don't really look that far, and I don't project wins and losses for a season or anything like that. But for us to be able to not play anywhere near our best and find ways to win usually bodes well, because you stay hungry. You realize it's easier to get the guys to pay attention to the details versus maybe if you won by 15 or 16. And so, do we love where we are? No. We're not playing nearly as well as we're capable of. So, until we do that, we're never going to be satisfied. But we're in the fight. We're in the mix. That's where you want to be.

On whether it gives him confidence to win games while not playing your best

No, I think it certainly gives our guys confidence that we're going to find a way. And even though I might not have my best stuff tonight, my breaking ball may not be breaking, there's still going to be ways that I can impact this game and help us win. And so, that's part of the journey of growing together as a team. But without a doubt, I think it gives you the belief that when things aren't going well, that you can still find a way.

On whether limiting Ace Bailey can translate to other opponents

I don't know. It's a great question. A lot goes into it. The staff did a great job with the preparation and figuring out a game plan. And then when you do something completely foreign, there were some holes in it that we could fix if we had more time. And so, will we replicate this? It's tough because Braden Smith, the ball is in his hands coming over half-court, so it's tough to deny him. But yeah, we need to do a better job of limiting the other team's best players' touches, pushing them off their spots, and challenging more. And so, even if it's not that exact game plan, we can take some of those tendencies to the future to go forward.

On not picking up a technical this year on the sidelines

Well, I have six years of trial and error, and I don't really want to talk about the officials because you can control what you can control. There have been times I felt like I jumped on them, and we proceeded to get terrible calls after that. And so, I don't think there's a right or wrong way. They're people, we're people. And so, I do know this, that the Big Ten officials, it's a relationship business. And even if you don't have a great relationship, you understand each other. I don't know these officials. They don't know me. Sometimes they may think I'm being sarcastic when I'll ask a question, and they'll explain it from their point of view, and I might say, you know what, that's fair. I see what you're doing. So, even those interactions. But I just feel like when I've screamed at officials, we've gotten bad calls. And when I've tried to talk to them like human beings, we've gotten good calls in the past. With people that officials and I pay attention to, which ones have called the game tight, which ones have called it loose. Do these guys come from the high majors, do they come from the mid-majors? Because it's usually a little bit different. And I try, we try to adjust to who's officiating and how they're calling the game.

On the competition for playing time between Justin Pippen and LJ Cason

What does he have to do to earn more minutes? It's hard to play 10 guys. You start playing a rotation, 10, 11, 12 guys. And you're taking Trey Donaldson off the floor. You're taking, I think Pipp's been very, very steady. The competition, I don't even want to say it's competition amongst those two. It's just which one can help the group function when they're in there. And sometimes as a freshman backup guard, the role might be which one can hold it in the road versus which one can go make some plays. And they're completely different players. LJ, LJ probably is as good, he might be better than anyone on our roster at simply going and making an individual play. But there's also different layers to that. And he's going to be a really good basketball player. It's just, like I said, it's tough to play 10 guys in a rotation. And once you start going one or the other, each by game, then they don't know when they're going to play. It's even more difficult for them to stay ready if they don't know if they're going to play or not. I think Pippen knows now he's in the rotation. He's going to come into the game about six minutes in. And so it allows them to kind of plan accordingly. But like I said, LJ, he's had really big moments. He's going to help us win some games this year. Phat Phat Brooks needs to stay ready because he's going to have some moments too. And that's a side of character, the guys that can keep moving forward when it looks bleak. And it's very, very difficult to do. But the special ones can do it.

On Danny Wolf's adjustment to Big Ten play

Well, Danny's played really, really well. And I don't think he had one of his better games, and he gets 16 of 14. His ability to track the ball, his instincts for rebounding is special. And we need it because we haven't been very quick to the ball. And part of that's being on the road sometimes. But he's bailed us out a lot just by having a real nose for the basketball when it comes to rebounding. The other stuff, we want him to trust his shot even more. We want him to simplify his game. The physicality, obviously, the 4-5 pick and roll is not very effective when you push Vlad up into the other defender, and then he grabs ahold of him and doesn't let him roll. So the physicality of the league has negated what we did really, really well when the game slowed down. And so now we have to adjust. We're throwing it to Vlad, and he's chasing a little bit more. I thought the first drive of the game was good offense. The ball squirted out. But that's one of those turnovers. Vlad seals. Danny has a layup, and the ball goes out of bounds. It's not as if we need to recreate the wheel. It's got to be a little bit more ball strong with that one. And like I said, the turnovers are leading to layups and dunks we live with. And that was leading to a layup.

On his family being at the Indiana game

Yeah, we get a ticket allotment as a group, and I have no more tickets. We're going to take care of immediate family and immediate family only.

On whether he is trying to treat the Indiana game just like any other game

Oh, yeah, without a doubt. It's just another game. I'm sure that when we go there to practice, you're walking into a place where you spent 50 hours a week as an undergraduate at practice rebounding for guys, whatever the case, and then I worked there as a staffer. And so, yeah, it would be very similar to if we played at University of Florida where I had great years as an assistant and have established relationships. But I watched them play Purdue the other night. I've seen them play a handful of games. They played at a high, high level in Mackey Arena. And so, no, it's not hard for me to detach the emotion because we have a job to do, and I'm not thinking about Indiana other than if they played tonight and Oregon didn't, then I would watch that game at 9 p.m. But other than that, no, we're focused on Oregon.

On being in the middle of the pack with free throw shooting

Yeah, I think we're probably right a little below where I thought we would be. Roddy's a good free throw shooter. He's shooting them well. I feel like we made some timely free throw shots. Once again, we practice them, and we don't line up and shoot 50 every day at the end of practice. Even when we shoot them as a group, it would be in competition. You're going to get four one-on-ones. You're going to shoot a one-on-one, potential eight points. As few as four, tally them up. And so we practice in every drill. If you win, you would pick a shooter that is fatigued, and we say, all right, to stamp this win, you have to make two. So we're pretty intentional to find five to ten pressure-free throws every practice, but we don't talk too much about them. It's step up to the line, trust your shot, and we live with the results. I think that allows us to take a big jump as a team. It's no secret they're not performing up to their standards for a number of reasons, and we all contribute to that. It's getting them to ball in the right positions at the right time and things like that, but we believe in them. If we're going to max out as a group, they're going to be a big reason why.

On what Justin Pippen does well to earn playing time

His consistency in practice and his approach to the game. He's almost exactly a carbon copy of himself every single day. That's not easy to do in a sport that requires a lot of emotion, a lot of physical work, mental work. He just has a real unique ability to think at a high level, to work with emotional intelligence. I think his steadiness has gained him more and more opportunity. He's earned the trust of his teammates and staff. I feel very, very confident with Pip on the floor.

On Pippen's injury setting him back

100%. He didn't practice this summer. He didn't practice, I don't remember the exact date, until the fall. I think he would be much further ahead now if he would have had that opportunity to work, and we brought him back slowly. But he's earned it. He's worked with great consistency.

On Sam Walters' growth

We all know Sam's reputation as a shooter. He's grown so much as a person, as a defender, as a rebounder. I watched the film, and he had one glaring mistake, and they all have mistakes. This happened to be a scouting report mistake. Other than that lapse, he played really good basketball. He was active. He was aggressive. He competed against Ace Bailey. He banged in two real shots that we needed to kind of hold it in the road when Trey was in foul trouble. When we weren't in a good rhythm, we'd smoke some two-on-one break play-ups and just couldn't find baskets, and those shots were big. Now, when he's got it going like that, we have to do a better job of looking for him and trying to use his gravity to produce even better offense because when he gets it going like that, we need to be more aware that when Sammy's out there, we've got to be looking for him, and if we can't get it to him, then that usually means there's a lot of attention going his way. I thought he played within himself. He caught it and shot it or got it moving, and his floor spacing allows Danny, Vlad, Trey, those guys to look even better than what they are.

On balancing letting the game flow versus drawing something up

It's knowing your team. I've coached a lot of great shooters, and we draw stuff up in practice to see how they respond to shooting off of a set where you're going to do this and this and this, and then you shoot it versus finding shots. Our FAU teams, once again, that's six years of practical experience, and we had guys who were really good shooters that if we drew up a play for them, they had about a 2% chance of making that shot. They were so excited to have a play. The timing was off. And then there were other guys who were marginal shooters, 30% shooters, that if you drew up a play and they had their comfort spots, they were banging it in. So it's just getting to know your team. That's been a challenge this year because we haven't had a guy that was able to come off those screens consistently on the move and knock down shots, but it's also part of the way we recruit. We recruited guys who are versatile. They're not just one-trick ponies, and usually the one-trick ponies are good at those things. It's more of we've got to just, with the way we play and the way Sam is, he doesn't sprint into a lot of his threes yet. He's going to. We're working on it every single day, and he's getting better at it. That's the next step of his evolution of the Duncan Robbins. Think about how well he moves off the ball now compared to how he did at Michigan. He came off certain screens, but he's a spacer guy, corner threes, and that's kind of where Sam is now, but he's getting better. It's just got to be more of we're going to try to flare in for him, and then if that's not there, then there's so much more space to attack the lane or whatever, things like that.

On the keys to victory down the stretch

Turnovers, turnovers, turnovers. And we're going to watch them today. We're going to replicate those situations, and I'm going to continue to try to figure out what we run better to eliminate some of these things. It's a partnership amongst us all. But once again, I think we have a really good shooting team. I think we're top five in the field goal percentage in the country. We're one of the best two-pointers, and we're really good at threes. And we're dropping from an offensive rebounding standpoint. We're on the decline a little bit. We need to get back up. But a lot of it is just the flow. If you eliminate half of those 17, 18 possessions and you turn it over, now your defense is significantly better. Guys have more touches. There's more flow. And so I think all parts of the game will function better if we just eliminate that one thing. And so we're fighting it tooth and nail every single day.

On Nimari Burnett's development

Yeah, one thing that I've learned, and I haven't looked at the numbers as closely yet, that I actually just met with Navarro, when he gets in foul trouble, it takes him out of the flow. And because we have those other wings, we typically don't play him quite as much with two fouls as we do a Trey or Vlad or Danny or whatever the case. And so he's been incredibly steady. He hasn't made the same shots he typically makes. His percentages are still good. We need him to play with more aggression. We need him to have more of a defensive presence. I thought offensively, Rutgers, I thought his first four or five minutes was really sound, and I thought his last four or five minutes, his pass to Danny, I thought was the biggest possession of the game. He had a nice back cut. Vlad, instead of settling for that 18-footer, hit Navarro on the cut. I thought our late clock poise was really sound down the stretch and the one shot clock violation, we had Danny cutting for a layup. It got deflected, or maybe he bobbled it, and Navarro ended up with it. So we need him to play like he's played all season, and we're very confident. He had a deep thigh bruise that he's coming back from and feels much better. That's one thing. When guys aren't playing well, it could be an illness or an injury at times, but also they're just not going to play great every night. And so that's the beauty of being on a team where I don't have to be my best tonight because I've got these guys, and one of them will pick up the slack, and you just keep them moving.

On Roddy Gayle's struggles

Yeah, Roddy, the free throw line is a good tell. The guy has good shooting mechanics, and Roddy does. And so now I think the confidence and rhythm that you need to be a really good shooter is not where it needs to be. But when he shoots it, if it's an inside-out, paint-touch, we need him to shoot it. The teams that have guys that won't shoot open shots are the teams that struggle finding any rhythm or identity. We just need those guys taking the right threes, but he's going to knock some down. There's no doubt in my mind, I believe it. He was in the gym this morning. He puts in the time. He makes them at practice, and so now it's just a matter of getting his confidence back. But we need him. Like I said, our ceiling raises drastically when Roddy, Sam, Ruben, those guys are playing good, sound basketball.

On whether he envisioned being a coach while a student manager at Indiana

There were a group of us, ironically. Mike Schrage was one who's now on staff at Duke. He was the head coach at Elon. Joe Pasternak was at UCSB. Mike was one year older than Joe. Joe was one year older than me. When I went to Indiana, even for the first year or two, I wanted to be a high school basketball coach. That's why I went there. I thought if I learned from Coach Knight, if I have Coach Knight on my resume, I could maybe get one of these high school jobs in my mid-20s in Indiana. That was my dream. One of the assistant coaches asked me one day what I was going to do. I told him I was going to coach. He said college or high school. At that point, I didn't know that college was an option. I said, you know what? That sounds cool. I think I'm going to do college. I went to my advisor and changed my major from education to history and chased it every single minute of every single day. At some point in the next couple years, because of Joe, he was very ambitious. He was much further advanced than I was as far as the world. He was much more worldly than I. He talked about being a D1 head coach. At that point, he's like, you know what? Maybe I can do that too. No. My career trajectory completely changed when I decided I wanted to enjoy who I was coaching and enjoy who I was going to work with every day and serving those guys and fighting like crazy. Then my career took off. When I was chasing being a Division I head coach, it wasn't working out.

On whether he thinks the team is what he envisioned at the start of the year

It resembles what we thought it would. We've had to create some things on the fly and really kind of get a few things out of the mud. Then those things get stopped. Then we kind of have to create some different ways. I think we're starting to really establish an identity of a hierarchy of what we need to be looking for first, second, third, fourth. I know I'm much more clear in my expectations now than I was two months ago when I was still trying to observe and watch our guys and whatnot. I think we're learning the league better, too. You can say we haven't watched Big Ten games, whatnot. It's different than I thought, significantly different than I thought. I've done a lot of research and talked to a lot of people. Once again, practical, real-world experience is much better than reading a textbook or sitting in a lab or whatever the case. Sometimes you just got to. We have a group that wants to learn, they want to grow, they want to get better. When things don't go well, then we back to the drawing board and figure it out.

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