Opening Statement
“Just to get it straight about Kennedy [Meeks], he was late to shootaround today, and so when you’re late you have to run some for however many minutes you were late and you don’t play your first run during the game. If you’re a starter, you don’t start. If you’re a substitute, you miss your first time going in the game. I’ve been a head coach 28 years. We‘ve had four guys that were late in 28 years, so that’s all it was. It’s no big deal, except I’m going to enjoy watching him run the next few days. Michael Jordan got caught in traffic in New Your City in a holiday festival or some tournament, so we set Michael down, and I set everybody down and said, we’ve only had four in 28 years so it’s no big deal. So he’s got to understand what the price to pay is to be the best team: be there everyday and not let other things get in the way… Other than that, I thought Joel Berry was really good. Look at his stats: five for ten, 13 points, six assists, no turnovers, three steals. I thought he was extremely important to us during the course of the game. We did some good things. You know, we started out zero for eight from the free throw line. I’ve been joking with some of you guys, every time you guys say how great we are at shooting the ball, we stink it up. So we talked about it again this week, but we were 11 of the last 14 [free throws]. Look at the stats, biggest thing is points after turnovers: we had 30 points in that way and they only had five. We caught them when they were undermanned with the two guys that were hurt. Our defense did force some turnovers, and they just had more turnovers than they usually have.”
On the key to Joel Berry’s progression
“He’s really just played good basketball. He worked harder in the offseason, worked on his shot in the offseason. He’s really stepped up and done some good things for us on both ends. He’s been very consistent on the defensive end. But when you have a guard that handles the ball and doesn’t turn it over like that, it’s really important to you.”
On if it was good to see the ball go in the basket a couple of times for Marcus
For everybody. Joel’s been making some but he was 2-6, Marcus 3-8. I was happy to see Theo make his also, he hadn’t made one for four or five games. He was 3-3 against Clemson. He was wide open, standing still, it was a good shot, he shot it and it went in. It was not a relief because I really do believe that we will make shots, we just haven’t been making them with the frequency that I want us to.
On the 23 forced turnovers, 12 were steals
We tried to run some scramble, but every time we did e double-team was a friendly double-team. A double-team is supposed to put the guy in jeopardy and take away his vision or his balance and we were double-teaming and they were just looking across the court and throwing it. They made two open 3s. So in the second half, we just went straight to our regular man-to-man pressure. And I think Justin, Joel and Marcus, those guys on the perimeter really did a good job fighting through some of those dribble hand offs.”
On having tougher games in the second half of the season
“It’s what it is. We’ve said it all year long, you don’t know what the schedule is until you get into it. You don’t know who’s going to be great. I think Clemson has really done some good things early and beat a lot of ranked teams. But now we are in the process of going into not just the second half, I think we have ten more games. Six of them are on the road, and a bunch of the games are against those teams in the top half of the league. If we play the way we played the last four games, it will be very, very, very difficult to win any of those games. So we’ve got to play better, and we talked about that. Even before the game today, instead of putting up some X’s and O’s up on the board, I said let’s play to get better on defense, let’s play to get better on offense and let’s give the grade A effort and see if we are mature enough to handle this.”
On saying he wanted to get better today, what was he pleased about
Our activity on the defensive end. I was ally mad at the half over the defensive fact that you can’t let a guy pull up and shoot the ball with the shot clock running down it’s halftime, and we were standing there watching. He was their leading scorer, he scored 31 against Pittsburgh, so he can score the ball, and we’re standing there watching a guy pull up and shoot the ball.
“Just to get it straight about Kennedy [Meeks], he was late to shootaround today, and so when you’re late you have to run some for however many minutes you were late and you don’t play your first run during the game. If you’re a starter, you don’t start. If you’re a substitute, you miss your first time going in the game. I’ve been a head coach 28 years. We‘ve had four guys that were late in 28 years, so that’s all it was. It’s no big deal, except I’m going to enjoy watching him run the next few days. Michael Jordan got caught in traffic in New Your City in a holiday festival or some tournament, so we set Michael down, and I set everybody down and said, we’ve only had four in 28 years so it’s no big deal. So he’s got to understand what the price to pay is to be the best team: be there everyday and not let other things get in the way… Other than that, I thought Joel Berry was really good. Look at his stats: five for ten, 13 points, six assists, no turnovers, three steals. I thought he was extremely important to us during the course of the game. We did some good things. You know, we started out zero for eight from the free throw line. I’ve been joking with some of you guys, every time you guys say how great we are at shooting the ball, we stink it up. So we talked about it again this week, but we were 11 of the last 14 [free throws]. Look at the stats, biggest thing is points after turnovers: we had 30 points in that way and they only had five. We caught them when they were undermanned with the two guys that were hurt. Our defense did force some turnovers, and they just had more turnovers than they usually have.”
On the key to Joel Berry’s progression
“He’s really just played good basketball. He worked harder in the offseason, worked on his shot in the offseason. He’s really stepped up and done some good things for us on both ends. He’s been very consistent on the defensive end. But when you have a guard that handles the ball and doesn’t turn it over like that, it’s really important to you.”
On if it was good to see the ball go in the basket a couple of times for Marcus
For everybody. Joel’s been making some but he was 2-6, Marcus 3-8. I was happy to see Theo make his also, he hadn’t made one for four or five games. He was 3-3 against Clemson. He was wide open, standing still, it was a good shot, he shot it and it went in. It was not a relief because I really do believe that we will make shots, we just haven’t been making them with the frequency that I want us to.
On the 23 forced turnovers, 12 were steals
We tried to run some scramble, but every time we did e double-team was a friendly double-team. A double-team is supposed to put the guy in jeopardy and take away his vision or his balance and we were double-teaming and they were just looking across the court and throwing it. They made two open 3s. So in the second half, we just went straight to our regular man-to-man pressure. And I think Justin, Joel and Marcus, those guys on the perimeter really did a good job fighting through some of those dribble hand offs.”
On having tougher games in the second half of the season
“It’s what it is. We’ve said it all year long, you don’t know what the schedule is until you get into it. You don’t know who’s going to be great. I think Clemson has really done some good things early and beat a lot of ranked teams. But now we are in the process of going into not just the second half, I think we have ten more games. Six of them are on the road, and a bunch of the games are against those teams in the top half of the league. If we play the way we played the last four games, it will be very, very, very difficult to win any of those games. So we’ve got to play better, and we talked about that. Even before the game today, instead of putting up some X’s and O’s up on the board, I said let’s play to get better on defense, let’s play to get better on offense and let’s give the grade A effort and see if we are mature enough to handle this.”
On saying he wanted to get better today, what was he pleased about
Our activity on the defensive end. I was ally mad at the half over the defensive fact that you can’t let a guy pull up and shoot the ball with the shot clock running down it’s halftime, and we were standing there watching. He was their leading scorer, he scored 31 against Pittsburgh, so he can score the ball, and we’re standing there watching a guy pull up and shoot the ball.
