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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEOctober 21, 2014Bo RyanCOACH RYAN: The only opening statement was the players asked that if you ask them a question down in Chicago, they asked me to ask you if you would not ask the same question to that same player, because they've had an experience where somebody in the room asked the same questions they asked in Chicago, which I'm sure you're allowed to do. But they were just looking to save time. I said maybe they think you'll give a different answer this time. No. I think they're hungry. Q. Traevon played a lot of basketball this offseason. I know he went to the Philippines, did the Chris Ball Camp. In what ways does he look better to you this year, more confident and those kind of things? COACH RYAN: He's more confident. He's a year older, and he's been through a lot of seasoning, basketball‑wise. The experience traveling and meeting different groups of people and on the kind of mission that they were on, that's a great experience. So I was more than happy for him to be able to do that, knowing how hard he works and that he would come back in shape and not lose any of the conditioning that some guys lose in the summer. Along the lines of that question, you think about, because some guys my age were talking to me about can you remember starting practice October15th every year and that's the day that you were to start getting into shape, in the'60s and into the'70s and then preseason conditioning, more emphasis on conditioning out of the traditional season. And to think where we are now, with their bodies, with how much they do in the summer, with the hours that we can be with them and that they can be in the weight room together. Because everybody's taking classes. Everybody's trying to graduate on time, for all the right reasons. But you really have to keep an eye on the physical conditioning and how much that the players are getting now. We went to once a week on the hill rather than twice. Which some of you know. But we've still got the 20. And still the 20 without‑‑ does anybody in here remember the coach putting four trash cans in every corner of the gym when you started October15th and it wasn't for empty water bottles? Does anybody remember that? So Tom you know what I'm talking about. But people know that, okay, now we've gotta get in shape. No, no, no. This is a full‑time thing, strength and conditioning. I'm just trying to make sure that our guys stay sharp and every coach is going through this. With this being a little bit different starting in the past couple of years with the summers and we just gotta keep our eye on it. Fortunately here at Wisconsin we've got such great training staff and doctors and medical help and people that know what they're doing, that it really hepatitis our guys. But Trae had a chance to‑‑ I wasn't worried about him getting out of shape doing something different. And it was a great experience for him. Q. You talk about strength and conditioning right now, getting prepared for the season. I don't remember Wisconsin ever being projected this high or having this high of expectations going into a season as far as basketball is concerned. At least thinking about maybe a few years back when expectations may not have been as high, what's the difference in preparing for a season when expectations are high, when you're a top 5 team and you are projected to win the Big Ten and coming off a Final Four season? COACH RYAN: First of all, you take that in its focus, the Final Four experience. Right here. Take a look at it. Okay. That stays right there. Now we move to here. So the other thing about expectations is that we were picked first. '07 was it, Tom? Who pointed that out? Jim? Not'06. We had lost all those seniors. Yeah, in the fall of'06, right. And Alando Tucker and Brian Butch were on the cover of a certain magazine and we lost on a runner at Ohio State after Brian Butch had dislocated his elbow. So that was expectations. We were picked to win the league.  Came up a little short. So I don't see our guys talking any differently or acting any differently on the practice floor simply because other people are mentioning that we might be pretty good. I don't see any difference. If you're asking me for okay how do you think they'll handle this, they know that there were eight, nine losses in there that we could have turned around by doing some things a little better. I'd rather have them thinking how they could turn some of those things around rather than dwelling on people telling them, hey, you guys ought to be pretty good this year because you have a lot of guys back, you have this and that. That happened to a lot of teams in the past where things didn't go quite the same the next year. So just think about what we can do and keep working on their weaknesses. Q. The changes you referenced about strength and conditioning over the years, has that allowed you to get off to a quicker start in terms of coaching and teaching once you get into the formal practice, once October15th rolls around? COACH RYAN: Let me put it this way, without a doubt, having a couple of hours and having a little more access with our players, across the country, definitely helps the teachers of the game. So if you have a staff, and I'm very fortunate, they're a very, very good teaching staff, they're not just here because of their looks, because they can just recruit, because they can bring me two or three AAU players from a team they used to work on, I've got guys who can teach and work with players and get them better. So it's definitely an advantage for Wisconsin. Q. Want to preface my question by saying that I ask it in respect, but as you mentioned Thursday, this is your 43rd year of doing this thing. I'm just curious, where is your energy level your drive entering this season coming off an accomplishment that a lot of coaches don't get to experience? COACH RYAN: Well, I mean, it probably took three days after the weekend of the Final Four to start looking at some film and taking a look at some DVDs and breaking them down and thinking about some things, how we're going to replace Ben Brust rebounding, and how are we going to replace his stretching and defense and will this guy be better at a 3 or 4? Will this guy be better as a 2? Right away I was already thinking about how we can be better and how to best use the players we have this year. So whether it's my 43rd or not and thank you for saying that out of respect, you're the first, I just‑‑ wow. I got another opportunity. Isn't this something? So I'm pretty fortunate to have guys like this who are hungry, guys who know the difference between a work ethic and being lazy. They know the difference between basketball IQ and non‑basketball IQ. They're just a great group to be around and actually they're the ones that get you going year in, year out, it's the players, it's your coaches, it's your managers. It's the feeling at practice. That's just the juice that keeps somebody like me going. Q. Sam has gotten a lot of the attention for his physical growth during the offseason; but over the last week or so you've been practicing who do you think has undergone the most basketball growth since you guys last played? COACH RYAN: I can't really say. Like if it was a horse race, I couldn't pick a winner. But they're all mudders, meaning they're working hard. Does anybody not know what a mudder is? My dad used to go to the track all the time, when it rained got sloppy, there were horses that some guys knew who to bet on. I'm not talking about betting on the players, but I mean there were guys who were really good under tough conditions. So that's what we're finding out now. Practice is a grind for every team in the country right now. People hide from it. Don't want to say it. It's a grind. You're going against the same guy all the time. I think of, if anybody in here had a brother or neighbor around the same age, you're playing in the driveway or on the playground in the barn every day you're going against the same day, do you remember how frustrating it was at times? So players have to go through that right now. That's what I mean by the grind. You're in drills. Sometimes the offense has an advantage. Sometimes the defense. And you're going against that same guy. Not every time, but close to it. It's how you handle the grind and you have to be able to say at the end of the day that you progressed. So it's the progression that we're trying to get them to understand right now as they're going through this step‑by‑step. So I can't say who right now‑‑ if he does something well in practice, I'm his teammate and he did it on me, then that made me look bad, I didn't move my feet, I didn't do that, I didn't block out. So every time something happens in practice, something good happened on one end. Something not so good happened on the other. So as a coach, you're like it's a tie. So I can't say one guy‑‑ now, after some practice I could say okay the top five guys were these five. And then you look at the practice tape. Not so fast. Maybe three of the guys you were right on. The other two guys their practice wasn't as good as it looked. And we do that. I look at every practice tape. Try to learn something for tomorrow. So I can't give you another guy because it would have to be a certain day. And I don't do that. Q. Along the line of grinding and two guys going against each other, I think I've been watching Happ and Vitto Brown go against each other. I think yesterday they were really getting at it. What have you seen from Ethan so far, even though it's early, just his ability to go at a big guy like Vitto and how he's handling it? COACH RYAN: Well, again, Ethan didn't have the ability to have as many hours as Nigel and Vitto last year in the summer. Because of the foreign trip. So Ethan's at about right now where these other freshmen were in July of last year. Seriously. Number of possessions, experience. So he's got to catch on a little quicker in order to get to where those guys were by the time we were at this point last year. But he's not shy. And everybody appreciates that about him. He'll bang. And you know we've been mixing up teams in these drills, and I always said to myself, I always wanted to be a guy that in practice, if I was on a certain team, that my coach put me on that the other guys would look and say, okay, good, we have Ryan, we're good there. Who else have we got? Just like you do in pickup games and all that. You look around and you go I think I'm going to take all the shots this time. I know Ochie used to say that every day he played. He took all the shots. But you know what I mean, the guys look around, if Ethan's on their team, I don't think they're saying right now: Oh, we've got Ethan, he's got a lot to learn yet. No, good, we got Ethan. I think that's a good sign. Q. Nigel's really impressed in practice with his outside shooting ability. I know you saw this coming? COACH RYAN: You guys get to come to practice so you get to see that. I was hoping he was going to surprise everybody. But I knew we could never get by with that. Now we just hope that he makes them in the game. What do you think? He's proven that he can shoot it. I think some of these guys laughed at me, but it wouldn't be the first time. Q. When you recruited him, did you see him as a viable outside shooter or did he just go to work this offseason and come back a different type of player in that regard? COACH RYAN: I could make up a story. No. I didn't see him as a 3‑point shooter. I didn't see that. He can get to the free throw line. And physically he can do some things defensively and all that. Now that he's expanded his game a little bit. Isn't that what's fun about what we do, to see these guys grow in different ways? And as we all know, he's different. He only had one question for me two years ago, when he committed and said he was coming to Wisconsin, he asked me, coach, if I become the Player of the Year my freshman year, is it okay if I go pro? How would you answer that question? I found out he was just kidding. After his third or fourth year. I don't think it will be this year. No. He just wanted to get a funny in on me. Q. You talk about the event the Make Bo Pay and how you see that role and what it means to the university and the cause you're working toward? COACH RYAN: It was an idea in the spring we have such a great event now that raised a million dollars last year, and over 3 million to this point. And in the fall, people kept asking me about Midnight Madness. To me‑‑ when people talk Midnight Madness I always looked at it as an experience with the students, with their peers, our players, to be in the community to have something. So I was thinking about a way to interact with the students. And tie it in with Coaches Versus Cancer and a donation. So that's what we came up with and actually I had a 3‑point‑‑ it was a free throw, 3‑point shot, and a half court shot. So we didn't have time‑‑ we realized we wouldn't be able to get all the students through and it went to free throw, $10, half court, a thousand. And $1 just to come in the building. Because if we would have had the 3‑point shot and that was maybe worth whatever, I would have had a yard sale at the house. But it's going well. We can't wait‑‑ for those who didn't know, it's tomorrow. And it's three to six, but the reason we say three to six instead of three to seven, we get everybody that's in the building, right, Patrick, then the doors will close and anybody that's still in the building they'll get to shoot because the way they bring them through the lines, for those that maybe haven't seen this, last year it went over five hours, because they close the doors at the end of four hours and then there was 500 more students. And our players are volunteering their time. And some of them had study groups and different hospital visits and different things they're doing in the community, community service. So that's why we're doing it the way we are. Should be a lot of fun. Q. How do you like your depth in the front court overall, and top to bottom in terms of talent, could this be the deepest you've been up front? COACH RYAN: If you look at last year and you look at Evan Anderson, who, in other years, other circumstances, if Nigel doesn't come in and do what he did Evan Andersen is getting 15 to 20 minutes a game last year. So when you say depth, but we had Evan every day in practice. And he made those guys better. Z‑Bo, even at six foot seven, six foot eight, he was crafty and he could do some things. So I thought we were pretty deep last year. But you didn't get a chance to see those two guys, for example, play that much because of the efficiency and the development, early development of the guys I just mentioned. Q. I know his foot injury held him out of practice for a few weeks but what have you seen so far from Vitto this year and where do you see him fitting into this whole rotation this year? COACH RYAN: On the report card, his singing gets an A plus, for those who missed his sometimes I feel like a motherless child freedom, if you Google Richie Havens and Woodstock, I had to wow the players. They didn't know that I knew where the song came from. And the reason I knew, I told some people down in Chicago, was it was, there was a wedding that I attended the weekend before I was asked to go by a young lady to Woodstock. The next weekend, I went back home back to Chester, and in my mailbox was my draft notice. You think that brings up good memories? Well, it's not the mail I was looking for at that time. So I didn't go to Woodstock. So I missed Richie Havens singing Freedom and the song. How is that for an answer? A plus in music. Did anybody not see his deal? Isn't it on something? What's it on? Might want to check it out. And Richie Havens just passed away recently, by the way. Little history lesson. Vitto, in basketball, because he is behind, it's a wait and see. But he's trying to catch up. Boy, his energy out there he's doing some good things. Again, another one of those guys that we're not trading. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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