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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEJanuary 11, 2016Greg GardMadison, Wisconsin THE MODERATOR: Head Coach Greg Gard is here. We will have some opening comments and take questions. COACH GARD: Obviously Saturday's game, looking back at that, the last 18 or 20 seconds gets magnified, but like I said Saturday after the game, there's going to be 50 to 60 things. There was actually 73 things that we looked at yesterday in film and went over. In terms of the progressions being made, obviously we're going in the right direction. A lot of things individually and collectively that have been improved upon but we also know that we've got a long ways to go. The guys, from the standpoint of how they've bounced back every game and every practice and responded yesterday, I'm happy with that response, because they've definitely had both feet in the boat, trying to row in the right direction and getting better as we go forward. This week going to Northwestern tomorrow night, Coach Collins has a team that's played well in the preseason and now in the conference play they've gotten two big wins on the road at Nebraska and Minnesota, played Ohio State really tough, I think it was a 3-point game with 4 minutes to go or a tie game with 4 minutes to go, and then Ohio State was able to knock down a couple of shots and pull away there at the end, and obviously Maryland was able to -- shot the three really well in that game last week at Northwestern, or two weeks ago at Northwestern. So we know it's a play that's developing. Backcourt play is really good with Demps and McIntosh, and then they've got a freshman in Aaron Falzon that's starting to come into his own and showing what he can do. Without further adeu, I will take questions. Q. When you say 73 things, what's normal for video clips? Then I think you said the other day that that's not all bad stuff, right? COACH GARD: Right. Q. So what's the breakdown -- COACH GARD: Normal for me has been -- I've been in the 90s to 100, so reducing is a good thing, and I would say there's probably, you know, of the 73 just off the top of my head, you know, 50 are things we gotta get better at, 23 were things that were pretty good so, so we're moving in the right direction. It hasn't always been that ratio. I'm seeing more and more consistency in terms of doing things the right way and how we want to play and identity that we have started to develop. Now it's a matter of becoming more consistent with that identity and hopefully we're, like I said, taking steps in the right direction. Q. There were so many rules changes in the off-season including evolving time outs. That last sequence, there, I just want to clarify, after the shot went through, are you allowed to call time out? Is that considered a dead ball? Were you trying to? Because it looked like at one time you were signaling. COACH GARD: Yes, I'm allowed until a player grabs the ball, and once Alex grabbed it, my power to call time-out was negated, and that happened -- we went over that yesterday, too, and obviously they didn't want to watch the last shot again but we did, but it was more what happened after that and how with 1.2 we have to advance the ball a lot farther than where we threw it to, and if we can't do that, then we need to take a time-out. Obviously with Alex grabbing it right away, I think it hit the floor once, and he had it, and I was trying to call time-out, but obviously that didn't happen, and when we did throw it in, we needed to advance it much farther to be able to do the bed and brush shot, you know, one dribble, try to advance it to at least half court on the pass, or you can catch, and catch it facing the rim and take one dribble and get the shot from there. Q. Mark Turgeon said after the game the other day he thought it was the most physical game they have played all season. I don't know if he was trying to pay you a compliment but do you take it as one? In talking about building an identity, is that one thing you want to see more of and have seen more of? COACH GARD: I think for us to be our best teams and how this program has been built has been primarily first on the defensive end, and watching this league over the years even before we got here and obviously Bo being here back in the 70s and the 80s, you have to be a very good defensive team if you want to be in the upper echelon of this league. You're not going to -- the scouting is too good, the coaching is too good, it is not going to be a point very often where you're going to be in a position to outscore people. You look at the history of this league, the teams that have sustained it at the top and what they have done defensively is always a key. We are getting of much better defensively. I think there are still -- of those 60 things that were good, bad, indifferent of those 73, a lot are on the defensive end. There are obviously things offensively, too, that we need to continue to improve upon but if you want to -- defensively you have to be consistent, and I think that's something you can hopefully always have control over. Some nights you won't shoot the ball real well, and we've had plenty of those, but if you defensively can become solid and rebound really well, those are the teams over the course of time that have always stood the test of time and hopefully we're becoming one of the better ones in the league. Q. Continuing with your analogy that everybody's got their feet in the boat, and they're paddling in the right direction, what's the water condition, are the seas rough in your mind at this point in time? Have they calmed at all in the last couple of weeks? COACH GARD: From my standpoint in terms of the transition? Yeah, it's been as easy of a transition -- you know, you hear other coaches going through that, whether it be an assistant to a head coach or taking over a program and starting completely over, the transition is always something people talk to me about, and this really has been as -- I think in two parts why it's been so easy for me and for our staff. Number one, I've got great people around me and I've said that from day one. Also part of that, part of those people are players, and they're the most important piece that has jumped in and obviously they went through that transition time emotionally, it was hard for everybody for a couple of days, and then you move on. Secondly, I don't allow it to affect -- people that know me pretty well know that my boat doesn't rock one way or the other. I don't get too high when things go really well, and I don't get too low when things aren't going really well, so from that standpoint we've got to keep continuing to move forward. I shared a story with the team yesterday, and you wonder how they are doing, how they are going to respond to losses. To make it in a nutshell, about three, four weeks ago, the team went to visit a young lady in hospice who passed away this past week, and we talked about adversity and what they have gone through and, hey, they've had a few tough losses, they've been right there, but to really define adversity and to apply it to what real adversity is. So we talked about that and they were aware of her and got a chance to spend some time with her, and I got a chance to spend some time with her family back in early December, but I also used some other examples. My own personal example with my dad. I talked about Coach Moore and some things he's gone through with his family, Coach Close, Coach Paris losing his dad to a heart attack when he was younger, Khalil Iverson lost his father a year ago to a heart attack. There are things that are real -- that's real life adversity, and that's real life things that people have to go through and grow through. And I said, hey the moment you're feeling sorry for yourself and you want to have a pity party, go over to the university hospital and sit at the valet for a while, about 30 minutes, because I spent a lot of time there over the last six months. You just sit there for a while, and you will realize -- if that doesn't sink in then go to the American Family Children's Hospital, go up to the cancer ward where all the cancer patients are that are kids that are fighting for their lives and trying to get to the next birthday, get to the next Christmas and then come back and tell me how tough you have it or, wow, we got beat by -- you know, we got beat by a really good team. We played really well, and we got beat by an All-American who hit a 26-footer that was a tough shot. Let's move on. So I think that gave them a reality check, if there was any sliver of whoa is me, in the room and if I smell any of that, I'll stomp it out quickly. And I think they understood where I was coming from because I got a lot of nods and all 17 guys' eyes were big and they were focused. From that standpoint -- do we take this game seriously? Absolutely. Is this program built on pride and all the things that encompass that? Absolutely. But at the same time we grow and move on and we get better, but there are other things out there that some of us have gone through, some of our guys have gone through, and I said if you haven't gone through something like that yet, you will. In a matter of time in your life, you will. That will help you get a better prospective of how we grow and how we learn. Q. When you played Northwestern last year I think it was easy to see that Chris had brought in some talent that was just young, and it was probably magnified going against you guys because you guys were old and experienced. Now that another year has passed and those guys have almost another full season under their belt, do you see the talent starting to come together in the way they play? COACH GARD: Yeah, it is, and it took a bump in the road with Olah getting hurt. They've had to readjust and added van Zegeren back in the middle. It changed a little bit what they have done defensively. They have been mostly man-to-man until the last three or four weeks when Alex went down, but they are. You see the growth in McIntosh, obviously Demps has been a scorer for them since he stepped on campus, Lumpkin has been a role player for them. They've gotten some good play from Taphorn and Lindsey off the bench. But also I think the emergence of Falzon. He's an older kid that -- he was at prep school out east. We actually saw him, he came here for an unofficial visit. Those emergences of those other pieces have helped them when -- Falzon stepping up has helped them replace what they lost with Olah, for the most part, so they've changed a little bit. They've gone from more of a -- they played through Olah a lot, earlier in the year, and now they are obviously relying on the three and shooting a fair amount of threes, and when they're on, they're really, really good and you just try to take 'em out of their comfort zone with that. Chris knows what he's doing, and obviously those guys are buying in. You can tell how hard they play and how they like to play together, and it's a team that has grown throughout the couple years that Chris has been there. Q. Greg, Khalil on Saturday, I think it was the first game he even played. Is he healthy, and if so is there a reason why he was not on the floor? COACH GARD: Yeah, he's healthy. No, it's all based on what I see in practice. It's still about results, and he's still trying to figure some things out defensively, trying to grasp things offensively, and it's not so much maybe what he wasn't doing -- I keep watching practice film and what Aaron Moesch is doing, I gotta try to get him more minutes, and I'm not doing a good enough job of working him into it, so I've got to continue to work on that, and Khalil has to continue to get better, but it wasn't anything -- I just felt with experience and how we were able to match-up and what I need to have Khalil continue to improve upon and grow as a freshman that we went the route that I did. Q. Greg, Vitto went scoreless in 18 minutes. His numbers have been dropping the past few games. Is this a slump? Do you think he's still factoring in, and are you demanding more out of him? COACH GARD: Who? Q. Vitto. COACH GARD: No, Vitto can continue to impact the game defensively. I think there are things that we continue to find that he needs to improve on, alertness away from the ball, reaction time to when the ball -- there is dribble penetration, when he's in the help position, and there is sometimes when he's not in a help position that he gets off a little bit too much toward triple penetration, so, the same thing with offense, making sure that he's playing under control, making sure that he's making good decisions, the type of shots that he takes. There is no different expectations for him than anybody else, and I also like the emergence of Alex Illikainen and what he's done. I joked yesterday with him that he couldn't jump over a Grand Rapids phone book, but I find him on film, you know, he's a rooter, he's always got his face in there, you rarely find him missing a block out, and he's blocking out guys that are way more athletic than he is, but he gets into them and he's got a bloody nose here and there, but those type of guys that understand that 90 percent of the game is played with your feet on the floor and can do those little things well always sit well with me and will get a chance to prove what they can do. THE MODERATOR: Anything else for Coach? Thanks, Greg. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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