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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEMarch 7, 2016Greg GardMadison, Wisconsin THE MODERATOR: Head Coach Greg Gard is here. We will have opening comments and then take questions. COACH GARD: I'm not completely through last night's game, but three-quarters of the way analyzing the film. Obviously a team that was playing well and I knew was playing very well going into that game, and offensively I think has improved immensely watching the performance the put on at Nebraska and then also last night. But for our guys to be able to finish out the year after starting 1-4 in league play, and obviously that's been well documented, and to finish 11-2 and also the places we had to go to with the road games that came down the stretch and how they have responded and grown, you've heard me talk about it before, I'm very proud of how they've grown and the position they put themselves in to finish in a tie for third and finish in that top grouping, top four, I guess, it is for the 15th consecutive year, and that puts us into a position to have postseason play, and that's something I'm proud of, and they've earned it. They have had to go through a gauntlet of a schedule and obviously a transition, and we're excited about what's going to come down the road. With that, I'll take any of your questions. Q. Greg, last year, if I remember correctly, the guys after winning the regular season play really wanted to win the tournament title to show that they didn't want to share with anybody. What's the attitude of this team going in? They've come back to make a late charge but haven't won anything yet in terms of a title. COACH GARD: Right. I think you always divide the season in three or four segments, and this being the postseason, and there is an opportunity for us to win the Big Ten Tournament Championship, and that's always something you set as a goal. First one is finishing as well as you can in the nonconference and positioning yourself, preparing yourself for what's coming in conference play, then obviously in the regular season we needed some help coming down the stretch, and that didn't help anybody, let alone for us, in terms of trying to catch Indiana, and congrats to Tom and that group for how they've performed and stayed consistent and really played well yesterday, too, against Maryland. Then obviously you get into the postseason, and we're in the position where we have a chance at for a tournament championship, you go after that, and you go on to the next step in terms of the NCAA Tournament. I don't think our goals have ever changed. That's always been the pattern and the goal that we have had here in terms of trying to win a regular season first, then you go step by step. You try to mix up the steps or jump one step ahead of where you are, you end up with nothing, really. You've heard me talk about process a lot, and that's very important. This is why that applies to this scenario as well. Q. Nigel was named First-team All-Big-Ten by the AP today, I don't know if you heard that. Considering where he was with his shot early in the season and trying to embrace his new role, how proud are you of him for the way he's responded during this stretch run? COACH GARD: I think he's always had the talent to be able to be in that position. Having the talent and then understanding how to apply it are two different things. He's gotten better at applying his talent and playing to his strengths. Also he has come a long ways in terms of a leader. I think there are areas in all facets of this game that he can still get a lot better at, but I think in terms of understanding what his strengths and weaknesses are and playing more to his strength and trying to minimize his weaknesses, while he's still trying to make himself a complete player is one area that I'm very proud of, but also how he's been able to step into a difficult role, and Bronson in the same fashion, that it's not always natural and easy for everybody to step in and be a leader, especially when things aren't going well, and that is where I think I've seen a lot of growth from those two guys, and Showalter and Vitto, obviously his evolution, too, but Nigel in terms of the responsibility. He had the spotlight on him from the beginning and expectations were high. It wasn't easy, because it wasn't -- we weren't performing at the level that we could have been performing at or should have been performing at. We weren't ready to perform at that level yet and also he wasn't quite ready for what his role was going to be, too, so he's grown in a lot of areas and I'm proud of the steps he's taken. Q. You guys take it one game at a time, but when you get to the postseason where it's one game and you're done, does that change mind-set at all if at all? COACH GARD: It can't change your mind-set. I think if you try to make it something different than what it is -- we understand it's possession-by-possession, I think that -- I keep using the "process" I've probably overused it. Is there a counter on how many times I say process? Process, process, process; I don't know how many times I've said it. I think while you stick to that, we have that approach of taking it day-by-day, that helps us, too, as we prepare. We will prepare starting tomorrow for Rutgers, and we will use Wednesday for Nebraska day, and understand we have been talking about that over a week now, and it's March, and that point in time where you have to be very consistent or you're going to go home. They understand that. They know -- these guys have played -- even the freshmen have played in high school tournaments, prep school tournaments, in Alex's case, and Jordan Hill's case. They understand what's at stake. I don't think we have to make it any bigger than it is. Q. How much of the game, like the one yesterday, make you reexamine the team defensively, and how much do you chalk up to another good night for Purdue offensively? COACH GARD: I think it's the combination of both. If you would have told me that Purdue was to going to shoot 64%, make ten three's and make 25 free throws, I probably would have said we would have lost by 30. At the same time if you would have said we were going to score 80 points, I probably would have said we're going to win. It's a combination of P.J. Thompson had hit 16 threes, 17 college games. My math tells me that's less than one a game. Going through the first half, like I mentioned before I am not completed through the second half, I know he got one three off a double-team that we doubled too far, off the lane line in the second half. The first half we doubled the post four times. Three of them were turnovers, and one of them Hammons dropped the ball, and got it back and got fouled, so the double-team didn't give up the three. We got the threes -- a lot of them were in transition. We had three straight point blank opportunities to finish at the rim, where we don't, so that's 6 points for us we don't get. They converted that to 9 points in transition automatically, right off the bat, so that's a 15-point swing, 6 we don't get, 9 that they get. Two of the other ones that P.J. got, we made mistakes on screens, we went underneath one screen up at the top, and we went chest person to another screen in front of our bench, so from that standpoint you've got to give credit where credit is due. He hit some shots. We should have probably stuck a little tighter and not made mistakes on it that we did, and also we made mistakes in the post in both halves. But from that standpoint, we've got to continue to get better. I think when you face a player like A.J. Hammons and how far he's come, he's going to make you pay for defensive mistakes, whether you get caught too high or caught behind, and obviously they were able to adjust and put more shooters on the floor when they put Swanigan at the 5, and made us more reluctant to double-team because of how they had stretched the floor and didn't have a guy that we couldn't play off of in the terms of the 5 man when they were playing with Swanigan at the 5, and that's something that, you know, is kinda new to our repertoire defensively, in terms of doubling the post, and something that has things go forward here and see what happens in terms of my position, but I've looked at that in the past and I liked what I saw last night, how we -- after only doing it for two days, we were able to scramble them up a little bit. But, again, it was some other areas that we let it slip, and part of that was I always talk about having our offense help our defense. There was a lot of times where our offense didn't help our defense by not converting. They don't convert, transition is fast, if it's a made basket, versus a blocked shot or not finished around the rim, and they turn it into 3 points in transition. Q. Greg, a lot of people including some of your colleagues are talking about this tournament as a free for all, six, seven, eight teams that are pretty equal. How do you view this conference tournament? COACH GARD: Well, I think you've got three teams specifically that are playing really well and we saw one of them last night, and I thought that going into last night, I thought they looked like they were in sync like I thought they would be most of the year, and they were really until Notre Dame beat 'em, and then they lost to Butler. Butler beat 'em, nonconference, right? Between Purdue, Indiana and Michigan State, I think the three that are hitting on all cylinders right now and hitting a stride. The rest of us obviously are -- you always -- it's one game at a time. You never know what can happen in terms of foul trouble, somebody gets hurt, somebody sprains an ankle, tournaments sometimes -- not so much in the conference tournament because you know the match-ups and it's unlike the NCAA Tournament in terms of match-ups are so key. We know how we match-up with some teams and how we don't match-up well with other teams, but you look at who is playing well and I think those three in my mind, looking across the board, are playing at a high level, more consistent level than anybody else right now. I think we're in that mix as well. I still don't think we've played as well for as long as what we're capable of. The closest we came was at Maryland on both ends of the floor, but I think we have a lot of room to grow and hopefully we have a lot of games yet in which to grow in that part. Q. You haven't played on Thursday in the conference tournament since 2000. How does that change this week, getting there a day earlier? COACH GARD: We'll use Tuesday, Wednesday, prep for each team and leave Wednesday night. We added one more game to the mix. I was asked yesterday in my press conference at Purdue about the impact of 14 teams in the league and not a true Round Robin and how Purdue tied with us and with Iowa and with Maryland, and how Iowa could be seeded below them, yet Purdue lost twice to Iowa, and the perceived inequities of not playing a true Round Robin, and that's what happens when you have that type of imbalance in terms of who you are playing once, twice. Look at our schedule who we played twice, obviously I don't have to recite the schedule for you, you can see that on your own, but I don't think it changes anything, it's still one game at a time, we just added one more task in order to get to Sunday. Q. Going back to the day that you introduced "swing" to this team, what's its absorption level to this point? 50%? 60%? COACH GARD: I think there are times when we're in the 70s, 80% in terms of what we pick up and see and lead. There's times, too, when we're back at 50, you know, and part of it will be the evolution of weak side movement and that away from the ball side triangle. We did get a lane line lob last night from Khalil to Nigel, which is a next step that we can start the -- I've had to make the reads that usually come automatically and instinctively within the offense into specials and call those as specials because we haven't picked up -- our instincts aren't at the level that they will be in time. Some are more comfortable than others. You can have three guys that are very comfortable in it and two that are maybe a step behind, or even mentally a step behind in terms of the processing of the possession. As we get everybody more and more on the same page, and everybody gets more experience with it, I think you'll see more growth in that area. Like I said, there are times when we're pretty sharp with it, and other times I think it gets off the tracks. Q. Is it where you thought it would be at this point? COACH GARD: Probably, yeah, I would say it probably is. I think we've -- we've gotten out of it what I wanted to get out of it. That was the ability to touch the post and get to the free-throw line more, because at that point in time I wanted to be able to look at a stat sheet and say we're going to go 13 of 29 from three. I didn't want to be so three dependent, and the free-throw line has won us a lot of games this year. So from that standpoint, to be able to get to the free-throw line, get better spacing on the floor, play inside out, try to get some players, per se, like Nigel and Ethan in a comfort zone of catching the ball in an area where they feel comfortable and then spacing around them and moving around them and then be able to create driving angles for the others, drive-and-kick opportunities, post feed and kick-out opportunities, it's helped. I think we sill get -- we need to get much better at the movement, that's the key. The spacing has helped us, the focus on trying to play inside out has helped us, but we're still not where we can be in terms of moving way from the ball. THE MODERATOR: Anything else for Coach? Thanks, Greg. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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