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UNIVERSITY OF IOWA BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

February 23, 2018

Fran McCaffery

Iowa City, Iowa

Q. Now that you've had a chance to look at it, did you look at Isaiah Moss' last 96 seconds and what did you think about that once you saw it again?
FRAN McCAFFERY: I was thrilled for him because we talk about that all the time, that he has that ability, and continue to encourage him to be aggressive like that and be that kind of player. It was fun to watch. He made great decisions, made great moves. When to shoot it, when to drive it, when to give it up.

We had a shot. You know, it was close to a five-second call (on them) at the end with us down two.

Q. Do you think this could be a big step for Isaiah?
FRAN McCAFFERY: Should be. He had a great game at Maryland. That's not an easy place to play. He goes for 25 there. We've seen him do that. We saw him go for 17 in the first half at Nebraska. I think he'll start seeing it. That's pretty special, pretty unique, 19 points in 96 seconds. But just sort of that kind of mentality I think is what we're looking for.

Q. How would you characterize Dom's four years here in your program?
FRAN McCAFFERY: Well, clearly he had great impact especially in the first couple years. Hasn't played as much, obviously, this year, and even a little bit last year. But an integral part of NCAA tournament teams. Character guy, multiple position guy. Really happy that he came here. I think the world of him. We had the opportunity to take him home this summer, which was great. A guy that's a friend to everybody and a solid contributor.

Q. What's it mean that he stayed here? It seems like so many kids transfer now when they don't get instant gratification, but he stuck it out.
FRAN McCAFFERY: Yeah, I think even more so when you're from Europe, you can go get paid, if you want. He had that opportunity to leave here at anytime and get paid. But he wanted to come here and get a degree. That was important to him. He wants to stay in the United States and work. So we're going to try to help him make that happen.

Q. Coaches in your situation in a lot of schools might feel a little heat to be on the hot seat after a season like this. Do you feel any kind of pressure based on the way the season has unfolded?
FRAN McCAFFERY: No, not at all.

Q. Because of the faith that they showed you with the contract extension before the season?
FRAN McCAFFERY: No, it has to do with body of work.

Q. Is it from what you accomplished that's allowed you to have a bad season? You have enough equity in the bank that a bad season --
FRAN McCAFFERY: It shouldn't affect anybody. You shouldn't even be bringing it up, to be honest with you or anybody else.

Q. I mean, you're in last place?
FRAN McCAFFERY: I know. I know. Like I said, body of work. There is a lot of things to be evaluated. Maybe you should look at that.

Q. Being in last place, what do you think that does for the team, for J-Bo, for this group of sophomores with their high expectations?
FRAN McCAFFERY: You know, I think for them what they have to do is evaluate everything, as we will do. Obviously we're going to evaluate how we recruit, strength and conditioning, how we travel, how we do skill development. When you have a bad season, that's what you do, you evaluate everything and you break it down. They've got to do the same thing.

So it's collective, but it's got to be individual. Okay, what could I have done better? We're all going to do the same thing. You look at those two guys, they put up pretty good numbers. They were obviously instrumental in our victories and they had some spectacular performances.

That said, what could they have done better? What could the other guys have done better? What do we have to do to grow together? How do we improve some of our negative areas, which obviously has been on the defensive end. I think that's the professional way to go about it.

Q. Northwestern obviously also had a lot of high expectations. They've gone far away from them as well. What do you expect for Sunday's match-up?
FRAN McCAFFERY: The thing with them they've had some injury issues. Not where they lost somebody for the whole year, but McIntosh was out for a little bit. Vic Law didn't play the other night, they lose a close game. They've been out of their building. There are some extenuating circumstances for them. Sanjay Lumpkin's graduation was a big deal. He was a big part of the growth of that program, not just in his senior year when they go to the NCAA tournament, but building up to that point.

They've never been to one. A lot of things have to come into play and come together for that to happen, and he was a big part of that. So you look at a roster that was pretty talented. Vic Law, Scottie Lindsey, Bryant McIntosh, Dererk Pardon, Skelly, I mean, these are some of the best players in our league and they have played that way at times. Then there's other times they've lost some tough games.

Q. Does it feel similar to you guys?
FRAN McCAFFERY: I think both teams had much greater expectation than where we ended up.

Q. Jim Delany kind of said that he doesn't want to do the condensed schedule again. Earlier you said you didn't have a big problem with it. Is that something you're glad to hear?
FRAN McCAFFERY: I get it. We wanted to try to take a look at the tournament at Madison Square Garden. That's the world's most famous arena. We have teams from back east. We'll see how the attendance goes.

But I suspected that Jim would come to that conclusion. I really did. But I think it was worth trying. I don't ever want to use that as an excuse because we're all in the same boat. It's unfortunate sometimes you have maybe one-day preps. You're traveling and so forth when you should have an extra day. So, unfortunately, that's the way it was this year. You've just got to play the schedule they put in front of you and go from there.

Q. I know that you're all about winning right now and beating Northwestern and going into the tournament with that. Do you see signs with your team -- have you struggled keeping them in that moment and not looking to next year, not looking to be at the end of it?
FRAN McCAFFERY: It does not appear to me that way, no. They've been engaged in scouting sessions. Scout team has been great, the starting group has been great. The other guys are locked into what we're teaching. The practice has been intense. They've been professional in our game prep, and we've played really well at times. Obviously, you look at the game the other night, we were great for 32 minutes. We were horrible for eight minutes. You have to eliminate that.

Q. Yourself and your staff, is it hard for you guys to not want to just keep that face, the winning face?
FRAN McCAFFERY: You're always doing that, but at the same time, to go back on your question, you're always looking to next year. You're always looking to the year after. You're always looking for where were we headed, so that really doesn't change. You always have your eye on to next year and the year after. That's how you recruit. That's why you recruit sophomores and freshmen, and put pieces together that fit and the pieces together that work for you. But you never immediately jump to next year. You're always going to try to win every game on your schedule now, especially when you still have mathematically a chance to play for a long time.

Q. Do you fight against keeping anything like let's check this guy for next year? Let's see what this guy has for next year? Let's maybe not run the zone and see what we have in defense next year?
FRAN McCAFFERY: I would look at a zone or man or change defenses if it would help us win that game. It wouldn't have to do with, hey, let's see what this looks like for next year, no. If there's a guy you've been trying to get playing time for, you might try to get him a little more playing time. But I've got a group of guys like that. Look at Kriener the other night, he was spectacular. He was out for a long time. He's missed parts of games for ten games because of two concussions. I mean, it's been a rough year for him. So now you're probably seeing what he's capable of doing when he finally feels good.

Q. I don't think we probably ever asked you about Charlie Rose, what kind of things has he brought to your program?
FRAN McCAFFERY: Charlie Rose is a spectacular individual who has been with us for a couple years now. Just wanted an opportunity to play. Tried out for the team, didn't know who he was, but he's really smart and he's pretty good, a pretty good player. As you can imagine, there are people around here like that.

But the key is to find a guy who can play, who is smart, who is intelligent in the classroom, and has the perfect attitude. You don't need any issues on your basketball team with walk-ons. You can't have it. He's the consummate professional in terms of everything he does and his approach. He's on the Dean's list. He shows up, he stays late, he learns the offenses and defenses of our opponents. He's best friends with some of the guys on the team. He's had a wonderful experience, and he's been exactly what you hoped he would be because like I said, we didn't know when he first tried out. We decided to keep him and you figure that out over time. We didn't recruit him, so we didn't get to know him.

Q. Talking about recruiting, do you foresee yourself looking at the junior college market this summer?
FRAN McCAFFERY: We always look at the junior college market. We presently don't have a scholarship, so if somebody were to leave and open one up then potentially, but we haven't done a lot in that area. But we always look at the junior college market. We had great success with Bryce Cartwright, obviously, since I've been here. There have been others before me that had done really well, so that's a possibility.

Q. Jordan didn't get a normal amount of minutes. What weren't you seeing from him? What more do you need from him?
FRAN McCAFFERY: I just wanted him to be aggressive like he usually is. He didn't -- he wasn't as aggressive, but I tell you, he did a great job feeding the post, running the break in the second half. So it really wasn't that I was mad at him or upset with him. I would like to see him be more aggressive. But, again, they're locking into him.

I thought Maishe and Isaiah were playing really well, and that's who I went with down the stretch.

Q. Does it change your tone? Do you look towards that? The way you are, the way you act?
FRAN McCAFFERY: I would say this, throughout the course of the year you're going to change your tone a lot. There are days when, depending upon what happens, whether it be a bad practice or a bad game or bad half, it might be more intense, you might be less intense. You know, okay. You might be more positive one day and another day you're getting up into people a little bit.

But when it's all said and done, the consistency that has to be maintained is there's got to be teaching going on. That's how we are most of the time. So you might see me flip out during the timeout or something like that. That's an isolated incident that happens a couple times. I'm not doing that every day. If you do, you'll lose your team all the time. They'll just turn you off. Say, okay, this guy's crazy, and we're not buying anymore.

So you have to come in and have a plan. Okay, how can I help the team? How can I help Cordell today? How can I help this guy today? It's me and my assistants as well. It's not just me. It's our staff. We're still bringing in guys watching film one-on-one. We watch film as a team. In our film sessions, this is how loud I speak to them, okay? This is good. This is not so good. This is what we have to do. This is what we can't do. We have to do more of this. This is what they're going to try to do to us, so let's make sure we're ready.

These are the counters we're going to have to what we think they're going to do to us. That way, your question earlier about staying engaged, that's how they stay engaged. There is a plan here and we've got to follow that plan.

Q. When you have -- you talked about the postseason evaluation of the program itself. You're going to sit down with the players individually as well.
FRAN McCAFFERY: We do that every year.

Q. How detailed does that get for you? And what are you trying to find in those moments?
FRAN McCAFFERY: Well, the thing that you have to understand is when you're meeting with those guys at the end of the season, it's not like we haven't met regularly before that. It's not like, okay, we're now going to meet finally. What you're going to do is you're going to evaluate the season for them, for us. Okay?

What are some of the things that are concerning to you? What did you struggle with? What makes sense for you? Okay. Then obviously we'll have a plan for skill development in the off-season and a plan moving forward. This is where we see you. This is where we see you playing. These are the positions that we think you can play, so forth. So it will be very detailed.

But it also relates to strength and conditioning. Do we need to get stronger? Do we need to lose weight? We we need to do plyometrics, do we need to do more speed and agility work? Those things will be with consultation from our strength and conditioning people. So when they leave that meeting, they'll say, okay, now I have a clear and concise view of where we're going from here. We can look back, but we've got to look forward too.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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