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INDIANA UNIVERSITY BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 15, 2019Race ThompsonJoey BrunkBloomington, Indiana Q. Race, Coach talked about you bringing a lift with your energy and your effort. How mindful have you been of that in terms of coming to games off the bench and kind of trying to bring that on a game-to-game basis? RACE THOMPSON: Pretty much just trying to do anything to help the team win a game. That's something I've always done throughout my whole life. So just trying to have fun with that. It's not all about scoring, not all about the highlights and stuff. You've got to do the little things to help the team win the game. Q. Coach kind of talked about the effort in practice has been a high, but he's trying to stress more of the attention to detail. How have you guys started to kind of address that after the first two games of the season? JOEY BRUNK: I think with the start of the year it's obviously like a learning process because we're trying to see what we need to get better at. When you get out there it's obviously a lot different; the practices are a lot different than open gym from the summer. Just want to take that day by day and see what we want to get better at after the game and kind of build on it and hopefully look like a different team in a month from now. Q. The redshirt play has been noticed by a lot of people, especially after what you had to go through last year. You look like you're having a lot of fun on the court in addition to playing well. That's got to be good for you. RACE THOMPSON: Yeah, it's a lot of fun to finally be able to be on the court with my teammates, feeling good, being healthy. So I mean, yeah, just being exciting out there is a lot of fun. Q. Joe, when you look at this team, you've been around for a while, what makes it potentially an NCAA Tournament team or what's really strong about your personality do you think? JOEY BRUNK: I think we have a depth to our team. I think that would make it maybe kind of hard to game plan because there's so many different guys that have the potential to hurt you and have a big effect on the game. So I think that's definitely something that's going to play to our advantage. I mean, college basketball is a long season, and the deeper we are, the better we are, the stronger we are. Q. For either of you guys, Coach mentioned that Troy is able to shoot the three ball from all five spots on the court. As big men, how do you close out better and what are the challenges that come when a team can shoot the three ball from the positions you guys currently have to cover? JOEY BRUNK: I mean, we drilled it yesterday in practice and I'm sure it'll be a point of emphasis today and just making sure we're aware of where they're at on the floor, and you don't want to get too spread out and we want to stay solid in our principles regardless of who we're playing and how they play. Q. Coach has talked a lot about the different lineups you guys have put together. In practice do you go through a ton of playing with different players that maybe you haven't played so much with in the past or even in the first couple games? RACE THOMPSON: Yeah, we switch it up about every week so bigs will switch up teams, guards will switch up teams so you're pretty much playing with everybody week to week, so it's always different every week, so yeah, we work with it here all the time. Q. Joey, coach has talked about needing to improve the defense. When you go back and look at the film, what jumps out to you that you need to do defensively and is it more physical or is it more communication type things you guy need to do? JOEY BRUNK: I think it lot of it comes down to just little details that kind of need to be worked out, whether that's our positioning or with the ball screen or making sure we're in the right spots for our help. I think as the year guys, that's going to be something that continues to improve. You get more reps at it, and week to week if you think you have five or six more practices, you're going to get better and you multiply that by a month you're going to make that jump as time goes, just with reps. Q. Race, Coach has described you a few times as a banger. Your physical mindset, where does that come from? Has that always been kind of innate throughout your high school or college career? RACE THOMPSON: I'm not afraid of contact. I've never been afraid of contact. I group up playing football, my dad played football so it's kind of in my blood. Just physical mindset. I like it, I don't mind doing it. Some people don't like it, and it can change the way the game goes, so I just try to mix it up a little bit. Q. What position in football did you play? RACE THOMPSON: I played wide receiver and quarterback. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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