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UNIVERSITY OF IOWA BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 29, 2011Lisa BluderCOACH BLUDER: Well, my message to the team was that everything's new. It's a brand‑new season. It doesn't matter if you're 10‑3 or 3‑10 coming into this basketball game. Everybody's 0‑0. Everybody starts the season all over. The statistics that happened before really don't matter. At the end of the season when we're looking at statistics, we look at Big Ten statistics because who knows the type of competition you're playing against in the non‑conference season. To right now in my mind everybody's 0‑0. To us, I think that's exactly what we needed right now. We need a new beginning, a new opportunity, and I think the players are really fired up to play against Northwestern on Friday night. Q. Did you guys get back Tuesday? COACH BLUDER: What is today? We got back on the 27th, which was Tuesday, yes. Q. What was the focus then in practice leading up to that? COACH BLUDER: Again, we're trying to‑‑ we did a lot of up‑and‑down scrimmaging trying to get our legs back underneath us again. But at the same time we're still trying to continue to develop the fundamentals, so it's not like one thing that we're really focusing on. We're really trying to focus on all the fundamentals of our offense and defense, and spending time on the chalk board before every practice, taking one subject area to go through and really trying to isolate that. Again, maybe in the preseason I rushed through things with such a young team on some of the fundamentals. So we're trying to go back and redo that part of our season where now we don't have any time constraints. So we can practice as long as we want, basically. So we can spend an hour in a meeting really talking about a subject, a defensive subject or an offensive subject and showing them film. We're not rushing off to classes or taking tests or things like that. It's a more calm learning environment, and I think that's been good for our team. But I will tell you, they're excited. They're excited to be back and they're playing with a little more fire than they saw at the end of the non‑conference season. I think they're ready for the Big Ten. Q. Given the amount of practices and extra practice you guys had, the fact that you had four starters back, did you just kind of assume that some of the stuff would be there rather than having to reinstill it now? COACH BLUDER: Yeah, I think that's a mistake that I made. I thought with four starters returning that we could go through things a little quicker than we had, but it was a mistake. Obviously, I forgot the aspect of we had 11 healthy players and really six of them were freshmen. I was looking at maybe the glass half full that we had four returners. But we had to remember the part that we had this other group that were going to be important to our success that we had to bring along, and I probably rushed them along too much. I needed to bring it along a little slower, and again, that's my fault so we're trying to make amends for that right now. Q. Samantha never shot a lot of threes in high school, but she seems to be hitting them. Has she been working on that? COACH BLUDER: Absolutely. We work on threes every single day. We shoot threes every single day. You know, that's a big part of our identity. So, yeah, we knew Samantha was not a three‑point shooter coming in here, but she's worked her way up to 37, 38% shooting from three‑point range right now, which I think is very good. But four games ago she wasn't doing so well. So we talk about that. We talk about who is shooting well, and finding your shooters. I'm just really proud of her, because she's worked her way up to being what we call a green light shooter. Q. Theairra, she came in here so highly hyped. Has she lived up to what you thought she would? COACH BLUDER: That's a tough one. I think everybody had such high expectations for a kid that's an All American I think she's done a great job. Here she is coming in as a starter. That is tough for any freshman to come in as a starter. Then now we're asking her to play the point guard, one of the most difficult positions to play on the floor. We're asking her to learn a totally different type of style of offense than she's ever played before. So we've really had some high expectations for her and high demands for her. I think she's done a really good job. I think she's done a very good job of handling some criticism when it's come her way. But also keep she's got a competitiveness and a fire that I love. She plays with a chip on her shoulder where she's got a little bit of an ax to grind, and I like that. Q. You've got champions on the court with her, that's got to take pressure off, because they're such great passers too? COACH BLUDER: That helps. That definitely helps having two veterans by your side. Q. You start the Big Ten season coming in 7‑5. You really have to play well at home, starting with Friday's game? COACH BLUDER: Right. 8‑5. I think we are. But, you know, yes, we have to hold court at home. Absolutely. If you want to be successful in the Big Ten, you win your home games. So this is an opportunity for us to start with a home court game. Q. Talk about Trisha being hurt? Did that make Kathryn step up a little more? She seems to be playing with good confidence lately? COACH BLUDER: You know, Trisha being out, I feel so bad for this kid. How many things is she going to have to endure and she keeps doing it for us. Whatever we ask her to do, whatever surgery or treatments we ask her to do, she does them, she stays positive. I'm just glad to see that she's working her way back into the flow of things right now. It's going to take a while for her to get her conditioning and timing at the point guard and stuff. But she's fighting. I just appreciate her positive attitude so very much. Q. You've got a girl that's probably playing through pain every day and she's thriving? COACH BLUDER: She is. Morgan's playing extremely well. She's shooting the ball well, she's blocking shots, she's rebounding better for us than she has in the past. She's running the floor hard. And you're right. The kid is in pain. If you see her in practice every day, it really gets to you because you hate to see your kids in pain. She has to remove herself from some of the drills, and we want her to. We want her to be smart and do the things that going to really help her, and the things that aren't going to help her as much, that's a good time to take a break and try to save those knees a little bit. Q. She's trying to pick up extra fouls and she's pretty smart. I don't know, I haven't watched every game, but. COACH BLUDER: Fouls are‑‑ she's contesting shots. I want her to contest shots. She's a shot blocker, but she has to be smart. She's picking up in my mind too many fouls 90 feet from the basket. She doesn't get the rebound in contesting an outlet, trying to go in and tie up the ball. Those kind of fouls we can't afford Morgan to get. She got one last game for holding a jersey. I watched the film, I don't see it. It was called. It was her fifth foul. Those are tough. No, you can't hold a jersey, but it's hard when you‑‑ so in my mind she's got to really be smart. Her fouls need to be blocking shots, contesting shots. They don't need to be because she's grabbing somebody or impeding somebody from moving, or, again, trying to tie up a ball 90 feet from the basket. I don't want her to pick up those kind of fouls. Q. How does the Big Ten look now compared to when you guys went to Chicago or wherever it was for media day? Does it still look like Penn State, Purdue? You guys had a great start. COACH BLUDER: I am really not very good at looking at the big picture when it comes to the Big Ten right now. Really I haven't seen Ohio State play all year. I know they're 13‑0. In my mind, them being 13‑0 is one of the bigger surprises, I think, of the conference. Probably Michigan State at 8‑5 is another one. Some people may say us being 8‑5 is another one. I know we have four teams ranked in the top 25. Northwestern's at 35th in the country. So five teams ranked in the top 35, to me, that's pretty good. That's a really competitive conference. But I really haven't looked at even who anybody has played. It they're putting up a lot of points, if they're defending well. I just haven't. I'm not a very good person at looking at the whole picture of the Big Ten Conference and kind of evaluating where we are right now. Obviously, Nebraska coming in and ranked in the top 23rd right now, that's been a good ad for our conference. It's made it more difficult. We have two games against them this year. Q. How have your‑‑ studying them, how different is it this year without Jaskey at Northwestern? COACH BLUDER:  I think they miss Jaskey, but they have a lot of height. They are a big basketball team. Their center is 6'5", their power forward is 6'4", their wing is 6'1", and then they go 5'10", 5'10", so this is a big group. They have a 6'5" kid that comes off the bench as well. So I'm interesting to see what is really going on with Diamant, because she did only play 7 minutes in the last game. She left the game, and we understand she left on crutches, but there is nothing being said about it. So we don't know what's going on with that situation. We don't know if she'll be playing tomorrow or be hobbled tomorrow. I would say that would be a big loss for them if they don't have her at full speed. But at the same time, they've got a tremendous freshman. We think we have a tremendous freshman in Sam Logic, but Morgan Jones is‑‑ excuse me, I said that wrong. Morgan Jones is a very, very good freshman. She is a scorer. She has long range like Jaime. She's probably not as good as Jaime off the dribble right now, but she is a good player that we are going to have to really contend with. So another really good freshman coming into the league in Morgan Jones. Q. How about Virginia? Is she getting the green light yet? COACH BLUDER: No, she still doesn't have the green light. It's frustrating and one of those things with a concussion that everybody kind of‑‑ it's like walking on glass. Everybody's very careful. Nobody wants to push too hard at this point. She has not been in a practice since this was diagnosed. She watched one practice and had a setback and has been not even to watch film, hasn't even been able to do that. That was on the Monday before the Drake game, so the 21st. Q. Is her case something where she can't even have stimulation? COACH BLUDER: Right, exactly. Q. So how long does that take do you think to get better or is it something you're going to have to watch out for? COACH BLUDER: I don't think so, but because it is a reoccurring one, that's what they worry about. If it would happen to her again, it's going to probably be even longer. Yeah, can you imagine an 18‑year‑old kid sitting at home for two weeks and not watching a TV or looking at a computer screen? That's almost unheard of and almost torture today. That's what they're expecting her to do and not be involved at all. I saw her today. She looks fine. She had the flu over Christmas as well, but she's recovered from that and hopefully we'll get back Virginia. But she's missing a lot of basketball right now and a lot of learning, and that's just really too bad. Lot of repetition that's she's missed. Q. So is she just in the locker room? COACH BLUDER: No, she's not even in the building. No, that's probably her sister, and she manages for us, and they look very much alike. Q. Defensively is there anything to do or just iron out the same stuff that you guys have been doing? COACH BLUDER: We're trying to iron out the same stuff we've been doing. We are not changing our philosophy or anything like that. We're just trying to get better at what we do and what we think we feel good about our system and trying to remind them what that system is and how to play that. Q. Have you enjoyed the new flex zone you have? COACH BLUDER: I think defensively. We've spent a lot of time working on that and, you know, it may not have been as productive as I like, but our kids enjoy playing it. They enjoy kind of the craziness that comes with it. Q. What do you call that? COACH BLUDER: We call it 22, but that's just our code name for it. But somebody told me I look like Richard Nixon when I'm calling it, so I'm thinking about changing it. I'm not sure. Q. It's a 2‑2? COACH BLUDER: It's kind of an extended 2‑3 is what it is. We're trying to really play passing lanes and that sort of thing. Make it different from our normal zone defense. We still have our normal 2‑3, pack it in, zone defense. We wanted a third look. We wanted our normal 2‑3, and we wanted a third look that maybe people don't see as often. So we spent a lot of time working on it. I don't know if we'll see the benefits this year. I hope so. But it's one of those things that you may have to commit to for the long run in order to get a lot of benefits out of it. Q. How close is Theairra to having that look that you know she's ready? COACH BLUDER: I wish there was a gauge that I could look at and see where she is on that gauge. You know, she's not still the player that we saw when she first came here. We see glimpses of it, but on a consistent basis, no. I really hope for her sake and for our sake that she comes back to the player that she is. Again, I think it's really not been that far over a year. They say it takes a year. So now we're into that next year, so hopefully now we'll start to see improvements in that. Again, to me, it's a confidence issue more than anything else. Wearing that knee brace can't be fun. She clicks all the time and sounds like a tin man half the time. That's not a lot of fun. It's a reminder. Every time she walks it's a reminder that she's wearing a brace and she had that happen to her. There is another kid that, like Trisha, I admire her so much because the other day I met with her and said, Theairra, you do not have to come back. I'm going to give you a scholarship whether you play or you don't play. Without hesitation, I want to play. I want to play again. And I admire that. So she's not playing for the money. She's not playing for the scholarship. She's playing because she wants to play the game she loves and she wants to be a part of this team. I have so much respect for that. Q. Do you have confidence in your half court through quarter court full court presses? Would you like to use them more or less? COACH BLUDER: We haven't done a whole lot of full court. Though we've done it Bradley and we did a pretty good job with it. So we haven't done a whole lot of full court yet, and again, it depends a lot on the team too. Are they breaking it effectively? How savvy are their guards and such? My philosophy is they want to build a really good quarter court and once I feel good, now I extend it and only use full quarter press for surprise and change the complexion of the game and you're behind and need something to change and using your full court press for that and not spending hours in practice working on that. I'd rather spend it in the quarter court. Obviously, we still need to get better in our quarter court defense. But the way we put on our half court press, you've seen us. We're doing it almost every game. Some games more than others, and again, it depends. We chart. Abby Emmert that is one of her responsibilities. Every possession she charts our defense's success. So I can look at her at every time out. I look at her in the halftime. You're this percentage in player, you're this percentage in your zone, you're this percentage in your press. So we want to know statistically what's working best, because sometimes you think you get one steal and you think it's the greatest thing ever, but you've given up a couple of easy buckets. So, we try to chart that and make wise decisions using statistics during the game. Q. So statistically speaking, that is best? COACH BLUDER: It changes game by game. That's to be expected. Opponent by opponent, people have different strengths. But statistically I think overall in the past 13 games, our player defense has been a little bit better. Q. When you talk to some of the coaches, would Carver be considered a good shooting gym? COACH BLUDER: I don't ask other coaches how they feel about coming to our gym. I don't. Q. There are a couple of teams that have shot well. Do players say that it's better than Purdue or better than Michigan State? COACH BLUDER: Every team would love to play at home. You're used to the lighting. You get the fans behind you. You're used to the floor. You've kind of got your spot on the floor that you love and stuff like that. But I think also players have gone to different places and done well and they like going back to that place and have a good feeling about that particular gym. I think other people coming here and shooting well against us is probably a problem of our defense more than that Carver's a magical place to shoot. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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