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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEJanuary 23, 2012Brad BrownellBRAD BROWNELL: Well, our guys had three games in six days last week, so capped off with a nice home win against Georgia Tech and certainly glad that we have a week to get ready for Wake. Our guys need to take a couple days off here and just kind of lick our wounds from the midpoint of the season and try to get ourselves 100 percent physically and mentally ready to play. Q. You say you have a week off. Is there any specific area that you'll use this week to try to improve the team? BRAD BROWNELL: Well, what we'll do a little bit is try to do some individual skill work with guys and try to get up some more shots and work on a few of the things fundamentally that maybe you don't get as much time for when you play three games in a week. All you're doing is prepping for the next game, and sometimes you're not getting up as many shots as you need to, and so we'll try to do some things with that. We'll do some things with tape with bringing guys in and watching film with coaches and trying to show some things from several games that we think can help us on both ends of the court. But try to spend some one‑on‑one time with the kids, especially early in the week. And then as you start getting to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, obviously then gearing more into Wake Forest. But here early on just trying to do a little bit more fundamental things, shooting and evaluation of tape. Q. I know you're looking forward to the week off, but does a guy like Andre who's coming off a great shooting game, is he ready to get out on the court again tomorrow? BRAD BROWNELL: I don't know, he's probably pretty tired. We had a hard week last week. We had some travel in there. You know, we grinded as a team pretty hard in terms of practicing. Our guys spent a lot of energy in that Georgia Tech game. So even though he had a tremendous performance, I'm sure he's glad to‑‑ I know he was glad to have yesterday off and to kind of slowly work his way back into this week. I think it's been a long haul for these guys in basketball. Those guys really start as soon as school starts, so they've been going somewhat since August, and you certainly have some time at the beginning of the year and then maybe a break‑‑ short break at Christmas. But we didn't even get much of a break at Christmas because we were over in Hawai'i. Our guys have been grinding for a long time and really need a couple days here to just kind of lick our wounds and kind of get reenergized to play again. Q. You had that power delay against Georgia Tech. How do you keep your players ready to play because of the uncertainty of when you're going to play again in a situation like that? BRAD BROWNELL: Well, it's hard. The one thing, the officials did a good job from the standpoint of they got with our people and they found out rather quickly‑‑ as soon as they found some information out, it would be about 15 more minutes and made a decision that we were going to‑‑ as soon as we thought the lights would be about full steam that we would put the guys on the court and let them have five minutes to warm back up. So there was at least a plan in place while we were all waiting for the lights to kind of get going again. We used it as a time as a staff to just kind of get together and talk about some things. We'd been playing extremely well defensively up to that point, and really offensively maybe needed to make a few adjustments and try to make some shots. We weren't turning the ball over, we just weren't making very many shots. But it was hard, you're just kind of getting out there in front of everybody. You don't want to be on top of your kids so much that it's like a halftime because you're getting ready to do it again in five or six minutes, but at the same time you want to bring them in and just give them one or two things, hey, let's finish the half the right way doing these one or two things, and that's what we did. Q. Andre seemed to get hot right after you resumed play. I mean, did he plug himself in somewhere? BRAD BROWNELL: No, you know what, we did a better job screening for him and found him‑‑ Devin Booker set a couple really good screens for him and got him a couple shots. He just kind of got on a little bit of a roll. We got a transition situation where we played some good defense and got a transition steal and he found an opening in transition and we got him a three there. It was just a culmination of good play. We really played extremely well for that 5:50 or whatever it was, the remainder of the half, and that really helped us kind of get going. Certainly it was great to see. Andre has been working really hard this year. He's had some games that haven't really gone very well for him in terms of his shooting. But he was certainly due for a night like Saturday, and we felt like one of those was coming. Just glad it came against Georgia Tech. Q. I know it's looking ahead to the weekend, but obviously the next game with Wake, can you talk about the impact Ty Walker has had on them when you look at them on film and how he's changed them since he joined the team a couple weeks ago? BRAD BROWNELL: Well, you know, I've known Ty since he was a freshman or sophomore in high school because I was the head coach at UNC Wilmington at the time. So I went to at least one of his games, if not two of his‑‑ I think I went to a couple of his games maybe when he was a sophomore, and he was still trying to figure it out then. He was a big tall kid that was lanky that could block some shots but was still really learning how to play basketball. I think I left maybe after that season ‑ I'm pretty sure it was that season ‑ and went to Wright State. So I know Ty; I know his game. He's really evolved and gotten much stronger. He's a very good defensive presence around the basket, and I think sometimes that's not given as much importance as some people think. I know we miss it a little bit this year with Jaray. I think Jaray did some things and blocking shots and protecting our basket defensively that I know we miss this year, and Ty certainly does a good job of that for Wake, and it just allows you to do some other things defensively. It allows guys to be a little more aggressive. When guys make mistakes and you've got a shot blocker in there like Ty Walker, it makes up for a lot of things. And it really is hard to measure how many baskets a game a guy like Ty Walker can affect because it's not just the three blocks or four blocks that he gets in the game, it's the other times that he comes over and rotates and alters a shot or stops a guy who doesn't even shoot because he sees a guy of that size coming. So it's not easy to play against, believe me, and it's a great value to have a player like Ty Walker. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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