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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEJanuary 30, 2012Mark TurgeonMARK TURGEON: It's good to get a win. We had lost three straight, played three good teams, Florida State at Florida State, Temple at Temple and then Duke at home. Played well in two and a half of those games and came up short. It was nice to get a win against Virginia Tech. I think it lifted everybody's spirits. The thing is we've continued to get better during this stretch, which is fun for the coach. But we're looking forward to going to Miami, coming off a big road win, and they're really talented and have good players. Obviously Jim is an excellent coach. We need to be a better road team, so hopefully we can go down to Miami and play better on the road than we have so far this year. Q. I was looking at Terrell Stoglin's bio in the media guide. He listed Texas A&M as one of his final choices. How hard did you recruit him there? What did you see in him as a high school player? MARK TURGEON: Well, I watched him. We didn't recruit him that hard. One of my assistants knew people around him and recruited him. But I liked him and just wasn't exactly what we were looking for, so we kind of went a different direction on him. I thought he was a kid that was good with the ball, exactly what he is. He's actually a lot better in college than I thought he could be. He was kind of a pudgy, little bit overweight kid coming out of high school, and he's redefined his body and got rid of a lot of body fat. I knew he could score but I didn't know if he could score this much at this level, so he's been a lot better than I anticipated when I watched him in high school. Q. When you began to evaluate your players and see them in practice and took at tape from last year, did you see evidence that he could become a big‑time scorer? MARK TURGEON: Yeah, I didn't watch a lot of tape from last year. I don't ever do that when I take a job. I just try to coach the guys. First couple days of practice, not individual work, I realized that he could really score and he could do some great things with the ball. My whole thing was just trying to make him a complete player and still today that is what I'm trying to do. There's not many kids out there that just are natural scorers. There's guys that can play hard and set screens and rebound, defend, but there's very few guys that can put that ball in the basket night in and night out, and he's one of them, so he's pretty special when it comes to that. I'm proud of Terrell because he's trying to guard. He's really goat ten better defensively, he's become a better teammate. He's still got a ways to go, but he's trying to do the right things. Q. I know I've asked you this before, but what can you do, what's in a coach's control, I guess, to make a team better on the road? What are your points of emphasis? MARK TURGEON: Oh, it's a simple formula. You've got to be able to defend and rebound, and that's really, really important. You can't give up 81 points a game or 81 and a half on the road. I don't know what it is. After the Temple game it went down a little bit. But in the league it's that. And then I think you've got to be able to execute and play with poise on the road because it's always going to be a couple, two, three times during the game where the crowd gets into it and it's tough and you've got to be able to execute at a high level, and those are things we don't do great. We don't defend and rebound great. Now, we're getting better and we're starting to show signs, and we don't really execute at a high level yet, and we're getting better, but we have played with poise when we needed to. When you start doing those four things at a high level, then you give yourself a chance to win on the road. It's never easy, but you still give yourself a chance. And then team has just got to keep getting better. We'll get more comfortable on the road as you can tell as it goes on, but we've just got to keep getting better. That's really the key. Q. I'm sure that it's a little bit of a concern that Terrell has had some foul line issues over the last couple games. Just how much is that an issue to you at this point, and maybe in a larger sense, what happens when you have a guy that scores like he does and will handle the ball as much as he does and then goes through one of those brief hiccup periods from your perspective as a coach? MARK TURGEON: I'm not worried at all about it. You know, it's a concentration thing with Terrell. I think in the Duke game he was frustrated because he wasn't scoring, and the game was really out of touch when he missed those free throws. It would have made the score look better at the end. He missed the front end of a one and one in the first half that probably hurt us more than anything. Could have been a one‑point game at the half. I think he loses concentration. He made the two the other day that he had to make, hit nothing but the bottom. So I don't worry about him. The kid has got guts. You know, I worry more about the other things that I'm trying to get him to do, and he's come a long ways. Just got to‑‑ just got to keep doing it and keep getting better, but I thought he defended just about as well as he's defended since he's been here on Saturday, which is a step in the right direction. Q. Can you update us on Alex Len's condition? Since the sprained ankle he's played, but has it bothered him or is he full health? MARK TURGEON: Yeah, I think he's healthy. I don't ask to be honest with you. As long as he's able to practice and play in the game, I don't know if it's 80, 90; I don't ask him. He just hasn't played well, just really hasn't gotten into a groove, hasn't felt comfortable out there, but still does nice things for us when he's out there. He defends the rim, rebounds pretty well, and I'm just kind of hoping he gets relaxed and starts to play better. He's gotten in foul trouble every game, which hasn't helped him, and it's just a maturation process. It's a more physical game than what he's used to, and once he gets used to that, and it might be a year from now before he gets used to it. I'm hoping it's Wednesday at Miami. We need him. For us to have a chance to win some games down the road, we need Alex to step up and play better for us, especially the way James Padgett is playing and Pankey, that gives you a really good three‑man rotation at the post. We've been able to slide Sean to the four some. But that would help. I think he's 100 percent or close to it. It's more of a confidence thing and feeling comfortable thing than anything else. Q. Just looking at you guys from afar and not being close to the situation, it looks like you're having a hard time getting Pankey and Len playing well at the same time. One of them is usually playing well and the other not and now Pankey has played a couple good games as Alex has struggled a little bit. MARK TURGEON: Yeah, I think that's immaturity. I think when you've got two freshmen, one is a red shirt freshmen, but they need minutes, they need touches, they need things to go well for them to play well. If one is playing well and the other is not, we're going to play the other one more. That's part of inexperience, youth of a team, and guys when they're young and they don't play well early, sometimes they don't bounce back. As guys get older, they have one bad rotation, they don't play well, they play better the next rotation. I think it's inexperience and youth more than anything, but if we get all three of those guys playing well, we've got five weeks and ten games, we keep telling them, hey, it's time for these young kids to grow up, that would really help us. The thing that's hurt Alex the most, he missed practice the first four or five weeks of the season, missed all that, and then he missed ten games. Then you get thrown into the ACC, and when you're not a great team, every possession matters to us. You can't allow him to play through mistakes. Early in the year guys were allowed to play through mistakes. He missed such a vital part of the year for being new, it's really catching up with us now. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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