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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 6, 2012Mark TurgeonMIKE FINN: We're now joined by Maryland head coach Mike Turgeon. Just a brief opening statement and then we'll go to questions. COACH TURGEON: We're playing better. Haven't got a win. Lost both games last week but played well. Obviously, no fun losing. But the guys are playing better, trying hard. Of course, we had two road games this week, so another tough week for us. Looking forward to it. Just got to continue to try to keep getting better. MIKE FINN: Questions for coach. Q. Last week the ACC announced a new scheduling policy for the future. Obviously one of the issues that came up is taking away the Duke/Maryland special relationship, so you might be playing once most years. Your reaction to that? Has it been a negative reaction up there to that policy? COACH TURGEON: Well, I'll be honest with you, I don't pay attention too much. I know that our partner is Pittsburgh. But during the season I don't read, listen or do much. I know in the end, maybe our fans haven't realized it yet, but I know they want to play Duke twice. They also understood when the league changed and we added teams that things were going to change. But the landscape of sports, college athletics, the leagues and stuff, it's the way it's going to be. But, no, I think it's going to be tough. There will be years where we still have them twice. Q. Mark, do you get a sense with your guys that the longer they don't finish some of these games the more they try to do to try to finish it, and they may be trying to do too much to get you over the top against a Carolina, on the road? COACH TURGEON: No, I don't think that's the case yet. We had a lot of close games early in the year. We won those games. But we were better than who we were playing. The game the other day, what we did, we just watched film from the last eight minutes of the Carolina game. Even though we didn't play from the 12‑minute mark down to the 8, that's one of the reasons they got back into the lead. Just the mistakes we made, the things you have to correct to beat really good teams. That's all you can do. I don't think so. I don't think our guys panic. I do think our shot selection at times is not great. Our attention to detail on defense is not great. But it's so much better than it was. You know, it's just not going to change overnight. The progress they've made, really since we lost to Florida State, has been tremendous. It's just no fun. We're losing close games. But I don't think there's any panic among the coaches. To be honest with you, I felt comfortable that we were going to win that game Saturday, even though we were down two or three. I just felt we were going to do what we had to do. We shot a couple bad shots in there, had a couple bad turnovers, then we made three or four really bad defensive mistakes and got whipped on a couple rebounds. You try to learn from them and keep getting better. I don't think we're in that panic mode or trying too hard to get it done. I don't think the kids are that way yet. Q. I'm doing a story on Jonathan Thomas. In terms of what he has brought with preparation and practice, early in the season, not in the rotation now, can you appreciate a guy like that in his role in terms of what he's done to try to help the team improve? COACH TURGEON: Yeah. The kid's been great. Helped us win a couple games early in the year. He was one of those guys that tried out that didn't really know he was going to do it till the day of. Then to have so much thrown at you, to be in the rotation, then to be taken out of it, the way he's handled it. But he makes our practices better. He's a good player. He's a tough guard. He's a smart kid. All those guys have really relished their role. It's part of the reason we look better, our preparation's better. But J.T. has been great. He's a solid, solid kid that puts academics first. He's been able to maintain and done a nice job academically even though he's spending three or four hours here every day. That hasn't been really easy for him but I'm really glad he's part of the team. Q. Mark, Alex Len seems to be making a significant impact on games. Do you see him becoming more and more of a factor as he gets that experience under his belt? COACH TURGEON: Yeah, I hope so. I was really proud of him last week. Played really well at Miami, 11‑7 or 12‑7, then he was 11‑9 against Carolina, was a factor around the rim, able to stay out of foul trouble. Yeah, so, he had to gain a lot of confidence last week. That's what he was lacking. Much more aggressive offensively. Yeah, that's what we need. For us to compete against the Carolinas and teams like that, we need Alex to play well, and he did, and that's why we were in the game till the very end. I was proud of him. It was a good week. We were just talking about it as a staff this morning, hopefully that's the Alex we get this week. You just don't know with young kids. But we're going into the Clemson game hoping to Alex is going to keep giving us those types of minutes and keep improving. Q. He seems to be developing a knack for shot‑blocking. I know he's long. He also has to learn how to do that without fouling, and he seems to be coming around on that. COACH TURGEON: Yeah, I think he's always been a great shot‑blocker. It was just getting used to the speed of the game. It's a different game than what he played overseas, the physicality of it. So it's just getting used to that. But, no, he had four, then three the last two games. He's a tremendous shot‑blocker. He has tremendous timing on that. He's good on the ball and good coming off the ball to block shots. The off‑the‑ball one, determining when he should go for it, when he shouldn't. If he actually has a chance to block it or if he has no chance. That's what we're working on right now. But, no, he was born that way, has worked at it, and should continue to be a good shot‑blocker for us. Q. I'm doing a follow‑up on UM's win yesterday over Duke. Having just played them, did that win surprise you at all? Having just played them, do you think they're coming together at this point in the season? COACH TURGEON: Well, we played them without Kadji. With him they're a heck of a team. I just remember watching film. I hadn't watched Miami a lot. Watching film preparing for Miami last week, I just couldn't believe how talented they were. They were just across the board really good players. Scott is a heck of a player, Grant, Kadji, Jackson. They just got really good players. The guys coming off the bench, Kenny Smith, I might be screwing up names, I apologize if I am, but Jones, they're all good players and good shooters. Jim's teams always play with great confidence. Does it surprise me they won at Duke? A little bit. But they do have some upperclassmen that have been through some things. They were able to hang on. A lot of teams wouldn't hang on and get it done. They were able to do that. I think they're getting hot at the right time. They're getting healthy at the right time. They have depth now, which they didn't have earlier in the year. They can make a nice little run here late in the season. MIKE FINN: Coach, thanks for being with us. Good luck this week and we'll talk to you next Monday. COACH TURGEON: I appreciate it. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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