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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 27, 2012Steve DonahueSTEVE DONAHUE: Tough week, Duke at home and then at Wake. I thought just from the start we just didn't have our legs, didn't play sharp, and in particular I give Wake credit. I thought they really came out with great energy and played really good offense most of the game and had us on our heels. Q. I saw that Patrick Heckmann got into the game Saturday. How is he recovering? Obviously he's recovered well enough to play, but what's his conditioning like, and how much do you expect him to be able to contribute these last few games of the season? STEVE DONAHUE: Yeah, I don't think his conditioning level is very good. We basically worked him out individually for three days, and he practiced Thursday and Friday. I thought we'd give him like two minutes here, two minutes there for the rest of the season. I don't know if we're going to get much more out of him. He's very rusty. When you have mono, it's not like you can even shoot the ball. They don't let you do anything physical, so he didn't really do anything for almost a month. Going to be hard to get him more than that, so we'll just work with it. Q. Is there value in him getting a few spot minutes here and there at least? STEVE DONAHUE: Well, I think so, Bill. I'd like him to just‑‑ I wanted to see him sit and then take and learn and then try to go out there before the season ends and try to learn from that. He did not play well on Saturday, and I think that's really difficult with all the rust and just being a young kid having not really had great success at this level yet, and I think it's a very difficult situation for him to have success. But yeah, I want him to get in there, I want to see if we can learn and do any kind of teaching points that you can do. I think it's beneficial for Patrick in the long run. So we'll try to do that in spots over the next couple games. Q. When you lost that heartbreaker to Virginia Tech, that was the fifth really competitive close, tough game y'all have played in a row. Since then you've had three games where you weren't competitive. I just wonder, was there an emotional kind of carryover or setback because of how you lost that game? STEVE DONAHUE: You know, at the time I did not think so. I thought we were really doing well and steamrolling ahead and feeling good about ourselves, and I agree with you. We had a stretch of that I think almost every game after the NC State game. We played Wake here, and it was a hard game, and every other game was basically tied with five minutes to go. We'd lose a couple tight ones, NC State, Georgia Tech, and then Florida State, and obviously we had the game won at Virginia Tech and let it get away, and since then the last three have not played well. I'm trying to judge, with so many young guys, I don't know if they've hit the wall physically, mentally, but our quality of play is obviously decreased, and we're trying to get it going and make a good run here at the end.  The guys want to do it. We've got to figure out the best ways to prepare ourselves again and make it a good run here at the end. But I didn't feel that at the time, but obviously when you look at the games, you have a sense that maybe the guys, just for whatever reason, have really hit a wall. Q. You mentioned you didn't think you had your legs against Wake. Is that a situation where you cut back on the work in practice or do you have to work them harder? STEVE DONAHUE: You know, I think it depends on your team. With my older teams, when I had Cornell teams, I could go really hard if I knew I had five or six days and get better. I could go ‑‑ in the Ivies, you went Friday and Saturday. I could go Mondays and really make that a competitive day and go long and really get the guys going. With this group, we gave them two days‑‑ we had an off week, so we gave them two days off, and they came back Wednesday, and to be quite honest with you, it was one of our worst practices of the year. And I told the guys that. There's just not‑‑ they're not understanding it mentally, physically how hard this grind can be. You've got to be ready to go. You know, so I don't know if we can push these guys any more than we are. Our strength and conditioning coach has got a plan, as well, and we're monitoring weight, what they're eating and sleep and all that for kids. But the reality of it is these guys have never gone through this. Most of these guys never played college basketball before, and this is all really, really new, and we're trying to just navigate our way through the end here and try to really make a good run at the end. Q. Sometimes in this league when you get to the second half of the conference play, sometimes you tend to hit a wall. But right now looking at it, Anderson and Jackson have basically elevated their games. What do you attribute that to, playing time, or is it just more confidence what they're able to do on the floor? STEVE DONAHUE: You know, I think what we're trying to do all the time with all these young guys is trying to evaluate who's going to be your real foundation going forward, and those are the things that I'm looking at, and I agree with you on all three of those guys. I think they've established themselves as solid ACC players at an early part of their career that I think we can expect great things. The rest of my evaluation is we've got to continue to evaluate these guys and add pieces to what we need in the future. There's no real answer to that. That's the hard part of trying to figure out what guys are going to help you and when you go evaluate them and who can maintain their toughness and their execution on both sides of the ball in a long season, and that's what we're trying to figure out. Is it youth or is it inexperience, or is it just like, hey, they're giving all they've got, that's all they've got in the tank. But just look at the positive: I'm really happy with all these guys for the most part. Those three in particular have proven to me that they can be really good ACC players and going forward they're going to be a foundation that we have. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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