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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 27, 2012Jeff BzdelikCOACH BZDELIK: Coach, it would seem that C.J. Harris has had one tremendously consistently good season for you look at his stats and he's had one game out of double figures. What's it been like from your viewpoint watching him play? COACH BZDELIK: First of all, C.J. Harris, you're right, has had a very quiet, terrific year. A very consistent, great approach to the game in terms of he always seems calm and cool and collected. Yet he absolutely loves the game. He is a gym rat. Always in the gym working on his game, handling the ball, shooting the ball. He just loves to play. It's reflective of the way he's improved. He's very athletic. In the last game against Boston College he even surprised me. He came down the court to the left side and dunked the ball with his left‑hand. Just really surprised everybody, including myself. Just like the way he's approached his game, he's quietly, extremely athletic. He's very cerebral, very skilled. Last year it might have helped him last year playing the point guard because it improved his ball handling. It improved and expanded his game as well. So, yeah, he's been a great leader in many, many ways. Q. The other part to the question was how have his leadership abilities shown in that he's a fairly quiet personality, but it would seem he's the kind that the players really listen to? COACH BZDELIK: They do. If you were to poll our players and ask them who they trust the most, C.J. would get 90% plus of the votes. He really would. He quietly is a great leader. He leads by example. They trust him. They look up to him. He leads not only on the court, but off the court in terms of the way he approaches his daily life here at Wake Forest. When he speaks, they listen, because he doesn't speak all that often. That's something we've had to get him to do is to speak more. He wants to be liked, so he's afraid sometimes to tell people what they want to hear‑‑ what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. But he's gotten beyond that now. We obviously look up to him in a lot of ways. Q. Coach K was talking to us and talking about his efforts to get the inside game going again. It seemed when they played you the first time, Ty Walker and Desrosiers did a really good job preventing the Plumlee's from finishing in the lane. Can you address that? Is that a focus or something you can do again? COACH BZDELIK: Well, you know Carson and Ty are very long. What we've worked very hard to get them both to do is do their work early and not allow deep low post catches. You know, that's half of it. If you can get your opponent to catch the ball outside the lane and then do a great job of getting low, back straight and from a post line defensive standpoint hold your ground. Do not allow your opponent to win the second bump and to take long steps against their second moves and wall them up and make them shoot over the top of you. That's how you defend in the post. Now we work on that every day with Ty and Carson, and they've gotten better at it. So that's a big key for us. If we can do that, then we don't have to compromise our defense by doubling down and digging off their great three‑point shooters. Not only them, but anybody else that we play. It all starts in the post. Not allowing that ball to be caught deep and doing a great job of blowing up your opponents and not giving them angles to the rim. That's a big key against any opponent. Q. At the same time, Ryan Kelly is a guy that's giving you guys trouble earlier this year. It seemed like last year. Is he a particularly tough match‑up in some ways? Ryan Kelly? COACH BZDELIK: Ryan Kelly is not just for us, but for anybody. He's so skilled. He shoots it so well. He stretches the defense. He can take smaller guys into the post and overpower them. He's very clever with his handoffs. He really is a guy who just kind of ties up all the loose ends for them with their great spacing. No question about it. Of course, last year when we played him, I think he was involved in 10 for 10 for us, I believe, during that stretch when he hit 16 or 17 straight. I can't remember exactly what it was. But, yeah, he's a handful. We're going to try to do some things defensively tomorrow night to hopefully offset his great advantage that he can do. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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