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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEJanuary 7, 2013Steve DonahueBRIAN MORRISON: We have Boston College head coach Steve Donahue. Coach, if you could, a few comments about your team and then we'll open it up for questions. COACH DONAHUE: Well, I thought over the last month, month and a half, since our trip to Charleston, I thought the team has played much better basketball. The younger guys, our two guards, have helped us greatly. I think just all of them coming of age a little bit, becoming a better basketball team. I think that's what you saw. We played a very good NC State team. I thought we played well, had our chances to win, but didn't make the plays you had to at the end. In particular, shoot fouls. Very pleased with our development of our youth. Going to try to keep getting better every day. BRIAN MORRISON: We'll open it up for questions. Q. As you look at Virginia Tech, they have gotten a lot of scoring out of Erick Green, not much else from their supporting cast. What do you see from the dynamic of them? COACH DONAHUE: I think obviously Erick has had an incredible start to his season. Not only does he score, but he has almost twice as many assists as anybody else. He shoots at a very good percentage. He gets to the foul line more than twice as much as anybody else. That's a handful there when you have a guy doing that much. But I think Jarell Eddie and Robert Brown have done a good job. They've been scoring the ball at a pretty good clip. I think their offense has been really, really good for a large part of the year. Q. What do you see defensively from them, particularly in the perimeter and their three‑point defense? COACH DONAHUE: Well, I think what they did, and they didn't do it as much against Maryland, but they scramble a lot, they put you in pressure situations, try to force turnovers. I think you have to be good with the basketball. When they've been successful pressuring the ball, they speed up opponents, they get the ball in transition. That's when they're very good. Their defensive numbers say they're a good team in terms of guarding the three. I think teams that have made extra passes and have been a little more poised have probably given them more problems lately, in particular BYU. But Maryland did a great job. Maryland made shots from three. Maybe typical kids that don't make them made them. They played great. I don't know if that's Virginia Tech's defense or Maryland playing a terrific game. Q. Obviously some powerful teams at the top of this conference. When you're fighting in the middle of the pack, how important is it to beat the other teams that are maybe on your level in the league? COACH DONAHUE: I honestly don't look at it that way. I just try to stay in our world here, play in the now. Really, NC State, people think they're one of the best teams, and I agree. But that was our focus, just to try to beat them. I don't know if you could do it any other way. Virginia Tech is a talented basketball team. My focus is on trying to get a road win and getting our team ready to play with that kind of attitude. But I'm not necessarily saying, Hey, they're a team we can beat. I don't know that is the message you send. We're going to have a championship mentality every time we go out there and we're going to try to win basketball games against whoever we're playing. Q. You're getting terrific production from a freshman backcourt, Hanlan and Rahon. Can you talk about how they've developed. Did you go into the season expecting to start two freshmen back there? COACH DONAHUE: Honestly, I thought they would. They're two of the kids we recruited for maybe two or three years as soon as I got here, even before that. I know both kids very well. They're two kids we targeted. Joe Rahon is probably one of those kids that's light‑years ahead in terms of IQ, toughness, feel for the game. Plays more like his upperclassmen. The thing about Olivier, he's got a world of ability, he wants to be good, he learns, and he really competes. The other thing is I think they're both physically ready to compete at this level, where maybe your typical freshman guard isn't. Both kids have good size and good physicality. The thing I would say I'm surprised at is their consistency. Every day in practice they practice hard. There's none of those issues you typically see with freshmen. They really have an understanding of what it takes to win games at this level. I think the rest of the team obviously sees that and respects that. I thought there would be more growing pains with that, but both kids, as I said, are really advanced in terms of their mental preparation for basketball at this level. Q. How did you find a guy tucked away in Canada? Did you recruit up there occasionally when you were at Cornell? COACH DONAHUE: I did. My teams at Cornell, I think I had as many as six or seven Canadians. Cornell, we were up in the 330 RPIs. I thought we can't bang heads with too many teams. We got to find guys. I did. I think it helped me be competitive in my first five years at Cornell. With that I met a guy named Dave Smart, who in my opinion is one of the best coaches in basketball, not just in Canada, but he runs a program up there. He's a Carleton University coach. He's won five out of the six last national championships up there. He has a grass‑roots program. Olivier is one of those kids. For years, I've kept in touch with Dave and we've been talking about Olivier. That's where it all started. Believe me, he was recruited. He wasn't just tucked away. He ended up playing at New Hampton Prep, and was recruited. I thought we did a good job early on in getting in there and developing a great relationship with him. Q. Can you talk about solidifying your front court in the sense that Ryan Anderson was playing great, got hurt, when he gets back to health, you lose Dennis Clifford for a few games, rehabbing. Can you talk about getting to the point of getting the guys up front that you need to have? COACH DONAHUE: It's been a tough stretch for those guys. I think we maybe would have won a couple more games if those two stayed healthy the whole time. The reality of it is Ryan was hurt going down to Charleston and probably took another two weeks to get back. Cliff, his knees have bothered him really from September on. We've been trying to monitor him. Hasn't gotten the reps that he needs to. He's not there yet in terms of getting healthy or in terms of being the player he's going to be. He needs reps, he needs practice, he needs to get better every day. In that sense it's been frustrating. Then he had the ankle injury at Penn State that set him back. I think both of those two are as healthy as they've been and I think we're able to see them together more. In the meantime, I think Andrew Van Nest was someone that was playing well for us at the time and he got a concussion, so he was out for a while. I'm hoping that now he's starting to feel the game again like he was, start to play and feel comfortable out there. It would be nice to get another bigger body to help in our rotation, for sure. Q. Talk about Ryan. He's fourth in the league in scoring, second in rebounding. Can you talk about him making the jump from being a nice player as a freshman to one of the better players in the league as a sophomore. COACH DONAHUE: I think the thing that has helped him out greatly is he did put in the time to get bigger and stronger. He has a terrific I say knack around the rim. This year he's gotten way more competitive. I thought he did a great job against NC State with their physicality. Rebounds he never would have been close to getting last year. He plays 38 minutes a game. For a big kid going up and down, I thought he had a really great attitude about competing that he did not have last year. When he does that, really good things happen. He has tremendous hands, a great understanding of where to be. He's relentless on the rebounding side of it. It really defies more that than his lack of athleticism because he's a good athlete, he's got fairly long arms, but not one of the better ones in the league. It's really in terms of IQ, a sense of where to be in all aspects of the game. What I'm looking forward to with him is him continuing to get bigger and stronger so he can use all these tools that he has and be a better athlete than a lot of guys out there. When that happens, I think you're going to have a real special player. BRIAN MORRISON: Coach, thanks for taking the time being with us today. COACH DONAHUE: Thanks, guys. BRIAN MORRISON: That concludes today's basketball teleconference. Thanks for taking part. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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