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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEJanuary 21, 2013Jeff BzdelikQ. There are losses and then there are really tough ones like you had at Virginia Tech. How does a team as young as yours get over that? Does playing a game on Tuesday, maybe you don't have that much time to think about it? Psychologically how does that work with them? COACH BZDELIK: I tell you what, we had a good practice yesterday and the guys responded well. No pity parties. That's part of maturing. Every time you wake up in the morning and look at the scores in college basketball there are teams that suffer one or two point losses. Its how those teams respond that ultimately determines their destiny. So these are things we talk about. We know we have a big game tomorrow against a great basketball team. We are looking forward to that challenge. I think sometimes being young helps because they are so resilient. So I have no doubt they'll respond in a positive way. Q. You have one of the emerging young rebounders in the league in Devin Thomas. What about a guy established, like Richard Howell, a rebounding machine, practically. How do you match‑up against him? Is there anything can you do to keep him away from the boards. COACH BZDELIK: Well, yeah, you're right. Devin Thomas is a terrific young player. He's probably a young, Richard Howell to be honest with you. So, it's a great experience for Devin to learn from one of the best rebounders in the ACC, if not thee best rebounder in the ACC. But Devin's just going to have to‑‑ it's part of the maturing process. Devin's strong and uses his body well. Obviously, it's a great challenge for him against Richard. He's just going to have to battle and fight, and that's one thing I'm really proud of this team is that they battle and they compete and Devin will do that against Richard. Q. I just want to ask you, with a young team, everything that happens has to be a teaching moment. I was thinking about the last play of the game with Tyler Cavanaugh. He made a great play to rebound the miss, and then, again, just to me looked like he rushed it in his follow shot and had more time than he thought. Is that something you can use as a teaching moment? What do you tell him after a play like that? COACH BZDELIK: I tell what you we do after every game. We debrief every game the next day with perhaps maybe 20 teaching clips that we obviously need to do a better job at, And 20 clips where they see it where they're doing it well. So it's a compare‑contrast kind of teaching. Well, this is what happens when you do it well. This is what happens when we have break downs. I really thought that Travis McKie made two game‑winning shots down the stretch there. But what we didn't do is we didn't get stops down at the other end, and that's where my focus was. Late in the game, at the very end, with eight seconds left to go, we got the ball into C.J.'s hands and he took it strong to the rim. You don't expect fouls to be called then. So there is no concern with that with us. He took it in there strong like a man, and we hit the offensive boards. It just didn't go down. But the defensive possessions prior to that were where our main focus was. We allowed middle penetration a couple of times and we didn't switch with aggressiveness. So we allowed Brown to go down the lane. We aloud Raines‑‑ excuse me, Eddie to get an open three or just enough air space. Those were the kind of things to me, also a couple of break downs in defensive transition when we had a chance to really get some separation when we were up nine, eight points, something like that, and we've got to buckle down and extend that lead. That's where our focus was. Q. You mentioned defense. Erick Green's leading the nation in scoring in the ACC. Haven't had a national scoring leader in more than 50 years. Can you talk about defending him? You all did a good job in the first half, at least by the numbers. He did a little better in the second. What is it about him that makes him so tough? Do you think these guys did do a good job in the first half against him? COACH BZDELIK: Well, we did. We worked on blitz and ball screens, and we trapped him and stayed on the trap. We did a good job of bouncing back to half court and not leaving the trap until he gave it up. We did a really good job of rotating to the right people. In other words, only once did we make a mistake, and we left Eddie to rotate to Raines or Barksdale, I can't remember which one it was, and there was no sense to do that when they're 15, 16, 17 feet away from the basket. But we did a really good job of blitzing them on ball screens, making them take tough twos. The thing that hurt us in the second half was our defensive transition. You know, Erick Green is a one‑man fast break. I mean, he just goes coast to coast, and his head was down. A couple times when we took shots, unlike the first half when we did a good job in defensive transition, the second half, we had some of our young guards that just stood to watch to see if the shot would go in instead of get back. We always wanted to have two guys back to look him in the eye as he was approaching, because he puts that head down and he goes. He got loose in the defensive transition in the second half too many times. He got to the foul line because of it. Q. Through the first 17 games, you've started in McKie Harris, Miller‑McIntyre and Thomas in each of the 17 games. That fifth spot, what are you looking for right now? You started Cavanaugh five times, Adala Moto eight times, Chase Fischer three, and Madison Jones even as has a start. What are you looking for out of that fifth spot? COACH BZDELIK: Well, just consistency. Defensive effort, and just helping us get off to better starts. It's been a questionable spot for us in terms of consistency, and that's something that we're searching for. But they all have to play. When you look at it, Tyler Cavanaugh and Arnaud played the majority of the minutes at the four spot. I think they're averaging about nine points and almost seven rebounds a game, which isn't bad. But we just need more consistency. But it's typical of young players to be inconsistent. They're working hard at it. We're playing a lot of guys, and that's just the way it's going to be by nature of our basketball team. Q. Coach, obviously, you're prepping to play an N.C. State team that's one of the ACC's two ranked teams. When you look at them and compare them to last year when they were erratic with the same core, Leslie, Brown, and Howell and these guys, do you see a difference this year? Have the two freshmen made that much difference or is it the maturity of their core that makes them a little better team? COACH BZDELIK: I think it's a combination of those two things. Maturity, obviously, the seniors are wood and Howell, it's their last go around. They're desperate. The maturity of Brown and Leslie, you know, they've got a couple of really talented young players that give them an offensive boost in Purvis and in Warren. So I just think it's all those things. It's the maturity, it's the incoming Frosh. It's Coach Gottfried has done a great job with them. You know, they're a team that can go a long ways because they're certainly talented enough. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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