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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 4, 2013Bo RyanTHE MODERATOR: Men's basketball team plays a pair of home games this week hosting Iowa on Wednesday and Michigan on Saturday. Wednesday's game starts at 8:00 p.m., televised by BTN. Saturday's game is an 11:00 a.m. tip on ESPN. Head Coach Bo Ryan is here and will take questions. COACH RYAN: By the way, that's the first time I got to meet the new football coach. Well, I'm in good shape because he never played basketball. It's going to be tougher for him, I told him, because I played high school football and weight league football, quarterback and safety. So a little bit of knowledge can make me dangerous, but he never played basketball. So he says, I don't have any place for you. Good guy. Q. Bo, we talk about Bruesewitz, and people talk about his defense. I know defense is a collective effort, but I think he did the bulk of the effort against Brandon Paul yesterday, and if I remember, in the first meeting too. What was he able to do to make Paul work hard for whatever shots he had to get? COACH RYAN: One of the things we do and the way we play defense is you have to trust your teammate. So if you're trying to take certain types of looks away from a player, you also have to know that, if you steer him somewhere, that the help is going to be there. So, yeah, it is a collective effort. He had him a lot of the time, but not all of the time. Sometimes we had to help and then exchange. We don't call it switching. But Mike is a leader. He sets the tone defensively. Both he, Ryan, and Jared are guys that have been around and handled a lot of different schemes offensively. Mike is right in there on every possession. Q. Why do you think this team has had so much success on the road in Big Ten play? Do you think there's a certain toughness that comes with going into another team's arena in the Big Ten? COACH RYAN: I never tried to analyze winning on the road, winning at home, any of that, because there's so many different things that you can say about why, why, why, because it would fit, and as soon as you think you have an answer, then next game, it's like, well, wait a minute. That didn't happen. All you're trying to do, when you're drilling your players, when you're working on things, is the upcoming opponent, their tendencies, what we do against people that do this, this, and this. Let's do it better than them. And we try that every night. Some nights it works better than others. But in order to win on the road, you definitely have to be able to tune certain things out. You have to be able to stick to your principles. It's the same in any sport. But basketball, because it's so confined, I would think is the loudest while people are playing. I appreciate that attention to being able to tune things out in all the teams I've coached‑‑ high school, Division III, anywhere. I've played in some crazy places, coached in some crazy places. Q. Iowa probably doesn't get the national love that a lot of other teams get. They beat you guys earlier in the year. Yesterday they took Minnesota down to the wire. How good are they? COACH RYAN: Well, they certainly can play. They have the guys with experience. They have depth. So that's‑‑ that's what you need in this league, and then you can compete with anybody if you have that. They're another team trying to make a move, like some of the teams projected to do so well this year. Iowa was given a lot of credible backing by a lot of people because of the way they play. So that hasn't changed in my mind, and it might be your record is what it is because of who you played, when you played, and where you played them. So Iowa is as good as any team as I've seen in the league. Q. Coach, at this point of the Big Ten season and your team very much in contention, could you have pictured this scenario in late November, early December? COACH RYAN: Well, I try not to picture that scenario because you have too many things you have to take care of in the here and now, in the precious present. To be able to get Frank back, obviously, after missing some games and the fact that he hadn't practiced much, it was a big difference between the Ohio State game and what he gave us against Illinois. When you don't have‑‑ when you don't have the rotation the way you would like it, if you don't have, every coach goes through that, some more than others, but there's no question that this year there's been‑‑ this is the most we've ever had where we've had to make adjustments. So to be sitting where we are, you take it and get ready for the next. Q. Not with the way that he was shooting at the free‑throw line yesterday, but what did Frank's presence give to you guys this last game, and what can it do for you in the next game? COACH RYAN: Did you ever look for Waldo? You put that hat and sweater on him, and I tell you what, it might happen, but we've been looking for him. I think we found him yesterday. Did you ever see him with those glasses on? Not the goggles, but when he had his glasses on? He's big. He's got a good touch. He's got good hands. He reacts defensively fairly well. By the time I'm done with the teaching clips from the last‑‑ from the Illinois game, he might not believe that I said that in here because there were several times that he did not make the proper rotation from the chest up and take a charge. So he can get better. He's got a ways to go. THE MODERATOR: Anything else for Coach? Q. The loss to Ohio State, you guys couldn't get to the line. Yesterday you went to the line 42 times. What do you make of that discrepancy? COACH RYAN: Different games, the score was different. A lot of those free throws came when they were playing from behind. Illinois was more aggressive with their hands. We had a couple more pump fakes, but still finishing in the paint. We're not the only team that struggles finishing around the basket now with the bodies in the Big Ten. It's hard. But it was a different type game. You can't compare the two. Q. You said you coached at a lot of crazy places. What did you make of Platteville knocking off Stevens Point on Wednesday? COACH RYAN: And then we got beat by somebody else next. I'm always focused on the next. That was a great win over Stevens Point, but I think we played somebody after that. It's like anything else. You can't get too high, can't get too low. That's a good league. It still is. Yeah, I do check those scores every once in a while. Q. I went to Point. That's why I asked. COACH RYAN: Oh, you're trying to rub it in. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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