|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
HAWAIIAN AIRLINES DIAMOND HEAD CLASSIC MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 16, 2013Paul HewittHONOLULU, HAWAII ELIZABETH MCCOLLUM: Moving on to George Mason head coach, Paul Hewitt. Coach, are you on the line? COACH HEWITT: Yes, I am. ELIZABETH MCCOLLUM: Great. Coach, even in the absence of Jason Arledge, you return a lot of experience to your team. Can you talk about improving on last year's record and the expectations you have for your season so far and how it's going? COACH HEWITT: So far we've gotten off to a pretty good start. We've had some unusual circumstances, as you mentioned. John Arledge not being with our team any longer. Missed a few games with an early season suspension, and we've had some injuries. But this break has been good for our guys. We're in finals right now, but we've had some pretty good practices, and we're looking forward to getting out to Hawai'i and competing. Q. Speaking of Hawai'i, the tournament format, you play two days and then you have a day off, then you play Christmas Day. Do you like the format? Can you comment about your first round opponent Iowa State? COACH HEWITT: Yeah, I think the format is really smart. It makes sense. You get two games in and give the kids a chance to catch their breath a little bit, then even us coaches get a chance to catch our breath and prepare for that last game. Iowa State is obviously off to a terrific start. A very balanced team, high‑scoring team. It will be a great challenge for our guys. Q. Do you have any plans for that break day? Are you going to let the guys rest up and tour the island? COACH HEWITT: We'll probably do a little bit of that, but I'm a pretty boring guy. Probably just stay in the room and watch some tape. Q. Coach, as you mentioned, Iowa State is very balanced. How do you Cope with that as a coach when you're going through your defensive strategy? COACH HEWITT: You know, it's back to basics. We've got to contest shots and rebound the ball. They're so good offensively. One of the things you can't do is give them extra possessions by turning the ball over or giving up offensive rebounds. Q. Coach, I think you guys will have by the tournament start a decent break time from games. Just your thoughts on has that helped you rest up, I think, after you guys had a cluster to start the year. COACH HEWITT: I got part of your question. I think you're asking about the long break we've had, the two‑week break? Q. Yeah, basically, yeah. COACH HEWITT: Oh, it's come at a good time. Obviously, for final exams, we're not allowed to play games during that time. But we had a couple of guys, Marquise Moore, our freshman point guard was hurt. We've got a couple guys dinged up, so it's been good. Also for us, there are some thing that's we needed to work on especially in the defensive end. We've had some really, really good practices. We're very pleased with how hard we've gone in practice, and hopefully it will show when we play against Iowa State. Q. Coach, how do holiday tournaments like this prepare you for conference play? COACH HEWITT: Especially the timing, number one, the competition is great. But the fact that we're doing it around the Christmas holiday, and we open up our conference schedule I believe January 8th against VCU, so we go from a field that starts off with Iowa State to the conference schedule. So it will prepare us well. ELIZABETH MCCOLLUM: Coach, thank you for your time and travel safe to Hawai'i. COACH HEWITT: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|