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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MENS' MEDIA DAYOctober 23, 2014Johnny DawkinsChasson RandleLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA THE MODERATOR: I'd like to introduce Stanford head coach Johnny Dawkins and senior guard Chasson Randle. Coach, an opening remark. COACH DAWKINS: Just coming off of last season, we lost a few very good players. We're trying to figure out how to continue to grow and get better from those losses, losing Dwight Powell and Josh Huestis was good for our program and how we finished up. But excited to have a number of returners that have had a lot of experience in Chasson Randle, Anthony Brown, Stefan Nastic. Looking forward to working with these young people and looking to continue to grow in what we do. This season we're very excited. I think we have a very challenging pre‑season schedule. We open up with Wofford, who was in the tournament last year, returning with a number of players they had last season. We are also in the Coaches Versus Cancer event where we have an opportunity to play UNLV. Two‑game tournament. We'll play UNLV to open and either play Temple or Duke to follow that game. We think that's great for us, as well. All of our games in pre‑season are great. But games that stick out to me are games like going to BYU to play them on their home court, hostile environment. Looking forward to that. We play DePaul at DePaul, get Chasson a chance to get him back and have his family see him play. We go to Texas to play Texas. Top‑10 pre‑season team. Of course, we have UConn who. (Loss of phone connection.) COACH DAWKINS: He's our point guard, he's the guy who led us and has grown into the position. While these other young players are learning on the job, he's our guy that we know we can count on. He's been dependable and we're going to keep him there. As you mentioned, we still will want him to stay aggressive offensively and pick his spots. I think as good as he was last year, he's even doing a better job of that this season, the pre‑season. I'm excited to see how he's grown his game and understanding when and when not to, not only playing at a high level himself, but he's done a great job of making his teammates better. Q. Chasson, you said you played AAU, that brought out the animal in you. What has coach brought out in you? CHASSON RANDLE: I think he's set that up another notch. He's brought my game to a whole 'nother level in terms of the way I prepare for games, also just learning the position at point guard. He was in a similar situation as me. He had to transition. He's definitely helped me in that area as well as some of the other coaches. Q. How has last season's run into the Sweet 16 helped or changed your preparation this year, particularly bringing on some new guys for the first time in a while? CHASSON RANDLE: I think our preparation this year has been real attention‑to‑detail oriented. We've been focusing on the little things, just making sure that we're doing everything we can to have a successful year. We're working really hard every single day in practice, so... COACH DAWKINS: It's about standards, you know. Last year we were able to set the bar. What we want to do is you can never take that for granted. You have to have standards to meet or exceed what you've accomplished. That's what we try to give our guys. Hopefully that can become our culture. Fortunately we have young men like Chasson who are returning, Stefan Nastic, Anthony Brown. All those kids have that experience. Even with our younger players who weren't able to share those moments, we do have guys who have a reference point now going forward. We need to rely on that as we continue to build what we want to do. Q. Coach, you're going to be playing UConn after you played five conference games. How did that matchup develop? Is that going to present a problem for you? COACH DAWKINS: Well, anytime you have an opportunity to play an opponent like UConn, from a conference like theirs, you want to try to take advantage of that moment. For us, when it came about, of course we have a schedule two game versus them, we played them at their place last year. The best time for us to play them based on scheduling would be during PAC‑12 play. There have been years where we played during our bye week, we sometimes will play a game, especially an opponent like UConn, because I think it's great for our conference. We're doing something similar again this year. I think it's great for us because, like I said, it's an amazing opportunity to go outside of our conference, but also it keeps us ready and really sharp for conference play because they'll be that caliber of an opponent. THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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