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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE OPERATION BASKETBALLOctober 29, 2014Will JohnstonAdam SmithCHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA Q.  What can you take from Buzz Williams being your new head coach and what has he meant so far? ADAM SMITH: I mean, he just brings excitement, you know. Everyone is really excited about the start of the season. We've been excited since he got in, and just something he brings to the table is just you learn a lot from him, just kind of being around him. If you shadow him, you just learn a lot. He rarely sleeps. He's really big on work ethic and hard work. That's kind of his mentality, just working hard every day, getting better. Q. Adam, Buzz Williams said a couple weeks ago that he still hadn't figured out you guys' identity, maybe how to play or anything. I know it's only been a couple weeks but are you getting closer to figuring out what this team will look like and what style of play you guys are going to be playing in going into the season? ADAM SMITH: Yeah, I think we're getting closer. Three‑hour practices every day, you've got to improve on something. Yeah, I think we're getting there. Like I said, we're learning a lot every day trying different stuff, figuring stuff out. We'll be there soon. Q. After finishing last in the conference last season and the year that you had last year, how eager are you guys to get out there and start anew? ADAM SMITH: I think we're just looking like forward, you know what I'm saying? We're just kind of building. It's something new. Not really going off what we did last season, but we have new players, new staff. Like I said, we're just kind of focused on the present moment, kind of just preparing for the future, not really looking in the past. Q. Last year Ben as a freshman was a captain and then you had some senior leaders leave. Who's stepping into the leadership role this season? ADAM SMITH: I think our returners, like all of our returning players. With a new coaching staff and then having five freshmen coming in, it just has to be like some kind of camaraderie, and I feel like the returners really set the standards for that. Everybody just kind of meshed as soon as they came in, like we're a family now. I feel like all of our returners are leaders in one aspect or another. Q. Do you have to prove anything this year to anybody? ADAM SMITH: I don't think so. Because we're at the bottom of the conference, we have like a lot of doubters, and not too many supporters. But I think it's more about proving ourselves right than kind of proving everybody wrong. Q. I think you probably you and Will look at it differently being seniors but I think a lot of outside people see this as a rebuilding year or don't expect a whole lot. Do you consider this a rebuilding year, and how do you see the outlook of the season with so much uncertainty right now? ADAM SMITH: No, because we're seniors we don't want to look at it as a rebuilding year, because rebuilding, it takes a long time. It's a process. We're ready now. We're trying to make noise now as soon as possible. Q. The last couple of years the season has started fairly strong. Is it important to get off to a fast start this year? Do you have to be 11‑1 or 9‑2 to get started? ADAM SMITH: Yeah, I think that's very important if we want to be 11‑1 starting off, why not. But the big thing is I think just taking one game at a time. 11‑1, you focus on the next game and just keep it going. I feel like that's really important. THE MODERATOR: We'll make the switch. Thank you, Adam. Will, talk a little bit about Adam and his importance to this program. WILL JOHNSTON: Adam provides a lot of leadership for us. You know, he's a veteran guy. He's played the game a lot. Not only that, but he can really shoot the ball, and that's going to be really important for us this year because within our offense we're going to be shooting a lot more threes than Coach Buzz is probably used to. That will provide a lot of importance for us. Q. Will, kind of going off the same thing, with Buzz Williams being new here and coming in an instituting what he wants from you, how would you define him as a coach and as a person? WILL JOHNSTON: As a person, he's like a father to us almost. You know, the way I think about it, he is like our dad and like my teammates are like my brothers. As a coach, he brings a lot of energy, and he's very consistent. He's the same person one day as he is the next, and that's really important for us because what he does off the court, it doesn't really matter because once he gets on the court, he's going to be the same person every single day, and we count on him for that. Q. Will, with so many new pieces and new coaches, you guys had only a couple guys returning from last year, is there anything you guys can build on from last year, or is it a completely new slate starting over, everything going into this year? WILL JOHNSTON: I'd say it's a completely new slate for us, just because completely new coaching staff. Yeah, we have a couple returning players, and I think one person, Joey van Zegeren, he's the main person I would say can build off last year because he had a really good end to his season. So if he can pick up where he left off, that would be great for him. But for the rest of us, we're kind of starting brand new, and just taking whatever Coach Buzz tells us and running with it. Q. With everything new, new coaches, new players and everything, how has the transition been? How have you guys all been meshing so far? WILL JOHNSTON: Really well. Right when Coach Buzz got here, the first thing he did, it wasn't about basketball or nothing like that. He introduced his wife and his four kids, and it was all about family, and for us, that's what we've built our base on. We're just a really tight‑knit group, and like I said earlier, he's like our dad and my teammates are like my brothers. Q. So if you're just proving to yourselves based on what your teammates said, if you think about the season, what is going to make this season successful, again, using the word new, with all the newness that's around? WILL JOHNSTON: I guess just not judging off wins and losses. It's kind of just playing hard and playing within the system that Coach Buzz gives to us. He wants us to be predicated on toughness, mentally tough, physically conditioned, not Xs and Os and plays and stuff like that. So if we can do that, I think we can consider our season a success. Q. What do you think is going to be the biggest change as far as your style of play? I know you just said you're going to be shooting a lot of threes. Talk about what you guys are planning to do out there. WILL JOHNSTON: We're going to be playing really fast‑paced, and because we're undersized, we're going to have guards guarding other teams' 4 men. So we're going to have to play really fast‑paced, and then, like you said, we're probably going to be shooting a lot more threes than we have in the past. Q. Along those lines, has there been a lot of conditioning for that? WILL JOHNSTON: Yeah. We had individual workouts where it was like hours and hours of work every single day, just to get through it. And then the hardest thing we did was boot camp, and that was about a week, two weeks where we didn't even touch a basketball. It was conditioning stations, basketball stations without using a basketball, and then just straight sprints. We just kept running and kept running until we got the sprint over with. With Coach Buzz, he holds us 100 percent accountable every day, so if we didn't get one sprint, we couldn't move on until the next one, so we just had to keep running and running, and now we're in the best shape of our lives. Q. With so many unknowns this year, what's already going to be maybe the biggest challenge or some of the biggest challenges you feel like you guys will need to overcome going into the season? WILL JOHNSTON: I would just say the biggest challenge with us this year is our depth and our size. Like I said, we don't really have a 4 man, and we just have two 5s. Being able to overcome our size challenge is going to be difficult, but at the same time, we're going to try to use it as a strength for us. We're going to have to guard, like, other teams' big men, but at the same time they're going to have to guard us on the perimeter, so that's going to be tough for them. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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