|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE OPERATION BASKETBALLOctober 29, 2014Brad BrownellCHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA BRAD BROWNELL: Well, I agree with Rod. I don't think we have a guy on our team that's going to be first‑team All‑ACC and average 17.7 rebounds and lead the league in blocks. Hopefully my guys are out recruiting somebody to take his place. But I do think we have guys in the program that are ready to take the next step. Landry Nnoko could certainly become a double‑figure scorer. I think Rod is probably going to stay close to what he did last year. He's not a guy that's as aggressive and sometimes I would like him to be, but he's unbelievably steady and great teammate and a guy our guys enjoy playing with. I think some of the scoring is going to fall on other players, whether it's Jaron Blossomgame, Damarcus Harrison, Jordan Roper, maybe freshman Donte Grantham. I think those guys all have opportunities to take shots this year, to run a few more actions for them. We're also going to run a little more motion offense than we have the last couple years. More like my first two years because I think our team personnel dictates that. The last couple of years we've played a little more pro style set offense, slowed things down a little more with Devin Booker, K.J. McDaniel because they were better in those systems. Q. There's a lot of great teams in this league. Only one of them can win the championship. What do you judge your team on being a successful season? BRAD BROWNELL: Well, we don't necessarily just look at wins and losses. I certainly want to see the development of my team throughout the course of the season. I want to make sure that we're playing better basketball in February and March than we do early. We do have goals of trying‑‑ the next step as a program. We certainly want to be part of the NCAA Tournament, and we know we have to play well. At this early stage of the season, though, I think it's premature to be talking about long‑term goals like ACC championships, NCAA Tournament berths. I think you just need to talk about getting better and what you need to do. I think we're all finding out about our teams, what we do well, what are things we need to improve on, what guys play well with others, and so for me, it's let's get better at that. Let's figure out our own team, our own identity, create an identity for this team this year, and as we do that and move through some games, we'll have a better opportunity to understand what it is we can actually accomplish. Q. Can you tell us a little bit about what you've seen from your two freshmen so far and what you expect from them this year. BRAD BROWNELL: Well, Donte Grantham is a talented guy, 6'8", he's more of a basketball player than an athlete. I mean, he really can dribble, pass and shoot. He's a skill guy that can play some different positions. Needs to add strength and certainly needs to learn our system, but really pleased with his approach. I think the year in prep school really helped him, and I think it's going to help him have an opportunity to play a great deal as a freshman. Gabe DeVoe is a guy with good physical strong body and an attack mentality to score. He's probably close to 6'3" and 195 pounds, and he likes to shoot. He likes to drive. He likes to attack. Those are all good things. He's got to learn the subtleties of the game on offense. He's got to learn our system. But his biggest step is defense. I don't put many guys out there that don't defend, and he's a guy that's a little bit behind from that standpoint, but he's making progress. He's a bright young guy. He's just got to learn to compete as hard as he needs to on every possession. He can't take possessions off. I think one of the biggest things you deal with with young players is they know how to play with the ball because in high school they dominate the ball, but you come to the next level and you rarely have the ball. On defense you never have it, and we play a team defense, and you've got to learn how to rotate and do things for other people. And then on offense we're running a system where the ball moves through other people's hands and he has to learn how to get himself involved when the ball is not just in his hands. Q. Right before Leonard Hamilton talked about the FSU football program and the other fall sports; the better they do, the more it helps to recruit other people coming in. As far as everything that Clemson does on the football field, does it help that coaches‑helping‑coaches climate at Clemson, as well? BRAD BROWNELL: Well, it certainly does. We talk a lot about the Clemson family. We're very supportive of each other. Coach Swinney, Coach Leggett, all the coaches, I think we have great relationships on camps. We really share ideas. We appreciate each other's successes. We try to help each other when somebody is struggling, and I think that's true of the athletes. It's one of the unique things about Clemson where we make Clemson people feel special. If you're part of the Clemson family you're made to feel special, whether you're a regular student, a student‑athlete, a faculty member. It's part of what we talk about. When there is success in our sports in the fall, our soccer teams are both doing well, our football team is off to a great start, it creates a buzz on campus, and so when you bring recruits on campus, there's a positive vibe there. And certainly when we bring basketball recruits to Death Valley to watch a football game, there's no better tradition in college basketball than watching guys run down the hill and seeing the excitement and enthusiasm and the spirit that our school has. Our school spirit is, in my eyes, second to none, and certainly we sell that in recruiting. Q. Your trademark is your teams play great defense. How hard is it to bring in a high school kid that's always been taught his offense first, defense second, to buy into your defensive scheme? BRAD BROWNELL: It just depends on the young man and how much he knows coming in and how committed he is to what we're trying to teach him, how coachable they are. There's varying degrees of that. I think we're probably a little more complicated defensively than most. I don't know that we're extremely complicated, but we guard some things differently. We make you think. We certainly guard as a team, and it's a priority from day one. You earn your spurs that way through me. I think teaching defense builds toughness. I think it also builds team. And if you can be a tough‑minded team, if you can be a true team into January and February, your chance of success is much greater than others. To me, that's where I've always started as a coach is on that end of the floor because I want to build toughness and I want to build team. Whether a young man is ready for that right away or not kind of depends on the young man. Q. Brad, if you can keep your defense where it is and that kind of intensity and statistical excellence, how much better do you think you need to be offensively to take that next step? BRAD BROWNELL: We have to shoot the ball better from three. We were a poor three‑point shooting team. Actually I was really disappointed that we didn't improve more in that area. We actually worked on it some. We don't have a lot, a lot of lights‑out shooters. We have some guys that can make threes, but we didn't shoot the ball with three‑point consistency that you need to be successful, to be good. If we could have been a good three‑point shooting team last year, we would have been one of the best teams in this league. We led the league in free‑throw shooting. We got to the line. We didn't foul a lot. We rebounded reasonably well, and we guarded. The next step for us is to become a better three‑point shooting team. I'd love to tell you that I just had a sniper out there that just makes threes because I think that's really what we need to be focusing on a little bit in recruiting. We need to recruit a guy that can just really shoot the ball. I think we have guys that can make shots, but I'm from Indiana, so my idea of a shooter and a lot of people's idea of a shooter is very different. I don't see very many guys that shoot like I want them to, and obviously that's a challenge in recruiting. Q. You had a very unique tournament in the Paradise Jam early on in the season. Obviously you hoped to come home with a trophy, but is there a bonding element that you hoped to also accomplish during the course of that trip? BRAD BROWNELL: Yeah, every time you go on a trip like that, you're trying to put your guys in a position where they can learn some things about a culture. You hope to show them some things that helps them appreciate the life they have a little bit more, and at the same time it puts you in a situation where you're going to deal with some adversity in terms of officiating, you're going to deal with crazy game times, no locker rooms. I mean, the game might be half outdoors, half indoors, whatever it is. But at the same time the lesson is that you've just got to play and you control your own destiny, and certainly it's a beautiful place to go for vacation. I don't know that any of us really want to go there and play basketball games that count, but that's part of the deal. So we've got to find a way to be motivated and focused enough to play well on a trip like that, while also having a little bit of fun. Q. Being a defensive coach, how satisfying was it to you last year to have one of your players be selected to Conference Defensive Player of the Year? BRAD BROWNELL: Well, it's very rewarding, and certainly we had a little bit to do with K.J. being in the right spot to do some of the things he did. But I didn't have a lot to do with him blocking all those shots. That was his mother and father, the heredity, the genes that came from that really got him to allow him the ability to block all those shots. We hopefully got him in some better positions. But what K.J. did, there's a lot of things K.J. did that you don't coach: The alley‑oop drunks, the blocked shots, the tipped dunks, that's just a guy that has special talents and special instincts. I think one of the things I'm proud of is one of the main reasons K.J. McDaniel drafted into the NBA was because of his defense and his mentality, and that was because of his decision to come to Clemson. 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
|