|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
CBS SPORTS CLASSICDecember 19, 2015Roy WilliamsBrice JohnsonJoel Berry IIBrooklyn, New York North Carolina - 89, UCLA - 76 COACH WILLIAMS: Really small locker room. I could care less. It could be the size of a phone booth right now because the last 26, 27 minutes of the game, I thought we were pretty doggone good. The first 12 or 13 minutes, I didn't think we were very good at all. Youngster Hamilton, I think, makes four threes in the first seven or eight minutes of the game. We talk about trying to do a better job of covering the three. We got to do a better job of it during the game as well. Brice and Joel, Marcus, Isaiah, Justin, all the guys that got in there and did a nice job. We went small a little while because of our foul trouble and played Theo at the four, and I think that helped us a little bit as well. Foul problems for both teams weren't very good, and I think we both would like to stay out of foul trouble more than we did today. Second half, again, I thought defense -- the second half and the last six or seven minutes of the first half, I thought we were really good. Q. Brice, you sat for about eight minutes there in the first half. We didn't see you score until about the seven minute mark, and then you got a career high. What happened there that led to you sitting on the bench for a while, and then what was your mindset coming back in? BRICE JOHNSON: Well, I can't really say -- COACH WILLIAMS: Coach got mad at him and took him out, and I had my reasons, period, the end. It's not a story. BRICE JOHNSON: I kind of used some bad language, and coach was really pissed off at me for it. So he sat me for it. It put a fire under my butt. When I got back in there, I was ready to go. I've got to learn from that. Even my dad tells me the same thing, I need to change my language sometimes. Sometimes it gets the best of me. I've just got to make better decisions when I come off the court, not yelling profanity and saying things like that. Probably if I'd have been in the game a little bit longer, I could have gotten a couple more -- COACH WILLIAMS: I'll take him 11 for 12 and letting him sit over there a little while. Q. Brice, you've had your career high the last two games. How much better in these games can you play going forward, and how good can this team be if you continue to play like that? BRICE JOHNSON: I can definitely do a lot better. I'm still messing up on the defensive end here and there. Those are the shots I shoot in practice every day. If you let me get it down there, that's what I do. You want to be able to make that shot. I practice it every day. I've been practicing for the last four years of my life. If you give me that opportunity to get in the paint and get my right hand jump hook, then I'm going to score it. Q. [ No microphone ]? BRICE JOHNSON: The team, the sky's the limit for us. We haven't been playing great, but we did get a big time win for us today outside of our building. Like Coach always says, he wants us to be able to get wins outside of the Smith Center. Just got to keep going. We can learn from this, learn from our little mistakes that we made and just be able to keep going, because we didn't play well in the first 14 minutes of the game. But the last six minutes of the first half, we did some really good things. That's what we need to do the entire game and not wait. Q. Joel, when Brice came back in, he was playing with a lot more passion, obviously, than in the first few minutes. How much did that infuse the rest of you guys? JOEL BERRY II: That helped us out a lot. We needed an inside presence, and he was out in the first half, but he came in and helped us out inside. Like I said, that's what we need. We want to attack inside out, and we can -- I don't know what our threes look like, but we didn't hit a lot of threes tonight or today, but Brice gave us a big presence down low. Q. Was his energy infectious the rest of the game? JOEL BERRY II: I think so. COACH WILLIAMS: [ Laughter ]. Not the first half. Brice's energy infectious. That's a good one. BRICE JOHNSON: I think it does. I think it did, yeah. COACH WILLIAMS: I've tried my entire four years to give my man more energy. Q. We're coming to Christmas. The league season is obviously a week or a little more away. Is this where you guys expect to be at this point? Are you happy where this team is? Do you feel like you guys could be more along than you are at this time? BRICE JOHNSON: I think we could be a little better, but it's a process. We just have to get better down on the defensive end. I mean, if we could stop a team from scoring, that's what we want to do. I think we're where we want to be, but I think we could still be a lot better going forward. Q. [ No microphone ] that second half probably what kind of defense you'd like to play. How do you follow it up and play that way consistently? BRICE JOHNSON: We just got to do it as a team, I guess. Everyone has to take their individual role and be responsible for what they're doing. Whether it's Brice, whether it's me, whether it's Marcus or Justin, we just have to come together as a team and sit down defensively. Q. Brice, when you were on the bench the first half, UCLA was kind of in control at that point. What was going through your mind as you were sitting there waiting to go back in and watching? BRICE JOHNSON: I was wondering if I was going to get in the game. Because Coach told me, he said, hey, you can go sit at the end of the bench, but if you say anything else, you can go to the locker room. I said, well, I'm not going to say anything. I'm just going to sit here. I was worried if I was going to get back in there. He looked past me about four times in the rotation. They did take control of the game, but I knew, if I got another chance to go in there, I was going to be able to do what I needed to do. I wasn't going to hold back. I wasn't going to regret getting my second chance. I did mess up in the beginning of the game, and I've got to stop doing stuff like that. Q. Roy, you were talking about Brice and his energy level. How much of just finding a consistent motor, not just for him but for the entire team is the solution for this team going forward? COACH WILLIAMS: I think I get on Brice and Kennedy more than anything else, there's no question about that, because of their energy level. I think the rest of the guys do a pretty good job of getting it up pretty high. Brice and Kennedy do it at moments. I'm definitely not telling you guys anything that I haven't told them. But they've got to get it up there. When Brice shows some effort and gets across the lane and draws outside the lane and gets a charge or deflects a shot, the rest of the defense gets so much better because he has the ability to block some shots. Kennedy has the ability to do some things as well. So those two are the main ones, and yet I do think that Brice's energy level was so much better in the second half. I almost hugged him and kissed him one time, but then I realized who it was. You've got to do that on a more consistent basis, and if we can get that out of them, I feel pretty doggone good about Joel and Nate and Justin and Marcus with that intensity level, getting it up there. Those two guys are so important to us. They need to get it up there as well. I didn't think very long about that, though. Q. For Joel, did you feel like just the defensive pressure forcing the turnovers is what really turned it around by getting into your fast break that way and using your speed against them? JOEL BERRY II: Yes, sir. I think that was one of our strong points today. I just tried to stop my man from scoring. He's a big key to the team, and I just tried to keep the ball out of his hands. In the first half, we were able to force a lot of turnovers from our traps and everything, and we work on that in practice, and I think Coach wants us to get to a point where we can run it a little bit more. Today in the first half, we did a great job of that. Q. Joel and Coach, what did you guys see in the second half in terms of offense, in particular, when things went really well for you all? Is there anything in particular that stands out? COACH WILLIAMS: Shooting 61 percent. We got good shots. I can clap and sit down a lot quicker, but I think we attacked them. Don't know how many points we had on the break in the first half, but we had some in the second half as well. Most of the points off turnovers were in the first half. They had 11 in the first half and only six in the second half. Fast break points, we had 14. First half and second half, it was more secondary break kind of level. It wasn't pitch ahead and go down and dunk it. I thought Joel did a nice job of forcing the tempo. Nate did a nice job of forcing it sometimes turning a secondary break into a primary break by getting all the way to the basket. Anything to add? JOEL BERRY II: Not at this time. Q. How important was it to start the second half so strongly after pulling even after a big deficit by halftime? BRICE JOHNSON: We just wanted to keep it going after the last six minutes from the first half. I mean, we just wanted to kind of get out on them and just try to take them away from the jump and not give them any confidence to try to stay with us. So it was big for us, and I think it helped us out a lot. JOEL BERRY II: I definitely agree with that. I don't have anything else to say. You said it all. Q: (Coach Williams on today's game) ROY WILLIAMS: Well it’s important; we’ve had some marquee games this year. Maryland at home, Texas at Texas, we didn’t play very well last weekend. The difference between winning and losing is so small. We needed to bounce back and play well today. It was good to have practice time this week because last week we had almost no practice time, five guys sick, so this was a good week for us to get practice time in. I did tell them it’s time to play well outside our building too, not just at home where the crowd is really helping us. Q: Do you know what it was that made Brice Johnson so mad? ROY WILLIAMS: Nope, Didn’t care. Q: What did you learn about your team? ROY WILLIAMS: I like that we got some turnovers out of our scramble stuff, because we haven’t done that very much this year. We had some time to work on it this week. I liked the way we kept staying aggressive offensively. Rex Walters, who’s the head coach at San Francisco, the best player I’ve ever had about secondary breaks and primary by attacking the basket. I thought we saw that Joel and Nate both did a better job of that in the second half. And then again in the second half we didn’t do as many scrambles, because early in the second half, three out of four of their baskets were on offensive rebounds and so we tried straight man-to-man, I thought we did a better job of that too. I think we did get some positive things out of that and all those things that are going to take us forward, but we need practice time. The last couple of weeks we haven’t had any. Q: (No microphone) ROY WILLIAMS: It’s not a love-hate relationship, it’s coaching. I think that you need to push some guys harder than others. I treat my players like their own children. I don’t ever hate any of my players. I may not like what they did at that moment, but there still my players. It’s like Scott and Kimberly are still my kids. You do have to set an example sometimes; it’s not a big thing taking him out. I just didn’t appreciate that and we’re not going to be like that. With Brice it’s a 24-hour job, trying to push him every day to get his intensity level up to where it needs to be, and that’s okay, I have no problem with that. Kenny a little bit of the same kind of thing. I haven’t had that kind of relationship with many guys, not that I can remember, but that’s okay too. I need something unusual to keep me even more fired up. It’s my 43rd year coaching. You need to have some Brice Johnsons. Q: (Question regarding Luke Maye). ROY WILLIAMS: Well, three offensive rebounds were big. I think we needed that because we don’t have Kenny and Isaiah in foul trouble, I’m mad at Brice and the ranks are getting a little thin up there. So that part and the other thing is when (Tony) Parker went out they didn’t have a true post player, because Welsh likes the mid-range game so it wasn’t the type of game for Joel (James). Joel was huge for us this week in the middle of the week and played great for 18 or 19 minutes against Tulane. Today I wanted to give Luke a chance. Luke is a good shooter, he hasn’t really shown that yet in games, but he’s really a good shooter and he did help us win today, no question. Q: (On why he used Theo Pinson when playing small) ROY WILLIAMS: Theo has quicker feet and a little more ability to get around in front of the post if there’s someone posting up, and it really doesn’t make a heck of a whole lot of difference. Justin (Jackson) I still believe is a really good outside shooter, his numbers just don’t show it. I thought Theo would be able to take the ball and drive it to the basket a little bit better maybe with the matchup he might get. 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
|