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BIG TEN CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA DAYS

October 2, 2019

Chris Collins

Hilton Rosemont - Rosemont, Ill.

CHRIS COLLINS: It's good to see everybody. Before we dive into my team, just wanted to congratulate Commissioner Delany on an amazing run of. Being in the conference for the last six years and being around him and what he's been able to accomplish during his tenure has been incredible. Also excited to be a part of Commissioner Warren's new regime. It's just funny how life is full circle. When I was a little kid growing up outside of Philadelphia, my father was the volunteer coach at the University of Pennsylvania, and the backcourt was Fran McCaffery and Kevin Warren, and I was the ball boy. It's funny to see how things turn out later in life.

But excited to have those. Also wanted to welcome Fred and Juwan to the conference, two great basketball guys. When you look in the room and you're amongst all the heads coaches, you feel honored to be part of such a great group. Although personally I'm a little down because I used to feel really good about being in the room, about me being the best player in the room. And if I'm being quite honest, I think I just got knocked down a couple pegs with those guys.

Anyway, with our guys, obviously it's a new phase to our program, what we've been able to do over the last six years through the ups and downs. We had a great group of guys that accomplished a lot of things when we came in and won over 100 games, went to a tournament, advanced far in the Big Ten Tournament. Did a lot of things in the history of our program that a lot of people even in this room thought would never be possible. It was a great group of guys.

As I look in my locker room now, it's a whole new group. For me that's very exciting. We have eight freshman and sophomores, and it reminds me a lot of kind of what we were trying to build when that McIntosh-Law-Pardon-Lindsey group kind of started their journeys. I feel good about our young talent. I feel like we're on the right track towards our future. But obviously I understand from afar where expectations can be because you look on paper and there's a lot of unknowns when you look at our roster.

But it's exciting as a coach to kind of dive into that and grow and try to build and see what we can become. We have three veteran guys. A.J. Turner and Anthony Gaines are two returning guys that we're going to really lean on for leadership consistently, a veteran presence. And then outside of our eight freshmen and sophomores, our other veteran player hasn't played organized basketball since his senior year of high school as a grad transfer in Pat Spencer.

So there's a lot of new guys, a lot of youthful excitement, exuberance. I feel good about our young talent. We just have to grow. We need experience. And as you guys know, the Big Ten can be a tough training ground for young players, and that's why we've got to stay the course. We've got to continue to get better. And I feel -- I do feel really good about where the future of our program is heading. Our young group, the talent is there, the attitudes are there. They work hard. I feel like we have a lot of pieces that can become outstanding players in our conference as they gain experience and hopefully get better with our skill development and in our system.

You know, just things are on the up and up in my opinion, even though the last two years from a win-loss perspective is not where we wanted to be. But you move forward, and excited to see what we can do with this group. The Big Ten is going to be Murderer's Row again, just like it always is. A lot of great teams, amazing fan bases, great coaches, tough places to play. And you've got to just take it one game at a time and try to put yourself in a position to try to compete every night.

I thought we did that for the most part of last year. You look at our record and it doesn't look good. But if you dissect what we did, I felt like we were in almost every game, and we just didn't close the deal. That's where we've got to get better. We need to make plays late, we need to find a way to score late in games when you need to get those critical stops, manage the game with time and score. And that's an area we really need to improve this year if we want to make a jump in terms of our wins and losses in the conference.

Great to get started again, and obviously open to any questions.

Q. Like a lot of people, I'm shocked when I hear seven years, but can you tell me a little bit about where you think where you're at as a coach now seven years ago compared to say maybe where you were three, four years into your time at Northwestern?
CHRIS COLLINS: Yeah, it's a great question. I think as you come in -- for me, not a lot of guys -- I was very fortunate to get an opportunity in a conference like the Big Ten with no head coaching experience. So for me, there's a lot of learning that goes into that. I feel along the way I'm still growing as a coach. You know, I always say I'm 45, but I've been doing this -- I started at a young age, so I've been doing this for over 20 years, so I feel like I kind of have a unique combination of experience, but yet still, in my opinion, very young in the profession.

I've tried to learn from all experiences. I feel I'm a much better coach today than I was hopefully seven years ago and definitely in the last couple years. We've gone through some incredible highs, we've gone through some tough lows, and I think you learn from those experiences. When you have an opportunity to coach against some of the greats in the game, you learn from that. You learn during a game how to make adjustments and how to manage your team and how to put your team in a position to be at their best all the time, and I think I've learned a lot of things, and I'm still growing.

I think as a coach if you ever get to the point where you feel like you've got to figure it out, then you're not going about it the right way. I think the game is always changing. You have to continue to adapt. That's the one thing I learned most about being around a guy like Coach K for all those years is he didn't stand pat with what he did. He always was willing to change as the game had changed and as the landscape of college basketball has changed. And so I try to always keep an open mind and learn from others, watch other great coaches, other great leaders.

And the best experience is -- the best way to get better is just through your own experiences. And I think what we've been through, we proved that it can be done at Northwestern. I think that was a huge thing. Coming into a place that had 80 years of not winning, of not going to the postseason, of not -- and then showing that you can win. And to be backed up with the commitment that we have from our administration, to step up with the new arena, a brand-new practice center that's going to be open in the next six weeks, there's an investment at Northwestern to be at a high level in basketball. And that makes me hungry to be even better as a coach and help deliver to a lot of people that have invested a lot towards this.

It's been a crazy ride for six years. It's gone really fast. Like you said, I can't believe I'm going into year seven. But I feel like I'm as good as I've been from a coaching perspective, and I'm going to need to be because we have such a young group. I'm excited to see what we can build with these guys over the next few years.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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