ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAY

October 25, 2023

Damon Stoudamire

Lance Terry

Miles Kelly

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

Men's Press Conference

Q. What's the biggest improvement you've seen in this team in the off-season?

LANCE TERRY: You know, the biggest improvement I would say is how connected we are. Coach has harped on that a lot, just being a more connected team, being there for each other, being more like a family.

Q. Lance, kind of what's been the biggest change you've seen with the offense and what you guys are trying to do this year under Coach Stoudamire?

LANCE TERRY: The biggest change I would say is a lot more screening. We're doing a lot of screening, a lot more moving, a lot of cutting, just being very detailed on our screens, rolling, doing a lot of head-unders, just a lot of different stuff.

Q. Just for the leadership style of Damon Stoudamire, what you like about the way he connects with the team and the way he tries to teach you?

LANCE TERRY: You know, the way that he tries to teach, I think he's a real hard-nosed kind of guy, but at the same time he's very laid back, like he'll joke around with you and everything, but he gives a lot of wisdom whenever he speaks just on us to listen to him.

Q. Lance, you are 14 miles from home. What's it like to play college ball so close to home?

LANCE TERRY: I love it. My family gets to come to every game now. It was a struggling when I was playing up here at my last school, so being back home, I love it.

Q. When we think about the transition that's happened at Georgia Tech over the last year or so and what the program continues to build, at the end of the year, how will you know you were successful this season?

LANCE TERRY: I just think you just look at our record and everything. I feel like we're going to be really good this year. We're going to be a winning record. Just going to try to do our best out there.

Q. When you think about Miles Kelly, how would you describe your teammate?

LANCE TERRY: I love Miles. He's a very great player, can really shoot the ball. That's my guy. I love him.

Q. What does Miles need to work on?

LANCE TERRY: I've been joking around with him, about getting his one leg jumping ability up. I want him to get some more dunks out there on some people, so I've been joking around with him about that.

Q. Miles, when you think about Lance Terry, what kind of player is he? What does he need to work on?

MILES KELLY: Lance is a very explosive player. He can shoot the ball. He can do everything out there on the court. He's a great player.

Q. To have a head coach that had so much success in the NBA as well as obviously collegiately, what that means to you to be taught by him knowing how many years he had in the NBA, rookie year and all of his successes?

MILES KELLY: That's huge. Anytime you have a guy like that who's played and coached at the highest level, that's huge. Just to be able to pick his brain and see what he thinks on things has been huge for me personally.

Q. Just curious, you guys played your first secret scrimmage and you guys are shooting a lot more threes. What has it been like to be given such a green light after maybe not shooting the volume of threes you guys are normally shooting?

MILES KELLY: I mean, it comes with a lot of responsibility. We've got to shoot threes and also knock them down. As long as we're getting into our sets right and making the shots, it'll be good.

Q. Double figures in your last eight games of the season, including the tournament. What did you learn about yourself at the end of the season that you carried with you into the off-season?

MILES KELLY: Definitely my work ethic. I think my work ethic stayed the same throughout the off-season and throughout the end of the season. I would say continuing to have that same work ethic has definitely taken me a long way.

Q. Coach, having the success that you've had collegiately and professionally, just what you can say about going through the journey that you had and how you can utilize all of those experiences to teach the youth of today, to teach Georgia Tech about what it takes to get there and to sustain when you are there.

DAMON STOUDAMIRE: Yes, I think that it's a lot to that. It's a lot of layers. I feel like I've been in basketball, 30 plus years of organized ball let's just call it, and I've been with a lot of good coaches.

But I think that for these guys, these guys back there, I've kind of avoided trying to tell my story. But as of lately, I've been digging back into it a little bit.

I told these guys this, and I'll finish the story because ironically enough it ended here. When I was at Arizona, we had some really good teams. I played with a lot of first-round guys.

The least talented team I played on was the most together team. It was built around me and another player.

But we were a together team. We clicked. We bonded. We hung out together. It ended with us making it to the Final Four right here in Charlotte back in '94.

I'm not going to say that this team that we have at tech this year is going to the Final Four, but what I see is a team that's connected, and if they keep playing the right way and they just listen to -- I always say this -- listen to my words, not how I say it all the time, I think they'll be successful.

What does that mean? I don't know. But just the fact that I've come through so many different eras, and I'll say this, coming back from the pros, it's helped me because with these guys, with my team, I'm not going to skip any steps. I'm just not going to skip any steps with them. I'm not going to do that.

If Tatum and Brown and all those guys don't skip steps to success, then I'm not going to allow them to.

There's been a lot of teaching, there's been a lot of learning. There's been a lot of stoppage. But at the end of the day, basketball comes down to being the mentally tougher team because when you're tired, your mind tells your body what to do, and what happens is at the end of games, you've got to be able to execute on both ends of the floor. You've got to be able to take care of that ball. You've got to be able to box out when you don't want to. That's the game.

All those things that are involved, I'm going to keep beating them down. What I would say is guys, get ready for more stories because they're going to come. They've just got to come at the right time.

Q. Coach Stoudamire, you've had a great career, college, pro, now first year for Georgia Tech as a head coach. What would a successful season look like for you, and what are some of your goals going into the season?

DAMON STOUDAMIRE: You know what, I haven't made any goals. Honestly, I don't know what a successful season looks like, but I do know this, I think this team is just going to keep getting better and better. I can see it. It's probably the first team that I've ever been a part of where the offense is ahead of the defense.

I've promised myself, but more importantly I've adhered to it with the guys. They've got to share the basketball. Like one of the first things I looked at with last year's team was last in the conference in assists, and for me, I just came from a place where we were one of the best assisting teams. We had a lot of good players, so you've got to be able to share the ball.

Like I said, I do believe we're a team that'll just keep getting better and better and better, and by the time -- I know conference play is weird because as I look at these schedules, now I'm going back to when I was in college just two years ago and I know we didn't have as many teams where I was at in the league.

I looked at our schedule, and I was like, damn, we play Duke on December 2nd. The conference starts quick around here.

By the time we get into the meat of that conference schedule, I look for us to start going this way. What does that look like, wins and losses, I don't know, but I definitely know we're going to be competitive as hell. We're going to play hard and we're going to be competitive.

Q. What are you most excited about with your team when you think about just going into the season?

DAMON STOUDAMIRE: You know, I'm just most looking forward to the way we gel together. When you bring in a new coach, it doesn't matter what level you're on. You know there tends to be a little bit of resistance. I always tell guys, it's nothing personal, but it just happens that way. I've been a part of coaching change before, never in college, always in the pros, but I think as we've been together more and more, they kind of see my vision.

The only thing I have in terms of my vision is us playing together on both ends of the floor. If we lose, we lose as a team. If we win, we win as a team. There is no I in that.

I just want guys to be connected. That's the biggest thing for me.

Then I'll say this just like with anybody else, I don't know what our margin of error will be as of yet, but I do know we can't have injuries. I can't have injuries. We can't afford to have our best guys and our key guys sitting out for long periods of time.

Right now -- we had a couple injuries, luckily for us, it's not injuries that's going to take its toll deep down the road, but we've got to stay healthy.

Q. Looking at the fact that you're obviously working to inspire these gentlemen on the team this season, who have been some of the sources of inspiration for you that you can kind of reach back to when you're working as the head coach of this team?

DAMON STOUDAMIRE: You know, the thing about it is I have a lot of those in my life, whether it's George Raveling -- George Raveling is a guy that -- I didn't even go to USC. He was there at the end, but I didn't go there, I went to Arizona.

But his perspective, and that's all I need at this time is perspective.

I still talk to other coaches, and a lot of times you need -- without the other person knowing, there's reassurance you're doing the right thing because you're listening to their message and what they're telling their team, and a lot of times we're all going through the same thing.

Coach Olson was always there for me, but he's since passed. But at the end of the day, I have a lot of guys that I try to talk to and get a perspective from, and then that perspective doesn't always have to come from basketball. It's about managing.

I think managing is more important than basketball. How do you manage egos? How do you manage success? How do you manage failure? How do you get guys to understand that the little things matter?

Managing, whether it's the team, whether it's the staff, whether it's the support staff, managing is also a part of winning, and everybody has a role.

As I go through this and as we go through this together, I'm looking forward to seeing how everything shakes out in this first year.