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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYS (MEN)October 29, 2009Ed DeChellisCHICAGO, ILLINOIS THE MODERATOR: Up next is Penn State head coach Ed DeChellis. DeChellis enters his seventh year at the helm of the Lions and welcomes back three starters from last year's team that won the National Invitational Tournament. If you'd like to start with an opening statement, then we'll open it up to questions. COACH DECHELLIS: Another year. Great league. Everybody back. We have four, five teams back in the top 20 today. Very competitive, it's -- in my seven years probably as it's ever been. We're very, very excited about it and looking forward to it and it will be here shortly. THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. Nowadays in college athletics some coaches only get three years to rebuild a program. Congratulations on the offseason for you, but could you talk about the fact that Penn State is letting you build and let you build up? COACH DECHELLIS: Well, yeah, everybody's philosophy's a little bit different, I guess, and where you start from. We started from ground zero. We think we've made progress every year. We like the direction we're going. Our recruiting efforts have been much better. We're finally recruiting players in the 2011-2012 classes that we were never able to do before because we were always trying to play catch-up. Now we feel we're on solid ground and moving forward. We like the direction we're going and obviously the university likes the direction we're going in. Q. Do you have particular guys who are going to replace Pringle and Cornley, or is it more by committee? COACH DECHELLIS: I don't know if you replace, Cornley's numbers were very good, but more important for us, Jamelle's presence, his toughness, his spirit, the command of the locker room that he had is most important. I'm hoping Talor Battle can provide that leadership that Jamelle provided in the past. I think the U.S.A. Basketball experience for Talor, he's playing with a lot of confidence. So I'm hoping that he can be that spiritual emotional leader that Jamelle was. The numbers on the floor, we think that our front line's improved. We think our players have improved in Andrew Jones, Jeff Brooks, David Jackson, we think all those three guys have improved. And Andrew Ott, the young guy that transferred in last year, has probably had the best camp of almost anybody on our team other than Talor this fall so far. So we hope he's showing improvement. So I don't know who the one guy is, but we're hoping by committee that we can take care of the front line. The back court, Chris Babb has played well, our freshman last year, sophomore, who played at times. We think he's done a nice job in the summer and in the fall he's practiced pretty well. We like our freshman guard Tim Frazier from Texas. I see him playing quite a number of minutes, if things go and he continues to play how he's played in the fall so far. He's done a nice job. And with him and Battle on the back court together you have two very, very fast athletic players who we feel can spread the floor, hopefully and make it a little easier for the other guys offensively. Q. Ed, Jamelle gets a lot of the we're going to miss him, but Pringle, Pringle did so many different things really well or maybe the best on the team for your on-ball defense and 3-point shooting, and he was the one guy who could break the press and just everything, did the pull-up shot. Is there any conceivable way you can replace all that stuff, even with all -- tell me about Frazier, his ability to do some of those things, maybe. COACH DECHELLIS: Pringle was such a solid guy for us. He was a guy, kind of an unsung hero. He just played hard every night. Worked hard every day in practice. Tremendous 3-point shooter, very athletic, very fast, could defend on the ball. He did some great things for us. I think Tim Frazier, the freshman, it's not fair to compare, but he has the ability to do that. He is probably faster than Stanley with the ball. He's probably more athletic than Stanley. Hard to believe. He's not the shooter that Stanley is. And he's not defensively he's not there because he's a freshman. But offensively he can really push the ball. He can use ball screens very well. He's a better drive/kick guy than Stanley was passing the ball. But Stanley made so many big shots for us and big defensive stops that Tim will be able to do in time. Just as a freshman he's not there yet defensively. Q. How difficult is it to make headway in this league especially in a year like this where it looks so tough top to bottom? COACH DECHELLIS: Making headway is -- I was talking to coaches last night, and you could be an 8-and-10 team in this league this year and be very, very good in terms of a conference record. Moving up, you know, you kind of look at it in the spring and summer, okay, who are we going to jump over. But I think you continue to do what you gotta do and work hard and stay the course. I think this year it will be like every other year, the team who you play and when you play them, who has the flu, who has got some sickness, who has got some injuries, and you get by somebody because maybe somebody wasn't at full speed. All those things, unfortunately, are part of the game. But the league is as good as it's been from top to bottom. Good players. So to making that jump, you just never know how you're going to jump. Can't get too high. Can't get too low. And there's nobody to point to that says I think we can get them at home or here's a win here. There's none of those. So you better be ready 18 nights. Q. You've got a schedule this year that a nonconference schedule that makes a lot more sense than the one last year. What did you go through with your new guy? He's not your old guy, not your old schedule-maker, and how much input did you have in that? COACH DECHELLIS: Well, we tried to upgrade. But I know the year before we didn't make the schedule not to make the tournament. We thought some teams were going to be better, they just weren't. And we played the odds again. We scheduled some teams who were pretty good last year and have good RPIs and we expect them to hopefully do the same thing that they did last year or play a little better. If they do, the schedule looks pretty good. If we have some teams that don't, they get some guys hurt, they have some difficulties, then all that can change. But I think we're playing a good schedule. I think the tournament in Charleston will be good for us as well, playing hopefully a Miami team and a South Carolina team, a Tulane, South Florida, some good teams in that as well. Virginia, Virginia Tech, Temple. And we think our schedule is solid. It will be more challenging, the teams are better and hopefully we can come out of it with a positive nonconference record and head into the Big Ten season. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. End of FastScripts |
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