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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MEDIA DAY

October 28, 2011

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

DAVE HIRSCH: USC coach Kevin O'Neill and sophomore guard Maurice Jones.
COACH O'NEILL: Through two weeks of practice or two and a half weeks, we're kind of a -- I would say, a work in progress right now. We return 11 points and three rebounds. The guy to my left is the only guy that played more than ten minutes. He is playing 40 minutes a game this year. I'm informing him of that right now, because he's going to have to.
We had a big loss this summer with Jio going down and being out for the year. What we're going to have to do is have a bunch of guys that haven't played at this level before step up.
We have a lot of injuries. Evan Smith's out for six to eight weeks with a shoulder. And Curtis Washington's out for the year. Guys that we were counting on giving us some minutes off the bench are not there. We're in a rotation of probably eight or nine guys.
Dewayne Dedmon's had a cast on his hand the entire time, but hasn't missed a down. He's playing his tail off every single day. We're a team that's going to play hard. We're going to guard you. That's going to happen no matter what. We're going to be good defensively. We're going to play hard, and we're going to get better as it goes along.
We'll depend on a lot of inexperienced players to play in a non-conference schedule and try to compete in a great league.

Q. We'll talk about the Trojans, but I can't help but ask you, Mike Montgomery just dropped a little bombshell about his surgery and his medical condition. I'm just wondering your reaction? That's a pretty serious diagnosis he was dealing with.
COACH O'NEILL: Obviously, everybody's prayers are with Mike. Not a more respected coach in the whole country. Not a guy that's done a better job at different levels different places in the whole country. Obviously, a guy that's a Hall of Fame guy in my mind. I have great respect for Mike, and I actually like him too. He's hard to like, but I actually like him.
When I was doing his surgery, he was cracking jokes the entire time, so I know it came out well, because I took care of him (laughing).
But on a serious note, it's great to see him healthy. He's got a good team. He's a great coach, and they're going to be a handful to deal with.

Q. Coach, just wanted to get your thoughts on what is the type of attitude that you're seeing in your eight or nine players that are currently practicing?
COACH O'NEILL: We have as hard a playing group as I've had. They're young. We have big guys that have great motors. We have a guy to my left that's taken his game to a new level, so I really, really like how hard we're playing, how hard we're competing, and how hard we're trying to get better.
We're having our good days and our bad days. Sometimes we look good and some days we stink. We're going to have to figure out where to go for points. It's hard to tell if Dewayne's able to do that yet, because he's had a cast on his hand.
I told Mo last night on the phone, I called him and said here's the deal. We need you to go back to in high school, play like you're in high school and average 30 and 10 and be an attack guy all the time.
So if we can find somebody else to run some offense through, I know we'll be good defensively, and we'll rebound the ball and all of that. I think we have a chance to improve daily as we go forward.

Q. You've had eight or so transfers on the roster. Is that part of your recruiting strategy to bring that instant experience in with those guys?
COACH O'NEILL: We had no choice. We lost two full recruiting classes. We could have gone out and taken a tremendous amount of freshmen one year. You take seven freshmen, probably five are going to work out or four are going to work out.
So we decided to bring in some guys by JUCO and straight transfers. They could give us some guys that had a little age on them this year. We knew we were losing our whole team from last year.
So that was part of our plan going forward. We've mixed in some high school guys also. Mo's one of those. But we really had no choice. If we let ourselves sit, there were two blank recruiting classes. If we didn't have these transfers in the sophomore and junior classes, we wouldn't have a team this year. So that was by necessity. In going forward, we'll still take some transfers or some junior college guys or whatever, but we'll also take some high school kids.

Q. Coach, what do you plan to do to replace Fontan with the injury?
COACH O'NEILL: We're not going to be able to replace him. He was our point guard, our leader. Our leading returning scorer. A guy that had 30 and 29 in two games against pro teams in Brazil before he got hurt, and a guy that really made us go. We don't have a second ball handler now.
Mo's going to be the guy that's running the point. We'll depend on some freshmen, Byron Wesley, Alexis Moore, and Garrett Jackson and some of those other guys to put us in a position where they're going to have to contribute also.
When we had two ball handlers, Jio and Mo, we thought we could be a fine team, but we really can't replace him. You don't lose a guy like that when you're in the throes of starting over with everybody graduating last year.
We're going to feel that. We're going to have to change our style of play a little bit from what we wanted to do, but it's incumbent on some other guys to step up and do a great job.

Q. For both Kevin and Mo, can you talk about the new recruiting rules and would you want to receive more text messages from recruiters? And Kevin, what do you think of what they decided to do?
MAURICE JONES: Me personally, it wouldn't bother me to get more text messages or calls from a coach because recruiting in high school wasn't that big of a deal. So it probably made it better for me, so it really wouldn't matter.
COACH O'NEILL: I'm in favor of deregulation. I think the less rules we have, the better. I've never understood why they couldn't text to recruit anyway. I think that's ridiculous. I think -- they don't have to pick up their phone if they don't want to.
There are some people that call me. I look at my phone, and I'm like I'm not picking that up, no way. So I think you'll see a lot of that.
They all have an opportunity to do that, but it might cut down on some transfers if you get to know these guys a little bit better and spend some time with them on the phone, or you might find out I don't want to recruit this guy at all. He's a moron, I don't want to deal with him.
So I'm for the deregulation, and the opportunity to get to know these guys better. I think the less rules we have, the better off we are.

Q. Last year, Coach, you had the luxury of having Marcus Simmons, the Pac-10 Player of the Year to guard the opponent's best player. This year who do you see stepping up as the defensive stopper?
COACH O'NEILL: We don't have anybody in that role right now. I think somebody has to evolve into that. I don't know who it's going to be. It might be Mo. It might be Alexis Moore. I don't know. But Marcus is a guy that didn't play much his first three years at all, and then become a defensive stopper in his fourth year.
No matter who you have on your team, you could not match what that guy could do defensively. There is no way. So we'll miss that big time because he was a guy that locked people down.
On the other hand, we hope that our bigs are better defensively, and our team defense is better to make up for the lack of having a real shutdown, lockdown guy, because it's really hard to do as a freshman or even as a sophomore, I think.

Q. Now that you're going to be put into the leadership role, how do you visualize yourself as being a leader for your team now?
MAURICE JONES: I've just got to be more vocal. Last year was my freshman year. I was just trying to get my feet wet. This year KO told me to be more aggressive, but still keep that point guard mentality in mind and create for my teammates. It's going to be a long season.
We have a lot of inexperienced guys and there are going to be some ups and downs, but at the end of the day I think we're going to be all right as a team.

Q. You said earlier in October if Mo got hurt you'd be under a bus or be hit by a bus. Can you expand on that?
COACH O'NEILL: If Mo gets hurt, we can't even really play the games if you think about it. We'd be starting two freshmen, and one would be a point guard. And that is kind of a recipe for disaster starting a freshman point guard. What I was trying to do is give you an idea how important I think he is to our team.
For me it's a process right now trying to get Mo, and this is something I've told him, which I wouldn't say it if I hadn't already told him, I need him to do more all the time. Because of the make-up of our team, he has to be in attack mode all the time. He's going to be a great defender. He's got to be prepared to play 40 minutes a game. He's got to lead. That is a hard thing to do for a guy that's just starting his sophomore year.
But his impact on our team with Jio out is unbelievable. If he's in trouble and gets hurt, we're in real trouble. Don't come to the games, it will be ugly, don't show up. Because if we don't have this guy, it will be difficult for us to be competitive in major college games.

Q. Can you tell us your reaction sitting there hearing him say that? Do you feel like you have to be a little more careful not to trip down some stairs when you're walk to go class or things like that?
MAURICE JONES: Yeah, yeah, KO's been telling me that a lot. I've kind of been twisting my ankle. I twisted my ankle three times in the last three weeks. I've just got to be more careful trying not to get hurt and things like that.
But still practice, play hard and things like that. I don't take it lightly. I've still got to give a hundred percent while I'm out there.

Q. What we've done is we've told him to quit going to class so he doesn't get hurt (laughing).

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