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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYOctober 17, 2013Tad BoyleSpencer DinwiddieSAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA THE MODERATOR: We'll start with an opening statement from Coach. COACH BOYLE: We're excited to be back. Another Pac‑12 Media Day in San Francisco. Great city. Pac‑12 Studios, it's an honor to be here. I'm excited about this season, obviously, like everybody is right now. But one of the reasons for my excitement is the guy sitting here to the right of me. Spencer, in my opinion, is one of the premier point guards in the country. I like our team. We have got four returning starters coming back from last year's team. I think there's a little bit of a misnomer in that we have an experienced team coming back. We have got four starters coming back, but outside of that, Eli Stalzer and Xavier Talton came off the bench for us last year. We lost a lot with Andre Roberson, Shane Harris‑Tunks, and Jeremy Adams. Last year we had experience in seniors coming off the bench. This year we have six freshmen.  10 of our 13 players are freshmen or sophomores. So we got a lot of youth. That's not going to be an excuse, but it's a fact that we're dealing with in practice every day. But I love our team, I love our guys. We got a lot of talent. And I think as the year goes on we're going to continue to improve and get better. And our non‑conference schedule is obviously very imposing, but these guys like that. THE MODERATOR: Take questions. Q. I was talking to Coach Sendek and Jahii about the exposure that it gets for the conference to have you, Carson and a couple other guys in discussions for Pac‑12 Player of the Year, and some of the better players across the country. Can you talk about the kind of players that are in the Pac‑12 this year that you see, specifically other talented guards like yourself. SPENCER DINWIDDIE: Well, in our conference I think we have a lot of very skilled and very versatile players. You mentioned Jahii. I think Kyle, who is also here is a matchup problem. You have Justin Cobbs, who is a friend of mine. He's very underrated. In the national landscape he's underrated. If you look on Cal, they have Ty Wallace, they also have Jabari Bird, who is a top‑ranked guy. Then you can go down each team. Stanford has both Chasson, who was this close to making our World University Games, and they also have Dwight Powell who played on a very talented Canada team that actually beat us. So, I mean, every team across the board is going to have those guys that make this conference tough. And that's why people predict us to be maybe a six‑ or seven‑bid league in the NCAA Tournament. So this year I think that the Pac‑12 is firmly backed. Q. A couple of years ago Colorado basketball wasn't very highly regarded. Now you guys are picked near the top of the conference, expected to be top 25, NCAA Tournament. How do you guys start to handle some of those expectations and deal with those as a team and a coaching staff? COACH BOYLE: Well, we don't worry about them. We don't talk about them with our team. They're there. But what we try to do every day is get better. We try to hold ourselves to the standards internally that our program is, that we have put on ourselves. We can't worry about what the outside world is thinking about us or talking about or saying. Because I think when they picked us 11th our first year in the league that didn't matter. We ended up winning the conference tournament. Now they're picking us maybe in the upper half of the league. That doesn't matter either. We got to come to work every day, and at the end of the day all that matters is the performance on the court. And it's important that our players know that and they don't get caught up in the hype. That's sometimes a challenge. But I like our team. I think you hear Spencer talk, you can hear a maturity level that he has. Askia Booker, his back‑court mate. We're going to rely on those guys for leadership this year and keeping our young guys kind of focused at the task at hand, which is getting better every day in practice. Q. Seems like there's an expectation that there will be a clump of teams right behind Arizona in this race, and I want to know if you see it that way and how you see it shaping up. SPENCER DINWIDDIE: Well... COACH BOYLE: I'm going to defer to Spencer on this. SPENCER DINWIDDIE: Okay. I would probably say what Coach is thinking. He'll be more politically correct, and I'm going to try to be polite as well. But we don't view Arizona as the top, the cream, and everybody else in the rest. We view ourselves as the cream and everybody else can fight for the rest of the spots. And that's how we're going to approach the season and we're going to try to win all of our games. COACH BOYLE: Confidence has never been one of Spencer's problems. No, I mean, to me it's a wide‑open race. You go down‑‑ like Spencer mentioned, you go down every team in the league, I don't care who it is, you can make a case for every night being a battle. I know that's a cliche, but I'm ‑‑ I don't get caught up ‑‑ I know this is a great day to talk about our team and what's ahead of us, but in terms of trying to pick a champion today, it doesn't do anybody any good. It doesn't matter. So it really doesn't matter what I think or what Spencer thinks, all that matters is what happens on the floor. And I do know that this league is from top to bottom is as strong as it's been since I've been in it, and I think there's some coaches maybe who have been around longer than I have that can probably attest to that. But we're excited to be in the hunt. We're excited to be in the conversation of one of the better teams in this league. Now we got to go out and prove it. Q. For both of you, I read something on your web site about the program that you guys underwent. It looked like some Navy SEALs‑type training. Kind of what did you hope to get out of that and how do you think that has helped prepare you for this year? COACH BOYLE: I'll start with this one, let Spencer talk about it as a guy who actually went through it. But it's the second year that we brought the program in. These guys are real military personnel who have kind of been there, done that. They bring a credibility in terms of not only defending our nation, as servicemen, but also the leadership, the toughness, the teamwork, all the things that we try to talk about as coaches through the course of a season. They try to put that in a two‑day program, basically. And it's not fun. It was cold and rainy the first night that we did it outside. We were in the gym the next morning in literal physical hand‑to‑hand combat. Our guys were going after these guys. They were‑‑ they had head gear on and pads. But you learn so much about your team, leadership. You learn about toughness. You learn about who wants to step up. It's the second year we have done it. I think we get a lot out of it. It's something that we refer back to throughout the course of the season. And it's no fun when they go through it, but I think when they're done there's a sense of accomplishment and something that we can really grow from that experience. SPENCER DINWIDDIE: On our end as players, it brings us together as a unit and also makes you do some self‑reflection. Josh Scott, one of our best players, may have the best season out of all of us, very talented, got bigger and everything, but there was an exercise where he had to be on the bike trying to command the unit. And Josh's strong suit is not being very vocal. And he acknowledged that later in the locker room, and he was like: It's something I have to work on. So when you go through adversity of that nature, it brings you together as a unit, which is good, and then it also makes you look at yourself individually and be very honest with yourself, because there's nowhere to hide, there's no real teammate to pick you up; you're going to know what you were weak at going through the program. Q. Early in your tenure when you first got to Colorado, or the second year, when you guys entered the Pac‑12, you were very vocal about that it was on the coaches to improve the Pac‑12, its kind of perception through recruiting and whatnot. And Coach Larry talked about the recruiting that they have done. Can you talk about the talent influx in the league as well? COACH BOYLE: It starts with recruiting. Colorado would not be in the position we are today if Spencer didn't choose to come to Colorado. It's about getting good players, good people, high‑character individuals that can help you compete for championships. So it doesn't end there. We got to develop those guys. And I think that any time you talk about your conference, as we are here today, once we get past the holidays, we're into January and February, we're going to be beating up on each other and trying to tear each other down and tear each other apart. But up until that point, I think it's important that we support each other. We got to root for every team in our league to win every non‑conference game, big game, small games, because it's a reflection on all of us. Part of that was recruiting, part of it is scheduling. I know for us we have really improved our non‑conference schedule. You look at what we have got this year, and we're playing the top three preseason teams in the Big‑12: Baylor, Oklahoma State, and Kansas. We got Harvard coming to town. We're at Colorado State, we're at Air Force, we start a home and home with Georgia. I mean, we have got tough, tough non‑conference games. It's important that we show well in those games. It's important that every team in our conference plays well in the non‑league portion of their schedule, because that brings credibility to our league. And that's the problem we had a couple of years ago, our first year in the league, is we lost some of those games and we didn't have as many marquee wins as hopefully we can have this year. And, again, with the players and the programs‑‑ I haven't looked at everybody's schedules. I just know ours. And that's what keeps me up at night, because we have bitten off a pretty big chunk. Q. The young guys on your team, are there any freshmen potentially going to start? If so, who and which position? COACH BOYLE: We have got six freshmen, and two of them redshirted. Wesley Gordon, a 6'8" kid from Colorado Springs who is really going to help alleviate the absence of Andre Roberson from our lineup. He can block shots. He's a very skilled player, plays above the rim, can rebound the ball. So he's got a shot at starting. I don't know exactly who is going to start. We're 11 practices in, but Wesley Gordon and Chris Jenkins, the other 6'6" kid from Detroit who redshirted last year as well, shoots the ball well from the perimeter and has got great length. Dustin Thomas and Jaron Hopkins are two guys of our freshmen class who so far in practice have really kind of stepped up and shown the ability to contribute. Whether they start or not, that is yet to be determined. Dustin Thomas shoots the ball extremely well from the perimeter. He's tough‑minded, he's smart. He's, again, very mature for a freshman. And Jaron is‑‑ reminds me a lot of Spencer as a freshman. He physically is a big guard that's very athletic and can really impact the game on a lot of different ways. We got George King and Tre'Shaun Fletcher, two other freshmen that are pretty darn talented as well. So it's a little early to talk about who is going to be starting and which one of those freshmen are going to emerge, because they are freshmen and we're 11 practices in. But I love our young guys and I think that the fans that watch our team this year are going to see a lot of growth and development throughout the season. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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