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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S MEDIA DAYOctober 22, 2013Lon KrugerKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI COACH KRUGER: It's great to be here. It's a great time of year, and it seems like all the coaches, we were here just a short time ago. It's come around very quickly. But terrific time of the year with practice started and everyone's excited and enthusiastic about the year ahead, and certainly we are. We look forward to the first exhibition game in a come weeks and we look forward to that and getting it started. Q. You guys had an overseas trip. Just talk about the benefit of that. COACH KRUGER: It was good. We've got a lot of new guys. The opportunity for them to get ten practices under our belts, five games on the trip, the time together off the court on the trip, sightseeing, whatever, it was really good for this group. I think it benefits all groups, but I think it was the younger group. We've got five or six guys that haven't played any Big 12 minutes, so for them to get a little more experience, little more exposure is really good for them. Don't know if we could have gotten more from the trip from a sightseeing educational standpoint. Extremely beneficial. Ten days of practice, five games over there were really, really good for us. Q. One of the new guys was Ryan Spangler, I believe is his name? COACH KRUGER: True. Q. Could you introduce us to him and what you hope he brings? COACH KRUGER: Ryan is a guy that's a blue collar‑type guy. He brings it every day. He loves to play. He runs the floor very well, a good rebounder. Will step out and make shots, pick up opportunities around the basket. Just one of those guys that coaches love because he's very competitive. He's a gym rat. Will do all the dirty work inside. Just loves to play. He's a good teammate. Even though he's just a sophomore, he'll quickly become a leader for us and does a good job every day. Q. Have you seen your three guards or freshmen a year ago take a pretty big step forward in terms of coming back for their sophomore seasons? COACH KRUGER: We really have. Isaiah will play a totally different role in moving to the wing. Last year we saddled him a little bit with trying to be a point guard. Little unfair to him, but we just needed some help in that area. He worked at it, but much more comfortable moving to the wing, running the floor, looking to be more of a scorer, attacking off the dribble much more. Je'lon Hornbeak will play ‑‑ swing over and play some points and have a good understanding for the game and very competitive. Making progress as well. But Je'lon and Buddy are both coming off surgery in the off‑season, buddy during the latter part of last season with the fifth metatarsal. Both have had good recovery from that and both playing full speed right now. All three of those guys, Buddy doing what he does in terms of great enthusiasm, great energy, all very healthy right now and looking forward to getting going. Q. Give us an overview of what your thoughts are on the Big 12 conference this year. COACH KRUGER: Everyone thinks their league is great, and ours is no different. Obviously, a lot of new players. That's exciting. There will be some turnover in terms of rosters in some cases, in other cases pretty good chunk of the minutes returning. But when you look at the roster with Kansas, Oklahoma State, Baylor all returning a lot of people, I think they understandably are thought to be at the top of the league in the preseason expectations. But then, I think, great balance as well after that. It will be an interesting race, as all conferences are. It's great to see how things unfold. Everyone has their expectations and predictions early. To see how those either become reality or not, exciting to watch that. It will be a very good league, very good league, and fun to watch it unfold. Q. You've gotten Oklahoma back into the NCAA Tournament last year. I'm just wondering how much of a sense of satisfaction you took out of that. It had been a couple years a few years since OU had been there. COACH KRUGER: Well, satisfaction anyone feels from a coaching perspective is the results of how the players feel. I was really, really pleased. I knew we had five seniors, and Amath M'Baye is a sixth guy we lose off of that team. For those guys to have the opportunity to experience the NCAA Tournament was very satisfying because they worked hard and had gone through their college careers. For them to have graduated and not have had that opportunity‑‑ I know they took great satisfaction in that as well. Because everyone, when you start out a season, that is your goal to play in the NCAA Tournament. For those guys to realize that goal was very satisfying and very pleasing. Q. How difficult is it to prepare for a guy like Marcus Smart when your team is facing Oklahoma State? COACH KRUGER: He's a terrific player and does so many things on the floor. I think when you have a guy like Marcus that can impact the game in so many different ways, it makes it even more difficult to prepare for him. He's just involved. Defensively, offensively, late game, terrific player, gets great results. You've got to be aware of him at all times. I guess in one way that makes it easier to prepare for him because there are not any surprises. You know he's going to be terrific, and you've got to be ready to take it on every possession. He's an outstanding player and tough preparation. Q. Just your thoughts on the new hand check rules and how difficult they could be for players to play defense this season? COACH KRUGER: It will be extremely difficult, and that's what they want. That they are able to, and hopefully they are, call it like they're prescribing and sustain that throughout the course of the season, I think we'll all be better for it. That's a challenge. It's going to be a big challenge. NBA, when they did it 10, 12 years ago, it was a huge, huge difficult transition. Fans hated it, players hated it, coaches hated it, and the game turned out much better for it. But it took time. It took time. The games will be ugly early. Everyone will be unhappy about it, but hopefully they can sustain it and call it the way they're projecting. It will be a huge adjustment. A huge adjustment. Maybe, we were talking about it coming up this morning, as big of an adjustment for the game as we've seen, and that includes the clock, the three‑point line. It's going to be a huge impact on the game. Q. (No Microphone)? COACH KRUGER: Yeah, right at the very beginning of it, yes, yeah, they were. So it wasn't a big adjustment for me because I didn't know any difference anyhow. But tons of fouls, a lot of free throws, long, ugly games. I think hopefully fans can prepare for that. Coaches are going to have to. It's going to be frustrating. Players are going to be in a lot of foul trouble early on. It's just going to happen. There's no way around it. Hopefully, again, the biggest challenge is clearly going to be for the officials. Because they're going to take it from the media. No one's going to like it. They're going to take it from the fans. They're going to take it from the coaches. Players in foul trouble. It's going to be a huge adjustment for the officials, and I'm hoping they can hang in there and execute the plan. Q. What kind of teams would be best prepared to take advantage of that? COACH KRUGER: The very skilled teams. The talent is going to win out. That's what the NBA wanted a few years ago. The college game is wanting more scoring. That will happen hopefully in time, but not just at the free throw line. Early on it will happen at the free throw line, but hopefully later on it will be higher scoring games through more movement. More good play, less contact. The game has gotten‑‑ it's really gotten so physical and the freedom of movement is something they're after and hopefully they can get that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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