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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S MEDIA DAYOctober 22, 2013Trent JohnsonKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by Coach Trent Johnson from TCU. Coach, welcome, and your opening comments? COACH JOHNSON: Well, I was impressed in year two, if we can get healthy and remain healthy, we'll be a good basketball team. It seems like last year I was up here saying if we can just find a way to be competitive to stay in games, that would be fortunate from our standpoint. But we've got a good group of old and new. We have one senior in Jarvis Ray. The young freshmen, Karviar Shepherd, Hudson Price, Brandon Parrish, Mike Williams, they're all good, quality players, good kids. And the continued development of Kyan Anderson and his leadership ability has been very impressive up to this point. Like I said earlier, for us, and me in year two, I'm excited in my own way. I think we have an opportunity, like I said, if we can get healthy and remain healthy, we have a chance to be a pretty good basketball team this year. Q. Coach, was it an easy decision to bring Shepherd here even though he's a freshman? COACH JOHNSON: Well, it was an easy decision. I would like to bring all my guys, quite frankly. But it was an easy decision because he's done his job in terms of being coachable, competing at a high level, and doing all the things that we as coaches and his teammates like in terms of being consistent with his behavior. So it was basically not necessarily my decision, but it was everybody's decision on this basketball team. Q. I remember you came here last year and kind of ‑‑ not downplayed, but I think provided an honest assessment of where you thought your guys were going to be. Now you're saying the bar is a little bit higher. Just talk about this optimism. Do you think you're being undersold a little bit this season? COACH JOHNSON: No, no, you know me. I don't get caught up in all the fluff and duff. I don't want to sell anything. I just think if we're healthy. We're much improved from a skill‑level standpoint. We're much improved from size and strength. Obviously, losing Devonte Abron hurts us. But what does it hurt us? If we're fortunate enough to win with Chris Washburn, he'll be able to help us this year. We'll still be able to compete and have better practices. That's where you get better at. Last year we had too many coaches on the floor to try to compete and play to just basically get through the year and through the season. But my optimism is based off the facts, and the facts are you should shoot the ball better and play at a faster tempo. I understand our scrimmage last year at this time. Scoreless with six minutes to go. This year with 65 to 59. So I shut it down with about seven minutes. That's where my optimism is based. Amric Fields is huge in this, but he's going to be back when he's back. Is he on schedule, behind schedule? That I don't know. That I don't concern myself with. I concern myself with the guys on the floor now, and the guys in practice. They give me an indication and a chance to be good if we can just stay healthy. Q. How much momentum have you gained from the recruiting class, from Karviar and the others, kind of how to make your mark from that standpoint? Are you seeing as you go around now off the court that that you are making inroads? COACH JOHNSON: I think we're making inroads. I said this when I took the job that the state of Texas has a lot of good basketball players. Are there enough great players to go around? I don't think so. But there are enough good ones to go around. So without question, we have a great education, we have a great location. With the renovations to Daniel‑Meyer Coliseum, which is where we play, we have a commitment from our administration and our fans. The caliber of basketball we played last year wasn't good, so to get the kind of support we did I thought was very, very encouraging. Like I said, there are a lot of good players in the state of Texas. The huge thing is it's not a sell, it's a fact. The challenge is to the guys that we're recruiting. Do they have enough courage to come and be part of building a tradition and being part of it. They can go elsewhere and be part of something that's already been established, and that's just a common fact. We've been received pretty well. But the bottom line moving forward is we have to continue to get better players in our program and tougher‑minded people in our program, and I really think that's going to happen sooner than later. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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