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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S MEDIA DAYOctober 22, 2013Travis FordKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Coach Travis Ford from Oklahoma State. Coach, welcome, and your opening thoughts. COACH FORD: Excited to be here. Really I've enjoyed working with our team the last three weeks. A little bit different feel with the early start time. But I've really been impressed with our competitiveness in practice. The earlier start time has allowed us to really mix the teams up and really have some great scrimmages and different things with teams kind of evenly matched. That's been exciting to watch. I really like our chemistry on our team right now. I really like the attitude of our team right now. So it's been fun to watch. We just‑‑ at this point in time, you've got to manage it all because it becomes such a longer season with the new start time. But right now, the chemistry's been good. The attitude has been good. The competitiveness has been very impressive. So those are the things that I like about our team right now. Q. When Marcus came back, a lot of people talked about you guys being the favorite at that point in the Big 12. Was that something you've embraced and talked to your team about? Then when the conference poll came out, how did you feel about being picked to win it with Kansas? COACH FORD: Well, we haven't talked much about where we were picked. We talk a lot about understanding what our goals are and what we want to try to accomplish. Winning a Big 12 Championship is something that we strive to do. It's something we talk about, but we fully grasp that Kansas is still a team to beat. I think any coach would tell you that. They're still the team in the Big 12 that everybody's trying to compete with. We understand the expectations of this team. Our guys hear it every day from the fans and the media and the positive things that are said, and we've embraced it in the fact that, yes, we think we have a pretty decent team. But we have to be humble enough to understand that expectation hasn't ever won anything for anybody. We've got to be humble enough to handle it and hungry enough to get a little bit better each and every day. We have a lot of motivation for our basketball team, which we talk about. Our motivation is to be better than we were last season. We didn't end the season the way we wanted to. But we had a lot of positive moments last season. A lot of high moments, lot of great moments. But we did not end the season the way we wanted to or expected to. We talk about that. We don't hide from that. We don't hide from, yes, we are supposed to be a pretty good basketball team this year. We don't hide from that. But we've got to understand it in the fact that we've not won anything. We still have a lot of motivation to try to win a Big 12 Championship, a regular season, a tournament and try to go deeper in the NCAA Tournament. So, for me, it hasn't been a problem as far as trying to motivate our guys every day in practice, because there are many things to remind them that we have not done. Q. How do you guys become a better perimeter‑shooting team? COACH FORD: Well, we spend a lot of time on getting reps up and practicing our shooting. At this point in time, practice has been one of our strengths, shooting the basketball. Marcus is shooting the ball really well. Markel Brown is shooting the ball really well, Brian Williams. We have some freshmen that have come in and their strengths are shooting the ball, between Stevie Clark and Jeffrey Carroll, these are some really knock‑down shooters on our basketball team. Phil Forte is probably one of the best shooters in America. So we think we'll be an improved team just by what I've seen in practice so far shooting the basketball. I think the new rules in place are probably going to get you a few more open jumpers than in the past. So hopefully our percentages will go up by the help of that rule. But it's an area we want to look better at. There are areas we want to get better at. Shooting is one, assist‑to‑turnover ratio is another, rebounding is another. Those are some areas that we're trying to get better at from last season. I know who my top seven are right now. We're trying to figure out who is eight, nine and ten on our basketball team. That is the challenge for our team that we're looking at. So there are a lot of areas that we've got to get better at. Q. Can you just go back and revisit Marcus's decision to come back and what went into that and how rare it is for a guy like that who would be drafted so highly to make that decision to come back? COACH FORD: Well, it was something that we knew was going to‑‑ as a coaching staff, that we knew the decision was going to have to be made at the end of the year. But it was something we never talked about with Marcus as the season was going on. It was never brought up one single time. That's not always the case. Some players you might need to talk to them about it as the season is going along. But with Marcus it was never a distraction for him, so we never really addressed it as the season was going along. Once we lost in the NCAA Tournament against Oregon, it became a daily discussion, he and I and his mom and dad. We were able to keep it a fairly tight‑knit group. But the biggest thing that I was proud of him about was it went on for two, two and a half weeks, every day, discussions, putting in front of him everything he needed to know about making his decision about where he was going to be picked, the money situation, what that entailed, all the pluses and minuses and everything that goes in it, we just gave it to Marcus. What I was so proud and I'm so proud of him of and the greatest thing to come out of that decision was he made it on his own, period. I think at some point during the two, two and a half weeks he was waiting for somebody to tell him what to do, because it's not an easy decision. But as I would tell him: I'm not making the decision. I'm here to advise and you help you in any way possible. There were days he would come in and he would say, Coach, I'm leaning on wanting to stay. And I would play devil's advocate: I don't know if you want to do that. You're going to be the third pick. Are you sure you can do that? His mom and dad were telling him, Hey, you're only a kid once. You need to make your own decision. When he finally made his decision and told me, I was so excited for him because he made the decision, and that's‑‑ in today's day and age for an 18‑, 19‑year‑old in his position, very rarely do they get to make their own decision. Someone is telling them what to do and they feel pulled in a certain direction. I think there are a lot of NBA guys that leave early that really might want to stay because college is a lot of fun if you're in a fun situation and you're enjoying it. You can't get that back. I think that's what Marcus saw. It was, hey, as he says, I'm not passing up the NBA. I'm just kind of pushing it all to the side for a while. And I think that's pretty mature for a guy that was a freshman in college. But he made the decision he wanted to make. Wasn't pressured by anybody either way. He came to the decision: I want to stay in college. I want to play in the NBA. It's a lifelong dream. I want to make a lot of money someday. I want all of that. No question. But I am enjoying what I'm doing. What I'm doing, I know if I make this next step‑‑ and this is him‑‑ I know I can't get that back. I don't care how much money I make. I can't come back and play college basketball. He enjoys playing at Oklahoma State. He enjoys his teammates. He enjoys all of that. I kind of thought that's the way he was feeling, just knowing Marcus Smart. On the court you see his competitive nature, you see how serious he is and how hard he plays. But in the locker room he's the practical joker of the team. He's the most lighthearted guy on the team. And he just enjoyed being that kid. So it wasn't a shock to me that he made that decision, but I'm very proud of him and excited that he made the decision on his own. I thought it was very mature of him to do that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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