HCDM
Coach compared the Providence game to the NC State game in that we faced a team in their own arena- a noisy place- and they had their best shooting game of the year but we had an even better one and were able to come out with a win. “Guys who aren’t normally good shooters were making threes”.
He said the game also showed the importance of Baye Moussa Keita as we wound up playing CJ Fair at center for a spell. “Baye walked off the court, missed a step and did a lot of damage. You could fall hard on the court and not do as much damage.” Later he said “Baye has a bruise in his hip. No damage to speak of. He can’t jump It hurts to put any pressure on it. I’m not optimistic he can contribute this Saturday.” (I assume the “damage” was just a bruise not a break or a tear in anything.) Earlier in the day, on the Brent Axe show, Jim had told a story that Baye actually came to him late in the Providence game and said he could play but Fab Melo intervened and said “No No! Baye Baye, (Bye Bye?) You can’t play”, so coach didn’t send him in.
They had the DePaul-Pittsburgh game and commented on it througho0ut the show, although the game ended right after the show so they didn’t get the final. DePaul jumped off to a 6-0 lead in the first minute. JB: “They, (Pitt) lost three great players and one of their guards have been out They are still a very good team.” Pit scored the next 10 points. But it was still close in the second half and Jim said “Pitt isn’t as strong as they were.” In the final minute DePaul missed an open lay-up and a tip in and Pitt scored on a fast break. Coach exclaimed “That’s amazing. The difference between winning and losing is in and out.” He said that Pitt is just the type of tough-minded team that figures out a way to get a win. After the show I tuned into the game to see Pitt miss two free throws with 8 seconds left up two and then DePaul drove right through the defense for a three point play to win the game. So maybe Pitt isn’t as strong as they were.
They talked about other Big East teams., especially Georgetown’s win over Marquette in which they came back form a 17 point second half deficit. “That happens. It happens on the road. It’s not hard to lose a big lead in college basketball. We were up big at NC State and last night and they came back.” Matt pointed out that it’s early in the Big East season and yet there are only three teams unbeaten in the conference: SU and Georgetown are 3-0 and Cincinnati is 2-0. “Cincinnati has really played well since their issues.” Matt pointed out that Villanova was an uncharacteristic 7-7: Have you ever been 7-7?” JB: “I hope not. They have a lot of young guys. They are very talented and will play better.” He didn’t think Louisville played very well against Kentucky- and yet they stayed in the game.
Dave in Minneapolis called in to ask how hard it is to handle a team that goes 10 deep after so many years of 6-7-8 man rotations. “When the ball goes in, nobody says much. When it doesn’t and you lose people question why you took a guy out or put a guy in. You could play 10 guys and go 17-10. It’s not the fault of the substitution pattern. Brandon got hot in the second half last night and Scoop wound up with 11 assists. What if I left them and they didn’t play well? (Last week Coach had pointed out the opposite dilemma- what if a guy gets off to a bad start so he sends another guy in. But maybe the guy who got off to the bad start would have had a big second half. Instead, he’s sitting because of the bad start. If you are playing key guys for 35 minutes they can play out of a bad start. If you substitute a lot, they don’t get the chance.) We’re playing well and will keep playing the way we are, (using 10 guys). We could get situations where players play longer. But it hasn’t been as difficult as I thought it was going to be.”
Justin in Syracuse asked if rebounding will be a factor against the best teams we will play. JB felt that we’d already played some of those “best teams”. He repeated his previous explanation that in our zone we won’t be an overpowering rebounding team but can make up for that by getting more blocks and steals. We also tend to commit fewer fouls in the zone, (despite last night). He also pointed out that you can sometimes get multiple rebounds on the same possession but a steal produces a separate possession, so the numbers can be misleading. “We aren’t going to lose a championship to rebounding. The most important thing is to keep our turnovers down and make shots- and defend.”
I called in my observations on Vinnie Cohen including the anecdote about Jim Brown leaving the team because of an unwritten rule about not having a majority of your starters be black. “I’ve heard that. I’m not sure if it’s true. Any coach who doesn’t play his best players isn’t doing his job. Jim Brown and Ernie Davis were good basketball players. Vinnie Cohen’s son, also named Vinnie Cohen, played for us as a walk-on and now he’s a lawyer in DC himself. I think he was a prosecutor. So we’ve had two Vinnie Cohens and both are a great credit to the university.”
Matt Park noted another distinguished basketball personage had died recently- Gene Bartow. JB: “A great man and a good friend. There was no finer gentleman. They were not used to losing at UCLA and he went on to found the program at UAB. Good coach, better guy. Bartow, Carnesecca, Meyer, Wooden, McGuire, all laid back coaches. We don’t have them in today’s world. Guys who coach for 40 years. They didn’t make much money so they had to keep coaching.” (I didn’t know those guys were all that laid back- at least not all the time. And JB, who isn’t exactly laid back is in his 36th year).
Rob In Liverpool praised Coach K for doing a good job of adapting to changes in college basketball. He wanted to know how JB rated himself in this regard. Jim said that Coach K “hasn’t really had to adapt- he’s still playing pressure defense and letting the players play on offense. Every program has a philosophy- you adapt within it but not a lot. It also depends on your personnel.” Matt suggested that the biggest change in JB’s career was the three point shot. JB: “Defensively, you can’t let that beat you. You have to extend a bit more. We’ve never really relied on the three but it’s been a good weapon for us, as it was last night.”
A caller named Bill asked “When did you start developing the press and make it the trademark of your program?” Matt suggested he meant the defensive pressure we use in the zone, not a full-court press. Bill also asked if he intentionally tries to recruit long-armed players to play his style. JB: “Long arms are an advantage whatever defense you play.
We’ll take a thinner guy than a more physical team would take.”
Bill also expressed disappointment that the New York City papers don’t talk about our #1 ranked college basketball team more, especially considering Dr. Gross emphasis on making us “New York‘s team“. JB: “NY is a pro town. It’s the Yankees, Mets, Giants, Jets, and Knicks, 99% about pro teams. That’s true of most big cities. UCLA get some coverage in LA but that’s a Lakers’ town. In Chicago it’s the Bulls. In Boston they don‘t even know BC plays.” Matt said that Bob Ryan was at the Providence game, along Providence writers Billy Reynolds and Kevin McNamara. “The Celtics weren’t playing.”
John in North Syracuse suggested that Jim was an under-rated offensive coach because so many SU players like Lawrence Moten and Dave Johnson had never done anything in the pros but had scored a lot of points here. And yet, the 2-3 zone “will probably be your legacy.” Jim said that Rick Barnes, (or was it John Gresham?) told him that he was more afraid of Syracuse’s offense than their defense. “We don’t run a traditional repeating offense that some people think is a sign of good coaching. You pass it around a lot and you still get a jump shot. I’d rather get an easier shot. I do think we’ll be known for the zone and that’s not too bad.”
Noting the Rick Barnes reference Matt Park said that Tom Penders had said some very favorable things about this Syracuse team. He said that Kentucky and Ohio State were the only teams that could match our B+ game. Jim said “He’s a great coach. He beat me 2-3 times and I don’t think I beat him.” (I have them at 1-1. JB won when Penders was at Fordham. Penders famously won when he was at Rhode Island.)
A caller asked where Jim would rank this team vs. his other teams. “I don’t rank teams or players- there are too many of them. Kids don’t stay four years like they used to and you don’t have the same consistency. We’re off to a great start and are a solid team. We can improve, especially on defense- we’ve had a couple of games were we were not great. We’re definitely concerned that we let people do a little too much on offense. It’s a little to early to be hanging banners on this team.”
They discussed Marquette. “They played very well against us last year. It’s anew year. They are a very good team and it will be a great test.” Earlier in the day Brent Axe had asked him if the team would be really up for this game. Jim dismissed it., saying that both teams would want to win and that wanting to win doesn’t determine the winner. It’s who makes the plays Saturday night. Marquette’s star players are Jay Crowder, who can play effectively from the top of the key as Kadeem Batts of Providence did, and Darius Johnson-Odom. JB noted that both are JUCO players and very physically tough. (He seemed to imply that this is a characteristic of JUCOs). “They play as well as any seniors in the league”. Matt suggested that Marquette “plays as hard as anybody in the league- are loose balls going to be at a premium?” JB: “Who in our league doesn’t play hard? I don’t see any difference.”
Jim is a Lacrosse fan and Matt asked him about that team’s prospects. “They lost one of the greatest goalies of all time but they will be in there this year.” Matt closed by asking if JB will be watching the LSU-Alabama game this Monday. “I used to watch all the bowl games. Now I watch just one. That’s what happens when you tell everybody that only one game matters.” He feels the Tigers and Tide “will score a little more than they did last time. LSU should win it but it will be a great game.” He was asked if the players will get distracted by all the hoopla or will they consider it a ‘business trip‘? “The players know what they are there for.”
Gomez handled the second hour of the show. He asked where Dwight Howard might be going. JB doesn’t know but doesn’t think he’ll stay in Orlando.
Gomez noted that 6 guys were in double figures for us. JB: “Balance is the key for us. We want to keep it up every night. We can still do better. There are always new pieces to the puzzle. Teams are constantly changing. That’s why we are always working to get better during the course of a year.“
Gomez asked about the officiating, noting that there were a lot of charge/block calls in the game. “The fouls were a little out of proportion. We normally stay a little out of foul trouble in the zone. A couple of calls could have gone our way for sure. We got two big ones to go our way late. Kris Joseph did charge a couple of times, playing out of control as he did last year. You’re going to have overcome calls on the road and sometimes at home.”
Gomez said that we must be pretty familiar with Marquette’s pass fakes and ball fakes by now. JB acknowledged that Jay Crowder “is good in the high post. Against some teams we move out more on shooters. Against others we move back. Crowder sometimes sneaks behind to the low post. Crowder and Owen are good players. We have to keep track of them at all times. We played well enough on defense to win in the NCAAs but our offense was the problem.”
Gomez asked Jim about his tribute to Dave Gavitt, which Jim basically repeated in response: that Gavitt was the sole reason the league came into existence- nobody else wanted it at the time but nobody else had his vision. In the press conference, Jim had said with a trace of bitterness that “if we’d stayed a basketball league it would have been the best basketball league in America for along time“.
Gomez had an idea for a new reality show, based on the new program “Celebrity Wife Swap”. He suggests that in exhibition games, coaches could swap teams and coach the other team’s players. He said he’d thought about that for a long time in hopes that Jim would like it. He didn’t. “This is serious business. I hope you realize that.”
They discussed Syracuse’s schedule which is variously rated at #3 in the country by CBS sports and 120 by Sagarin. JB couldn’t imagine how anybody could rate it #3 and thinks they must be including all games, including the ones we haven’t played yet. He did say we have the toughest Big East schedule.
At this point I called in my second question. First I suggested that the schedule rating might include our practices. That got a laugh. I told him I was going to ask one of those pesky questions about why he didn’t play somebody. I said the people in our chatroom had assumed that Brandon must have been injured if he wasn’t in there at the end. Apparently he wasn’t, (at least JB didn’t say so). “We were up 10-12 late so we were in good position. Scoop and Dion are good free throw shooters. (Scoop is 52%, Dion 68%, Brandon 86%). If they were going to foul, they’d foul Fab. I had thoughts of putting Brandon in. If it had gotten away from us, people would have questioned it. Everyone has their favorite player. People are always calling into talk shows asking why I play this player or that. I don’t listen to them but sometimes I do when I’m in the car.” I suggested that if he listened to those people, nobody would be on the court at all. That got another laugh.
Gomez suggested that Seton Hall’s wins over Connecticut and West Virginia would help our ratings. JB noted that Seton Hall has a high strength of schedule. They talked about how DePaul was doing vs. Pitt. “We were not a good match up for them because they like to press and we can handle the press.”
Steve Lavin may not be returning this year due to his prostate surgery. “That’s usual. Usually you are back in about three weeks. There must have been some complications.” Gomez asked what the rules are on whether the games played in a coach’s absence count on his won-lost record. “If you miss a game or two because you are sick- those are your games, (JB missed two games a decade ago, so those are “his games”). In the case of Jim Calhoun’s suspension, it will be up to the infractions committee.
Jaime Dixon was facing a possible fourth straight loss in the DePaul game- he’s never lost four straight. JB: “It’s not fun when you do. Believe me, I know.”
Jim said that people are treating the Temple win over Duke as a big upset but it isn’t- losing to the Owls in Philadelphia. Some reported asked Coach K if he had foreseen the loss. His response was that he would have called in sick if he did.
Paul Westphal was apparently fired at the insistence of DeMarcus Cousins, “a so-called star player who isn’t very mature. If you get Kobe Bryant mad at you are in trouble but Cousins shouldn’t have the power to get a coach fired. Mike Brown said it’s a player’s league but the players have to allow you to coach them” Jim said that the Chris Paul trade would have “made” the Lakers, who badly need a good guard to go with Bryant and Bynum.
Gomez asked about the Knicks who were booed in their last game. “That team isn’t built for defense. Stoudamire is not a defensive player. Melo can play defense but isn’t great at it. They need a high quality point guard. They don’t have enough weapons to just outscore people.”
Nick in Syracuse asked how Jim was handling all this talent so well. He said that the barometer of how a coach is handling so many good players is that nobody ahs been talking about transferring. JB: “Guys want to play more but see how productive they are with more rest.”
