HCDM
Matt congratulated the coach on “getting another road pelt”. JB: “we had a good first half. Our defense was good. They made some turnovers and we converted. It was a lot like the Marquette game. Wayns and Cheek played terrible and they had no chance. They can‘t afford to play like that with all those freshmen. ”
Matt brought up Scoop’s half court shot. “We haven’t had one like that in a long time. I really don’t remember when.” (Could it be the Pearl- Sonny Spera’s shot was earlier in the same season.) “Dion played great. He’s the 6th man of the year. He’s played well all year. He gives us a great lift coming off the bench. James missed some shots he can make but I like the way James is playing and he’s improving.”
Justin in Syracuse asked what can be done to minimize the impact of foul trouble, especially on Fab Melo. “If you had no back up center, it would hurt. But we have one and he’s good on defense. If guys are only playing 20-22 minutes you can avoid foul trouble. Big guys tend to get in foul trouble because they are blocking shots, taking charges, etc.”
He may have already gotten my second question, (I always E-mail them in ahead of time.) he began talking about going undefeated, saying that only the fans talk about the that. The players know they aren’t going unbeaten. He talked about the last team to do it- the 1975-76 Indiana team, which “had five future NBA players on it. Quinn Buckner was 6-4 215 and he was a tank. Wilkerson and Abernathy were 6-7. May was 6-9 and Benson 6-11. They just dominated. We played Virginia Tech that year. They were about 20-5 and they beat us here by 15 points.“ (They were 21-7 and beat us 92-81). “That team played Indiana and they were down 24-4 and it should have been a shut-out because the only shots they got off were two falling down jumpers that went in…If we were about to play Louisville, fans would be concerned that we might lose. Well, Providence beat Louisville by 31 points! You just can’t tell.
Pittsburgh had beaten Rutgers about 8 times in a row and lost by 23 at home. Cincinnati has lost one of their last 8- at home to St. John’s, who ahs been struggling. It’s just not realistic to think or talk about being undefeated.”
I called in my first question about the play on Saturday vs. Marquette. “The refs can go to the monitor for a flagrant foul only. They can’t decide to call a common foul. It’s a Flagrant 1 if it it’s accidental, a Flagrant 2 if it’s intentional. It’s any time you get hit with an elbow above the shoulders. I don’t like the rule. I’ve never seen a player get a concussion in 36 years from being hit by an elbow. I don’t like to call for a review. You can also ask them to review if a shot is a 2 or a 3. It’s always been the case that you lose a time out. I probably wouldn’t have called for a review in the Villanova game except for what happened Saturday. Melo got hit the same way but they said ‘it was just a basketball play‘. On Crowder, it’s just a regular basket because it’s a live ball.” Matt asked if there is a “statue of limitations” on making a call. “It’s the second live ball with no whistle.”
What I got out of this is that the refs can retroactively call a flagrant foul based on a review of the monitor even if they never called a foul in the first place but since they didn’t blow the whistle, the basket Crowder scored still counts. The whistle discounts the basket, not the fact that there was a foul. I assume from this that if there was a basket scored before the whistle was blown on a common foul, (and the player scoring it had not committed the foul), the basket would count because the players had not “stopped playing” upon hearing the whistle. I’ve never seen that happen so I guess the referees have a lot of dexterity with those whistles.
They were watching the Wisconsin-Purdue game on TV. Purdue was down big early after having lost their last game to Penn State by 20 points. They expressed sympathy for Robbie Hummel who is in his sixth year of college ball. He’s missed most of the last two due to two major surgeries. When he first got hurt he was one of the top players on one of the country’s top teams. Now he can finally play again and Purdue doesn’t seem be much good this year.
Warren in Syracuse wanted to know why Pitt seems so weak this year compared to the teams they’ve had over the last decade. “They lost their three best defenders and three of their top 4 offensive players in McGhee, Wanamaker and Brown and they lost their best shooter to injury in Travon Woodall. They were 4 for 32 in the first half of last night’s game. I really believe last year that if they hadn’t fouled at the end of the Butler game, they would have won the national championship last year. It was their best team. They’d already beaten Connecticut and I think they would have done it again in the Final Four.”
A caller wanted to know how the coach keeps the kids ‘grounded’ with all the success they’ve been having. “Veteran players know how hard it is to win in this league. It is what it is. You get yourself ready to play and if you’re good you’ll keep winning. None of these guys are cocky. All that matter sis that you go out and play. We’ve just played the next game for 36 years. Whatever we end up is where we deserved to be. The rest is just all talk.”
William in Syracuse showed a lot of guts in asking the coach if he “is serious about fundamentals“. He especially wanted to know about boxing out for rebounds because it’s something William’s coaches had always taught him to do. JB: “We work on fundamentals every day. Boxing out is easy but if you are in a zone you might have more than one guy in your zone. Also our forwards have to get out to play shooters. We may give up a couple of extra offensive rebounds in a zone but we might get 5-6 more steals or blocks so it more than evens out.” Matt wonders what would happen if they overloaded to the shooter’s side. JB pointed out that the ball often comes off on the other side. He also said that we can “run better in the zone because the guards never get caught inside, as they can be in a man-to-man.”
Paul in East Greenbush said he went to school with Craig Forth. They discussed how Craig is now coaching a girl’s basketball team. Paul asked if the coach had seen Kentucky play and how well we might match up with them. Coach just said that “they are very, very good, better than last year.” I’d have loved to hear a detailed breakdown of the two teams. But JB is thinking about Providence, not Kentucky.
Larry in Venice, Florida asked about the restricted area under the basket. The rule is that player who isn’t the “primary defender” cannot stand in there and draw a charge. The primary defender can run past the player with the ball and establish himself in front of him and draw a charge. The problem in a zone is determining who the primary defender is. “Fab is not normally the primary defender unless they toss the ball into the post. I like the rule. Players were standing under the basket and that’s not a good way to play the game. I would like the circle to be bigger, like it is in the NBA.”
Rick called to ask if the NBA going to a zone helped in recruiting because other teams couldn’t claim that playing in a zone wouldn’t properly prepare players for the NBA. “It hasn’t had an effect. People have tried to recruit against us for that but we’ve had more guys drafted that anyone else in the conference over the years. The NBA drafts a player based on his offensive ability and then they teach him the defense they want. They don’t use the zone that much in the NBA, although Dallas used it effectively last year with Chandler blocking shots. NBA teams can use it for short periods with the right personnel. But the league just has too many shooters. People don’t realize how well those players can shoot it. Wes Johnson is a great shooter and they have 30, 40, 50 guys who are better.”
Darrell called up and apologized “for being a Golden Domer”. JB: “That’s all right. Not everybody can go to a great school.” Darrell wanted to know Jim’s opinion of the Irish this year. “When they lost Abromaitis, I thought it would be very difficult for them. I’m very impressed with the way they responded. Their big guys have improved tremendously. That will be a very difficult game for us.”
Dave in Minneapolis wanted to know “how the zone began” and how it became the traditional defense at Syracuse. JB: “We played the 2-3 zone when I was in college . Penn State also played it and I was impressed with their zone. We used the zone to beat UNC and get to the Final Four when I was an assistant. When we had Roosevelt Bouie and Eddie Moss, who were great defenders, we played pressure man to man most of the time. . We lost a couple of recruits in the 90’s and we were not good at man to man. We used the zone to get to the Final Four. In 2003 we had a lot of young guys and they were better in the zone. There used to be a lot of teams that played zones. In our league Georgetown and Connecticut did and Villanova had that match-up zone. But now so few teams play it that we often play teams that aren’t used to seeing a zone or haven’t seen a good one. I thought we might play some man to man this year but our zone has been our best defense.”
Bill in Liverpool wanted to know how the move to the ACC will affect coaching and recruiting. “It won’t effect recruiting. We might be able to get a player from Georgia but I’m not sure we want to go to Georgia for players. The players in the Northeast like the Big East and the ACC. There won’t be as much travel as the new Big East with all the new teams. Fans will get to see UNC, Duke, Maryland. Miami, Virginia Tech, Boston College and Pittsburgh are all former Big East teams. I don’t see any negatives. It’s just different. Instead of going to Providence, we’ll go to Greensboro.”
Matt noted that Kobe Bryant had had back-to-back 40 point games. “He’s good.” Bud Selig isn’t retiring at 77. He’ll be Commissioner through 2014 at least. “He makes $25 million. That’s why he wants to keep going. I can’t imagine these people making that much money. The presidents of corporations make $300 million plus stock options. It’s completely out of control.”
Gomez took over for the second hour. They spent a big chunk of it talking about food. They talked about Pascal’s restaurant moving to Fayetteville. “If you like that kind of food. For straight Italian, I like Asti’s on North Salina. But get a reservation.” Gomez asked if he liked Philly cheese steaks. “They’re good but I wouldn’t go around the block to get one.“ Jim said he’d been watching a show called “Diners and Drive Ins” where these guys go around and cook gourmet dinners in diners. Matt had seen the same show and highly recommended it. Apparently there are 50 or so places around the northeast where they will be and JB said he’d love to just drive around to them and have lunch and dinner. They also talked about JB’s appearance on “Man vs. Food” last year. He marveled at how the host, Adam Richmond could consume such “monster portions of food. And he’s not a big guy.”
Joe in Fayetteville asked them to stop talking about food as he hadn’t had dinner yet. He asked if the player rotation was set before the game or if JB “coached by the seat of his pants”. Coach said “there’s a kind of a structure we want to use. It’s worked out that we’ve been able to play two centers and have 8 guys for the other four positions. Dion, the CJ, the Baye will come in. James stepped up early. Michael Carter Williams gets time in the first half. I’ve explained to him that we have three veteran guards so he’s less likely to get time in the second half. Michael is a good player but he’s behind more expected good players. It’s not new to use 8-9 guys. In 2003 we had Jeremy, Josh and Billy. The only difference is that we hardly had Carmelo out at all and Gerry wasn’t out a lot. This year it’s not a big gap between players. Carmelo would not be playing 22 minutes if he was on this team.”
A caller asked if it’s harder to coach a team with a superstar player or a team like this one with a lot of good players. JB didn’t think there was a any special difficulty to either but “it’s always good to have a player who can do things other guys can’t do.”
Another said he expected Melo to be a bust after last year- was JB surprised by his progress. “No. I know what he could do. But last year he was so out of shape he couldn’t move into position to make plays. Rony needed four years plus a year in the NBA to hit his peak. Fab will peak in about three years. Dion will not get a lot better. Baye needs to gain weight. He isn’t eating enough. He’s very fussy about what he eats.” (Maybe JB could take him on a tour of those diners this summer.)
A caller asked if this team was our best chance to get another national championship. JB: “Two years ago I thought we had our best chance in along time until AO went down. That was one of our best teams. We’ve had 7-8 or eight teams with a chance. Last year Ohio State and Kansas were the best teams in the country and they didn’t get to the Final Four. Football coaches are smart. They don’t want to have to play 3-4 games to win. If they had a tournament in football this year, LSU could have lost to Oklahoma State in the first round.”
Gomez talked about how Purdue, (who’s game with Wisconsin was on TV), had a raised court. Is that dangerous? JB said not, but admitted he sprained his ankle there once.
Dave called and wanted to know how Dion Waiters had adjusted to coming into games off the bench, noting that last year there seemed to problems. “We talked- last year it didn’t do much good. I can’t fault the kid for wanting to play more. He’s finally understood he’ll play a lot and not be restricted. He could play somewhere else for 35 minutes in an offense that restricted what he could do. He could have left. Dion was packed up and ready to go a few times. His mother was very good. Sometimes parents are enablers. She wasn’t She told him “You’re not coming home!” Gomez: “I’m a huge fan of Mrs. Waiters.” JB: “Most everybody struggles during their freshman year, wondering if it would be better somewhere else.” Gomez: “Is subbing the new starting?” JB: “Scoop’s starting because he’s our best point guard. Dion is our best scoring guard. Brandon can be more of a point guard next year.”
A customer at Delmoncio’s had “handsomely written a question on a guest check and said ‘We’ll see you in New Orleans’”. He asked if Dion could be first team all-Big East as a sixth man. “He should make it if he keeps playing this way.” He also dismissed critics who say he shouldn’t be considered for sixth man awards. “When Frank Ramsay played for the Boston Celtics, he was better than the guy ahead of him. A certain number of minutes starting doesn’t matter. Dion likes to watch the game first. The only bad thing would be if you came off the bench and didn’t play a lot.”
I called in my second question”. JB was adamant that he’d rather go undefeated into the post season if he could. It wouldn’t add pressure to the players. “It would lessen it. The players would have gained so much confidence after doing that they would feel no pressure. You want to win every game and be playing as well as you can play when you go into the tournament.”
A caller asked about playing Louisville and Connecticut home and away. JB: “Notre Dame and Cincinnati are playing better right now than they are. West Virginia is as tough as anybody.” he did acknowledge that “Connecticut has the most talent. They have 2-3 first round draft picks. They just have to click. Before the season is over we will have a whole lot of tough games.”
Gomez noted that Donovan McNabb was playing in a rec league. JB: “I’ll bet he bruised some people. He’s a very physical player. “ Gomez reported that Donovan had 14 points and 10 rebounds in the game.
Someone asked how Fab “lost those famous 30 pounds: did he spend all last summer on campus with the strength coaches?” Coach said that Fab was here 5-6 weeks and did work with a stength coach and watched what he ate before he joined the Brazilian national team. “Sometimes the food in those Olympic villages isn’t too good so you eat less.” (I think it’s a good idea to watch what you eat. It’s less fattening than eating it.)
The subject came up of what kind of a player JB was came up: could he play today? “The guys today are a lot better than me. I didn’t try to do things I couldn’t do. I probably had 10 turnovers a year. I matured late. I didn’t shave until my senior year. (Laughs.) I got really good a couple years after college. I had a couple of chances to get into the NBA but I had begun my coaching career. I was 6-4 155 in college. I tried everything I could to gain weight. I drank more milk shakes than any human being on earth.” (They didn’t have those diners in those days. I’ve always wondered how a guy who talks about food so much isn’t fat.)
“Dave Bing could play today. He had the same athletic ability as these guys and more. He was unusual at that time. He was athletic- he could jump way better than Dion. He was a modern player 50 years ago.” (I’m trying to imagine a guy jumping way better than Dion.)
The judge in the West Virginia-Big East case has ordered the parties to go through non-binding mediation on the subject of when the Mountaineers can leave the conference. JB figures that they will come up with a deal regarding how much West Virginia will have to pay the conference to leave. “What are they going to do- arrest them? I don’t think we’re going to go like that. They need us for another year before the new schools come in. We’ll be here for that year and then they’ll let us go. That’s my best guess. But I’m not smart enough to know what’s going to happen.”
