Murray State University Athletics
Weekly Press Conference
1/24/2005 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Questions were addressed to head coach Mick Cronin.
Opening statement: Well, a big road week for us. We've got to find a way to win on the road if we want to compete for a conference championship. We've got a young team that we're a little concerned about. It's their first time in that kind of situation. They haven't had to handle playing the same team twice in the same year, having beaten them already, both in Eastern and Morehead, so you've got to understand that your opponent has all the motivation n the world to turn the tables on you.
I would think that Thursday, our guys defnitely will be ready because they understand that the Eastern game could have and maybe should have gone the other way the first time around, so that's a big concern of mine with the young group, having never been through the OVC and having to play a team for the second time. Other than that, we're excited to be 5-1.
How come somebody's always undefeated in the league? That's my concern. It's what we were talking about with the TV show. You know, Austin Peay went 16-0 last year, I'm sitting there thinking, "We've got two teams now (Samford and Tennessee Tech)," and everybody's saying, "Well, they'll lose; they'll lose," and they never lost. But, at the end of the day, the tournament's what matters, but I have visions of Austin Peay running the table last year, and can't ever catch them.
But back to our stuff. Rebounding, obviously, is a major concern for us. Eastern Kentucky's a great rebounding team. I think, in overall games, they're probably the best rebounding team in our conference. That's a major concern going into Thursday, especially the way we did not rebound the ball at the end of the game on Saturday night. We did, probably, the worst job of blocking out of the year. Maybe, the first time we played Eastern Kentucky, we didn't do a good job of blocking out.
Our guys have to realize that our starting line-up with three guards, Shawn Witherspoon and Charles Johnson -- we're the smallest starting five in the league. We need to block out, our we're not going to get the ball. So, we'll be working on that a little bit this week. We're going to play some block-out technique.
On taking Eastern Kentucky's best shot on Thursday: Well, I was planning on getting that, anyway. They had opportunities to beat us. At the end of the day for all of us -- I'm from the school of thought where the conference tournament is what matters. That's who gets to play on. I think (EKU head coach) Travis (Ford) is worried about building his program, getting his guys to compete every night out. They played the top three teams in the league, are their three losses: Samford, Tech and us. Although they're 3-3, I think they are still formidable. They're playing well; they're obviously going to be very tough at home. They gave us fits up there last year; we had to come from way down to win it late in that game.
I can tell you that (against EKU) Samford was 8-for-9 from three in the second half, and shot 14-for-20 overall in the second half. That's pretty strong.
About the EKU game against Tennessee Tech: Tennessee Tech is extremely athletic. They remind me a lot of us last year, minus the point guard. They're explosive and athletic, and I think that anybody who goes into Tech is going to be in for a tough night, because they're athletic and strong with Willie Jenkins. The game was a close game, and he hit three straight threes on three consecutive trips, and each one was harder than the last one. He looked like he should be playing for money that whole game. I'm not looking forward to that game; they were extremely impressive. I finally got to see that game yesterday.
They're just explosive, they're older, strong and athletic. That was the end of Eastern's four-game road swing. They got down 24, and I think they've become a team of character. They battled back; they cut it to 10. They found a way to battle back; they don't quit. My impression of that game is: whoever goes to Tennessee Tech is in for a tough night. (Murray State does not play at Tennessee Tech during the regular season.)
At the end of the day, we're all going to play in the conference tournament, and we're going to be in Nashville, hopefully. The final four teams are going to be in Nashville on a neutral floor, and that's when it matters. Next year, we'll see. We go to a 20-game schedule (in conference), so we play everybody twice. It's going to be a long conference season next year.
On the three-guard offense: There's good and bad to it. My concern with it is we don't rebound the ball. Darnell (Hopkins) didn't get a rebound in the Tennessee State game. He's got to do a better job of rebounding or we're going to have to make some sort of adjustment and play Justin (Orr) and Shane (Dansby) more, because we can't just get dominated on the glass the way we got dominated late in that game. We got dominated on the glass in the second half of the Eastern Kentucky game.
I just try to put our older guys out there, get our more experienced guys out there, make it easier on Justin and Shane to come off the bench and not worry about size, because Darnell's toughness allows him to play bigger people. But we're not too caught up in who starts; it's more, as the game gets going, try to find the right combinations, having the right guys out there at the right times.
My main concern with the three-guard line-up is Trey (Pearson) not getting enough rest, because he's got to play his position, then when I rest Keith (Jenifer), he's got to play the point. I think, eventually, I'd love to get back to bringing one of those guys off the bench and having a three-guard rotation instead of starting all three of them so I could get Trey more rest.
Trey and I had a talk after the Samford game, and he's been great ever since, but I told him it had to start in practice. Somebody's going to have to score for us, or I'm going to have to get out and recruit somebody to be a go-to guy, and have him play the point guard with Keith, let the best man win.
Somebody's got to be a guy who creates offense for us, but it's got to be an everyday thing in practice. You can't pass up open shots in practice. How are you gong to develop yourself as a go-to guy and get in any kind of rhythm as a scorer if you don't shoot the ball every day in practice when you're open, in drills and three-on-three and four-on-four and all the stuff we do? You've got to be a scorer, and you've got to compete and play like an all-league player every day in practice if you want to be an all-league player.
So, we got a lot out of our Samford loss as far as devoting, finally, a lot of guys on the team to what we expect of them every day in practice and what they should bring to the table if they expect to be the players that they want to be, and I'm very happy, obviously, with the way the guys responded.
On EKU's development under head coach Travis Ford: I think that people have to understand. When Travis took Eastern over, they had a lot of personnel turnover, and they were at the bottom of the conference, and then, all of a sudden, a year into your program, they institute the "Five and Eight" Rule. Now, all of a sudden, it's not like you can go out and sign nine guys. You're under the "Five and Eight" guidelines, you don't bring in more than eight under a two-year span. Then, if you make a mistake, and a guy leaves, you can't replace him. That's what made that rule so bad. It took a rebuilding process about double the years it would take some people, and Travis just had to work through that.
We're friends. You can't be much better friends. When I went to Louisville and got to know him a lot better, he would come down to visit Coach (Rick) Pitino and I, and we spent a lot of time talking about it. It's hard to turn things over when you can't recruit other players, you can't upgrade your talent.
I think he immediately upgraded the expectation level of the program and the intensity with which the players played, but it took him a while to get the talent upgraded because of the "Five and Eight" Rule. I think, as he's done that, he's been able to add to the talent level, they've risen in the rankings of the OVC every year. He's won more games every year he's been there than the previous year, and he's done an absolutely tremendous job of rebuilding that program under the intense guidelines of the "Five and Eight" Rule.
I went through it at Louisville. We were able to bring in a couple of players like Taquan Dean, Francisco Garcia and Larry O'Bannon, and I can give you a list of other guys that we might have signed as well if there was no "Five and Eight" Rule.
On referring to former coaches he worked with: I talk to Coach Pitino as well as Coach (Bob) Huggins (of Cincinnati). The best thing you can do is stay in touch with other coaches and have coaches you can talk to about your team, things that are going on with your team. When you have people like that who will give you their time and concern, I'd be crazy not to call them and tell them what's going on.
Sometimes, it's just to be able to talk to somebody who's been through a situation before, like coaching a young team and not having the right returning guys. Then, you go on to the X's and O's thing, to try different things from an offensive and defensive standpoint.
We talk more about other things, to be honest with you, than what's going on with our different teams, because it's tough for them to give me too much advise, because they don't see us play, where I can give them a lot of opinions, because I see both of their teams play. It's really more that way, we're talking about I saw their game. I know both those guys saw our Missouri game on satellite, and haven't had a chance to see us since. So, I look forward to getting some opinions from them after our two upcoming television games (Feb. 10 vs. Tennessee Tech and Feb. 12 vs. Austin Peay). But I always bounce stuff off those guys as well as my father.
One thing I've learned as a young guy, it's given me a lot of advantages over young coaches that I don't know it all, and I don't need to act like I know it all, just because I'm young, like I have all the answers. We all try different things at times. It'd be crazy not to seek advice and run things by people. We all do it, even guys who act like they don't do it.
On Murray State's position in the OVC: I would have loved to have been 6-0, but now, if you look at Samford, I think 5-1 is probably -- losing at the first-place team's gym, when I thought we had it under control; we just turned the ball over too much. I worry a little. We sit back, and my assistants say, "Well, they'll lose this many or that many," them and Tennessee Tech, and I've been through --Austin Peay didn't lose any. So, you wonder if you can afford any losses this year if you want to keep pace.
The way I'm approaching it for our guys is: "If you want to compete for first place, we need to win," and at least stay within one game, because we don't play Samford again, and we do, fortunately, get a chance to play Tech. You can't hope for other people to lose; you need to go out and win, because you can control that. You've got to control what you can control.
At the same time, I'm happy with our guys, where we're at now as far as our development. But, from here on out, it gets tougher. These two road games, and February's going to be a tough stretch, because it's tough to win in February. The real running has started. People are competing, they're fighting for their lives like we talked about earlier. Eastern's in a must-win situation if they want to compete for the league title. Everybody's to the point where they need to start winning games if they want to make our conference tournament or get a home game or whatever.
One thing I've noticed on tape in scouting the last couple of opponents: I think the competitiveness of the games has really, really picked up. It's a lot more physical out there, and the games get bigger as the season gets deeper, and as you win, the games get more fun, because every game becomes a lot bigger.
