Men's Basketball Prepares For SEC Tournament
Monday, March 9, 2009 | Men's Basketball
University of Florida Head Coach Billy Donovan Press Conference 3-9-09
On Upcoming game against Arkansas
“We obviously played Arkansas; it was our third SEC game. Both teams have certainly been through a lot and both teams are dealing with some young guys and the rigor of a long schedule. I hadn't really had the chance to see them play a lot as of late. I will get a chance to watch a lot more today. Certainly John (Pelphrey) and I are familiar with each other and I did see a little bit of the Vanderbilt game yesterday. We are excited to play. Being a Thursday game, it gives us an extra day than a normal preparation week because we are usually playing on Wednesdays. We had the chance to take off yesterday and we aren't really doing anything today besides watching a little bit of film and then we will have two good days to prepare and get ready to go to Tampa.”
On if there is an advantage for UF on having the SEC Tournament in Tampa
“I don't know if there is or there isn't. Hopefully there will be a large contingency of Gator fans, Tampa is a good city for that, but I think you also realize the way the economy is and the difficulties people are having and something like that can be expensive.”
On the team's confidence level
“I really haven't noticed a lot of ups and downs with that. They have some pretty good confidence and I don't think that has been an issue. Coming off some tough losses throughout the year, I never felt like the group was lacking confidence. Sometimes I talk to the guys about guys who really have deep internal confidence and guys who only have surface confidence. I don't see that being a major issue but either way for us I think our guys are doing pretty well.”
On if UF has a good chance to win the tournament
“The fact that we play on Thursday and we have a game that is the most important thing. I don't think you can go into this type of tournament looking down the road. People are always talking about the tournament or Saturday and asking if you can win four games in a four day period. We will worry about that when it gets there. That will be something we will worry about then.”
On if this tournament is open for any team to win
“This is my perspective; I don't think you talk about winning, you talk about trying to play very good basketball to beat Arkansas. You can't win anything unless you get passed your first day. So, talking about the Tournament as a whole, that is not what it is really about. The SEC Tournament Championship right now is against Arkansas because you have to win in order to advance. If you don't win you go home so it is not even about to me whether or not it is open or not open. I don't think there is any question, based on what happened last year, that no one ever predicted Georgia. Could that happen again this year? Absolutely. The main focus for us is we have to play our best basketball Thursday night at 9:45. That is really all this comes down to me as a coach is our total focus and energy towards that.”
On the way Allan Chaney and Eloy Vargas have dealt with their injuries
“I am not disappointed in their injuries. Chaney's injury is a stress reaction, the start of a stress fracture. Eloy, when dealing with the ankle, conditioning is definitely a factor which sat him out for a period of time. He has been in practice for awhile but the most difficult thing for me as a coach with Allan Chaney and Kenny Kadji, and Eloy Vargas is they have to learn. Fatigue is such a factor every single day for them. It is such an overwhelming factor in that they have a very difficult time just playing two possessions. The thing that has been tough is we obviously knew going into this year, even if Speights was back, that we needed help across the front line. So, with Chaney, Vargas, and Kadji, we felt like we were really trying to address those issues up front. Tyus, Werner, and Parsons need some more help. They need more of a level of consistency. Now Chaney hasn't been able to play and right now Eloy has got a long, long way to go. I am just telling it like it is. It is not necessarily his foot condition anymore, it is his overall conditioning. They have had a very difficult time, the three of them, dealing with fatigue, dealing with practice, being able to run up and down the floor at the pace, being able to get back in transition, and being able to do the right things. In a possession, shot goes up, they block out, have to run out back in transition, get on a man, get matched up, maybe show on a screen, rotate to a guy, shot goes up, block out again, run the floor, and run up. That is overwhelming for them right now. Sometimes, you want to put them in the game, but you can only put them in the game for a minute or two and then we have to get them out because they are not able to energy wise or motor wise play at the level that is necessary. We can use more of those guys to provide that and I think Kadji has probably been the best guy this year in at least showing some promise or some hope that he can become more consistent. That is the thing with freshmen; you just don't know what level of consistency they are going to provide for your team. I don't think those guys necessarily are any different from any other guys. They are probably not a whole lot different from Maurice Speight his freshmen year but Speights had three guys in front of him so it didn't get exposed. Because of our lack of size in the frontcourt this year, there is a little bit more of a focus on how come these guys aren't really able to get in there and do a little bit more.”
On matching up with Arkansas' Michael Washington
“It is a tough matchup. He is very long and can shoot the ball. He is as good an offensive rebounder as there is in this league. The last time we played Arkansas last year, I think he played 12-14 minutes and had five offensive rebounds in the game. He is a terrific anticipator and has long hands when shots are going up and he can get inside in position. He can post, he can do turnaround jumpers. He can do a lot of different things. He is an all-league guy and he has played like that all year long.”
On Patrick Patterson grabbing more offensive rebounds in the first half than the second
“I wish it was a little bit more of us but if you look at the statistics, Kentucky shot 39 percent in the first half and shot 52 percent in the second half so there were a lot less of them in the second half to get. When a shot comes off, hopefully we are doing a little bit better of a job rebounding. I thought their low shooting percentage, and his ability to go up and offensive rebound in the first half was a problem for us. For whatever reason, watching some of the clips a couple of times, there was a rotation where we actually had two guys on him which was a positive thing. It just kind of happened that way. There were a couple of balls that came off the rim pretty sharply and he really wasn't able to get his hands on them. I don't know if we did anything special or better in the second half regarding the fact that he didn't get a lot of shots off or rebounds. But we know the number of offensive rebounds were not as many as in the first half because of the shooting percentage.”
On Nick Calathes' recent drops on the stat sheet
“In a lot of ways, people look at his numbers from two, three, or four weeks ago to his numbers now and a lot of times that is the unfortunate part for young kids. They actually think that makes a difference. In the first half against Kentucky, he was phenomenal. He played as good of basketball as he had played all year. Then what happened was he started to try to do too much and when he started to do too much it didn't help us. He has got to be one of those guys that says you know what, they have two guys guarding me right now and someone else is going to be open. We started off the game making five of our first six shots, things were going good. He may have to look at this and say you know what, I don't need to score and I don't need a lot of assists. I just need to be a little bit of a decoy. Now can you as a player handle being a decoy? Can you handle looking at a stat sheet and see yourself getting 12 points instead of 20 or instead of having eight assists, having four with six rebounds? I think for a lot of kids, they look at a stat sheet and base that as how their performance was. It is not about that. If you look at the efficiency of our team in the first 10 or 15 minutes of that game against Kentucky, we were shooting a high percentage and we were getting the stops on defense. He wasn't shooting and he wasn't scoring he was just making everybody around him better. He gave Alex Tyus a dunk and gave Dan Werner a wide open three-point shot. He made a couple of good plays on the break. He did a lot of really good things in that first half. But like any player who is competitive, you want to always try to do a little bit more and sometimes doing less is doing more.”
On Nick Calathes balancing what he has to do
“Absolutely, that is the whole evolvement of a player. I think you hear it all of the time and I am not comparing him to anybody but come fourth quarter for any team playing against Kobe, you hear it is Kobe Bryant time right now. Guys understand and Nick has to understand that he's not in a situation where he is the most talented guy on the floor and can just get the basketball and score. He can't do that anymore. So there is a balance of understanding how to manage that part of him and he is trying to work on that. The one thing I love about him is he has such a great drive and strong will. He just has to find a way to manage all of that and that is part of his growth and development.”
On if Coach Donovan has to teach more with this team being inexperienced
“I still think the same level of teaching is always going on, it is just different. The team I had coming off their first national championship, the on the court stuff needed to stay sharp and keeping them together and focused. I would say for this group, I still have to do a lot of teaching and situations with timing and scoring and different things that can happen that they can learn from. Also getting them to understand as a group, how to be a team. When one guy breaks down on defense, they kind of all break down. When one guy loses focus, they all lose focus. I thought in the Kentucky game, a very physical game, I thought our guys were running off screens and weren't setting their man up. I am probably spending a lot more time with that stuff, trying to teach them and coach them, than I would from more of an experienced team. It is different. I think every team is different. I feel like you are always coaching something whether if it is on the floor, scouting reports, preparation, little things we have to run, and things like that.”
On the team's effort
“I think our team's effort has been really good. I think every team every year has one of those games where you can say you know what this is uncharacteristic of the effort that we gave. There have been maybe only a couple of games like that. Our effort has been really, really good. The problem for them is what they are doing. There are a lot of things that go on during the course of the game. Understanding how to break momentum and understanding how to keep momentum. I don't know if they really understand that and that whole concept. If all of the sudden Nick comes down and tries to make a pass over the top to Chandler (Parsons) and the ball gets deflected and the ball gets thrown to (Jodie) Meeks who makes a three and the lead goes from 10 to seven and we call timeout. We have to understand that. One time, on the weak side, Kadj caught the ball on the low post and doesn't do what we ask him to do and he tries to throw the ball to Dan Werner and it hits him and then the other team goes on a break. Those things happen instantaneously in games where they change momentum. We have a lot of those plays and until we can really understand that we have to limit the things that we can control, that is it. It is not like one day our guys are really energized and then the next they are not.”
