Indiana University Athletics
Tom Crean Previews Matchup with Rutgers
1/30/2015 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 30, 2015
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BLOMINGTON, Ind. - Read what head coach Tom Crean had to say as he previewed Saturday's game at home vs. Rutgers (3:15 p.m.; BTN).
Opening statement:
“Rutgers to me, is dangerous for so many reasons. Number one: they’ve got bonafide scorers that have done it for a period of time. I know they’re new to the Big Ten, but they’re not new to college basketball. They pose issues. They bring some of the best of some of the other teams that we’ve seen. You’ve got a guy like Myles Mack who can really shoot the ball and change direction, change speeds, gets fouled; I think the comparison would be Trimble from Maryland.
“You’ve got a guy like Kadeem Jack, who can play in the middle of the lane, can play in the post, can do different things with creating offense for others, maybe more so like a Dez Wells from Maryland.
“Bishop Daniels, I’ve seen him play since he was in high school. Fully aware of what he’s capable of, his numbers and percentages are solid, but he’s a much better player even than that. And then they’ve got the tenacity to get on the glass as some the other good teams in this league.
“So we’ve got to take that viewpoint into everything that we do in this game, and at the same time get ourselves better. And that’s what yesterday was about, with the exception of diving into Rutgers on film.
“This is a game that they can play different speeds, they run a very good system of offense. Eddie Jordan is an outstanding coach. He’s been an NBA head coach and certainly has the pedigree of success. He has All-Americans, he has Mike O’Koren. I remember watching Mike O’Koren at North Carolina. You guys are too young, most of you are too young, but one of the great college players of all-time, so you know they’ve got the tutelage there that’s outstanding.”
On what needs to be done:
“To me, what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to be really focused on what we do well. We have to be really focused on moving the ball quickly; our transition defense has got to improve, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, and there’s got to be more urgency in that.
“Certainly we’ve got to take care of the ball better, and make it simpler, and make our play simpler, and not try to make plays that are not there. I think when our players see us trying to challenge A.J. Hammons and it looks as ridiculous to them on film as it does when you try to do it in the game. When you’re driving the ball like Yogi does and keeping the drive alive and moving people around, then we’re playing better, so we can get better on both sides of the ball. We will.”
On road games:
“J.D. pointed out we played more road games than anybody else to this point in the Big Ten. I know we’re getting ready to go on the road again next week, but you just have to continue to move forward in everything that you do in this league. When you win, you’ve got to learn from that. When you lose, you’ve got to learn from that, and that’s the sign of a very good team, when you can continue to learn from those areas. We’ve got to continue to build a hunger that allows us to do that, and allows us to make progress and continue to move forward into whatever the next challenge is, and Rutgers is for us.
On energy on defense:
“We have to do a better job. The size is what it is. We’ve got to do a better job with ball pressure; we’ve got to do a better job with deflections, being active, discouraging passes in. What we wanted to do was make the touches into the post, you know there’s going to be catches, but make them harder, and at times we did. We have to mix our defense, even when we’re man, we have to mix that in it. Sometimes we’re playing man and then we jump to zone based on a player, based on the decision that we’ve made. We’ve got to be active and alert. And then when that shot goes up, we’ve got to be tremendous at getting everybody inside of the paint.
“The flip side is, defensively, you can’t have everybody inside of the paint when you’re in half-court defense, because people shoot the three so well. The last thing that we wanted to do was give up a bunch of open shots on the perimeter to the guys that could make those shots. They did a very good job of continuing to move the ball. They’ve got to, certainly in transition and some places like that, they’ve got to on some drives. We’ve got to get better.
“We don’t want to give up because we’ve got some shot blocking size. We don’t want to also look and say ‘well, we just can only take one thing away. Let’s just get inside of the post, and if they make threes so be it.’ If you do that in this league, you’ll lose a lot of games. We want to continue to build our 3-point defense.
“With all that being said, it just becomes more activity; becomes better set up in transition defense, becomes more activity with our feet and with our hands, and then everybody’s got to get inside that paint when the shot goes up.”
On offense against Purdue:
“We didn’t stay true to the simple principles, really, of just continuing to move the ball. Our cutting was very poor at Ohio State. Our cutting was better at Purdue, but we didn’t move the ball as well. We’re a movement offense. We use the full court, use the half court, and when we’re not active in our screens, our screens aren’t as good. And frankly, we didn’t play enough out of the corners the other day.
“Collin didn’t have the ball nearly enough against Purdue, which was an issue at halftime and continued to be an issue. When you’ve got five people on the court that you can play through, you have to play through those five people. We played with our head down too much the other night. We were so focused on getting to the foul line and getting to the rim that we didn’t let some of the simple things that were there come about. We cut impatient and cut short. On Troy’s steal dunk we got very impatient. We played into their defense’s hands a little bit. There’s definitely more room for improvement. There’s as much room for improvement on that end as there is on the defensive end.
“At times we’ve got to have much better recognition of when we’re going too fast and when we’re trying to make things happen that aren’t there. So now maybe we’ve got to run more set plays, we’ve got to create the offense more out of the play, and then there’s other times we just want to create the offense because we’re playing. In getting that recognition down, at times we make strides in that, and at times we don’t. In the last two games we hadn’t made strides there.”
On psychological factor of winning:
“We always want to win. Absolutely. There’s a bunch of teams sitting there right now that have three losses with the exception of Wisconsin. So certainly you want to win. You don’t prepare these games to be close. You don’t prepare these games to be in it. You prepare to win. You go into every game to win. That’s the mentality that it would take.
“We’re working fine, and we’ve just got to carry it on into games a little bit better, like we have been as recently as last week. It’s not as much about who you’re playing, but just doing the things that make you be successful. If you do that you’ll have a good psychological edge.”
What does Rutgers do well and what have they struggled with since they beat Wisconsin?
“They’ve had injuries. There’s no doubt about that. It’s a hard league. There’s no doubt about that. So, everybody goes through that. Wisconsin hasn’t gone through that yet but it’s still early in the season. And they’re playing at such a high level because of the way they’re getting to the glass. That’s one of the more underrated things about Wisconsin. So, even when they miss, they are putting themselves in a position to get there. I’m not trying to jump ahead to Wisconsin, just giving you an example of it. They’re staying very, very consistent with that and everybody else has got to find those things they do well and do them consistently well and find ways to do them every day and that becomes the hard part.
“But to me, Rutgers is a very good rebounding team, like we mentioned with the three guys that can really score points. They’ve got Junior Etou back now. He can play at the basket. I think they’re really good around the bucket. I think they’re really good at getting to the glass and Myles Mack makes it go. He can score in the lane; like the other better guards around, he can get to the rim, he can score in the paint, and he certainly score from three, and he is very good at getting fouled. So, he is in the line of excellent guards in this league.
“And Kadeem Jack provides a lot of issues because he can post and he can play in the mid-post, he can play on the wing, and he can shoot. So, they have a great system with Eddie’s system, which is more of that Princeton cut style system. They’ve got a very good system with that, so they are a rhythm team and when they are in rhythm they are pretty good. And I think our job is to make sure don’t let them get in rhythm.”
Why were the guys not as aggressive in their cutting versus Purdue and how do you change that?
“We’ve just got to continue to build on that constantly. I think we drove the ball pretty well the other day but we didn’t make the next pass. And sometimes when you’re driving it, you are not as aware of how you are being played and I think that’s big. And I think what happens when you get down and you have a bunch of scorers on your team, they want to be the ones that are going to help bring it back. That’s just how they’re wired. You have a bunch of scorers on the team. It’s not a matter of selfishness, it’s a matter of them thinking ‘I gotta get going, I gotta get us going.’ No, just let the offense do it. Let’s get defensive stops and get out on the break, let’s keep getting to the offensive glass.
“We missed numerous opportunities to make baskets when we got offensive rebounds. We’ve got to get better there. We thought we could get to the glass and we did but we just didn’t capitalize nearly as much. So, it’s just a matter of that continued awareness and letting the offense and letting the spacing do the work. But you do the work by creating the spacing with your cuts and being ready to shoot and making that simple pass when you see the help and continue to keep the defense moving as much as possible.”
On not relying on the 3-point shot too much:
“We just want to get good open shots and be ready to shoot, make the simple play. We don’t put a number on the number of threes we are taking or anything like that. I don’t even know what we are averaging, three point wise, right now. I should but I don’t. It doesn’t make any difference to me, as long as they’re good shots.
“Unless we are wide open on the break, we don’t want to take quick first side ones. We want to get the ball through the paint. I’ve talked about it a lot but it’s true. Our numbers are really high when the ball touches the paint, whether it is man or zone or whatever somebody is running. So, when the ball gets inside, then things get good for us. That’s really what it all comes down to. We played Maryland and they’re 3-point defense was pretty high right? And we made 15 3s, so it’s not like you go into it with that mindset. You go into it with ‘this is how we have to play for us to be successful’. Now, you will show what they try to take away and you also try to show what you feel like you can get. But other than that you just play.”
What do you think of Yogi’s comments about the team playing soft?
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. I didn’t see the comment, so I didn’t read anything really. I thought we could have played a lot more aggressive. I don’t think there is any question about that. But, I think they practice hard and I don’t have really much more I can say about that. I didn’t see it.”
On keeping it simple and not forcing things on offense:
“You have to keep at it. You have keep at it like anything else. We’ve got some guys that can score points, but when we are moving the ball and playing through the paint, and playing through the corners, and getting a reverse, and back-cutting and doing those kinds of things and really playing.
“Where we struggle sometimes is when our cuts weren’t as quick and as fast. They weren’t scoring cuts. You know against Ohio State, we didn’t make as many cuts and you’ve got to cut to score. Now in the Purdue game, we did get some really good back cut opportunities. We didn’t make every one of them but we moved the ball better and sometimes it’s just that. It’s playing with your head up, the open man cuts, and hitting.
“I guess it’s simple but it’s harder to do inside of the game because you do feel like you can beat your man. But you want to be in a situation where you are really trusting the offense the best you can.”
On the group of teams having three conference losses already:
“Well it’s early and we are at the halfway point. I would look at it as the glass is half full. It is a pretty strong league. It is really hard to win on the road and we’ve got two road wins. I’m not sure everybody else is on that. We had to work really hard to get both of them. We are proud of both of them. It’s very hard to win on the road, let alone to hold your home court. So, it’s a tremendous league.
“It doesn’t get enough credit and the coaches are always speaking it that it doesn’t get enough credit maybe on the middle to bottom rung but especially the bottom rung because that bottom rung would not be a bottom rung in very many leagues. People can beat people in this league because everybody’s got things that they do well. There are very few teams that don’t shoot the ball or have people on their team that can’t shoot it pretty well. We can score points in the paint, we are not necessarily scoring off the post. Most people can score it off the post right now too. So, it’s a very balanced league, with the exception of the way Wisconsin is playing right now. But like we said, it’s the halfway point.”
On the team understanding how good shots impacts transition defense:
“I don’t know if that’s the issue with our transition defense. We just have to have the urgency that you have to have there. We had some quick shots. But I am more concerned about the defense fueling the offense and getting us out in that area.
“No matter what happens offensively, you have to have great transition defense, you just have to. We are not big into taking corner threes and we have some guys that can take those but corner threes are usually going to create some real defensive transition imbalance for your team getting back if you miss them.
“But, bottom line, we just got to do a much better job. Purdue is a very fast team and there were times where we did not respond well to that. But, we are a fast team and we’ve got to make sure we’re getting defensive stops so we can get out in transition. Some of our shots the other day were quick, but the issue with the shots when you are trying to challenge shot blockers is when you can keep the ball moving and get a better shot by just driving and moving them. When we did that, we didn’t make all of the shots, but we had success with good looks. When we tried to take them on, that’s not a very smart play and that is something I’d like to see us grow out of pretty quick.”
