On not beating South Carolina coach Frank Martin yet…
“It’s not about getting one on Frank [Martin]. It’s about getting one on South Carolina, no doubt about it. They’re a very tough opponent. They defend extremely well. They’re aggressive. They’ve been very tough. More often than not, they’ve won the rebounding game on us. They’re a really good opponent, and he’s an excellent coach. It’s not as much about the personal battles at all. It’s more about the team matching up and being able to play the way we need to play and play the way we’re capable of playing.”
On Christian Brown’s recovery and playing again this season…
“He’s getting better. He’s practicing more fully right now, and I think he’s gaining some confidence, so my hope would be that he would.”
On the impact of the seniors on the team…
“It’s a unique senior day not only because of the season but because they’re going to have the option to come back if they want. That’s something that we’re going to deal with down the road. I think the three of them, if we’re going to generalize it, have brought a real maturity. They’ve brought an excellent spirit. They’ve been well coached, and that absolutely benefited us when they came in. They’ve been great to be around. They’ve gotten better. I would say that what I’ve loved too is that they’ve appreciated being at a school like the University of Georgia. They’ve appreciated being in the program, at the school, at this level. Obviously, P.J. [Horne] had been in the ACC, but to come back home I think was a big deal for him. In the case of Andrew [Garcia] and Justin [Kier], to be at this level, and you could see it in the summertime, but you could really see it in the fall to be in our condition, took nothing for granted. I think that’s been a good lesson for our players to never feel like you’re entitled to everything because it’s all about how you work. It’s all about how you prepare. It’s about what you bring to the table, the impact that you can make on your teammates. I’ve loved having all three of them.”
On the next two games against South Carolina and Alabama…
“With Alabama, we’ll deal with them after the game tomorrow. I’ll be happy to talk about that game then. As far as for South Carolina, we have to be better than we were there. There’s no doubt about it. We didn’t score very well. We didn’t make shots. We let it affect our defense. We let it affect our transition defense. We have to be really good with our rebounding. They hurt us on offensive rebounds and kickouts for threes. They hurt us in transition, and we have to do a really good job there. We just have to persevere in the game. They’re a hard team to play against. They’re very physical. They do a really good job now of backing up, and they load the paint up very well. They have some bonafide scorers, so what we have to do is make sure that we continue to move them when we’re on offense as much as we can, be very locked into what they want to do on the other end of the floor, be very competitive on the glass, not let them get out in transition because they’re an outstanding transition team and persevere regardless of how our offense is going.”
On the difference in the team’s confidence late in the season…
“They’ve prepared well and practiced hard all year. There haven’t been practices where I’ve thought that they didn’t believe that they were going to win, and I think they’ve bounced back. They’ve shown really good resilience in bouncing back from the tough games, and I think it’s a credit to how they come in and how the coaching staff comes in. The coaching staff comes in with a very demanding but a ‘let’s get better’ mindset, and the players come in with the same thing and understand it. I think that’s what has helped us, so I would think the confidence level is raised. The moment you take your foot off the gas or relax for a second, it will leave you. So for us, we just have to continue to remain absolutely focused on how we get better and how we prepare for each game because as usual, each game is its own entity.”
On what he believes has led to the improvement on defense recently…
“We’ve changed coverages, we’re more aggressive. I’ve stopped worrying about what we don’t have, in the sense of rim presence and shot blocking presence and this team is playing more to their strengths — whether we’re mixing defenses, whether we’re trapping ball screens, switching ball screens, whatever it is. We just needed to become a more aggressive team and you always get worried about that when you don’t have that shot blocking rim presence because you can lose the game on layups and dunks. It’s a lot easier to challenge a three than it is a dunk or a layup but at the same time we have to play to our strengths. I think their aggressiveness has really helped and it’s helped build their confidence.”
On whether he’s watched the film from the last time they played South Carolina…
“It’s very hard for me to watch that game. I’ve watched it a couple of times over the last couple of days and it’s not good for my stomach. I don’t know how much of it we’ll show the team. We’ve shown them some clips, but it’s more so where they’re at right now, how they’re playing, what we have to do there and then what adjustments we have to make from how they guarded us the first time. A lot more gets done on the floor than from film.”
On what he tells the team before games to get off to a fast start…
“I think it’s just, and it doesn’t mean we’re going to start strong, you stay locked into what that game plan is. It’s reiterating that, it’s making sure you have an aggressive mindset and that they understand how important that is. It’s that more than anything else.”