On getting the team to mesh with a new roster…
“I think it’s a daily process. I think that is the most important thing. Go in with a plan each day. Be ready to adjust the plan. Try to learn each other the best you can as coaches, but the best thing is for them to learn each other as players. That’s where the chemistry gets built. They have done a great job or working, building togetherness. Being in here when they don’t have to be in here. Now it is just a matter of building that level of playing together over a period of time. Hopefully those kinds of things mesh for us.”
On filling roster spots in a short period of time…
“Absolutely, Absolutely. I think a great example is I think it’s all about how it fits. You have to do the best job you can. Now there were point guards that were available. We knew even if Sahvir (Wheeler) was back, and when the season ended we fully expected him to be, that we were going to take another point guard. We weren’t just going to play the way we played last year and have those kind of turnovers. We’re going to have to be a better shooting team. We did miss out on a couple of guys, one that I felt we would have gotten, who is going to be a starter in a power (five) conference league right now, but at the end of the day we end up with Aaron Cook. We’ve been extremely happy and fortunate to have him. Recruiting never really stops and it never really stopped during the portal. It’s just part of it. You just have to continue to move forward. The last thing you want to do – and this is where high school recruiting kicks in in a big way – you do not want to settle based on just filling scholarships. You have got to get talent. You have to get people who can be multidimensional. The maturity aspect of the team is such a huge deal. We have a pretty good blend of old and younger. You have to keep making sure that you are looking at that and just navigate the waters as they come. That’s exactly what this offseason was like and I’m extremely proud of the way these guys have come into Georgia. They have come in excited to be at Georgia and they have come in really working hard for Georgia.”
On recruiting a player via the transfer portal…
“It’s harder, there’s no question. Zoom made it harder and it’ll be interesting to see what happens. There are some coaches that would like legislation to change so that you can’t go visit a transfer portal player. I’m not sure how that will transpire as we go down the line. There’s trial and error and risk and reward. You want to make phone calls, study a lot of film. As I tell the coaches all the time, it doesn’t matter if you’re recruiting somebody in the transfer portal or in high school, you’ve got to get the people that are off script. It’s so easy to tell somebody what they want to hear, to give passive-aggressive behavior and paint a picture that isn’t realistic, you’ve got to get off script. That’s where you really find out, but when you get face-to-face, which obviously we couldn’t do, you start to get your instinct going. You can use your instincts to a degree when you’re watching film, on zoom and talking to people. But, when you get face-to-face with people, whether it’s in a meeting or at practice or a game, that’s when you get your instincts back. It’s been much more of a selective process for us not only in the portal, but in high school recruiting because you know there’s a whole new wave of recruits. The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter if they’re coming in from a transfer or high school situation. What works is number one, you’ve got to have a level of maturity. It doesn’t mean that an 18- or 19-year-old isn’t going to have as much maturity as 22- or 23-year-olds. There’s got to be a level of maturity. Number two, there’s got to be an edge to them, a competitive edge to their game. And number three, you need to believe that they can be efficient, because they have been efficient before. If you can put those factors in it, then it gives you a chance to take some of the guess work out.”
On how he pushes guys that transfer from Virginia, Gonzaga, and USC to rub off their winning culture on the rest of the team…
“You mention some that have won and some that have a lot of talent. Aaron Cook has come in and done a great job. He was at Southern Illinois and Gonzaga and has a winning background. There’s also places that you’d be surprised which is part of it. I don’t think you make any assumptions when you bring somebody in, you bring them in for the vision you have for them. Not only what their skill level is right now, what they’d like to accomplish, but you have a vision for them. The biggest mistake you can make, and I’ve made this in the past but not lately, is when you bring somebody in from a program and you realize that they weren’t doing close to what you thought they were doing, it’s the same thing with players. But it comes down to who they are individually. When you get with them, you don’t assume anything… you build on where they’re at. You meet them on where they’re at. I think that’s important. Meeting them where they’re at does not necessarily mean we’re going to stay there. When you do that, you’ve got to start bringing and ramping them up to see what they’re capable of, whether that comes from a mental toughness standpoint, the physicality of the game, the learning standpoint, stability, durability, all those things. You’re trying to figure out how they are in a learning situation and a pressure situation. With that being said, sometimes the guys at successful programs have a better understanding of that. That doesn’t mean guys who haven’t can’t get there. Those are the key things you must look at without making assumptions. When recruiting, you like to look at people who have won, but in high school you like to recruit people who have won year-round and if they haven’t, let’s figure out the reason why and you base those things in your decision making. Yes, you want them to bring what they know, yes you want to impact them with what we have here, but really your culture comes down to how you treat each other daily and the mutual respect they build and how you can hold them accountable to get better.”
On FIU…
“They are very much a high-octane offense. They shot 30-32 threes a game last year and made 10.5. They are very efficient. They have bonafide shooter. They are going to put three to four three-point shooters on the floor at all times. I think the biggest thing that we’ve got to do is control penetration, so that it does not create an overhelp type of situation in the game because of the way they shoot the ball. I told my team over the weekend that they were phenomenal at making one more pass. And when we were really good on Friday night, we were really good at that. That’s the difference, and we’ve got to control the penetration to not allow that as easily. And then defensively, they’re going to come at us with pressures, and whether it’s full court man-to-man, zone pressures, run and jump is one of their staples – they’re very good at that – and trying to get that trap that you are not ready for. They mix their defenses, man and zone. So, they’re a deep team that can go very big. They’ve added transfers, and at the same time, they have very good veterans that have played well for them.”
On the new landscape of college basketball with the transfer portal…
“It’s going to change even more. It’s the first year of the portal. Everybody has to remember, and I know some people on here have heard this before and maybe heard it from me. We were given the statistic that last year in the SEC, for scholarship players, there were only 14 players who finished where they started in the SEC. And four of them were at the University of Alabama. So, it’s not like this wasn’t coming. It’s not like it hasn’t been different. As I tell our team, as I tell our coaches all the time, everything’s changing. Name, image, and likeness, the transfer portal, how easy it is to leave, all those types of things, the bottom line is what hasn’t changed – what it takes to win and what will cause you to lose. You’ve got to be locked in to that every day. You’ve got to be locked into that with your scheme, you’ve got to be locked into it with how you play, how you address your team, how you pace your team. You’ve got to understand what those opponents are. And we work very hard. And it’s obviously different, and it’s more of a challenge when you have so many new guys. When you go out and play guys that not only weren’t in the SEC last year, but have never started a game in the SEC. Those things are different, but that’s what the growth process is about every day. We’ve been very, very good in that area. That doesn’t mean we don’t have bad days, but we recover pretty quick because we’ve got a lot of really serious-minded, mature, young people that not only practice hard and study the game and are doing a good job in school, but they’re in the gym and they’re working at getting better when they don’t have to be.”
On the teams identity…
“I think we have to be a ball-moving team. We have to be tremendous at throwing the ball ahead. There were times last year that we threw it ahead, there were times last year that we held the ball for too long. We’re going through that now, but we’ve got to get the ball thrown ahead. I think that because we have shooting and we have so many good shooters potentially, we’re going to get better. It’s not getting down when you don’t make a shot. Like I said the other night, I’m not down about the misses, I’m down about our footwork and spacing and how close we were to the college line. We have got to understand how to utilize spacing. So, I think, getting the ball up the floor, utilizing the spacing, getting the ball reversed, being a quick passing team, getting really, really good on the offensive blast, and then what we’re going to have to do is not only make the threes, but cut the turnovers down. Defensively, we’ve got to be a five-man transition defensive team that becomes hard to score against initially and a five-man rebounding team. Along the way, we’ve got to have really good awareness in our help defense, we’ve got to have very solid containment ball pressure-wise. We want to be active on and off the ball. But, that rebounding aspect when the shot goes up is going to be absolutely crucial because we’re not a huge team. We have some size but we’re not a huge team and we’ve got to make sure we do a really good job of having all five people in there.”