UGA men’s basketball head coach Tom Crean fielded questions and shared his thoughts on Tuesday afternoon as the Bulldogs prepare for another SEC tilt on the hardwood, a 7:00 p.m.ET tipoff versus Auburn on Wednesday night in Athens at Stegeman Coliseum
Opening Statement
“We have tremendous opportunity tomorrow night with Auburn and the way that they’re playing. They pose numerous challenges as most everybody else in this league does but especially the way they’re playing. The way they’re getting fouled right now, the way their offensive rebounding the ball, extremely high levels, playing extremely fast, aggressive. They play with great confidence and are playing like a veteran team. I mean they really are they’re playing like a true veteran team with a couple of younger guys sprinkled in. And right now, what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to be excited about the opportunity and I think like our turnovers are a great example of where we’re at. Our turnovers are coming because we’re in a rush, and we’re playing too quick or we’re not getting our feet down or really what I always say, you got to be committed to the spacing, which means don’t creep in. Finish your cut get behind the NBA line, be ready to step in and have good footwork. Sometimes I think we’re in such a rush to make a play or such a rush to move the ball that that’s where our turnovers are coming, and they’ve got to clean up and we’ve got to be the old John Wooden, ‘Be quick but don’t hurry’ and that’s kind of what we’re epitomizing right now. we’re in way too much of a hurry. We just got to be in a situation where we’re excited to be home, get our confidence inside of the game not let our belief, drop like it does at times when things don’t go our way, and continue to find a way to have some type of collective leadership. Again, we are excited for it, and the end of the day, the whole goal with this team, whether it’s a 40-minute game, a 45-minute game, a 50-minute game, whatever it is, to play as close to a complete. Not that mistake-free not perfect game, but as close to a complete game as we can possibly play because that’s really if we had to put it in a nutshell that’s what’s hurt us is we’ve had too many stretches, whether they’re bigger stretches or smaller stretches that have hurt us when we’ve been right there to win a game that we’ve got to be able to overcome.
On if he believes everyone will be healthy for the game…
“We’ve got a lot of guys right now that are. We’ve got staff, we’ve got players that are dealing with illness, sickness, a lot of medicine right now, so everybody got through it yesterday, that we didn’t everybody at full tilt by any stretch. So we’ll see I mean it’s, unfortunately, you can take flu shots and you can still get sick right I mean it’s what we’re dealing with and I’ve got a staff of guys in there that are trying to fight it so I anticipate it, but, you never know.”
On if the team thinks “here we go again” when a lead starts to shorten…
“Possibly. Yeah, that’s when leadership comes in. That’s where they’ve got to look out and feel safe. That’s what we need and we didn’t have that as much last week. It’s some of that, and in all honestly, Anthony [Edwards] had a tough week. It started out with the sickness, and I’m not sure he ever really quite totally recovered from it when it came to getting the energy up when it came to eating right all those different things that go into it and I think it affected his week because he can bring a lot of confidence to your team and he’s been better and I fully anticipate that he’s going to be much better, but bottom line is, he’s also 18, as is Sahvir [Wheeler] and we rely on those guys for a lot. The bottom line is, that’s why I keep using the term all the time, collective there’s really no way around it. He has got to keep building that.”
On Anthony Edwards potentially staying another year…
“I don’t know. I don’t read the mock drafts, I see Twitter here and there but I haven’t even read those and now we’re focused on today and how he can be better and how he can improve and get his energy back where it’s got to be and, those type of things and play to the level that he’s capable of.”
On how much of a challenge it has been to get the freshmen to be vocal leaders…
“Well it’s been a huge challenge, especially with Toumani [Camara] because he plays a lot of minutes and we need that right we need him to verbalize the game and we need him to call things out we need him to play with that level of confidence and what guys don’t always understand is, the more you talk the more energy you have. So, it’s not only you’re bringing energy to your teammates you’re bringing energy to yourself. It’s an engagement that is there, and, I always say like you’re empowering yourself to be even more of a leader when you talk and that’s the bottom line with getting guys to understand that but there’s veterans on our team, veterans across the country that aren’t great at talking yet, and it’s just something you got to be able to become comfortable with and that it becomes part of who you are. It’s something that we need from him, we need him to be aggressive. We need him to be able to get to the foul line. I don’t think he said a free throw in the last five games. We need him to play with confidence. Keep being that Swiss Army knife that he is, get him on the perimeter, even more, to drive and cut. We’re asking a lot of him so he’s doing a lot of really good things, but there’s no question that talking could be something that he could be much better at for us.”
On what it is going to take to put together a win…
“We just need to focus on playing well right. Like playing longer stretches together, talking through it, playing with confidence not, you know, not waiting for the bottom to fall out right and that’s what happens sometimes with teams it’s just keep playing. We’ve got to take care of the ball. We can have every great intention that we could possibly have but if we don’t take care of the ball better and then those become problems for us.”
On what causes the slow second halves…
“Could be trying to do too much, and like I said earlier, trying to play too quick, and trying to make something happen. You start to lose the lead and now you think you got to make something happen rather than continuing to trust the spacing. Commit to the spacing and trust the offense, those types of things. I think that’s a part of it, guys trying to make plays that aren’t there in decision making, and rather than playing with really good awareness. I think that becomes part of it.”
On if the slow second halves are due to freshmen not being as conditioned…
“Well we know we’re not as big and as physical as most teams. I don’t know if it’s that I think when you start to lose confidence your cardiovascular goes down pretty quick. Yeah, I think when you know, that the mental is to physical as four is to one, as they used to say. It’s probably pretty accurate, and then you can get really fatigued when the balls not going and you can get fatigued when it’s not going your way. You can get fatigued when you get disappointed. I think that that that’s why it’s so hard to measure it right so hard to measure what it is but as far as the conditioning and running and those type of things I don’t think those things are issues I think what happens when we’re not having success, makes us look a lot more fatigued than what we really are, but being able to concentrate focus and again just keep the game simple. The better the player you are, the simpler you keep the game and getting guys to understand that simple passes next pass all those types of things are so big.”