Jan. 31, 2012
Oregon State men's basketball head coach Craig Robinson sat down with the media at his weekly press conference on Tuesday to talk about the Beavers' Civil War victory over Oregon and preview the upcoming road trip to Colorado and Utah.
On extra conditioning at practice this week to prepare for the altitude at Colorado...
"I don't know if it's going to matter or not but I think any extra conditioning at this point is still pretty effective for us. It may or may not help us up, we don't know, but if the guys think it does than that's good."
On what can be learned from last year's trip to Colorado...
"The only thing is that Ahmad didn't feel well, but Ahmad was a freshman. A freshman playing in a big game away from home is probably going to feel sick anyway. I don't know if it was caused from the altitude but that's not why we lost the game. We lost the game because they went on a great run at the end of the first half and built a lead and kept that lead for the rest of the game."
On the difference of going on a new conference road trip...
"Actually, it won't be that bad for us because we've done the Colorado leg of it at least. We've been up there and played there. But it will be like any road trip. We typically see the inside of the arena. We see the hotel. We see the airport. It won't be that big of a deal. It's just another game for us. But it's a challenge that we need to rise to. We want to get good at these road events and we have to kind of have our game step up to the Oregon game level on the road every single time."
On the difference of the team on the current three-game win streak...
"I think that these guys really understand that once you get in your conference, you can't win on offense alone. I think our guys really understand that and they really focused on their defensive principles and being defenders. That's the main thing. The other thing is I just see them playing more confidently. We had to ring out those games that we lost and get them out of our system and realize that you don't make a whole season on three or four games. You make them on a whole season."
On the growth of Eric Moreland offensively and defensively...
"He's constantly growing. The biggest growth area that I saw was the fact that he had been in the starting lineup and we changed the starting lineup for our own reasons, not because he did something wrong, and he handled that like a man. A lot of times you would have a guy who would be pouting if you took him out of the starting lineup for no reason or for no negative reason. It was really fun to watch him handle that real well and then come in and be a positive influence on that game, a huge positive influence on that game. And then offensively and defensively just watching him get better at his work ethic every day is something that we've come to expect from all of our players, so it's not a surprise to see him do that. But it's really nice to see him do that."
On whether it was a tough decision to put Eric Moreland at the top of the 1-3-1 since he's such a good shot blocker...
"It's a nice option to have. Before he got hurt last year, I had him down around the basket when we played the 1-3-1 in practice because of his shot blocking abilities and his rebounding abilities. We had Omari (Johnson) playing the top. We put Devon (Collier) at the top. We had a bunch of guys at the top. We used to call it auditioning. We called practice auditioning last year. And Eric came over and said `coach, I would like to audition for the top.' And he used the term audition, which was impressive coming from Eric at the time. So I let him audition at the top and he was terrific. The next game, or close to that time, he hurt his shoulder and was out for the rest of the season. That was the evolution of getting him at the top. I'm sure I could have come to that on my own, but I wasn't ready to put him at the top because you have to be pretty responsible to be at the top. It's not just jumping around and stealing the ball. There are other things to do when you don't steal the ball. The responsibilities are really important to maintain."
On facing another experience team like Colorado after defeating an experienced team like Oregon...
"It's good to have a little practice at it and it's good to have a little success at it. The difference with Colorado is they have three seniors, but they aren't as deep as Oregon is so we are hoping that will work into our favor somehow. This team likes to push the ball a little bit more than Oregon does. Oregon picks and chooses its spots to kind of push tempo. These guys are more like us; they want to push tempo the whole time. And I'm sure we aren't coming in there as a surprise. I think if we hadn't won down in Eugene, they could have the sense that we can't win on the road. Now they can't have that sense so we are going to get an even better from those games."
On whether the Beavers have the sense they can win on the road...
"I'm not sure until after the fact and we see it. I'm hoping for it. I really have liked the first two days of practice this week. There's just a different pop in it heading onto the road. There's not sort of an overhang of `whoa is us' or `what are we going to do'. Practice seems as if we were going to have a home game."
On the difference of a three-game Pac-12 winning streak compared to a non-conference winning streak...
"There's actually a little bit more swagger. I mean it's your conference. If you can roll out three games in a row in your conference a couple of times, you can be in the mix. But again, I don't think our guys look at it that way. They are looking at it that let's just win this next one and we'll worry about Saturday when we get past Thursday. And I like that. I like the fact that we are approaching it that way. It's hard to not think okay, if you can win four games what would happen. As a coach, I have to look at these three road games that we had in a row as man, it sure would be nice to win all three, but if you could get two out of the three it sort of makes up for the games you lost earlier or something like that. That's what coaches do. But the guys aren't doing that. They are looking at it one day at a time and they are looking at it confidently."
On being happy with the Civil War win or it making the team hungrier to do it more on the road...
"I think that the Civil War game is usually completely different from any other game - road, home, conference, non-conference, winning streak, no winning streak. Typically, in our case, since we had stumbled on the road it meant a little bit more from the road win standpoint. Since we had a two-game winning streak, it meant a little bit more from a streak standpoint. To be able to keep it going with your third win being on the road in a rivalry game against a veteran team, all of that adds to some fuel to your confidence."
On still being in the Pac-12 race despite the slow start...
"It would be nicer to be in second place and not having lost the overtime games. But I have more confidence in this team than any other team I've ever coached. So record be damned, its fun coaching this team because every single game we coach, we feel like we are going to win it. And these guys make me feel like they feel like they are going to win it, if that makes sense."
On Colorado staying strong despite losing two key players...
"They have replaced those guys with equally good guys and then they have the kid (Carlon Brown) who is the one-year transfer who comes in and plays. So they've reloaded, not to the extent that you have an Alex Burks and a Cory Higgins. Both of those guys are in the league right now. I know (Andre') Roberson is getting some looks but he's a young guy. But this team doesn't drop off much from last year. As a matter of fact, they might be a little bit better because the scoring is more spread out."
On Colorado's defense...
"They work hard and they play man-to-man. They don't play much zone. They have the ability to shut teams down and have done that. We are hoping that we can defend those guys because they are a pretty prolific scoring team themselves. If we can do that, I'm hoping our offense is running efficiently enough now that we can score. It was important for us to get 53 in the second half of the game on Sunday because that's a good defensive team."
On whether he'll need to substitute more because of the altitude...
"Probably and we can this year as opposed to last year so that's another nice aspect of this team that we hadn't had. Will I go 10 deep or will I go 11 deep? I'm not sure but it'll be more frequently. What Sunday's game showed me is that I only gave Jared (Cunningham) rest because he got in foul trouble. It showed me that he was a lot fresher in that second half than he has been in a while. So that is in the back of my mind too when we go up there."
On the motivation to be the first Pac-12 team to win at Colorado...
"We never pay attention to stuff like that. I don't even think of that kind of stuff and I'm trying to train the players not to think about that kind of stuff. We are thinking about if we play our game and play it well, there are very few teams that we think can beat us. So we really are focused on that and it doesn't matter that not many people have gone in there and won games. There hadn't been many people who had gone in Matt Court and won games. Most people at this level don't lose a lot at home. I just think our guys are hungry to be considered good. They show that in practice every day and they really want to just beat guys and that's all you can ask for as a coach. I want my team to be able to walk in a gym and beat the daylights out of guys and it doesn't matter what's on the uniform."
On what it will take to beat Colorado...
"Not tongue in cheek, but carefully I have to say this, because we score so efficiently we think we can score on anybody. But we still have to guard guys and prevent them from scoring two more points or one more point than we score. If this is a game of who gets to 100 first, we like our chances. But it won't be. There will be defense. There will be strategy. There's going to be half court possessions. There's going to be all kinds of stuff that affects this game."
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