Feb. 8, 2011

Listen to today's press conference

Head Coach Craig Robinson

On playing USC a second time this season...
"We've been good in the past at adjusting to a player who has absolutely torched us, and I'm hoping that we can repeat that in the USC game because (Nikola) Vucevic absolutely took us to the woodshed. Now having said that, he's a good player; I really like the way he plays. He's going to be hard to adjust to, but in order for us to win on the road, we can't let him have the kind of game he had when he was here."

On Devon Collier's performance in the past few games...
"Watching his personal growth on and off the floor has been tremendous. I've talked about how it's hard for high school kids to make the transition, and it's even harder for guards. I don't want to underscore; it's been hard for him too. He's been working extremely hard in the classroom, but he's working just as hard on the basketball court, and it's showing. He's staying after practice, getting extra work in. He doesn't always work with the bigs, he works with the guards sometimes. All of that takes extra effort. What we're seeing are the fruits of that effort."

On the recent play of Ahmad Starks...
"I'm so happy for Ahmad because Ahmad's under that extra pressure of being a point guard, making the transition from high school to college. I absolutely think that it is the hardest move to make. The speed of the game is magnified for a point guard. He's had to deal with that, and then what a lot of people don't realize about Ahmad is he was a true point guard, pass-first in high school, and that was how his dad was when he played and he raised him to be that kind of player. When we got Ahmad, we wanted him because he's such a good shooter, to do both for us. That was a bit of an adjustment. It's the kind of adjustment that takes a little time, but once he gave himself over, you're seeing the excitement of where he could be for the next three-and-a-half years. He was thinking we were going to judge him on made or missed shots, but that's not how we work. He's one of the few guys who we think can make shots on a consistent basis so we want him to be taking more of the shots."

On Jared Cunningham's scoring in the past five wins...
"It's worked out that way, because we haven't been getting scoring from other places. He doesn't have to be, but we need somebody to do some scoring for us. It helps when it's Jared, because Jared has a lot of different ways he can score. He can score off of his defense, he can score off of rebounds, he can score in transition and he's gotten good enough with his outside shot that he can score in our half-court offense. What we need is somebody to score, in our last four or five wins, as you pointed out, it's been Jared. It would be nice if he had some help, and second time around everyone's going to be focused on Jared, just like we're focused on guys who have played well against us. Every team we play is going to be focused on Jared."

On USC letting OSU shoot three-pointers...
"I would think that anybody who has seen us play over the first-half of the year would let us do that, but there are some teams that are strictly man-to-man teams, so we're preparing for both. We're preparing for if they play a zone or if they play us in the packed-in man-to-man that they did when they were here."

On Roberto Nelson's current role...
"He's working hard every day to break out of his slump. He is where Ahmad was, only he didn't have the benefit of playing last year or the year before that. He's had a year and three-quarters of non-competition that he's trying to shake the rust off. It's going to happen, but it'll happen at a different time for him. We are still very confident in him. As you can see, he still gets in the game. What we're liking, and what I'm liking, is that he's making plays without taking shots. He's getting other guys shots, his defense has gotten a whole heck of a lot better and he's rebounding the basketball. There are ways you can participate without scoring."

On Angus Brandt possibly being more aggressive...
"We use the term `conservative.' He's very conservative. He puts more pressure on himself than I could ever put on him, so I want him to go crazy out there. He's measuring himself so he doesn't make any mistakes, and I'm of the mindset where if you don't take any risks, you can't have any rewards. It is a personality trait of his, so it's taken us some time to help him break out of that. But we're encouraging him to go out there, go crazy, relax, make some shots, make some mistakes. We understand that you're a sophomore."

On Joe Burton's reaction in traffic...
"It's easy to forget, but I remember how bad it was last year. He was four or five turnovers a game last year. He's cut that back. We all have things we can get better at, and leaving your feet when you're passing the ball is one of them. Trying not to make the spectacular play to the guy who scores is another one. I don't feel as nervous when he has the ball in his hands as I did last year."

On the team playing well despite shooting poorly...
"To shoot as poorly as we did, and then to be down two with 45 seconds left and have a chance to get a stop and come down and maybe tie or take the lead...I'm done with the moral victories. I talked about that the first year. It was good to see from a young group. To shoot poorly, not to play poorly, to shoot poorly and then still be right there in the game because of your defense, that's our mainstay. It wasn't good to see on tape, but it made the loss less hard, if that makes any sense to you. Looking at the stats over the weekend, you have Washington who's leading the league in scoring. You have Washington State who's second or third depending on where Cal is, and they're averaging 80 and 72, respectively, and we hold those teams to 58 over the weekend. That's a big deal for us because we haven't been able to do that with this young group. It's not where we want to be because we want to win these games, but I see progress. I've been really pleased with our defense over the past two games.

On the team feeling like they're turning the corner...
"It's still a young team because you know what happens with young teams, you say something good and then wish you hadn't told them because then they think `okay, we've done it.' I'll make sure that they know we aren't finished, but I want them to know that this defense is better than it was two weeks ago, a month ago, absolutely."

On UCLA's size and matching against them...
"They still have the same personnel, and we have the same personnel, but not the same team. I'm hoping that we will take care of the physicality of the game. Along with the defense, I think we matched up with the physical nature of every team we've played over the last four games. That's a good sign for a very young team, and it's a good sign for this team. We haven't always been the most physical team, so if we can continue to do that, I think both USC and UCLA are physical teams, if we can do that this weekend and not have the worst shooting night of the season, I think we'll be in good shape."

On the team responding to playing on the road...
"I won't know until we do it, but this won't be the first weekend on the road. This will be an opportunity to show that we can handle being on the road. We were able to, in the last couple of years, pick up some road wins. This would be a great opportunity for this young team to gain some away-from-home confidence."

On UCLA's victory over St. John's...
"I saw parts of that game and haven't watched the tape of that game yet. They're as tough as any team is in the country when they're at home. They have a historical home-court advantage. Fortunately for us, they'll play Oregon before they play us. Playing at Pauley Pavilion is hard no matter who they're coming off of playing."

On winning at Pauley Pavilion...
"It's one of the bucket list things for us still; that's something we haven't done since I've been here. We ticked off beating Washington. We haven't beaten UCLA and it's going to be tougher in their place. That's something that is out there, but we really don't concern ourselves with it. We want to stick with our game plan and play hard and play well and then see what happens. I'm closer to your age than their age, and you walk into a place like that and think about the history, but these are kids who played hundreds of AAU games all over the country in gyms just like Pauley, against the guys who they're going to be playing in Pauley, so they have a different viewpoint of it. I think that those guys don't have the same reverence for history that we did, so it might work in our favor. It's one of those things though, where we don't put any credence in it either way. I'm of the old-school, you pull on your shorts like the other guy, and you have to play harder than him."

On the starts of games at home versus on the road...
"We are more focused right now at home, and that's a transformation from when I first got here. The pressure for us when I first got here was at home, and pleasing the home crowd, so we were much better on the road. Now that we've gotten some experience under our belts, we're much better at home and have to get that road-warrior mentality back. We're much more focused at home. We need to understand that coming out at the beginning of games on the road is a very hard thing to do so we have to orchestrate the first four minutes."

On changing the slow starts...
"We try and choreograph what we're going to do at the very beginning of games, rather than at home where we get the feel of the game by playing. I don't think we can afford to do that yet on the road, with the youth movement here we want to tell them exactly what we want to take place every single time down the court."