KU Men's Basketball Coach Bill Self's Weekly Press Conference quotes
Dec. 27, 2005
LAWRENCE, Kan. –
Bill Self Basketball Press Conference Quotes
On his team’s holiday practice schedule:
“We haven’t done anything yet, but we practiced last night for a couple of hours. We practice today at noon and we’ll go again at 5 p.m. and we’ll go a couple of times tomorrow. We’ll spend a lot of time on individual work and get a lot of shooting done.”
On KU’s last few games:
“We played bad offense for 30 minutes against Pepperdine, but other than that we’ve actually done pretty well. We played a good final 30 minutes against Cal and played great the first 10 minutes against Pepperdine. We ran a pretty good offense against Northern Colorado. Other than that one long stretch, it’s gone pretty well. We’re getting better defensively.”
On the tough times that New Orleans is dealing with:
“It’s tough. I just found out that they (the UNO coaching staff) moves into their offices on Jan. 3. It was a good thing that (Kansas Senior Associate Athletics Director) Larry Keating did. We wanted to get ESPN to broadcast the game if we could get New Orleans on the schedule. Hopefully, ESPN will do a good job of telling their story, because it’s a very unique story. We think that we have issues to deal with, but think of the issues that they deal with on a daily basis.”
On the team’s personality:
“We have to figure out, as a team and a staff, a lot of things. A. Who to play? B. How we’re going to play in different situations. If we are going to be committed to trying to run, then we need to run. If we believe half-court execution is most important, than that needs to be our emphasis. We have to be good at something and know where our points are going to come from. Our team is pretty unselfish and a lot of times they won’t take shots as they come. We need to find about 10 things that we’re looking for offensively and become really good at looking at those things.”
On Brandon Rush:
“Brandon can’t be nervous about making mistakes. Brandon’s got to be a playmaker for us. And, he has gotten better. When you’re shooting 60 percent from three-point range, you shouldn’t be shooting three a game. He should be taking eight a game and shooting 40 percent. That would help the team a lot more.”
On what type of offense fits his club better:
“We’d like to run. But, if we don’t get really good at it, we’re going to have to become an execution-type team. I would much rather run. We’ll always run off of misses. We need to get the ball up and down the floor to utilize our length, athletic ability and depth. You’ve got to run with a purpose.”
On Darnell Jackson’s return:
“(His performance) didn’t really surprise me. I think how well he fit in impressed me. He did some good things, he was pretty active. He’s three-of-eight from the field on shots he can make, so I think he can shoot better. I think he played just about like I thought he would. He looked like he belonged out there.”
On the team’s big men:
“C.J. (Giles) and Sasha (Kaun) are our two most talented post players, but they haven’t played extremely well together. Christian (Moody) is the security blanket for everyone else. He’s played pretty well, but just because he started last game, doesn’t mean we’ll do that every game. Christian and Julian (Wright) really do a good job of passing to the other big guy in the game. I think that Darnell (Jackson) will certainly put pressure on the others to play well.”
On the team’s starting guards:
“If you commit to the run, your guards must score more than 10 points per game. When you run, you get shots early in the shot clock. We must get more consistent scoring out of our perimeter players.”
On Stephen Vinson:
“Stephen (Vinson) is a plug-in guy that will do whatever it takes to make the team better. He’s been great. I’m real proud of him. When he’s out there, we don’t take a step backwards.”
On the play of the team’s freshmen:
“I would say inconsistent. At times, they’ve been terrific and at other times they haven’t played nearly as well.”
