SportsTalkSC show podcast
Lamont Paris 10-15
I'm glad to be back here, the weather's cooling down, and that always means the start of basketball season. So I'm really excited to be back again amongst great coaches, some unbelievable teams, and really excited for this group to continue to gel and get ready to see where they lead us. It's a great opportunity. It's really fun for me. I enjoyed doing this. Groups are probably now more than ever. You got more turnover and more new faces on your roster. And so again, just trying to see where these guys take us is an exciting adventure for me personally, and I'm really looking forward to getting going. But we had a really good summer, a lot of new faces. At the same time, some familiar faces. That's always a good amount of experience, not only at the Division I level, but a good amount of experience within our program, which I also think is important. So that's the basic stuff. I'll open it up for questions. Sure. All right, let's raise your hand if you have a question, and then we'll get one of the remote mics to you. And if you would, when you ask your question, if you would state your name and the media outlet that you represent. So let's start right down the front row. Coach, what is the role for Nick Pringle, a transferring over from Alabama? It'll be a very significant role for Nick. He's experienced guy, he's from the state of South Carolina, so we were thrilled to have him come back. He's been experienced not only in college basketball, but in his well-versed in SEC basketball. He's got not only NCAA tournament experience, but he's played in the final four. And all those things will serve him well, but his role will be one of leadership. We'll have really high expectations for what his role will be as a basketball player. The one good thing about that I think about there, a lot of moving pieces in guys transferring from one school to the next. And I think one way to look at it is that you can provide opportunities for guys, different roles, different opportunities. And so Nick will have a role for us that he probably has never had in his college career. And so that's exciting to help provide that for him. And I'm really looking forward to see how he adjusts to that role. And my anticipation is that he'll do a tremendous job with that. But we're gonna count on Nick for a lot of things on both sides of the ball defensively. He's a high-energy guy. He's a tremendous athlete. I don't think he's ever really been asked to score. But we're really interested in exploring that and seeing what that looks like for him. But he's got a great infectious personality, a lot of energy and really looking forward to seeing what he does this year. - What is it that makes Colin such a special player? And where do you see he can make some realistic jobs here and your two for you guys? - Yeah, Colin. Colin does a lot of good things. I think the strengths that really tend to set him apart, he's got a tremendous feel for the game of basketball. He's incredibly unselfish, probably two unselfish. But he's incredibly unselfish. He values playing defense at a high level. He takes a lot of pride in doing that. But I think the things that really make him different are he's got an incredible feel, incredible touch and just a knack for putting a ball in a basket, even in some non-conventional ways. And you can get him in a short role situation and he can make a play or attack the rim or pass. He's a really good passer. I think those are the things that we saw in him when we first recruited him that led us to believe that he had a chance to be a really good player. In terms of growth, I think there are a couple of different areas. I think he has such good natural touch. At one point, I do believe he'll be able to shoot the ball from with range. Only time will tell when that happens. So I think that's an area that he can grow. And then I think the other one is just playing a different role. He's the type of guy that can get double figures in any particular game. But we're going to need him to generate offense for us. And I think there's a distinction that's made there that's significant because it's one thing just to go out there and in 30 minutes, find your way in the 14, 15, 16 points. And then there's another thing completely to say the offense is you're generating offense, not only for yourself but for others and making decisions and you're the focal point of other teams. And so I think that's another area of growth just for him to be able to not just get stuff to happen for him, but to intentionally create things for other guys on his team. - Last year, you stood here. Your team was picked last in the league, but you knew or you thought you knew what you had. Fast forward to this point this year. Does anything that's happened in the last year kind of validate what you feel like you are as a head coach and how things played out for you all last year? - Yeah, I wondered how many questions it was gonna take before somebody referenced last year. And while I thought about channeling my inner JJ Redick and his opening press conference, I decided not to do that. But you know how I feel about rankings and honestly, I think it's a favor to be put in a position where you have to prove yourself and I think we all have to prove ourselves. And when you get a ranking, that's not as high as what guys think. It sets the stage for constant validation and approval amongst your peers, amongst the media, amongst the selection committee. So I think for them, there's nothing that could be better than for us to be ranked in a way that they perceive as disrespectful. But you know, we have to prove ourselves. So why should we be ranked in any different? I knew the rankings are, I didn't do as many as much research, I don't have the same stats that I did last year. But fortunately, I think it's generally accepted if the last place team finishes first, that you don't get to pick anymore. So luckily, we didn't finish first for those guys. But as far as my own validation, I've been doing this for a long time. You know, maybe particularly down here in the Southeast, my name's not sexy. But I went to the College of Worcester. People don't know how to pronounce the name of the university. So it's just, I am who I am, a very comfortable with who I am. That kind of was our mantra last year. There was a couple of things. One was earn it. They made that up themselves in the preseason that they wanted to earn it. I feel like they did. But the other thing that they always said, I didn't tell them was we are who we are, we do what we do. And that's not gonna change. I am who I am. I like the guys that I like, and we develop guys the way that we do. And hopefully, we rely on the fact that, I mean, there's probably a couple of teams that wish we didn't have to play the games based on where they're picked. We rely on the fact that we get to play the games to show that maybe the picks just aren't that accurate. But we're looking forward to getting a chance to try to prove that. - Defense was so much a part of this team last year and kind of the buy-in you got from everybody. You know, you lost a lot of players up last year. Do you feel like this year's group has the same kind of buy-in to those principles and those rules from what you've seen so far? - So far, I mean, we ended up being a really good and efficient and effective defensive team last year. So, you know, it's hard to predict. I think from a physical standpoint, potentially, there's more. We have more length. We have more athleticism overall, but how that comes together in terms of learning and committing to rules, a complete devotion to basic principles defensively. We'll have to see as the season goes. The potential for us to be really good defensively is there again, but we're not there. So we start, honestly, the first thing I would just look at would be how the summer went and how our guys interacted with one another. And I think that's probably where the biggest similarities between this year's team and last year's team are, is that we just have a group of guys that respect one another at the highest level. They enjoy being around one another and, you know, we have workouts in 30 minutes after the workout's done. In the summer, they were sitting around talking about what was going on in the Olympics or whatever it is. We don't tell them to do that. They just do that. They like one another and I think that always helps in your plight to be a good team. And defensively you have to make some sacrifices. And this is the type of group to make up of it anyway, would lend itself to believe that we have a chance to do some good things defensively. - The SEC is very talented and tough and their expectations are that the makeup of the SEC is going to be a challenging conference. How do you see this team for you guys kind of fitting into the toughness of the SEC? - Well, as Commissioner Sankey mentioned, this league continues to get better every year. I think back to Rick Barnes made a statement that this was last year's season was the best he had ever seen the SEC and you can't imagine it being any better. Fast forward a year later, it might be better. So, and it's full of tough minded and tough physically tough teams, but tough minded teams, which I think is just as much, just important or more important. And so that's kind of who we've been. That's who I am, I just, they're challenges. We want to be in front of challenges and then overcome obstacles and hurdles and make achievements in the face of challenges. I don't think we wanna, I don't think there's near the gratification of making achievements without adversity, without challenge. And so that's what we want. I think everybody wants that. And certainly that will be provided in this conference with the great coaches, the great traditions and the number of good players that are in this league. But our toughness, we had a high level of toughness last year. Again, it's a process to try to get to that, but we have the makings of what could be another good tough team. If you're not tough in this conference, I just, it's gonna be hard to win any games, to be honest with you. The definition of offseason probably changed over the years, but it is a time where players can improve, but how do you as a coach, utilize the offseason to improve as a coach? - That's a good question. Times have changed the amount of time that you have as a coach to do anything that's not directly related to the team that you have right now is getting smaller and smaller. And that's whether it's spending time with your family, playing in a little golf, talking to the other coaches. That's one thing I think that unfortunately doesn't happen as much. You used to be able to spend more time and go see coaches and sit down and talk more about basketball. And it's getting more and more difficult to do that. But I did try to make a commitment to do that this summer. And in the offseason, just talking with as many coaches as I can. And we did some things that worked last year that we had success with, but still bouncing that off of other coaches, some things and trying to learn. I just got back from Bo Ryan, who I worked for for, I was seven years in Madison. The majority of that time was with him, was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame. And so I just got back, but while I was up there, I went to Boston Celtics and watched a little bit of one of their workouts and just constantly trying to learn and see where people that are doing it the best, how they, what they value, just as I'm consumed by greatness and learning why people or individuals or teams or groups achieve greatness. And so just spent some time diving into that a little bit and trying to improve the mental aspect of it. - Hey, Arkansas got Joe as they do from Tennessee. I know I think you played him twice last year. Just wondering what you thought of him and what kind of player you think Arkansas's getting. - Well, he's, the obvious, he's long, athletic, he's growing as a player. He's been a fixture in this league. He's obviously a valuable asset. I hate to talk about people as assets, but he's a valuable asset to any organization at this level. And so, you know, I don't know him as a person, but he seems to be a very competitive guy, peers to be a good teammate. So I don't know, they're getting a long, athletic, developing offensive skill guy that's very familiar with this league. - Just wanted to ask you in your experience, integrating freshmen and then transfers into your program, what are some of the challenges that come first with the freshmen and maybe they haven't learned a system like yours before or haven't heard some of the terminology versus bringing in a transfer who maybe are having to reprogram some of the things that they were doing at past programs? - Yeah, the challenges exist for both of those. It's a really good question. We've talked about that. I think the difference in the young guys and then the older guys that are new to this system, they've been around college basketball. And so I expect that they're the rate at which they acclimate to new things will be quicker than young guys. Young guys are young guys. And so two distinct challenges, and I think in terms of how much you push with those two different groups is gonna be a little bit different. Your level of acceptance of continual mistakes, I think you have a shorter, shorter, smaller tolerance potentially for older guys that have been around that understand, I think they understand stuff a little bit. But yeah, we do, we have some young guys that will end up playing significant minutes for us. And we have some new faces into our program that are older that will play significant minutes for us. And for us, what we do and how we go about our business is so important that I don't wanna devalue at all the fact that we have a lot of returning guys. We have a lot of new faces, right? I think probably six of our top nine guys from last year or back. And maybe some would argue that the top three are gone, but that next six guys is vital in terms of getting new guys, whether they be young guys or transfers up to speed in terms of terminology, the communication aspect of, it's one thing for me to show 'em or teach 'em something, but when they hear that voice coming from someone who's been in this program, that's one a lot of games that understands it thoroughly. I just think the carryover is so much more important.