Ryan Addresses Media During Monday News Conference
November 12, 2001 | Men's Basketball
Wisconsin men's basketball coach Bo Ryan spoke to the media on Monday during his weekly news conference. The news conference was in preparation for the second exhibition game of the 2001-02 season.
Ryan spoke on Athletes in Action, Dave Mader, the Badger offense and defense, and the freshmen and their performance in the first game. A partial transcript of the conference follows.
Thoughts on Athletes in Action: 'We have film where they played so-so and we have film where they played pretty well, they took Kentucky into overtime last night, that's not an easy task. Typically with these teams that travel a lot, it depends on what their travel schedule is the day before they play you. They've got pretty good guard play, their front line is not real huge, I thought we matched up pretty well against EA Sports. They're in the state, they play UW-Green Bay tonight so they won't have a long trip tomorrow for their game so we 're expecting to have our hands full. If they play the way they played against certain teams, it'll be a heck of a game.'
Thoughts on Dave Mader: 'Good positioning. He took care of the basketball, made good decisions. Everyone keeps telling me how great he looked. I don 't get real excited this early about anything, I guess he showed poise for being a person in the middle that is expected to take care of a lot of things. He blocked out well, his guy didn't get to the glass very often, he was active on the offensive boards, kept some balls alive, made good passes. What he did was, he did his job, he played his role extremely well.'
Goals for Mader: 'The same goals for every player that has played the five spot is protect the basketball more, you're in help situations probably more than any other player on the floor, you need to protect the basket, you need to make sure in transition somebody doesn't get an easy bucket at the other end. Our bigs touch the ball and have to turn the ball in our man offense and our zone offense more than most fives in any other offense. So our bigs have to be good passers, they have to be good decision makers because they're asked to do more of that in our offense, cerebral, good basketball IQ is needed. It's the same with centers that I 've had that were 6'4' or 6'11'. Being a five man is an important position, but we haven't asked him to do things he can 't do.'
Is it tough for Mader in practice not to go up against guys his height' 'Again we're trying to make something that looks like a negative into a positive in that if he's playing against quicker guys, he 'll move his feet better in practice. We're working on his positioning that way. On Saturday night he moved his feet, he positioned well. We'll see now with maybe a little smaller lineup.'
Are you happy with your defensive effort' 'Having taken the film apart, writing down a few things, I'm one of those guys that feels that maybe they should have had 10 of those 64 points. The other 54 should have never happened. The only time I worry is if I ever think differently. Every game I've ever watched on video tape, if the team scored 100 or 50, I figure 80 percent of those points we could have eliminated. Overall we did a pretty good job of positioning, but I 'm looking for good positioning on every possession. We were pretty good until the last four or five buckets that they made in the last three, four minutes. Those are tough to gage because of the game score and rotations on the floor so I can't get too upset about those. There are some things that we're definitely going to have to work on. I don't think our players feel that in the past six weeks we were able to team them everything, because if they think that we're in deep trouble. There 's still a lot we have to learn.'
Thoughts on offense' 'We handled it both ways with them, because even going into the game knowing what it was going to be like, the possessions need to be valued and at times it's going to seem easy and when it does, consider it to our advantage in that we probed the defense, we attacked the rim and if they don't stop you, make a layup. If they do stop us and the good teams will, then what's plan B' As a player you get into a situation, how do you get out of it' Drive, rotation comes, hit the open man, make the next play, turn the ball, but protect the ball, don't get yourself in trouble. So a lot of times we probed Saturday night and we got to the rim. I don't think we're going to get to the rim as many times. With quicker feet, defensively, Athletes in Action rotates better, it's going to be a little bit tougher to get to the rim. Now we 'll see what the next decision is. Basketball is a whole series of decisions. When your penetration is stopped or the ball goes into the post and they help or double, what 's your next decision' I don't think they have any feeling that they teams we play we'll get as many layups. Not with me in the locker room. '
Thoughts on the freshmen: The one thing I always become very leery of is freshmen having a good game, the media going way overboard and the next three games you don't see the same numbers and then saying what the heck happened to that freshmen. So I always said, if I ever got the job here at Wisconsin, that if a freshman plays well to just treat it as that was a good performance for that night and we 've got a lot more stuff to accomplish. We aren't going to go overboard here on anything other than saying that was great, now let's hope we can stay consistent and do it again. And if that doesn't happen, we're going to get him ready for the next one and the next one after that. Hopefully they can try to do the same things, but teams start getting films now. They'll look for weaknesses, they'll look for strengths, they'll look where to neutralize. But the freshmen did take advantage of their opportunities Saturday night, if they do that every night it'll be a lot of fun.'
