Ryan Addresses Media Monday
December 09, 2002 | Men's Basketball
Wisconsin men's basketball coach Bo Ryan spoke to the media on Monday during UW 's weekly news conference. Ryan talked about the upcoming game against New Hampshire and addressed various issues about the team.
A transcript of the news conference follows. The news conference video is available by clicking on `multimedia' on the red menu bar.
Did you recruit Kyle Peterson from Malone, Wis., who now plays for New Hampshire' No, I did not. I saw him play though. I saw him play either at the Sheboygan tournament or an AAU tournament, when he was maybe a junior (in high school).
Were you pleased in how your team bounced back ' 'After we went over the film, and took some of the edits out, we worked on that on Thursday. There is never a simple explanation, but in all fairness to our guys, some of the things that happened in that game early with a guy who is 2-11 from 3 coming in and they hit the longer threes. The more I look at it, I look at the spacing defensively that we ended up with. I look at also some things that happened because of that, what happens to your interior defense. When we are playing from behind, I just thought offensively that is the first time ever a team that I coached had 1.1 points per possession and lose a game just after talking about it the week before. It is a very reliable, consider it 99% effective, because you are just not used to giving up that many points per possession. It has happened a few times when a team gets over one. They ended up with 1.2, we ended up with 1.1. It is a ten point loss. Now I said, how can we give up this many points' I am looking at things that anybody would and every coach does. Our spacing was not good. Our rotations became tougher then. We worked on some of those things. It is not like it is something you can change over night. We just hoped that (Marcus) Banks did not come in and early and hit three or four long threes and stretch out some. Do you want to live on those kinds of three's all season' I do not think Wake (Forest) is going to do that, but they are also good enough inside to still win a lot of games. What Wake did is they hurt us in one area, then they hurt us in another area and then had a player who could make plays. A player who could get his shot off, get into the paint, shoot a three, take it to the hole and create some match-up problems for us in Josh Howard. You look at Vegas on tape, I would love to see Vegas and Wake Forest play on a neutral court. I think that would be a great game. We played better. We got hurt by a couple other players scoring-wise that we didn't necessarily expect, but for the most part I thought we kept in check the person that could hurt us the most and that was Banks.'
Do you plan to stick with (Alando) Tucker in the starting line-up' 'I usually need a reason to not have somebody where they were before. I do not see any difference here. Especially, a lot of the non-conference teams, to have a 6-5, 6-6 four-man it amazes me. In the media some places I see that Alando Tucker was our center Saturday. He is not the center. He was our four-man. He can match up real well with a lot of the four-men that we are going to play against.'
Can you play the shorter guys when you get to Big Ten competitors' 'Some teams have done it and been effective. Some teams have won in the Big Ten with two scorers, playing six guys, seven guys. Some teams win the Big Ten with ten guys and four guys in double figures. I think if you look there are a lot of different ways to do it. And what our team's going to play out to, I'm not exactly sure yet, but that's why we're playing non-conference right now, to find some of those things out. I just really like playing guys who make statements with their play that help the team. Everybody wants to help the team. We don't have one guy that practices with us that doesn't want to help the team. It's just junior executives with a lot of businesses that aren't top executives yet because they don't have the experience, they haven't been through the battles, they haven't matured enough yet. What is different in athletics ' We are trying to bring along some of these other guys. We have not had serious foul trouble ' yet.'
Do you have to balance playing the guys that deserve to play versus the guys that need to get ready for Big Ten games' 'We are trying to get them ready for the Big Ten in practice every day and in game situations where we can. We have also tried to insert guys to get some minutes that way. Sometimes just getting gut on the floor for two minutes helps young guys a lot.'
On playing a guy on defense versus offense: 'I do not worry about that. We are just talking about basketball here. We are not talking about playing quarterback and playing defensive safety or playing a cornerback position and then playing tailback on offense. In basketball, we play both ways. That is all part of the game. You have got to be able to play both ends hard. There is no favoritism for anybody that doesn't play both ends hard. How effective some guys are on one end compared to the other does not always equate to being equally successful as the next guy. As long as the effort is there and they are trying to get some things done and working within the framework of the team, that's okay. I never concerned myself with a player playing good hard solid defense taking away from his offense. '
On Freddie Owens: 'He has been opportunistic. Maybe once or twice, he has been in a situation where a shot has not been in the best interest of what we were doing. You know I watch enough games on TV where I can point out a lot of players that take about ten of those shots. Freddie has pretty good recognition of what his strengths are now and how he can help this team on the offensive end and on the defensive end. He is a player developing. Hopefully, he is not finished. '
On the game film from Saturday, especially the defense: 'Some pretty good defense. I know people have a job to do. They have to report the game. The job Devin Harris and Boo Wade did with Banks ' tough shots. I look at all of those shots and we took every one of Banks' shots. How many easy shots did he get' Very few. I do not know if those guys got enough credit from elsewhere; family members, fellow students, whatever, media, it does not matter to me. We gave them credit. Especially after looking at the film, those guys did a pretty good job. Boo did not score points, but rebounding-wise, keeping people blocked, even though you don't get a rebound, we look at every rebounding situation and say `Okay, did his guy have a chance to get the ball if it bounced his way'. He did an excellent job of that. Dave, in all but one instance, in the seven minutes that he was in there blocked out well. Same thing with Ray, moving his feet, got into position. What happens on dribble penetration here' Did he rotate' We do that with all the guys and they contributed.'
What do you know about New Hampshire' 'We needed to get fifteen home games. We had twelve, eight plus four others, not counting the two that we ended up with the tournament because that came later. Coach Gard started calling around and saying `Hey, who wants a paycheck''. Basically that is what you are doing. You are paying somebody. At UW-M, I had the contract for $85,000 minimum with Cincinnati, Utah, Iowa, Iowa State, in order for us to have an athletic department. I know what it is like to be at those schools. We called around and got three takers because we had to pick up three games where we could not return the game to their place, no way, and New Hampshire is one of them. And that connection with Wisconsin, with a player (Kyle Peterson). He's played Northwestern. He's played Miami. He's played ' Oklahoma. If you look at New Hampshire 's schedule the last couple years it is kind of like what we were doing at UW-M. Go get the blood money. Go try to beat somebody on the road. Go take on whoever will play. I give those guys, in this profession, those are not easy things to do when your athletic department needs that kind of money to run the athletic department. I don't know what their situation is, but having been at a mid-major school and knowing how important those paychecks, those guaranteed checks are ' not paychecks (correcting himself) ' its checks for the school. That money helps every program; track, baseball, soccer at UW-M. Same thing at Green Bay, same thing at the other schools that have to do that also and this is one of them.'
