Blackshear Leads Cards To Exhibition Win Over Barry - SCACCHoops.com

Blackshear Leads Cards To Exhibition Win Over Barry

by Card Chronicle

Posted: 11/1/2014 6:01:31 PM


Louisville was outrebounded 53-41, but rode strong offensive performances by Wayne Blackshear, Montrezl Harrell and Terry Rozier to a 91-71 win over Barry in their first of two exhibition games.

Here's your Louisville/Barry Box Score

Your postgame quotes from Rick Pitino:

Head Coach Rick Pitino

(Opening statement) 
"From our practice film I realized what our weaknesses are. One are the turnovers, we did much better today. Our second weakness is rebounding and Barry did us a great favor. When you give up 29 second-chance shots, two things happen - you're playing good defense - they're shooting a low percentage, but when you give second shots you're taking away every fast break opportunity. Even though it was a high-tempo game, we only had five fast breaks in the first half. That's what exhibition basketball is all about. You see what you're doing well and you see where your weaknesses lie. It's really technique and that's why we've been rebounding poorly. What we're doing is, we're in good position the shot goes up but then we run to the rim. If it's a jump shot and the ball comes off more than five feet and we're running into the arc. We've been watching tape on Kenneth Faried where instead of going towards the rim he goes toward the perimeter while he watches the flight of the ball. Thirty percent of his rebounds is chasing down the ball because he knows the angle it's coming off. We're running to the rim and the only thing you can do that there is take the ball out of bounds."

"From a technical standpoint, this was very good for us because right now we saw our flaws. We keep our turnovers down and that's been a point of emphasis. I think our conditioning was good except for one time when I had to call a timeout. I wanted to play some of our guys major minutes and pressing. We didn't play any zone, we played all man. I saw a lot of things I liked. The great thing about exhibition games is you know what to work on. The obvious thing right now is we can't play great defense and give up 29 second shots."

(On whom was Pitino most pleased with) 
"I don't think necessarily that I was happy with any individual. I thought Wayne was very aggressive. But he didn't go to the offensive glass and that's something he has to do. We did some good things passing the ball wise. I wasn't really happy with any specific player. I try not to focus on that as much as I do the ball movement, defensive help and rotation. I think I can get up to eight guys out of the rotation."

(On why the players weren't disciplined on rebounding) 
"They've been told from practice that it's their weakness. Sometimes a dad can tell someone don't go in that neighborhood or you'll get in trouble. Then finally you'll get in trouble and say why didn't I listen to my dad. Sometimes coaching wise you tell them the weakness from watching film every day. Until the game starts they don't realize it. We've got their attention right now because that was one of the three areas of weakness on our basketball team.

(On the team's defensive communication) 
"They're doing a pretty good job there. You know sometimes when you're physically weak; like Mangok is a very good offensive rebounder, he's weak defensively because his legs are so thin he gets pushed underneath. So the way to cure your rebounding woes is you have to rebound on the weak side where 80 percent of the rebounds come off 2 versus 1. The guard has to lead them in and go to the back of the guy that is pushing Mangok, or pushing somebody underneath and that's the other area we have to work on. Make sure that we rebound the weak side 2 vs. 1."

(On the team's ball movement) "That's what I would a say a team wise, that's good. Now obviously, we are not running a lot of our sets right now because, our early opponents, we don't want to give them too much. Every game of ours is on television, so we don't want to show as much as we would for a regular game."

(On Chinanu Onuaku's performance)
"Onuaku is going to be a good basketball player. He's very smart, he's physical, he's ready to play. He's going to be a good basketball player."

(On Onuaku's passing and high and low stuff he can do)
"Yeah, he also understands the game a little bit. Like Montrezl understands the game; he has a very good feel for the game of basketball. That's something - he has to play a lot this year obviously when you go against the size of Minnesota or Iowa State and you play the team's we're playing he's going to have to log a lot of minutes. The good thing is, he's 18 so he's much more mature now."

(Bigger team than in the past, ACC connection or did it just shake out like that)
"It just shook out that way. I think that, I know these big guys, when you look at them, I've been through it so much in my life, that they're just are not ready to play; but guards are always ready to play early. The bigs are ready late and these guys are going to be ready late. Like one guy doesn't have good skills right now - Matz (Stockman) - the other guy (Anas Mahmoud) doesn't have good strength. They're both going to get strength and he's going to get skills from all the individual instruction. Nanu gets by because he is physically ready to play; Shaqquan is not physically ready to play. Shaqquan is 175 pounds, so we played Montrezl a little on small forward because of the type of schedule we are going to face."

(On turnover creation being what he wanted) 
"Yeah, I thought we did... we were a little late on rotations, but that's to be expected. When you play, you press the whole game and you play good man and you're always moving, it's a great conditioner as well. The obvious thing is you can't get teams to take bad shots. And I would say about 30 percent of our rebounds tonight, we just didn't chase the ball down. They were long, got them to take bad shots, but we didn't chase them down and you have to chase rebounds down."

(On 30 second shot clock experiment)
"We play with a 28 second shot clock at practice every day. We're slow to move in college basketball with a lot of things, but the women have played with it for a long time. Now they're quicker, smarter, better than us, but they've been playing with it for a long time."

(On Chris Jones having foul trouble and playing out of sync)
"You know, I let him play with his two fouls for some time. I was happy that Wayne didn't get in any. Chris usually can stay out of foul trouble. That's a minor miracle [that Blackshear had three fouls]. It was a good exhibition game for us, it really was, because they're a well-coached team, well drilled team, they run good sets, and I know exactly now what I felt we needed to work on and it solidified everything in my mind."

(On dunks getting a rise out of Montrezl Harrell)
"Does it get a rise out of me? No, that's Montrezl, that's what he can do. His timing is excellent, his length is excellent, he's a very good passer, he's a good leader. He doesn't surprise me at all. Terry doesn't surprise me, Chris doesn't, we got Wayne playing much more aggressively now. I got on him at halftime about rebounding the ball and he did a good job. There's six players I have great confidence in right now. I thought Anton was OK on defense, I thought he was okay. That gives us seven. If Q (Quentin Snider) comes around defensively, that gives us eight; we're perfect, we're fine. Just have to get Q playing some defense and we're fine."

(On Shaqquan Aaron sitting out this game)
"I can't play everybody. I really can't. I got to work on getting ready for Minnesota. It's a different schedule this year, so I know you want him to play, but I can't put him in because you want him to play."

 

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