To celebrate the arrival of another beautiful, duty-free Friday, we transcribed IU coach Kelvin Sampson's Thursday press conference and posted it below. There's some great stuff in there; Coach talks at length about the logic behind his lineups so far, a little bit about Errek Suhr's position on the team, and has some great stuff about D.J. White and "swagger."
Also interesting: Sampson touched on an interesting discussion commenter PMK started up the other day. He wondered if substitutions after a player's mistakes were beneficial to a player's confidence in the long run, whether Sampson could be hurting player morale significantly by causing them to constantly look over their shoulders. Well, Sampson addressed that briefly as well, and seemed to acknowledge the potential problems therein.
Oh, and here is our Friday IU basketball coverage from the print edition:
Sampson: D.J. needs a swagger, By Matt Mattucci In flux: Sampson continues to switch around starting lineup, By Eamonn Brennan On Earl, Rod and A.J., By Ryan Corazza
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Here's the transcript. It's long; dig in.
On whether he'd consider a starting spot for Errek Suhr:
"Consider it, sure. Depends on how the practices go, I like our kids to earn things. He certainly earned consideration Tuesday night.
Another thing I liked about our team the 2nd half we didn't waste any possessions. We may not have gotten good shoots every possession, Duke was guarding us too. But we didn't turn the ball over. That's a pretty good offensive team, you've gotta take care of the ball. Then you can find out the other things you can do. Errek was just solid. You know sometimes that's what that position requires. You don't have to throw five touchdown passes every game, just don't throw any interceptions. Get your team and whatever you're going to do and make sure you get a shot.
We're becoming a solid rebounding team. Not a great rebounding team, but a solid team in that area. But offensively, I think that's the one area our team needs to improve on, some continuity on offense. Then we've gotta get better at finishing the ball in the paint. I think our post guys had plenty of opportunities, we just didn't finish a lot of balls in there.
On Armon Bassett:
"Armon's getting better. He has his freshman moments, but he's gaining confidence. He's one of those kids, the more confidence you give him, the better he is. That's what I think earlier I said about his shooting percentage, that means nothing. Armon's a good 3-point shooter. Just getting him comfortable making plays, and just giving him a little freedom to make a play. Not making him feel like he has to be confined inside a play. The thing about getting to the free throw line, which we've gotta do a much better job on, is you gotta drive the ball to the rim. There's two ways to get the ball in the paint: you can pass it in there or you can drive it in there. I'd like to see Armon put the ball on the floor and create more. Joey Shaw's getting better at that. But Armon is a good offensive player. Just gotta keep working on defense and staying at a high concentration level.
On Joey Shaw:
"Probably (surprised me the most). I didn't see Joey in high school and obviously he didn't play last year. Anything that he would do ... maybe surprised isn't the right word. I've been encouraged by Joey, I didn't know what the expect. Sometimes as we go along and you see a different situation, because you didn't see a kid his junior year in high school or his senior year in high school, play in the summer, weren't involved in recruiting process, don't really know the kid in terms of game situations, you're learning as you go. That's why I would prefer to have a set rotation. But until we have 5 guys that prove they can play the best together, we'll just keep doing what we're doing. The more you see them play though the more you learn about them. Close games, road games, I'm seeing things for the first time. So is Joey. That was his first true road game as a college basketball player. That was Armon's first true road game. It's not like this is a veteran team that we have playing. We have some veterans, but the other guys are playing better. And my job is to put the best team out there, and thats what I'm gonna do."
On Lance Stemler:
"He hasn't been cleared to practice, that's all I know."
On Ben Allen:
"I saw a difference, I saw his body language is better. And you can tell a lot about a kid's confidence level by their aggressiveness. I think Ben...some guys are prone to foul, some guys just have bad luck. Ben had 5 fouls the other night and you could make a case for 2 of them. You could make a case for 3 of them may or may not. And it's hard to fault Ben for his effort the other night. He's rebounding the ball better. I think when we get some consistency in our guard play, I think Ben's gonna get a lot better on offense too. Ben can't grab the ball and create a shot for himself, that's what guards do is they get shots for big guys. But I like the way that Ben's rebounding. You look at his rebounds per minutes played, he and Mike White, I thought both of those kids played aggressive the other night on the boards. We just gotta get a little smarter on defense, and I think we are. I don't know that you could tell it the other night because there's so many fouls, but you can see carry over in the games from what we're doing on defense. And as long as we're getting a great effort we'll turn the corner there."
On the team's defensive improvement:
"We gotta keep them off the foul line. I thought we defended them well. But you defend well for 14-15 (minutes)...if you can make a team like Duke go deep into the shot clock that means position-wise you're doing pretty good...But I thought we defended a lot of things well against Duke. My only problem with our defense is that we put them on the line 29 times."
On Saturday's opponent, Charlotte:
"They're well-coached. Bobby's a really good friend of mine from way back. We've been on the Operation Hardwood Tour together twice. But what a great guy. Just a wonderful person ... (Story about 1999 NCAA Tournament, facing Charlotte) ... They run more stuff, there's just so many things they run, they're just really, really good offensively. So for us this will be a challenge to defend them. We've got two days basically to prepare for them, today and tomorrow, we play them Saturday. They're good though. DeAndrew Alexander, obviously I know well, is having a great year. I saw that he's a Wooden Award candidate, top 50 players in America. Their point guard Goldwire, talented kid. I saw AJ Drayton play before, he's long, athletic, can score - they have 3 seniors who've all been in that system a while. Offensively they're really, really good. They're a good team, a really good team. Sometimes you can't look at someone's record - you know, they've played at Syracuse and Miss. State. They lost both those games, but having played those road games really prepares you for your next road game. I'm sure bobby would rather be 5-0 and having played, like a lot of teams, 5 home games and build some confidence with his team. But he's played at Syracuse, he's played at Miss. State and now he's gotta play at Indiana."
On whether there was a message behind Calloway/Wilmont/Ratliff sitting in 2nd half:
"Oh there was a message. But at the same time, whether I'm coaching the British Columbia Wildcats or IU, my responsibility is to put our team in a position to win. A lot of that's putting the right guys on the floor. I'm just observing. I threw 5 guys out there to start the game, they didn't play very well. You know, I just didn't see a lot of confidence with that group. But I've never seen them play on the road. The second half - after watching us play the first half and watching Duke play the first half - I felt like we could win the game, if we just get settled down. You can't turn the ball over 12 times and beat anybody. We had 5 turnovers the second half. If you have 5 turnovers the first half you may be leading. It's not a complicated game, it's fairly simple. Look at a lot of our turnovers: picking the dribble up, trying to force passes inside off of pressure. The best way to attack pressure is to drive it. Attack it with the dribble. If they're gonna deny the lanes and if they're gonna pressure the ball, they're telling you 'drive us.' That's what we did the second half. You don't need a complicated offense. It's space the floor and drive it. We did a much better job. You saw Suhr get in the lane and finish, he had a little runner there - it's the same play that Marquette ran ... First half we were trying to pass the ball from point A to point B versus pressure ... I think our poise was very good the first half. I thought the second half we settled in and play. We competed the second half. You look out there and you've got a walk-on and you've got two freshmen on your perimeter, but it doesn't matter. Those guys played good. That's what matters."
On the team's progress:
"I'm a lot more concerned about seeing progress as a team. You know we're gonna have some head-scratching possessions right now ... Five years from now we're still gonna look lost at times. I've never coached a team that didn't looked lost at times. The thing that as we go on is that you just learn more, you learn who plays where, who fits best together. You come up with a starting lineup but that's in pencil right now, eventually you'd like to have it in ink. But we find out as you go. How guys handle pressure, who has poise. I don't know who has poise on this team. I have a better idea now because I saw them now. You move forward ... And for me, even though Rod and Earl are seniors, they're freshmen for me. And they play like freshmen at times, so it's not anything to question or get alarmed about. I'll figure out who can play and I'll play them."
"The guys that I inherited, some of these guys are playing good. Ben Allen's getting better. Armon Bassett's getting better. Joey Shaw's getting better. We've got guys improving. You can see it in practice. Some of these guys are limited. When I say 'drive it' you gotta be able to drive it. You can't sit there and be a fan and say 'why don't they do this?' Why didn't that guy through a fastball? Well maybe he didn't have one ... That's why we've been working so hard on halfcourt defense. You've gotta hang your hat on something. Good, bad, indifferent - you've gotta hang your hat on something that you can take into the game and say 'let's be good at this today.' I think offensively, we're gonna get better as we go, when we figure out who can play what, when and who can do what. That's probably the only negatives you see in the exhibition games because you have to play a Division II school ... That's not a choice, it's a rule ... Sometimes when you play those schools you don't learn a lot about your team. I didn't find out a lot about this team until we played the last 7 minutes, 6 minutes against Butler. You find out a little bit. Then you come home, play a couple games, then you go to Duke and find out a little bit more. I feel better about our team now. You have a better feel for who to play - who can do this and who can do that. I think all the new coaches go through that. I'm not unique in this thing, it's the way it is."
On AJ/Rod/Earl getting message:
"I dunno, we didn't practice yesterday. But they did. They will. They're good kids. Kids that don't have high-character become problems. These are high-character kids. They're great kids. That's not an issue whatsoever, it won't be. I saw them at 6:00 in the morning, I've already put them through a bunch of adversity. They've already been through a bunch. Whether Earl starts or not, Saturday night he'll play a lot better. Making mistakes isn't a crime, it's OK to make mistakes. But don't repeat it. That's the message you send these kids. And don't get mad at them because they didn't play good. I can't do that, that doesn't help anybody. I spent most of the day yesterday, Earl came by, Rod came by, they wanna know 'Coach, what can I do?' You know that's their attitude. They wanna help the team. If you're around here worried about playing time or shots, you're in the wrong place. The name on the front of our jerseys says "Indiana". You better figure out how to help Indiana, that's the best way to help yourself."
On what he'd like to see more of from Mike White:
"Nothing. Mike's doing what he does. You understand we signed Mike White in May. Mike got 8 rebounds the other night. If he does that every game, Mike will ... Mike did an unbelievable job. He's not a great finisher. Mike's 6-4, 6-4 1/2, 6-5. We got here in April, we looked in that room and the only big guy for sure that was gonna be here on this team was Ben Allen. We recruited Lance and Mike after we found out we needed some big guys. So we started in April recruiting those guys and signed them in May. Look what Lance has done for us this year, he's been tremendous. Mike White, great. 8 rebounds - don't make Mike out to be what he's not. He took that ball to the hole, went to the foul line 7 times. We're gonna try to get him as much around 50 percent on his free throw shooting though, that would help. But you know he's in there playing against Zoubek, McRoberts - those guys are 7-foot, he's 6-5. But I didn't see anybody better than Mike at the end of April/May that we could get to help us. I think Mike's doing great."
On D.J. White:
"You know what D.J. needs to do, he needs to get his swagger. You gotta bust open them bar doors and say 'who wants a piece of me?' You know what that is? That's an attitude. We're talking about a basketball game here. Irregardless of what happens, if you start making it out to be more than that, I'm gonna send you over to Kuwait for about a week, that'll get you straightened out. It's a basketball game. Bust open those doors and look around and say 'OK, who wants some of this?' You know what that is? That's an attitude man. That is a swagger. That's what you gotta have - good, bad, indifferent, win, lose, draw ... You gotta be the biggest, baddest dude in the joint. If somebody wants to mess with me, come on, let's go outside, let's see what you got. That's what he needs, he needs to get a little nastier, a little meaner"
