Watch the full interview and read the complete transcript below.
ON BEING IN MAUI
It’s been good trip so far. The guys, we went on a boat last night, so they enjoyed the cruise. It’s been, it’s been fun thus far, but now it’s time to get down to business.
ON PUTTING THE FOCUS ON LIMITING TURNOVERS AGAINST SETON HALL
It’s been solid. We always wanted to be better. I think it’s been it’s been solid. It’s front of mind. So certainly, when it’s front of mind, I think that helps. But we’re not going to be able to turn the ball over 17 times, have six shooting turnovers or 23 total turnovers. Can’t give away a quarter of your possessions and expect to run very good offense, and expect to expect to win at a high level. So Seton Hall is going to test us tomorrow with their ability to create turnovers, their ability to full court press. They do a little bit more trapping than VCU did against us, so we’re going to have to have to be a lot cleaner with the ball.
ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH SETON HALL COACH SHAHEEN HOLLOWAY
He’s a great coach. It’s all about toughness. We have a lot of mutual friends. One of my former assistants is on his staff, who I’m good friends with. And so, you know, they’ve got a great program. It’s all about grit and toughness, and he’s got guys that play extremely, extremely hard, and it’s going to be a very, very physical and tough game tomorrow morning.
ON IF HE FEELS HIS TEAM IS LOCKED IN AFTER ARRIVING ON FRIDAY
Well, when you come on these trips, you got to wear a lot of different hats. Different hats. You got to wear the practice hat. Then you go into the, you know, we had study hall. You got academic hat because where it’s the end of the semester for us. And then, you know, we had the fun hat when we when we went to went on the cruise, and then we came back and did some film last night. So you you have to be able to transition between a lot of different, you know, a lot of different activities, a lot of different things. And our guys have been, guys have been solid with that so far. And you know, hopefully we’ll continue that.
ON THE ADDITIONS OF COLE CLOER AND TREVON CARTER-GIVENS IN THE 2026 CLASS
Yeah, really excited about both of them. Tre’s just a big, long, athletic body. He’s got an elite skill and blocking shots that you know, that’ll be able to translate to what we’re trying to do. And with Cloer, to be able to get the number one player in the state, it’s a big, big deal. It’s not just getting the number one player in the state, he’s a damn good player. Really, really good shooter.
He just had some surgery. It wasn’t nearly as serious as we thought. So that was very, very good, and he’s on the road to recovery, and so he’s somebody’s going to be able to come in and help us and make an impact for us from day one. And so he’s got great length, great size, can shoot somebody that we’re really excited about.
ON WHEN HE EXPECTS TO HAVE CLOER INTO THE PROGRAM
Potentially in December. We’ll see. We’re still working through that. There’s some graduation stuff that we’re working through, but we could potentially have him in December.
ON FACING NC NATIVE NAJAI HINES FOR SETON HALL
He’s been great for Seton Hall. He’s fourth in the country in blocked shots. Been really efficient on the offensive end as well. So somebody, you know, look, we knew he was a good player. He’s a talented player, and he’s really had a really good senior year at Plainfield, had a really good EY BL peach jam with the Rens, and so did a really nice job, and he’s been able to carry that over to college.
ON WHAT HE FEELS HIS TEAM NEEDS TO FOCUS ON AGAINST SETON HALL
Well, the first thing is, we’re going to have to match their toughness. Which is going to be hard for us to do. We haven’t been the toughest team through these first four games, so we have to embrace that challenge and match the toughness. Secondly, we’re going to have to value the ball, and we’re going to have to, we’re going to have to keep them off the backboards. They also offensive rebound 40 percent of their misses, so they’re getting four out of every 10 misses they get.
So you’ve got to be able to value the ball, keep them out of transition, not have live ball turnovers. There’s some of that stuff we can clean up. We had a live ball turnover on a baseline, out of bounds play against VCU. We could have just thrown it in front of us. Could just held the ball where we can go set our defense. There’s a lot better options than throwing it over top for a pick six. So we’re going to have to make sure that we don’t let our bad offense turn into turn into their good offense with high quality shots.
We’re gonna have to rebound the ball as well. We have to really use all five of our guys to block their guys out, because they because they crash hard, and then have to meet and physically exceed them, on the on the toughness, on the toughness quotient, which is going to be a challenge.
