• last year
Porter Moser Pre-North Carolina (12-19-23)
Transcript
00:00 Well Porter, let's just start with the obvious one here. Going against Baycott, what's that
00:05 challenge like? How excited are you to see what John and Sam are able to do against him?
00:11 He's a tremendous scorer. He's experienced. He knows how to get angles. He's quick. He's got
00:17 a quick spin move. He's got quick moves in there. Obviously he's got length and touch. He's probably
00:25 the best big man in the country. Arguably he's one of them. But his quickness and length,
00:33 you've got to be ready for how quick he makes his moves and he's got great touch.
00:38 Just going to follow on there, not just what he can do there, but the rebounding threat as well
00:47 that he poses and then what you see out of RJ Davis as well as guarding him, what that job's
00:52 going to be like. So with Baycott, just like any really good offensive rebounder, is you got to get
00:56 into the body. You can't play volleyball and just think you're just going to stand there and try to
01:01 out jump him. We got to be physical with our box outs and we got to get into the lower body
01:07 and be fundamental with our box outs. That's just an everyday thing.
01:14 But if you're side by side and you're just not going to put a body on him,
01:20 he's just got tremendous length. And then to your question about RJ, he's on a tear, 30, 30, 26, 27,
01:31 whatever. He's just by sheer volume, you just want to keep him under, you want him to be
01:39 a lot of shots to get his points. And you want to wear him out. He's going to play 36, 38 minutes.
01:48 We just got to continue to run different guys at him, wear him out with our depth. But we've got
01:55 to make him work for everything. He moves tremendously without the ball. He'll hunt that
02:01 three, he'll come flying by. If you lose vision on him, he's great and making you pay if you lose
02:06 vision on him. He'll get lost and all of a sudden he's catching it and shooting three. He's just
02:12 tremendous, one of the best scorers in college basketball. He's got great speed with the ball
02:16 in the open court. He gets to the foul line, great scorers know how to get to the foul line,
02:23 he knows how to get to the foul line. And that's something that he does very well. We got to keep
02:29 him off that foul line. We got to slow him down in transition and we can't lose him. We can't lose
02:36 him and let him get easy, easy threes. He's got to work for everything. We got to make him work
02:43 for everything. We'll go James then Eli. And Porter, you know the matchup in this game is
02:52 incredible because you guys have figured out how to match up against everybody you play. Your bigs
02:58 combined are averaging about 20. So the matchup there is incredible. But if you could kind of
03:03 dive in the entire matchup, I think it would be fascinating to hear what you have to say about it.
03:08 So they put the matchups with the bigs, obviously Sam and John, taking their turns being physical
03:16 and trying to, they got to win the battle of the catch with Baycott. They got to win,
03:22 there's two battles. I feel like I'm quoting Rick Majerus. The first battle is the catch.
03:27 And that's the unsung battle. Everybody always talks about the battle after the catch,
03:32 but the unsung battle is the first battle. That's the battle of the catch. Where's he catching? Is
03:37 he catching at heels in the paint, heels in the line, or is he catching at two or three feet
03:41 off the block? So that first one is going to be a battle on how hard we work with Baycott.
03:46 They'll come down and he'll work really hard to get a post up in transition.
03:51 So we've got to do our work early with Baycott. Do it early, don't do it late. If you're late on
03:58 getting your position and working your feet, he'll pin you. So we got to do our work early on that
04:03 matchup. So I think Sam and John, they've been working a lot in all year. So they're going to
04:11 have to, they got another challenge. The matchups with RJ is it's got to be collective. Like they
04:16 said, a lot of ball screens, we got to be great in our ball screen defense. We can't let him just
04:22 get run wild in the ball screen. So our ball screen defense has been good, much better since
04:27 day one. And Sam has really improved in his ball screen defense. So that's a matchup. Obviously,
04:34 Harrison Ingram is a key. I know everyone wants to right away talking about RJ Davis and Baycott,
04:41 but Ingram's a really good player. He's a really good player. And he's a guy that he's a strong
04:50 wing. He's transferred from Stanford. So he's been a guy where he's been their leading scorer before
04:55 at a high level. So he's a guy that we got to match his physicality. He's shooting the ball
05:00 at a good percentage. Cormac Ryan transferred from Notre Dame, a Corver, can't get him loose.
05:07 He saw it going in a couple of times against Kentucky. We've got to really match him up and
05:11 not get him open looks. And then Kudu. Kudu is a, they're leading assist guy really fast.
05:17 He sprays the ball. We just can't let him, we've got to make sure we're staying home on the shooters
05:22 when Kudu really smashes the paint off his dribble drive. Thanks.
05:26 Porter, in some ways, it's like hard to believe it's only been 10 games, right? With this group,
05:33 in a broader sense, like over the years, how long does it take each season to know your team,
05:40 to know what you have into really deeply like understand a given group?
05:45 It's hard to quantify that question. Like, like it just every team's different.
05:52 But we try to do is we try to have this mantra just getting better. And hopefully you're getting
05:56 better, you know, and playing your best basketball, January, February. I think we got a huge room for
06:04 improvement. What I feel this team has done is they have really embraced trying to get better.
06:12 They've really, I mean, really embraced playing, you know, everybody teaches spacing. And well,
06:20 I mean, we really teach spacing. And we emphasize so many little things. And these guys embraced it.
06:27 You know, we had a film session this morning, just from our practice yesterday. And they see all the
06:33 mistakes we made in practice yesterday. And they sometimes got teams don't embrace it as much.
06:38 And that starts with leadership. You know, you're for years, you'll say your coachability of your
06:45 team is based on how coachable your best players are. And our best players are really coachable.
06:51 Our best players, our first day, our eight starters are really coachable. And, and they know
06:58 that they all got a job and they got a big role. So I feel like I've seen that early with this team.
07:04 But I think the thing Eli that I see with this is that I just feel we have a big gap to improve.
07:12 And so do they. And that's what I love about this team.
07:15 And just building off that, I mean, based on what is there to improve that room to improve,
07:22 what are you most excited to learn about this group? I don't know if it starts tomorrow night,
07:26 but with games like this and everything you've got ahead January, February,
07:30 I mean, just you just how, you know, how efficient your defense is, how efficient your offense is,
07:36 you know, it's hard to get all eight guys playing well, like Jill Moore had a couple of really good
07:41 games and all of a sudden Waldo's had a couple of good games and Latre saw it going in last game,
07:45 you know, Sam will be really good. Then John, so you're not going to have all eight. I mean,
07:49 that's your goal, but just, I just feel like we're getting all eight contributing. I think all eight
07:55 contribute every game. You know, there's never a game. I don't think that we're not getting any
07:59 contributions from the bench. I think between John Waldo and Latre, I mean, we're getting really good
08:06 bench production. And sometimes that bench production doesn't show up in the box score.
08:10 Some people's things just sometimes bench production is the only points. No, I mean,
08:15 Waldo and Latre are two of the best defenders, you know, they're the way they're, they do things
08:20 when we watched the film after the game, like, God dang, look at what Waldo just did. Like those
08:25 guys that we're getting a lot from those guys off the bench. And they're, I, you know, this,
08:32 cause I've said it for months or weeks. I use that term bench loosely from our second shift of
08:38 starters from our second shift of starters. We're getting a lot. Thanks Porter. Yep. We have a time
08:46 for probably a couple more questions. We'll go to Jesse to start.
08:49 Porter, you've mentioned transition and trying to do your work early and transition against them. I
08:56 guess. Yeah, I know you guys want to get in transition to it and get some points that way.
09:01 Maybe, maybe what's that balance between establishing the pace you want and getting
09:06 opportunities in transition while also making sure they're not getting a bunch of points in
09:10 transition. Maybe how do you handle that, that balance? Well, we had a great example of playing
09:16 a game like that with Arkansas. We knew they wanted to run. We knew they wanted to play up-tempo
09:21 and we did too. We, we, we won the battle of transition points in that game by pretty good
09:29 margin. So we don't want to change what we're doing. Like we still, but you want to be smart.
09:35 What are we trying to get in transition layups, foul line, open threes. You don't want to take
09:41 contested twos. You don't want to turn it over. You don't want to take rushed contested threes,
09:48 but we want to take good threes layups and get to that foul line. So we want to still pass it
09:53 ahead and get to that. But if not, we, we, we go into our half court, we flow into our half court
09:58 offense, which we've been really efficient per the numbers. So, but then we definitely, we've been
10:04 doing that different presses to slow teams down. We did that with Arkansas. We're going to, we're
10:10 going to keep being who we are and just got to be better at it. We got to be, it challenges it
10:15 because now you're playing an extreme athletic, talented, talented group that, and they do a great
10:22 job with spacing. They're going to space you. They're going to run. They're going to, I mean,
10:25 that Carolina break for decades has been a staple of their, their traditions and that Carolina break,
10:32 man, you you've got to slow that thing down. Appreciate it.
10:36 We'll go Bob and James to close it out.
10:40 Porter, you, you joke after Saturday's game about playing Florida, all the baby blue that was in
10:48 the stands on that night. Anyway, are you, I don't know if curious is the right word,
10:53 but how intrigued or curious are you about how your team responds to being in that type of
11:00 environment? It's you got to embrace it, got to embrace it. You got to communicate.
11:07 Now you couldn't tell the ratio of Arkansas because of the same colors. So you couldn't tell,
11:14 but I mean, it got loud with Arkansas, you know, with that. So we know it's going to be loud.
11:19 These, the good thing about it is like, you're not coming off the bench with, you know, we have,
11:26 we're, we're playing one true freshman right now is Caden. He's in that eight though,
11:31 Latres played in a million games. John has played in a million games. John's actually played in
11:35 Carolina and done well. Jalen Moore has played in Carolina at Georgia tech. You know, you know,
11:41 Waldo has played in big atmospheres. Um, Tega, Sam and Los played at Kansas last year. So I think
11:51 once you, you know, once sometimes when you're a true freshman, sometimes these atmospheres,
11:57 once you start doing it, you know, you embrace it, man, that's what you want. You love college
12:01 basketball like that. So the thing you got to be aware of is, is runs, you know, when it,
12:08 when it's going loud, if they're on a four Oh run, you know, what do you want when another team's
12:12 making a run, you want a good possession. You don't, you want to be solid with the ball. You
12:16 don't need grand slams when they're on a four Oh run. You want to, you want to get a single,
12:20 a double or something, you know, a nice play when, when, when that we're making a runs and
12:23 stop that run. Um, sometimes things, people think the only way to stop a run is a grand slam and,
12:29 um, you don't, so that's where you need. That's what we're gonna have to be aware of is. And I
12:34 thought we did a great job of that with Arkansas. They started the second half on a run. Their
12:37 problem was trying to get back into it. Boom. Next, you know, JVN scored six straight, got
12:41 followed on a three and hit a three and we stopped that run. And, uh, that's what you're aware of in
12:46 atmospheres like that is, is avoiding those big runs. Appreciate it, Porter. Yep.
12:51 You know, Porter, uh, you know, North Carolina is the blue blood. I've always said, Oklahoma
13:00 is a better basketball program than people think. And so I'm just curious. I wish I could have been
13:06 at your practice yesterday to see if your team has a little more bounce in their step. I mean,
13:11 how much are they looking forward to playing this game and playing North Carolina?
13:16 I think there's no question. This group is, is excited to compete. Um, and I, and that's the
13:22 word I use compete. Um, you know, not just excited to play, but excited to compete, um, against,
13:28 you know, one of the most storied programs in the country. I think someone told me yesterday,
13:32 you guys would know more than me that, uh, Oklahoma has never beaten North Carolina in
13:36 basketball. Um, and, uh, you know, that for us, that's, that's not something we're telling the
13:44 guys like, Hey, this is let's do this. We're telling our guys, man, this is another team in
13:48 our way right now of, of climbing where we want to go. And, uh, they have a confident, confident
13:54 respect for every opponent. And it's no different against Carolina. These guys are excited to compete
14:01 against Carolina tomorrow on this stage. Thanks Porter. Yep.
14:11 You guys good. All right, guys. I'll see you. Thanks everybody.
14:15 - Thank you, buddy.
14:16 - Appreciate it.
14:17 - Appreciate it.