Wes Miller Addresses Media Following Cincinnati's 83-75 Win Over Stetson
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 I'll get it started real quick. First off, I want to wish everybody out there,
00:04 especially all the Bearcats, a Merry Christmas. Um, you know, I'm glad this
00:10 group is going to get away for three days to spend some time with family. I
00:14 think it's much needed. Uh, and I think about guys like Aziz and Victor, uh,
00:21 and Seamoss that actually don't get to see their family. So that's I told the
00:25 guys in the locker room. We owe it to them to make the most of that time with
00:30 our loved ones. So I'm looking forward to seeing my parents and my siblings.
00:35 Um, you know, getting getting away from it for a couple of I'll get away from
00:40 it mentally or working on it, but just getting with some family. So Merry
00:44 Christmas to everybody out there, and I'm glad these guys get a break. Um,
00:46 I'm glad we won. Sometimes the game for Christmas is a difficult one. Stetson's
00:52 a really, really nice basketball team. You know, when you look down, they're
00:56 coming in here at seven and five with the wreck with the schedule they played
00:59 and being at that level before, you know, it's seven and five with the
01:04 schedule they play. That means you're a damn good team. December, you know, so
01:08 I knew it would not be easy. Um, their backcourt was pretty damn good tonight,
01:14 and I told I was trying to be pop guys. We got three days off. So I was trying
01:19 to be positive. The one thing I said, We can't let guys come in here and get
01:22 dirty.
01:23 Can't do that. But hats off. Uh, he's black. That's a terrific player. He
01:30 plays with a lot of freedom. And if you give him daylight, I thought John did a
01:34 really, really nice job on early in the game. And then I thought John wore down.
01:39 We're trying to just ride John out to garden. We sub John out, put Gisle on
01:44 and Gisle had a freshman segment there. He had a couple of the day, but that
01:48 was that was one of them. And, um, we're gonna need to find some guys on the
01:51 perimeter that can take challenges on. But I thought is the game more on John
01:57 lost a step a little bit, and then we start putting on the foul line and we
02:01 lose a little bit. Dan loses. I mean, so I give him credit. He was terrific
02:06 tonight, but I'd like us to be better. So I'm not happy about that. I'm really
02:09 not happy about the free throws. That's two out of three games. We're putting
02:13 somebody in line 29 30 times like we gotta make. I mean, I'm out there
02:17 arguing calls. But the fact of the matter is like we gotta make a better
02:22 effort. We gotta make a better effort to play with more defensive savvy. Like
02:27 sometimes we're taking paths defensively that are given advantages to the
02:31 defense for no reason out on the floor. And we tried to make some adjustments
02:36 in practice because we're struggling with the concept. Uh, and that's putting
02:40 us in some precarious positions. And then we just gotta make a little more
02:44 effort to get legal guarding position and make people make him over the top.
02:47 They make him over the top. So be it. People gonna make some shots, but just
02:52 keep putting people on the foul line. It's really frustrating on. I promise
02:55 you that we're aware of it. We're working on it, and our guys gotta kind
03:00 of make a conscious decision. It's important to them. Um, I thought we're
03:04 a little careless with the ball at times. Like I thought, Jamil, he's got
03:09 to get the rust off and get his footwork back because the footwork
03:12 turnovers are killing us because we got the ball three or four feet traveling.
03:15 He had three of them. I think the first half I thought Vic just wasn't tight
03:19 with the ball early. So you look down at halftime and they got five or six
03:23 turnovers between the two of them. But I thought both of them tightened up a
03:27 little bit in the second half. Um, gosh, there's a lot of stuff that I was
03:31 looking. I thought to start the second half, we casual with the ball and
03:34 train. We had a couple times in transition to get out and run and we
03:38 hold the ball too long. Don't share it. Turn it over. You felt like there was
03:42 times and opportunities to push the game out to 15 20 point leads in the
03:47 second half, and we weren't able to capitalize on that. So I was frustrated
03:51 there. But all in all, I'm glad that we won the game for Christmas. Um, I
03:57 think that's a good basketball team being in a game late, like that's good
04:03 for our development. We're gonna be in games. So having to execute in the last
04:07 four minutes was good for us. But I didn't think that if we tightened up a
04:10 little bit, we had to be in that position.
04:12 The family situation.
04:16 Any any
04:18 angling as to why it's so gentle and high for the games where it won't be a
04:24 problem at all. And then the next game, you don't get the line.
04:27 Um, yeah, I have opinions.
04:36 I'm
04:37 um, I'll just stick to this.
04:43 There's a there's there's some habits defensively
04:48 that create more consistency to not fouling.
04:54 Okay. And we show the ability to do that. But we got to turn that into who
05:02 we are.
05:04 And we have some guys with some really bad habits.
05:08 Okay. And so then and but they're good kids and they're trying and whether it
05:13 looks like it or not, we're freaking coaching. So when they're locked into
05:18 it practice or when they're fresh and they're mentally there,
05:21 yeah, they can play without fouling. But then fatigue, the moment, whatever,
05:28 whatever it may be, bad habits come out. I mean, I always say if I'm talking
05:34 negative about john Newman's defense, then think about how the hell everybody
05:38 else is playing. Right. But like john gets fatigued tonight and we wrote, I
05:42 said after the game, I played him too many minutes. I got to learn my lesson
05:45 there. Like somebody else has to be able to go in and guard.
05:47 But
05:48 john gets fatigued and all of a sudden he's committing fouls. He didn't
05:53 commit the 1st 24 minutes of the game, 28 minutes of the game. There's an
05:57 example like when fatigue happens, you start giving in. So is that some edge
06:03 and toughness that we got to create as a team to never give in? Is it guys
06:06 like day day that just have some really bad habits when they're trying to cut
06:10 a guy off just hipping them? I mean, we're giving our back to the ball
06:14 sometimes around the basket and I think those are tough calls because it's not
06:19 like we're jumping into anybody. I mean, Vic on that last animal with black
06:23 and like he turns his back to the guy, he doesn't like come into him or
06:27 fouling. But I think turn your damn chest to the ball and work hard to get
06:30 legal guardians. I know Vic can do it. I see him do it. He can be a great room
06:35 presence, but it's gonna take a little something more and that and that I'm
06:38 not just picking on a couple guys like it's it's the whole team and it's a
06:42 mentality. But then sometimes we're taking bad paths and we're precarious
06:46 positions because of that. So we're trying to make some defensive
06:50 adjustments to tighten our defense up. We've been pretty good at working on it
06:55 in practice, but it's that transition. We weren't great at it tonight. What
07:00 was the
07:01 that dance
07:04 Scott, that might be your greatest question
07:10 in the two years that I've known you.
07:14 I mean,
07:15 yeah,
07:17 um, that's not what I'm saying, but it's just it's more of a statement than
07:24 a question. And it's true. You know, we we need some guys to emerge
07:31 we all know Dan's capable of everybody that watches those. I mean, it's his
07:35 talents obvious. And tonight we talked about this him and I earlier today. It
07:43 has to start with him defensively. Like it has to start there. Like he's he's
07:48 got to go into the game and he's got to be really, really energized to make an
07:54 impact defensively. He usually always makes an impact on the offensive board,
07:58 which is something that I think is a standard he's got to stay with. And
08:02 then he's just got to play the right way. And I thought he did that tonight
08:04 for the first time in a really long time. And what happens? The ball just
08:08 finds and all of a sudden you look down, he's scoring the hell out of it. And
08:13 then he has one possession after he might have had 10 at this point or
08:17 something. I wasn't counting, but he he scored a little bit and he has one
08:21 possession that he gets it at the top of the floor. It sticks. He puts his
08:25 head down and he goes and turns it over.
08:28 And it's like, stop that. Like, move the ball. Because when you just guard
08:35 rebound, do your job and play hard, he's going. He's a natural score. He's
08:40 gonna score. And so I thought for the most part tonight he just played and he
08:45 played hard in the first half. I thought he really got it going. Um, he could
08:49 be a great defender for us. We need him to be. We need somebody other than John
08:53 to do that. You can see possessions tonight where he showed the capability
08:57 of doing that. And then you can see possessions where he relaxes. It's like
09:00 bang three. You know, we take John out because he's dying or gets his fourth
09:04 bow. And then it's like the next. And then you see the next session. Dan gets
09:07 to the screen and blows it up and stops Blackman and gets it out of his hands.
09:11 And you're like, Okay, but we need that Dan skillings to continue. That means
09:15 he's got to shoot it like that every night. But we need that kind of
09:18 mentality. I believe in the kid as much as you could believe in a young person
09:23 trying. And so we do need him to keep trending that way every night.
09:26 He's all big.
09:29 How much of those
09:31 they could be a phenomenal group because they're both good passers and
09:40 they both have really good feel for the game. Um, I've challenged actually
09:45 those two. We basically didn't. They basically haven't played together in
09:50 practice since October. Right. I'm not. I am not guys. I don't make excuses.
09:55 I'm not. That's just the truth. Because as the season starts, we're trying to
09:59 get Odi and Vic playing together or, you know, Vic or Odi playing is the single
10:06 big with four guards. And then as these comes, and then we're trying to get
10:10 Aziz and Vic with Odi in there a little bit. And then maybe Aziz or Vic with
10:15 four guards.
10:16 And so Jamil has been on the other team in practice. He's not played with
10:22 disease. He's not played with Vic. So the last week since he got cleared, I've
10:27 been trying to play him and Vic together a lot. So they start to get that, you
10:31 know, connection together because it could be fun. The question is, can we do
10:36 the right things defensively to make it work? And that was kind of a debate we
10:40 were having on the sideline tonight. We were actually about to sub and go small,
10:44 and then we had a really good offensive possession. We got to stop with another
10:47 one. We decided to stick with it for a little bit.
10:49 Two more.
10:50 You guys have 19 assists tonight, seven.
10:53 You and Frederick, do you feel like at court the ball was hanging around and
10:57 moving really well in the closure offense?
10:59 Yeah, outside of the nine turnovers, and I felt like we had 39, you know,
11:06 outside of some of the careless stuff, turning the ball over,
11:11 we've really emphasized getting the ball moving. Like I mean, and the kids are
11:16 buying into it. But again, as the possessions wear on and the game goes
11:22 back and forth, sometimes old habits show up. We're really trying to get it
11:26 moving and get to multiple actions and multiple sides. And sometimes when you
11:30 do that, you turn it over a little bit more at the beginning. Sometimes you're
11:34 gonna get late shot clock, which you guys saw that happen a little more than
11:37 usual. And these are just it's just part of it. If you want the ball to move
11:41 more and you want offense to turn over more, there's gonna be some negative
11:44 side effects that but I do think that's really important for this team. And I
11:48 thought I thought it was significantly improved tonight than it's been the
11:52 last couple weeks.
11:53 What you guys didn't have him up here. I haven't had a chance to visit with him
12:06 yet. But I I he practiced yesterday and we played in really heavy minutes
12:10 today. 33. My gosh, Seamus Seamus had a shoulder injury yesterday. I don't
12:18 think it's serious. We've already had done MRI and all that. So nobody used to
12:21 freak. Found out a lot of it had to do with the car accident. So we did the
12:26 MRI like he had something that's a couple weeks old. You see the car
12:29 crashes right where you get the windshield. We actually have tape of
12:32 that now and it's insane. It's violent. You know, it's like I and I just saw
12:36 that today.
12:36 It's wild. But he's had a tough go of it. Seamus. I mean, it's just like one
12:42 thing after the other. I think he felt like he was starting to find an
12:45 offensive rhythm the last couple games. So I but it was that was the last play
12:50 in practice yesterday. But I do think he's gonna be fine. You just gotta get
12:53 that shoulder to calm down a little bit. But when you talk Seamuses out,
12:58 uh, you know, it's gonna mean extended minutes for CJ. Right. And I thought he
13:06 handled it well, given that he hasn't done a whole lot this week. I hope his
13:10 hamstrings. All right, we're gonna this three day breaks probably needed for
13:13 him. Some of that was the packet close out a little bit more.
13:17 CJ, was that by design or
13:22 I thought is the is the ball moves. CJ is gonna benefit. I got CJ has such a
13:28 natural feel for how to play, which is why you look down. He's got seven
13:32 assists because is the ball moves. And as we start sharing it again, I thought
13:37 we did a great urban season. But as we start trying to share it again and turn
13:40 it over, guys like CJ are gonna really benefit because he just has a great
13:44 feel for it. He really does. So he's gonna make the right pass, get more
13:48 shots. I thought he attacked a couple clothes after I wanted to shoot.
13:52 I'm sure everybody else felt that way, but you don't over coach kids like him.
13:57 You let it play.
13:57 Thanks.
13:59 Thank you.