• last year
Transcript
00:00 crowd, understanding how hard the SEC is, understanding the competitive nature,
00:06 understanding the size, understanding the physicality, understanding the will to win.
00:09 Give Auburn a ton of credit. They came in here, they kicked our butts.
00:13 I mean, that's quite obvious. This team has not resembled what we built the last four years
00:23 from a competitive standpoint, from a defensive standpoint, from a loose ball getting standpoint.
00:28 So what are we going to do? We got to try to figure it out as much as we can.
00:34 Guys got opportunities and didn't cease the opportunities.
00:38 165 passes when our goal is 200. Again, we built something that I thought was
00:47 really special. And this group of guys has not carried on the tradition. And so we've got to
00:57 try to continue to get as best we can with the group that we have right now.
01:01 Wes, I know everybody ended up playing, but rotation-wise, it looked like you tried to
01:06 drill it down a bit, especially the first half. Was there anything positive in a game like this,
01:11 at least the first 20 minutes or first 16 minutes that you saw from drilling it down a bit?
01:16 Yeah, I mean, I thought we played good, Kevin, in the first half. Not good, but we played decent
01:22 enough to give ourselves a chance. I did not play the end of the first half very well at all.
01:27 It was just a competitive fiber. It wasn't there for 40 minutes.
01:36 Do you feel like you can settle that you've been early too much through the line of attack?
01:41 Yeah, we talked about that over and over. They're a team that will put you on the foul line.
01:47 They do give up rim shots, although they're great rim protectors. Again, I thought we played pretty
01:54 good, pretty decent, okay, whatever word you want to say, survived the first 16 minutes.
02:00 I mean, I've coached a long time. I don't remember a home game like this ever
02:09 since I've been coaching, whether it's the minor leagues or whatever.
02:13 We had people that paid good money to come to the game. We had people that
02:17 drove far. It's basically a filled-up building.
02:24 Coach, you mentioned just there the close to the first half. I think that's happened a few
02:32 times this year where it's really good, the first 16 and maybe the last four. Is there something
02:36 going on there? Can you put your finger on something there? Understanding the importance,
02:40 Hutch. It's been addressed not a little bit, a lot. It's winning. Are you used to winning? Is
02:50 winning a part of your DNA? Do you understand getting on the floor for a loose ball the last
02:56 two minutes of a half become really important? They got a lot of guys with some experience that
03:03 have won a lot of games. I thought that guys like Jalen Williams played really well. I thought Johnny
03:09 Broom, I thought we did a great job on him in the first half. I thought the second half he was just
03:14 totally dominant. It looked like we didn't want any part of guarding him whatsoever. Some of the
03:20 plus minuses on our team, I've never seen some of those like that in the minutes that guys played.
03:26 As a competitor, disappointed. I really don't know what else to say other than the fact
03:34 that practice, competitive nature, and games become two different things.
03:40 You mentioned several issues there at the beginning. Are those
03:43 things that you believe and are confident that can be fixed here moving forward?
03:46 How would I know? All I know is I got to try to talk about him and address him.
03:50 Eric, their paint points were really dominant in the paint. What was your take on that?
03:58 I didn't think we had enough. Paint points come in two ways, Bob. They come off dribble drives
04:04 and they come off post-ups. They hurt us in both. I'll go all the way back to year one here. That
04:12 group understood that we had to guard the three. We go to LSU and lose 28 to one on the glass or
04:19 whatever offensively. We still give ourselves a chance to win because they understood. This group
04:24 does not understand what identity on either side of the ball. We have to, back to Hutch's question,
04:31 we got to try to just figure it out and keep talking about it. Whether it gets solved or not,
04:36 I don't know. We had a lot of great wins here. I'm sure you're going to have a lot more,
04:40 but today was the most lopsided loss Arkansas has had in this building. With your experience
04:47 and all the winning you've done, how tough is that? Ever or during my tenure? Yeah, that's
04:53 a pretty bold statement. You know what I mean? It's factual. I don't know what it means to that
04:59 locker room. I know what it means to me. I know the history of this program. I have incredible
05:04 respect for everybody that's coached here, everybody that's played here. That's a wild
05:09 statement. And then number 10, I think it was number 10, Matt Baker, Manzanera. Pretty good
05:15 player, but I think he was averaging eight or nine coming in. Then he went off for 14 in the first
05:19 half. How big an impact did he have? Was it addressed that on the right wing they run a
05:26 pick and roll for him to get to the middle and shoot his pull-up jump shot? Yeah, it was addressed
05:30 about 100 times, but he still got to a sweet spot. I thought he played really hard. I thought
05:35 he played really aggressive. You've spoken a lot about the defense so far. I'm just wondering
05:44 where in your mind the offense kind of gets stuck in the mud and how much of that maybe transpires
05:48 from the struggles that you guys had defensively? Yeah, I mean, I certainly think that defensively,
05:54 if you can create some offense, that makes it a little bit better on the other side of the ball.
05:58 We were bad on both sides of the ball. I'm assuming the 165 passes is an all-time low
06:05 since I've been here too. You keep Broom scoreless in the first half. Was there any concern at half
06:14 time? We're down by seven and he hasn't really gotten going. Just how maybe deflating is it that
06:21 their bench was able to kind of be just so impactful? Their bench is impactful every night.
06:28 I mean, we never talked about Broom having zero points and what are we going to do if he has...
06:33 Just follow the game plan and follow the blueprint of what we did the first half
06:38 and maybe the results would have been different in the second half.
06:41 Their transition game, even early when the game was closed, seemed to really kind of
06:46 help them when it was a bit of a grind. I know Arkansas has struggled this year some in transition
06:51 D. What is going on there do you see as far as this goes? We've struggled everywhere defensively.
06:57 We've struggled on pick and rolls. Your shot selection has to do with your transition defense.
07:02 So, I mean, when you lose by 30, I mean, we could go all the way around the room and each of you
07:08 could pick a different area and you would all be right. We stunk in all areas. I mean, I don't
07:14 know. I mean, transition defense. What about Johnny Broom in the second half? I mean, I can go on and
07:18 on. Yeah, we stunk. I mean, and we got to get a lot better to even survive in this league. We got to
07:24 get a lot better. We got to be a lot more competitive. So, with that, I will say you guys
07:29 all saw how poorly we played and there's a million things we could discuss, but we stunk in all those
07:36 areas.