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00:00 Members of the media, thank you for joining us today for our zoom conference with West Virginia head men's basketball coach Josh Eilert. Coach will start with an opening statement from you.
00:13 Yes, you know, to put Houston to bed, I just want to give them credit.
00:20 You know, Houston and coach Samson and their culture and their mindset on the defensive end is very impressive.
00:29 You know that. A team and their program. You know they got a heck of a shot to to to win this whole thing, not to mention when the when the league, which might be just as hard as as the whole thing.
00:42 So yeah, they've they've got things rolling and and and those are impressive performance on them.
00:48 So I'm giving them a lot of credit. It doesn't mean that you know I'm not short sighted, excited enough to think that we didn't play well and we didn't execute our game plan.
00:59 So you know that coupled with how hard they play and their defensive approach really turn into a lopsided loss there in Houston.
01:07 But we gotta we gotta turn the page and.
01:11 I told these guys and you know after that game this this league can eat you alive if if you you know hold on to things so we gotta figure out how to turn the page quick and yesterday we did that with a first day of prep for Kansas State.
01:26 Good Kansas State team that is coming here on Tuesday, so we'll have a second day of prep today and will go a lot harder.
01:35 Practice today and work through some more of that on on the court.
01:39 We kind of did more film work as opposed to court work yesterday, so we'll get after it today and get ready for the end of state coming here on Tuesday.
01:50 Thank you coach will open it up for questions now. Please use the raised hand feature for questions with coach Eilert.
01:59 We will start with Kevin Kinder.
02:03 Hey Josh, how's it going this morning? Good. How are you Kevin? Not bad. I was looking at foul totals and you know I know you had to kind of be cautious about when the roster was diminished a lot so you didn't get in trouble there.
02:16 But it seems like there might be a balance that you're striving for that you're going to get some naturally when you're contesting shots better playing better defense.
02:25 Do you have necessarily a number in mind or acceptable kind of fouls and where do you think you know that balance is right now?
02:34 Yeah, it's definitely change. You know that's that's the one of the challenges trying to go from zero depth to you know plenty of guard depth for sure.
02:45 Now so we had to be very, very careful and very strategic in the first nine games to stay out of foul trouble because you know one guy you know sitting on the bench could have crippled us and so.
02:59 Our preparation up to that point had a lot of do a lot to do with you know our strategic defensive approach to stay out of foul trouble.
03:07 And not to mention try to keep Jesse out of foul trouble, which we don't even have right now to work with. So yes, trying to turn that page midseason and try to be more aggressive in our approach has certainly been.
03:21 You know what we're trying to do, but it doesn't mean that some of those.
03:26 The muscle memory of college basketball and everything you've kind of been taught in the first 1012 games or you know it's hard to you know turn up the pressure late.
03:36 You know it's kind of like if you're a basketball coach. If you have the opportunity, you have the depth you want to. You want to turn the pressure up early and if you have to back off you back off.
03:46 And we had and then Rayquan obviously and then Rayquan obviously has had foul trouble in a couple of his most recent games, but his effort is obviously there on defense.
03:56 Is that again just trying to get him in the comfort zone of what he can and can't do early?
04:02 Yes, it's gotta. He's gotta get that mindset that you know he's as good as anybody in the country with his pump fakes and he can get people off the ground and put them in a bad position to fit them defensively.
04:14 But he's so athletic and so quick twitch that it works the other way as well. So he just gotta be true to itself and stay on the floor and move laterally as much as he does vertically.
04:27 And if we can be more, you know, you know what is this third, fourth game in the equation so that that stuff is going to come with some time.
04:36 A lot of it's just exuberance and excitement being out on the floor. Now he's just gotta play a little bit more.
04:43 You know, he's just got to play a smarter game of basketball on the defense bench.
04:49 Our next question comes from Justin Jackson.
04:53 Hey, good morning coach. How are you?
04:55 Good, how are you Justin?
04:56 I'm good. Hey, a question on K State and Coach Tang with Jerome.
05:03 You know, you look at what he did last year in his first year.
05:06 He basically had Noel as a holdover and then he brought in a ton of transfers, takes him to the Elite Eight, comes back again this year.
05:15 He's basically got one starter coming back, a bunch of transfers and you know, they're having a pretty solid year.
05:23 You know, with the transfer portal being what it is and college athletics and what it's probably going to be in the future.
05:31 Has anyone ever stopped and asked Coach Tang how he's able to get transfers to blend so well and so quickly?
05:43 I haven't had that conversation with him yet, but he has done a great job there.
05:48 And I think the K-State community is very excited about having him and that staff there in Manhattan and him in charge.
05:55 And he's done a fabulous job there in Manhattan.
06:00 And, you know, you look back, I look back to some of the film from last year and they had, I mean, guys like Desi Sills.
06:08 You know, he was huge for them late in the year and just a third, fourth, you know, offensive minded, downhill,
06:16 left handed guard that nobody even talks about to compliment Noel and Keontae Johnson, not to mention,
06:24 you know, Tomlin at the five that they certainly they've lost since then, you know, through unfortunate situation.
06:33 But yeah, it's it's he had he had he put together a lot of talent there, you know, last year.
06:40 And he's doing kind of the same thing this year with a lot of new guys and even floating some freshmen out there as well.
06:46 They're playing very significant minutes for him and giving him a good production.
06:52 You know, I don't they're not the team that they were last year, but they certainly have a really,
06:57 really resilient group that, you know, find a way to win.
07:00 You know, you look down and every time I turn the TV on, it seemed like I put the cats on and I'd watch them, you know,
07:09 sometimes with a struggle late, but they always, you know, I think, what, four out of five games there for a stretch.
07:15 They end up in overtime, but they found a way that that resilient group and that that culture,
07:21 they found a way to win those hard games down the stretch and then overtime or send it to overtime and figure out how to win it in overtime.
07:28 So credit to them and them finishing games and having that discipline.
07:33 And I know obviously what you're going through this year is not the perfect example to go by.
07:42 But I mean, you know, you kind of saw it from from a from a side seat last year with with Coach Huggins bringing the new guys, trying to get them to gel.
07:52 So, I mean, you have some experience with it, obviously what you're going through this year.
07:58 You know, if things had been in a perfect world, you had everyone could be a different story.
08:02 But can you just kind of talk about, you know, what it's like in today's college athletic world to maybe have something that looks good on paper?
08:10 But, you know, you got to go out and I mean, it's more than just what it looks like on paper, I'm guessing.
08:16 No, yeah, it's it's it takes time to mesh.
08:19 It takes takes time to build that chemistry.
08:22 You know, I was probably naive enough to think that we're just going to float three guys into an equation.
08:27 It's all going to work out perfectly and all there are going to complement each other and everything like that.
08:35 And that takes time.
08:36 I mean, you know, a lot of times teams, you know, bring in a lot of transfers and there's a lot of new personalities, new faces, and they work together all summer and they might go on a foreign tour.
08:47 But they're all there from day one, not to mention those teams that can hold on to guys over two or three year period.
08:56 They have incredible chemistry.
08:59 And so we're trying to it's not lost on me. I knew chemistry was going to be a problem, especially bringing guys in as late as we did in the summer.
09:08 But then trying to float guys in to the equation midseason, it's been a challenge in itself.
09:16 And, you know, it's just something we're working through each day.
09:19 And I told him we took a big lump, a heck of a loss there and in Houston to a really good team.
09:28 But we can't lose sight of each other and lose faith in each other.
09:33 And we just got to pick ourselves up and put our boots on and go to work.
09:38 And that's what we did yesterday.
09:39 We got to turn the page and figure out a way to not hold on to that and move on to the next one.
09:46 Thank you, coach. Appreciate it.
09:49 Members of the media, the question queue is empty right now.
09:52 Please use the raised hand feature for to ask a question.
09:57 We will go to John and Tony.
10:01 Look in here, Josh, at their stats and there's some things that are oddities.
10:04 You know, they don't really shoot it great from three.
10:07 They're turning it over more than their opposition. Pretty good rebounding advantage.
10:14 What is it? Is this just a team that just grinds games out?
10:17 Is that what you see from them? I mean, some of the lot of these teams that we're playing, I mean, they're really, really good offensive rebounding team.
10:26 But on the other side, I mean, they don't if they don't rebound as well on defensive end.
10:32 They're doing their lifeline in a lot of ways.
10:36 Their transition offense and trying to get easy buckets, just like we've kind of preached a little bit here,
10:41 trying to figure out how we can score, you know, sometimes in the half court setting this league and everybody sets their defense, it gets really tough.
10:50 And so we got to figure out ways to run out and get some easy buckets.
10:54 And that's what they're trying to do as well. But, you know, they're trying to figure this out.
11:00 And they had a really good win. You know, they really, you know, UCF went to Manhattan.
11:06 Then seemed like they were ready for that challenge.
11:09 And in case they really took it to them from the jump and really jumped on them and took full advantage of that entire game.
11:17 So they had a slow start coming out of the break. You watch the Chicago State game.
11:23 They seemed a little out of sorts. And it sounds like, you know, they were out off 10 games and it seemed like the same team that played against Chicago State as it did UCF.
11:35 They really they really changed their mentality and they really took it to them.
11:40 One other thing here real quick, I noticed they've shot one hundred and twelve more free throws in their opposition.
11:47 That is that a concern getting them, keeping them off the line?
11:50 Yeah, yeah, certainly the concern. But we can't we can't get too tied up in that.
11:56 You know, we got to we got to play as aggressive as we need to play.
11:59 And if we end up sending them to the line, we end up sending the line.
12:03 So we can't get too tied up in that.
12:07 But we just got to key on who we need to key on and make sure certain guys aren't beating us.
12:15 Next question comes from Mike Gazaza. Hey, Josh, how are you?
12:20 Good. How are you, Mike? I'm great. Thank you. I'm just kind of piggybacking off of something you were mentioning about blending guys in and just the additions.
12:26 Old stuff. I get that. But you talked about offense.
12:29 You want to have them and playbook and all that. And I'm thinking here that you want guys to do what you plan to do.
12:36 Follow the pages in the playbook and do that. How much changes when you figure out what guys can do that either doesn't work or just won't work or that
12:45 that can add and be maybe separate or unique and then it doesn't make any sense to ignore that, like take advantage of a strength.
12:52 You know, go back to the Houston game and trying to figure out how we could score.
12:55 We had you know, we didn't shots and fall for us.
12:59 You know, we had some really good uncontested looks and, you know, they did a good job of trapping Kerr and getting the ball out of Kerr's hands.
13:08 But we didn't take advantage of the mismatches we had on the backside of it.
13:13 And I mean, I mean, what I mean by that is you get out of that trap, you should have a lot of one more passes and let ball start sticking when we got out of the trap,
13:22 which which allowed Houston to, you know, which there is a good closeout team, good rotational teams, anybody in the country, anybody I've seen by far.
13:32 So as soon as we got that ball in the trap, we didn't make them pay for that ball, start sticking.
13:37 We didn't make that next pass, which we looked at where we really examined on film yesterday, all the passes that we missed.
13:45 And we could have got, you know, uncontested good looks, whether they fell or not.
13:50 I don't know if they fell or not. But, you know, certainly you have a heck of a lot better chance of making uncontested look and trying to force something that's not there.
14:01 And then just one more, what have you learned about some of the new guys or the effect they have on players who were in those first nine or ten games, just offensively, defensively, just things that jump to your mind as you're asked the question?
14:14 Well, I mean, we with those those guys that I give a lot of credit to the guys that came in, you know, that played that backup role and that gave an excuse.
14:24 And they came in and kind of helped serve for us when things weren't going well.
14:28 And, you know, I certainly hope those guys have the confidence to know that they're going to help us win just as much as maybe the starting five.
14:38 So we need everybody from top to bottom to contribute in a meaningful way.
14:43 What that meaningful way is, it's going to be different from one guy to the next.
14:49 And certainly roles are changing and whatever that role is that can help us win.
14:56 We need to figure out what it is and pinpoint it and play it, play that role.
15:00 Right, thanks.
15:03 Questions for coach, please use the raised hand feature.
15:08 Coach Eilert, that seems to be all we have for today.
15:17 Thank you for your time.
15:18 Thank you.
15:19 Thank you.
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