Jim Christian First Week of Practice

Jim Christian talks about the first couple of practices

Transcript

00:00 Day one of practice. Obviously you've had workouts since you got back on a very unorthodox summer,

00:06 but what was day one of official practice like today?

00:09 Yeah, I think day one just indicates we're 40 days away from a game, so I think the guys are getting excited.

00:14 This year we were able to ramp up our hours. The NCAA allowed us to go from what used to be four hours to eight hours,

00:21 so that helps a lot in terms of understanding. It's just exciting to see the guys compete and get ready to play.

00:26 That's what they love to do and they've been through enough, so it's really good to see them out there do what they love.

00:31 Now you talk about the core values of the program, the respect, the connectivity, and the discipline.

00:36 What elements did you see about that on the book today?

00:40 I think it's going to be an everyday thing. I think they're learning it. I think you can see the joy they have in playing together.

00:46 And we're a really experienced team, so the older guys understand that the games that we've stayed connected,

00:52 the games that we've been disciplined, we beat anybody in the country.

00:57 And it's just a matter of every single day driving it home.

01:01 I think we have really good leadership on this team because we have a lot of experienced players,

01:04 whether they're new or they're here. We only have two freshmen, so everybody else who's played a lot of basketball

01:10 understands the importance of those things.

01:12 Two of those guys, Winston Tabbs and Stephon Mitchell. It's nice to have Winston back on the court,

01:17 it's nice to have an all-ACC, do-it-all guy like Stephon Mitchell. What do those guys bring to the court?

01:22 Again, experienced guys. Winston's such a great story that I think he inspires everybody.

01:26 Everybody knows how hard he's worked to just be able to play, and just his joy to play after going through all those things spreads.

01:33 Stephon, he's a senior, he's played a ton of minutes, he understands what we're doing,

01:37 and now he's getting to teach some younger guys and lead us by example when we do those things.

01:42 It makes us really effective.