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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEJanuary 7, 2013Mark TurgeonBRIAN MORRISON: We have with us now Maryland head basketball coach Mark Turgeon. Coach, if you could, a few comments about your team, then we'll open it up for questions. COACH TURGEON: It was a fun game Saturday for us. A lot of guys played well. Guys stepped up with Nick being hurt. It was a good win for us. But we're looking forward to Florida State, a physical team. One thing we didn't do well is rebound Saturday versus Virginia Tech. We have to get a lot better at rebounding. We're looking forward to this week. A couple really good games on our slate. BRIAN MORRISON: Open it up for questions for Coach Turgeon. Q. I wonder if you would comment about the fact that your record is so good. You're not showing up in the rankings or anything, there's been some criticism you haven't played the toughest schedule. How would you respond to that? Do you think your team is as good as its record or ranking? COACH TURGEON: Well, we're as good as our record because that's who you are. But I don't care about the rankings stuff. We have plenty of time to prove ourselves on that. We have a tough league schedule ahead of us with a lot of good teams a couple times on our schedule. I don't worry about all that. We took care of our schedule. You see teams that lose games they should win. We took care of it, which was important. Most importantly we had young guys getting better during that stretch. They played with a lot of confidence on Saturday because we were able to give them confidence through the non‑conference schedule. A lot of people say what they want. We have plenty of chances to prove ourselves over the next eight weeks. Q. Could you fill us in, what is the situation with Faust and the back spasms? COACH TURGEON: Yeah, it's become more than I anticipated. I expected him to play Saturday. It locked up on him when he went out and played. He took yesterday off. He's going to take tomorrow off. I'll be shocked and disappointed if he doesn't play Wednesday because he's gotten a lot of good care. I think he's feeling better. I think tomorrow he should be hopefully full go in practice. Q. With Florida State coming to town, what are your thoughts on them compared to last year? COACH TURGEON: I'll be honest with you, I haven't watched a lot. I watched a little bit last night and some this morning. The thing about them, I'll watch more this afternoon, Leonard's teams are always going to guard you, be very physical. The snare kid can score. The Miller kid is healthy, makes them go, too. White is playing well for them. They're going to guard you. They're going to execute. They're going to be physical, which we need. We haven't been playing as physical as we need to play. Hopefully Florida State will be able to bring that out in us on Wednesday. Well‑coached. Had a great year last year. Have a lot of confidence. Whenever I talk to Leonard, he loves his team. Lost a couple of games they shouldn't have lost early in the year. They usually come on when it comes to league schedule. Obviously had a big win on the road against Clemson on Saturday. Should be pretty confident coming in here on Wednesday. Q. Mark, with Nick, when he is healthy, can get back out there, do you anticipate easing him back into the grind or do you anticipate he might be able to go full speed quickly? COACH TURGEON: I'd like to think Nick never really gets out of shape. I think he can go full speed. I'll know more tomorrow when we practice. The doctors advised us to give him today off, so we did. He was down on the bike when we finished practice this morning. I expect him tomorrow to go full tilt and be ready to go on Wednesday. I'd answer that question differently tomorrow with media after practice, but we'll see. Q. Statistically Pe'Shon Howard doesn't do anything that dazzles you, but what is it that you like about him at that position and how is he playing right now? COACH TURGEON: Well, stat‑wise he's doing pretty well at the assist. I think he's averaging five and a half, six, something like that. That's pretty impressive. But he's solid. He runs the team. He communicates. He talks. He takes on the challenge defense. He's usually in the right spot. He's gotten so much better at not turning the ball over like he did last year. He's just become a more complete player and a solid player for us. He's a really good shooter. He's going to make a lot of big shots for us in the ACC. He's been shooting the ball great in practice, not last game, but the games prior to that, three of the last four games, shot the ball well, over 50% in those games. I'm not concerned about his scoring. The thing about Pe'Shon is he's not going to force shots. That's nice to have. A lot of kids like to shoot. It's nice to have a kid that likes to shoot open shots. Helps our offense flow better. Q. All your bigs, but particularly Alex Len, how does he benefit from a guy like that? COACH TURGEON: Pe'Shon finds him on the break, in our offense, out of the sets, getting in a position to score. I think Pe'Shon makes Alex better. I think Dez is the same way. A lot of guys benefit. Running on the break, he's going to find you. He's a pass‑first guy, which is fun. It's nice to have somebody like that. He's really having a great year for us. I didn't anticipate him coming off a knee injury for him to be this good this early. He's really played well for us. Q. Could you talk a little bit about the emergence of Layman on Saturday, what you forecast for the freshman going forward? COACH TURGEON: Well, he had practiced well. He's always tried hard. He's competed and tried hard every day in practice. He came back from Christmas with this renewed confidence. Nice little break. We gave everybody four, five days off. He came back with more confidence, practiced well, played well in the first game back. Got an opportunity on Saturday, made his shots, gave him confidence. More importantly he's gotten better defensively. That's the key. Early in the year, he was a liability there, and now he's not. He uses his length and his speed to be a good defender and is becoming a better rebounder. He's getting tougher. Going forward, I don't know if Jake will get 20 every game, but I think he's capable of getting 20 in games. It will be a little bit harder when Nick is back in the rotation to get the minutes. We're happy. He's a great shooter. Coming out of high school we expected him to make shots. He did on Saturday. I was really happy for him. It's been a tough go. For him to have that day, it was great for him. Q. Speaking of confidence among the young guys, given the ACC game over the weekend, how big do you see ACC play with the young guys? COACH TURGEON: It was a good day. It's just one day. They made shots. I thought Shaq played well, too. He didn't have the opportunity because we had to go small at times. Shaq was 2‑3 in 13 minutes. Clearly our best physical presence in the game. I thought they all played well. I thought all the guys, Dez Wells, not his best game, Logan played well. Six new guys that played well. We had a great environment, a great crowd. It was a lot of fun. Just because we won by 20 doesn't mean we're 3‑0, we're 1‑0 in the league. Don't get too high or too low. Practiced today. Thought we got better. Just got to keep those guys levelheaded. That's the key as we move forward. They're pretty mature kids. BRIAN MORRISON: Thanks for taking time being with us today. We'll hear from you next week. COACH TURGEON: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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