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UNIVERSITY OF IOWA BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE


November 3, 2013


Fran McCaffery


Iowa – 87
Augustana - 65


THE MODERATOR:  Questions for Coach.

Q.  Was this invaluable, the way the game was called, ready for season opening?
COACH McCAFFERY:  I think it was invaluable in a lot of ways.  That is certainly‑‑ clearly the game is going to be called differently at least for a while, if not the rest of the season, and where as it will be the rest of the season.
But I think there's a couple of ways you can go with this game:  You can schedule however you want.  You can find a team that graduated everybody or you can find a team that's got everybody back.
You can play a team that was 10 and 17 or you can play a team that wins championships and is 19 and 8 and has a terrific coach.
I knew what we were going to get from this team the day we scheduled this game.  We got outplayed and we won the game.  We were substantially outplayed today by that team.
And I think it's exactly what our team needed today.  I think we needed to get outfought, to get outplayed.  We needed a team that was going to force us into some mistakes, and we did some things that were good, did enough good things to win and there were some individual performances that I thought was terrific.  I thought Woodbury was terrific.  Aaron White was terrific.  Zach McCabe, spectacular.
There were some great individual performances for us and some guys that stepped up when things weren't going well throughout the course of the season as you notice sometimes things go well, sometimes things don't go well.  It wasn't going well.  We weren't making shots.  We weren't making plays.  Our assist numbers per field goal were horrendous.  I thought we had too many turnovers for a team that was playing a contained press back to a zone matchup, whatever, they weren't really pressuring us.
So I think it was a great opportunity for us to play a team that's used to winning, that's physically capable of competing and have to do some things in that period of time where we did some things that won the game or we were going to really go in the complete opposite direction and struggle the whole time.  Because we struggled a lot today.

Q.  Did you expect them to outplay them?
COACH McCAFFERY:  I didn't expect them to outplay us.  I expected them to be really good.  What I said was they outplayed us.  I didn't expect them to outplay us.

Q.  Clemmons, what's the issue?
COACH McCAFFERY:  He tweaked his ankle on Friday.  He'll be good.  He was still a little bit swollen, a little bit sore today.  If he had to, he could have gone.  It wasn't worth pushing it.  I thought he would be better by today.  He'll probably be good by Tuesday, I'm guessing.

Q.  Do you expect him to play Friday?
COACH McCAFFERY:  Expect him to play Friday.

Q.  3‑point range, two of 18?
COACH McCAFFERY:  We've been shooting the ball well from 3‑point range.  Again, we started poorly.  We jacked a few, they're in the zone.  It's good to see Zach hit one early.  He's really the only one that hit one early.  The other ones we hit were‑‑ the other one we hit was late.
But Pete was a little bit gun shy, which is not normally him.  He just fired too quickly.  Missed a couple.  And hesitant I thought.  Shot a little bit as an afterthought.  I want him to just‑‑ if he's open, shoot it.  And one time he had a wide open 3 and he tried to feed the high post and turned it over.  Shoot the ball.  He'll get that figured out.

Q.  [Indiscernible] on the technical?
COACH McCAFFERY:  I think he was a little bit antsy when he fouled the 3‑point shooter and the kid made it.  Four‑point play.  He has great pride in himself.
So he feels like he let his team down when he makes a mistake like that.  But we had trapped on the side.  We tried to rotate.  He whacks out on the shooter.  He got there about half second late.  Tried not to foul the guy.  Fouled him.  Of course the kid makes it.
The good thing for Gabe was he came back and did some really good things after he made some mistakes.  And I think that's a big step for him.

Q.  They got some penetration‑wise to the basket.  Was that poor defense, poor offense?
COACH McCAFFERY:  Their offense got us all spread out, and we were pressuring the next pass.  So the X is on the O.  We didn't play some guys correctly.  And they have some guys who can drive.  They also had a small‑‑ we had a big lineup.  We could have adjusted to that and taken Uthoff off Sprouter (phonetic), for example.  He's going to drive on Jared.  But again we felt we had some advantages on the other end.

Q.  (Question Off microphone)?
COACH McCAFFERY:  Defensively he was not good.  I thought the good thing was he did show some aggressiveness.  He did end up with six points, got to the free‑throw line a couple times when he really needed it.
And, like I said, I'd like to see him shoot the ball as soon as he's open and but he's going to have to be a better defender at this level to be effective, because the guys he's going to be guarding in this league, they're killers.

Q.  (Question off microphone)?
COACH McCAFFERY:  He looked nervous to me at the start of the game.  We all forget, I try not to forget anyway, he hasn't played in two years.  And first time out there in Iowa uniform I thought he did some really good things.
But it took him a little bit of time to settle down.  And what happens is he doesn't take shots that he normally takes.  He's teammates expect him to take shots he picks up his dribble and then he gets jammed up and now he's struggling.  He's sideways and we need him to just be more aggressive.
I mean, he's too good an offensive player.  He's open from three, shoot it.  If he does a crossover dribble, elbow raise up and get the pull up, shoot it.  He was hesitant I think the first time I put him in.  The second time he was much better and the second half he was much better, I thought.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports




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