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BIG TEN CONFERENCE MEN'S MEDIA DAYOctober 16, 2014Richard PitinoCHICAGO, ILLINOIS RICHARD PITINO: Morning, everybody. Certainly feels better being in year two sitting here than year one, just talking about it, just knowing who we have, what we've got coming in as well as what we had last year, so certainly very excited about it. Excited to get rolling. Q. Can you just talk about the newcomers and how they're doing in preseason practices this year? RICHARD PITINO: Yeah, really good. I think the difference between this year and last year is our newcomers fit the way that we want to play a lot more so than maybe last year, and I think that will help with our defense. It'll help with our press, all those little things that we're trying to do when building kind of the brand that we want to play. Those guys fit that. All of them do. And they're all guys that if we make a defensive mistake or somebody is in foul trouble, I'm confident, defensively, that they can really pick up the slack there. Certainly, they'll go through their lumps like all freshmen do and all newcomers do, but all of them are different, but I think they'll all contribute. Q. Do you feel like with those newcomers coming in being able to play a little bit faster that you're going to run on teams a little bit more than you did last season? RICHARD PITINO: I thought we ran last year. Obviously, you did not. But yeah, I think the difference will be the defense more so than the offense. You know, my first year at FIU we were top ten in the country in steals. We certainly were not that last year. I think that number will go up, and hopefully we can create more offense from our defense. So yeah, I think we're moving in that direction, definitely. Q. What can you share from the game plan for the season opener November 14th in Puerto Rico? RICHARD PITINO: Shocking that you'd ask that. You know, it's interesting because me and my dad talk every day about our teams: How's practice going, this and that, and neither one of us have kind of, like, backed off the intel, but I see it coming soon. We start giving so much information, and we flip that switch a little bit. So that part is definitely different. It's hard because I haven't started scouting them. I watch every game. Normally I go back and see the games they lost, but I don't want to watch them lose games, so I've got to kind of figure out how we're going to approach that game. And, certainly, in about a week or two, we'll start doing that, but it's going to be a fun experience for our guys for sure. Q. You get (inaudible) and Mo back. How much will that affect how much you play out of the post this year? RICHARD PITINO: You know, you look at Mo as he was getting going towards the end of the year was really scoring at a very good rate in the low post. We've got to establish that. We probably got a little bit three‑point happy. I think we made the most threes in school history. We also took the most threes in school history, and that's not always a good thing. I think everybody wants to establish that inside‑out attack, and we've got to do that. We've got two veteran bigs with Mo and Elliott, whoever starts, I don't know, but we need to go inside of them early because they're very capable. Q. Dre Hollings has gutted through an ankle injury the last couple of months of the year, but he's been a prolific scorer his whole career. What do you expect from him and how do you think he'll play off Mathieu now that they've got two years together? RICHARD PITINO: Yeah, I think he looks really healthy. Last year he got hurt in the Wisconsin game, hurt his ankle, and he rushed back. I think he missed three or four games, I'm not sure of the exact number, and he rushed back versus Purdue, and we were only going to play him a little bit, and then we go into triple overtime. His ankle really was hurting, and he showed a lot of guts to fight through that because he wanted it so bad. Well, now he's healthy. His ankle feels good. His hip feels good. He looks really good. He's had a great, great preseason, and I expect him to have a very good year. Q. How much do you think the NIT title and coming off a game like that can springboard the team this year, and is that something you feel like guys talked about in the off season, that they can achieve something special? RICHARD PITINO: The NIT, winning the NIT, it's just a weird‑‑ nobody knows how to handle it. Do you brag about it? Do you talk about it? You know, he didn't even put it in the notes, the Big Ten guy. I noticed that. That's okay, though. But, certainly, your goal is to get into the NCAA Tournament every year. We know that. But when you get in the NIT, it's really difficult, and you're playing some really good teams with great competition. So our guys are very proud, especially of those last two games. You play Florida State. Again, it was a very good team. You beat a very good SMU team. They were certainly very proud of it. But that's not the goal to be in the NIT, and I think everybody in the locker room knows that. And it's good in the sense of we know what kept us out of the NCAA Tournament, and we know what won us the NIT. So that carryover, I hope is there, because I know those guys are pretty focused to get in the NCAA Tournament. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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