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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE OPERATION BASKETBALLOctober 29, 2014Brice JohnsonCHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA Q.  Tell me what you think about this upcoming season. BRICE JOHNSON: It's going to be a great one for us. Q. What's going to make it great? BRICE JOHNSON: Well, I mean, just knowing that we have a lot of returning pieces to the team from last year, and we have great freshmen coming in. We have all the pieces that we really needed that were missing last year. It's going to be a big help from them. Q. Brice, when you look at Marcus and the backcourt, how would you define it and how much has Marcus helped your game? BRICE JOHNSON: Marcus has really helped my game a lot because he looks for me down low, so he passes me the ball and we're able to score. The backcourt last year wasn't as strong as it should have been, but this year with the new incoming freshmen, we should see a new look at it. I mean, we should be all right. If they play well as we think they should, we can really go as far as we want to. Q. Brice, your development is a real key, and now it seems like it's your time. What has been the biggest thing that you've felt like for you to become a first‑team All‑ACC player? What's the key thing you need in your game that you've been working on? BRICE JOHNSON: Consistency. I mean, I can sum it up in one word. It's consistency. That's the one thing Coach has been preaching to me for the last two and a half years, that I need to be consistent with my play. He's been saying that I've had good times, and I've been doing some great things, and then all of a sudden one day I just go backwards. So I just need to be consistent with my play and keep doing those great things and not go backwards and just show him that I can be that player that he really needs. Q. Last year your free‑throw percentage could have used a little bit of improving. What have you done over the off‑season to make sure you're a little bit better at the line? BRICE JOHNSON: Shoot a lot of free throws. I didn't really go to the line as much last year, so I didn't know what to expect every other game. I'd go once every two or three games sometimes, but I've just been shooting a lot of free throws, and Coach Davis has really been helping me with my free‑throw routine and stuff. I've just been working on it all together. Q. Brice, you guys obviously prefer to get up and down the court, and the ACC last year was literally the slowest league in the country. Are you guys aware of that out there? Is that a constant frustration? BRICE JOHNSON: Yeah, Coach really preached that to us. He said we got away from the way we play. He kept preaching that we need to run more. This preseason we've really been running a lot in practice. We just have to turn it back around the way that Coach wants to play. That's the way he wants to play. He wants to be a run‑and‑gun team and run it up and down the floor. Q. You've picked up weight since your freshman year, and then on the flipside, Kennedy Meeks has dropped weight. How has that changed you guys' game? BRICE JOHNSON: Well, for myself it's really given me an edge on the offensive end and defensive end knowing that I can't get bullied around like I have been the past few years. And for Kennedy, it's a plus for him because he can move a lot better than he did his freshman year. I mean, I just feel like it's just a really big plus for both of us in numerous ways, just have to find out when the games actually come around. Q. Brice, you mentioned that there's a lot of good freshmen coming in. Talk about them a little bit and what they've shown you so far. BRICE JOHNSON: They've shown me some great things. Justin Jackson is a great scorer, could be a very good defensive player, can get you some stops. Joel's a very, very good facilitator, can also score. Theo Pinson, great rebounder, very athletic. They all bring a key piece that we were missing last year from guard play. I really look forward to them helping us out this year. Q. It was Marcus who closed games for you guys last year. Everybody would like to think they have that ability. Do you have guys, other guys on the team this year that have that game‑closing ability do you think? BRICE JOHNSON: I don't know. We'll have to see. I mean, Marcus has proved himself at the end of games. We just have to find somebody else that can do it, too. He did win us some games, and he did finish them well because he shot the best percentages of his career in the second half. This year we're just going to have to see what close games we get to and see who's going to step up if it's not him. Q. Fill in the blank: Our season is successful this year if we do what? BRICE JOHNSON: What Coach tells us to do. He preaches that to us every day. It's a proven fact. The teams that do what Coach told them to do, they've been winners. Q. The schedule shakes out pretty well. Fun schedule to start the trip for Battle for Atlantis. I know players take it one game at a time, but are you circling those dates on your calendar? BRICE JOHNSON: No, just like you said, we're taking it one game at a time. It's a long year. When it comes around, we'll be ready for it. We've just got to look forward to our first two games before that and be ready for those. Q. Brice, it seems the pattern with Coach is that there's a lot of experimentation with lineups in kind of the non‑conference and eventually you'll settle down. Is there any frustration as players that as one of the five best in your case, that you're not just getting starters burned constantly, or are you guys comfortable in that setup? BRICE JOHNSON: Well, just me being there for a while, I'm used to it. I mean, that's just what Coach does. He like to experiment with it just to see who's the best and see who's going to‑‑ he likes to get reactions from other people, too, just to see how they'll react to not probably being in the starting five or being on the blue team because that's what he does. He just wants to get the best out of everybody. He wants every day in practice to be a competition, so he tries to even out the teams as much as he can to be able to get the best out of everybody. Q. What's the hardest place been for you guys to play on the road? BRICE JOHNSON: Well, you have to restate that question after saying Cameron Indoor because that is the toughest place to play for me, just because it's such a small arena. The students are right on top of you. It's very loud in there at times. Probably the second would be Syracuse because it's such an open environment. It's so big, it's a lot of people in there. That was my first time playing there, so I was a little nervous playing there. Q. Carolina has been in the news a lot since the report that was released last week. Have you seen the environment change around campus regarding the student‑athletes? BRICE JOHNSON: No, I haven't. We just move on. I mean, it's not really going to affect us. It's a report. I mean, that's all it is. It doesn't faze me. I mean, it does faze me, but I'm not going to let it faze me. At the end of the day, that happened years ago, and I'm here now, so I have to worry about what's going on now and not worry about what was happening in the past. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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