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NIT SEASON TIP-OFFNovember 28, 2014Mark FewKevin PangosNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK ST. JOHNÂ’S – 66 Q. What did it mean to be the most outstanding player of the tournament? KEVIN PANGOS: It was an honor, but the entire team, you could kind of pick anyone. It's a well‑rounded team. First game, Wiltjer played great. This game, Domantas, Gary, everyone made great plays. It's an honor but anyone on our team I feel like could have been most valuable. Q. Down the stretch after Obekpa fouled out, looked like you guys were able to take advantage of the size you had inside. What happened, what were you looking for and how did they take it away? KEVIN PANGOS: They are really feisty and didn't make it really easy. Just tried to throw it up top and not look at it on the first side, like it swung a bit, make the defense work. But that's the lineup they went to and we have really great bigs, so we tried to exploit that. Q. Last year at the Maui Invitational you had a great tournament and now earlier in the season, you are the MVP of the NIT tip off. Anything special about these tournaments that gets you going? KEVIN PANGOS: Just the competition I guess, playing great teams. I just love playing basketball. Doesn't really matter when. Just good to be healthy and playing with a great group of guys. Makes it easy for me because they can't just focus on one player. We've got so much depth. Q. You won the tournament tonight but got close towards the end. What things do you think the team needs to work on before you get to conference play? COACH FEW: Well, we've got a long time before we hit conference play. So we've got some things we need to work on this week. But again, we came back here, we were challenged. We played some very good teams. I think we played two NCAA Tournament teams, which I think is a good sign. We played experienced teams in both Georgia and St. John's that are hungry to get back to the Tournament, to beat a ranked team. We had to fight them. We had to fight them on offense. We had to fight them on defense. Kind of two different styles of play, but two very good rebounding teams. I thought we fared fairly well on the glass, also. Q. The other day you joked that it was surprising to see Pangos make his first turnover and today he only has two. To have him as a point guard and running his team, what has it meant for you personally? Has it made your job any easier? COACH FEW: Well, yeah, I sleep a solid eight hours at night. I've been blessed with some great ones. But yeah, he's a special guy. You know, his approach to basketball, I don't think I've ever seen any of our players have that same approach. There isn't anything that goes‑‑ any stone that goes unturned with Kevin. His nutrition‑‑ he's at the top of his game; his sleep pattern, he watches that. He comes into the gym every single night. He's not a guy that just comes into the gym and works his game. He will pick one aspect of his game and work on that from 10 to 11 at night, and the next day it will be something else. As you've seen, he's incredibly humble, and he's a joy, just an absolute joy and one of the lowest‑maintenance guys that I've ever been around in my life. Trying to get him a fifth year. The NCAA is dealing out those waivers to everyone, so why not give one to him to keep my stress level down. Q. Are you surprised with the way St. John's rebounded? COACH FEW: No, their rebounding numbers are really good. They are really strong and their rebounding numbers are based on the balls are kind of coming off crazy everywhere, and they are excellent at pursuing it. They are quick; they are athletic; they are opportunistic and strong hands. They go after it. That was something we tried to talk about in practice yesterday. We really couldn't mimic it, and sure enough, there were several today that that they kind of snatched from us after we had our hands on it first. But by and large, I thought our bigs did a nice job of kind of asserting their will at times, especially in that stretch when our lead drew and we thought we had an advantage there. Q. Sabonis was the beneficiary of the size advantage you had. How much impact did he have coming off the bench in your opinion? COACH FEW: Oh, big, big. He's basically a starter. It's nice to have somebody like that. I mean, he's thought of as such, and I just him that much. That's why we play him at the end of games, and playing him at the end of games, even switching ball screens with him; so putting him on guards after they set a ball screen. But he's a great rebounder. He's got great hands, and the best thing that he has is he's got a motor. He plays hard. You saw him out run their guys a couple times for easy ones, and that's always such a gift to have as a player, and to bring to a team if you don't have to get somebody going. You never question his effort, which sounds simple, but boy, it's great to have somebody play that hard. Q. You've had Sabonis now for a few games. Where do you think his development is in his freshman season? COACH FEW: I wouldn't say we are just scratching the surface, but we are just kind of moving past scratching the surface, whatever that next step is. That's why I like this team moving forward. I think it may be different than years past. We've got an upside. I think he's going to get nothing but better, and our team will adapt as he does get better. You guys saw a glimpse of Silas Wilson; that was his first collegiate minutes today, and banged in a couple shots. He can do that. I think he will help us and get better. Byron Wesley, we are adapting to him. You saw how willing he was to kind of take over and take big shots down the stretch of games, which is something that we haven't had with smaller guards where you can get in the lane and make plays. So I think back to Sabonis, he just turned 18 a couple months ago, which is amazing in this day and age of prep schools and all that, to have a true 18‑year‑old freshman. Q. You have Przemek, Kyle and Domantas, three big guys that basically all have three different skill sets‑‑ COACH FEW: And Angel, we like to bring him in. Q. How much of a value is that for the versatility‑‑ COACH FEW: No, that's a great question. That's what we like, and we'll run different schemes offensively depending on‑‑ offensively and defensively. We can switch screens with Domantas and Angel. We run more of a perimeter‑oriented quick‑hitting kind of ball movement, player movement offense with those guys. When we get Przemek and Domantas in there, we love to go high‑low and kind of play power basketball. That's what you saw tonight and they were trying to guard us with a smaller four. They were trying to guard us with a smaller four, we are trying to take advantage of that. Both those guys can pass and catch. And then Wilt, he was phenomenal on Thursday. He wasn't quite as good tonight, but he still is such a threat. You've got to‑‑ from a game scouting point of view, when you have a four man that can pick‑and‑pop out to 25 feet like that, and is so skilled, man or zone, that takes a lot out of game planning and adjusting to. Q. Defensively you're holding them down pretty well for about 30 minutes. What were you trying to do to stay in front? COACH FEW: Gosh, they are so good and so quick and so effective at dribble penetration. They were averaging I think 33 free throws a game or something like that and I think they were making 18 and a half. You know, that was something that we really wanted to focus on. They had only had three threes made outside of Harrison all year leading into that. We gave up some there at the end, but again, that was the game plan to kind of get in the gaps and make them take perimeter shots. Q. Sorry if I missed you talking about it, but can you talk about what Kyle brings to the team and on a night when he doesn't have to score 32, what does that say about how deep you are? COACH FEW: I think it says how balanced we are and how versatile we are. Yeah, he's a tough guard because as I said, he's a skilled power forward that can stretch you literally out to 25 feet. So any ball screen, you've got to adjust, are you going to switch that; are you going to come out and hedge it and stunt with the other big. And then if you do switch it, what you saw against Georgia, and a little bit tonight if he's able to‑‑ he's pretty effective at taking those guards down and being patient and getting to his shot down there. No, he wasn't as good tonight. But this is kind of our team. If he makes a couple free throws tonight, we'll have six guys in double figures, which is about right for us, actually. So that's kind of who we are. Q. Sorry if you've been asked this. What are your thoughts on St. John's, especially their small lineup? What kind of problems did they create? COACH FEW: Well, we run zone, and they went small, because we wanted to keep Przemek in there protecting the rim. And again, we thought might be able to help us with dribble penetration. But then they started hitting some pretty tough shots down the stretch and then we went man and tried to switch ball screens and kind of contain them there. So we were morphing in and out of both those things. But yeah, with Obekpa in there, it's really tough getting a lot of scoring around the paint. And I think you saw that. Byron was able to attack the rim on three different occasions there with him out of there. Obviously we tried to attack inside‑outside on our end, with the other end with the small lineup, we were just trying to contain them and get a hand up, but they were able to hit two deep threes. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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