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EA SPORTS MAUI INVITATIONALNovember 26, 2013Gerard ColemanMark FewKevin PangosLAHAINA, HAWAII Gonzaga – 113 COACH FEW: Well, today was about responding, and we needed to respond. We were obviously very disappointed with how it turned out last night and the way we played some aspects of the game, and in a situation like this you've got about 12 hours, so there's not a whole lot of Xing and Oing going, it's about kind of looking inside yourself and stepping up against a team that can kind of frustrate you with banging in threes and spreading you out, and for the most part we did a really, really nice job. Q. Could you talk about your game plan against Christophe Varidel and what you feel like you guys did successfully there? COACH FEW: Well, our guards did a great job understanding how good a player he is and how much freedom he has. When you play against somebody that has that amount of freedom, that's a really, really hard guard. He can pull up three at any time over half court and use as many dribbles as he needs to and as many screens. So I thought Kevin and Gary did a great job. They've done a real good job in the past on guys like that and kind of tag teamed him and did a really nice job. Q. Can you talk a little bit, is David struggling a little bit? He didn't make a shot yesterday, didn't make his first shot until late today. Are you guys concerned at all, or that just the way David plays? COACH FEW: You know, David's game is about‑‑ he's a phenomenal passer and a great decision maker, and he's one of our tougher guys, and so it's not about his scoring, it's about him making the right plays and giving us kind of a tough, hard‑nosed, scrappy entity that kind of needs to be the face of the program a little bit. That's what it's been through all these years. I mean, I'm not concerned. He kind of comes and goes on the shooting or the scoring. The other night he didn't score great, but he had nine assists and no turnovers, and those are the games we need out of him. Q. Mark, just some thoughts on Arkansas, what they present with that defense and athleticism. COACH FEW: Yeah, again, they're off the charts athletic and long and we have not done a great job thus far keeping guys off the glass, which is usually a strength of ours. In less than 24 hours we're going to have to really solve that and then we're going to have to be really strong and have a fortitude about us mentally and physically to take care of the ball and to stay in attack mode. But we do have basically three point guards out there and almost four when you add Dranginis. That's a lot of good decision makers, but again, they just bring something that we don't face. I don't even think we saw anything like it last year. You know, I was just talking to Coach Montgomery and they had all week to put in a bunch of press breaks. We don't have that luxury, so we'll just kind of go with what we have. Q. Kevin, what was it like guarding Christophe? What was going through your mind? Did you ever think of trying to expect what he was going to do? What was your mindset? KEVIN PANGOS: Just try not to let him get it really because he can shoot the three, catch and shoot, he can do stuff off the dribble. If I didn't let him get anything, he couldn't do any of that stuff so that was kind of my mentality. Coach just said to face guard him in certain situations and that's what I was trying to do without fouling. Q. Same thing for Gerard and Kevin, Arkansas probably wants to speed you up. How do you avoid falling into that trap? KEVIN PANGOS: Just taking shots in our turn, whether that's getting it to our post players inside or not rushing things and taking care of the ball, whatever that means. We know our game and we know each individual strength of ours, so just do that and control the game that way. GERARD COLEMAN: Yeah, the big thing is to not panic against the press, take your time, just make the right reads and just be smart pretty much, don't let them speed you up in turnovers. Q. Kevin, do you want to maybe comment on the quick turnaround from last night to today and you were shooting pretty well today, too. KEVIN PANGOS: Yeah, it's one of those things, even Coach said you can't get down on two more wins, it's a long season, so our team just tried to respond that way. Come out hard, it's a new day, and fix the things up we didn't do so well the first game. I thought we did a pretty good job of that and were pretty energized. Same thing tomorrow, quick turnaround. Even if the shot is not falling you've got to find a different way to do things and play as a team. It's not going to be one guy throughout the whole thing so we've got to play as a unit. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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