This will be an interesting road trip for the Tulane basketball team, first at UConn, which desperately needs a win after back-to-back double-digit road losses, and then at Temple, which had played well this year before being humiliated at Tulsa. Winning away from home is tough, but we'll find out a lot about this team's potential Wednesday and Saturday.
RON HUNTER
What were you the most happy with against Cincinnati?
"We've been close for the last month. It was just the little things, and so it just finally came together. I didn't think we played great basketball, which is what I'm excited about it, but we're starting to figure things out. As a coach that's the one thing, we just want to figure it out at both ends of the floor. Our transition defense, which has been terrible the last four or five games, was absolutely great, and I thought that won the game for us because they couldn't score in transition."
Christion Thompson is going against the coach who recruited him (UConn's Dan Hurley was at Rhode Island when Thompson signed there and for his first three years). You have to like the way he's playing, right?
"He's playing great. It's funny but there's always a storyline with our guys. It's K.J. going home. With all these transfers, and really Jelly going back for the first time to the East Coast. Those guys are excited about going home and they'll have a lot of family there, but what I tell the guys is to win a league you have to win your home games and you have to find some games on the road to win. The best part of what we're doing, our schedule we've got the best teams in the conference (right off the bat). It's UConn, it's Cincy, it's Memphis. I like that. It's a good league, but we needed that win for confidence. We've been so close with everything but it doesn't matter if you don't win the game. We won a game that we needed to win."
You mentioned earlier in the year about your team having to learn how to handle success. Does that apply to this road trip after beating Cincinnati?
"That helped us earlier in the year. I didn't think that earlier in the year we were handling success very well. We were winning, but I didn't think we were playing at the level we needed to. So then we had a little setback and now we're bouncing back again. I always say the ups and downs of a college basketball season is how you handle the downs. We kind of got into that valley and now we're starting to come back up, but I can't wait until we peak. My teams always seem to peak around the end of January, the beginning of February, and I can see that with this team."
What does is say about the team that you won without K.J. making a shot?
"K.J. didn't make a shot, but more importantly I liked that it wasn't a huge celebration. I went in the locker room and it was like we were supposed to win. That's when you know the culture starts to change in a program. No one was throwing water and Gatorade and all those other crazy things. It was what's next."
You've always played a tight rotation, and now you're down to seven. What is your philosophy there?
"When I recruit, I tell everybody I am only going to play seven or eight guys, so it's up to you to get in that rotation. It's not up to me. It's up to you to get in that rotation. I would like to get one more guy. but it's hard. Ibby (Ali)'s coming back, but that means less minutes for Nobal, and Nobal's playing great basketball. It's not somebody's not playing well in practice. It's kind of like where it is. We're down to 16 games."
Why do you like small rotations?
"Because I know exactly what they're going to do, and they know exactly what they are going to do. A guy like K.J., who didn't play really at all last year, I'd rather have a tired K.J. on the floor who knows what he's doing than an 18-year old freshman who gets a little giddy and not quite sure of himself. I've always been that way. I trust my best players. I trust my older players."
So that's been your philosophy from the start of your career?
"It's always been that way. When you're building programs it's hard to trust the team?"
When I researched your past teams, I never found a year with more than nine guys getting significant minutes.
"And nine is rare. Look, there are so many TV timeouts. You got so many timeouts in a game, you can rest guys. The way we practice in that regard, I save my guys for the games. We don't lose games in practice with legs tired. We're in great condition and they know (they will be playing heavy minutes) from day 1. It's their job to get into the rotation, but once I get the rotation set, I just don't like changing it."
What is Ali's status, and is the biggest issue his injury or his conditioning coming off the injury
"It's six weeks off in my system. That's really hard. He's missed so much, and we're adding more things, so he's always in catch-up mode, and he's a guy that never played (his two minutes in the opener against SLU are his only ones), so I'm asking a guy that's never played to catch up. I would love to get him in. I was going to put him in the last game, but it comes do I put Nobal in and know what's going to happen or do I take chance on something I'm not sure of, and when you get into conference play, I like to be on (the sure thing). And right now, Nobal's becoming my security blanket. That's just the tough part right now. We even talked about it today. This might be the road trip to put him in. I said that the last game and it just gets really hard because we're in one-possession games all the time."
UConn has a 6-9 shot-blocker (freshman Akok Akok averages 3.0 blocks per game) and a 6-11 center (Josh Carlton) that can create matchup issues. How do you deal with that?
"One of the things why I thought we won the (Cincinnati) game was they had to make a decision whether to play their big guy or not. During the first half they took him out. Kevin (Zhang, who hit 5 of 5 3s) was killing him. That's part of our nature is you've got to decide to play big or play small. Most teams have benched (their big guy). Memphis didn't play their center and then (Cincinnati's) big didn't play until the last seven minutes of the game. It's funny. Teams end up going small when we play them, and now you're playing Tulane basketball. We're not going to match up with UConn's size, but guess what? Now they have to match up with us. We beat Utah the same way. They ended up playing five guards, and so when they do that, then we won the battle and now you're playing our way. That's one of the reasons why we do it. That's one of the reasons why I've always done it because I've always been kind of the underdog when it comes to size. We're probably always going to do that. We're not going to recruit the same bigs that Memphis and some of these guys have, but my skill guys can be really good."
RON HUNTER
What were you the most happy with against Cincinnati?
"We've been close for the last month. It was just the little things, and so it just finally came together. I didn't think we played great basketball, which is what I'm excited about it, but we're starting to figure things out. As a coach that's the one thing, we just want to figure it out at both ends of the floor. Our transition defense, which has been terrible the last four or five games, was absolutely great, and I thought that won the game for us because they couldn't score in transition."
Christion Thompson is going against the coach who recruited him (UConn's Dan Hurley was at Rhode Island when Thompson signed there and for his first three years). You have to like the way he's playing, right?
"He's playing great. It's funny but there's always a storyline with our guys. It's K.J. going home. With all these transfers, and really Jelly going back for the first time to the East Coast. Those guys are excited about going home and they'll have a lot of family there, but what I tell the guys is to win a league you have to win your home games and you have to find some games on the road to win. The best part of what we're doing, our schedule we've got the best teams in the conference (right off the bat). It's UConn, it's Cincy, it's Memphis. I like that. It's a good league, but we needed that win for confidence. We've been so close with everything but it doesn't matter if you don't win the game. We won a game that we needed to win."
You mentioned earlier in the year about your team having to learn how to handle success. Does that apply to this road trip after beating Cincinnati?
"That helped us earlier in the year. I didn't think that earlier in the year we were handling success very well. We were winning, but I didn't think we were playing at the level we needed to. So then we had a little setback and now we're bouncing back again. I always say the ups and downs of a college basketball season is how you handle the downs. We kind of got into that valley and now we're starting to come back up, but I can't wait until we peak. My teams always seem to peak around the end of January, the beginning of February, and I can see that with this team."
What does is say about the team that you won without K.J. making a shot?
"K.J. didn't make a shot, but more importantly I liked that it wasn't a huge celebration. I went in the locker room and it was like we were supposed to win. That's when you know the culture starts to change in a program. No one was throwing water and Gatorade and all those other crazy things. It was what's next."
You've always played a tight rotation, and now you're down to seven. What is your philosophy there?
"When I recruit, I tell everybody I am only going to play seven or eight guys, so it's up to you to get in that rotation. It's not up to me. It's up to you to get in that rotation. I would like to get one more guy. but it's hard. Ibby (Ali)'s coming back, but that means less minutes for Nobal, and Nobal's playing great basketball. It's not somebody's not playing well in practice. It's kind of like where it is. We're down to 16 games."
Why do you like small rotations?
"Because I know exactly what they're going to do, and they know exactly what they are going to do. A guy like K.J., who didn't play really at all last year, I'd rather have a tired K.J. on the floor who knows what he's doing than an 18-year old freshman who gets a little giddy and not quite sure of himself. I've always been that way. I trust my best players. I trust my older players."
So that's been your philosophy from the start of your career?
"It's always been that way. When you're building programs it's hard to trust the team?"
When I researched your past teams, I never found a year with more than nine guys getting significant minutes.
"And nine is rare. Look, there are so many TV timeouts. You got so many timeouts in a game, you can rest guys. The way we practice in that regard, I save my guys for the games. We don't lose games in practice with legs tired. We're in great condition and they know (they will be playing heavy minutes) from day 1. It's their job to get into the rotation, but once I get the rotation set, I just don't like changing it."
What is Ali's status, and is the biggest issue his injury or his conditioning coming off the injury
"It's six weeks off in my system. That's really hard. He's missed so much, and we're adding more things, so he's always in catch-up mode, and he's a guy that never played (his two minutes in the opener against SLU are his only ones), so I'm asking a guy that's never played to catch up. I would love to get him in. I was going to put him in the last game, but it comes do I put Nobal in and know what's going to happen or do I take chance on something I'm not sure of, and when you get into conference play, I like to be on (the sure thing). And right now, Nobal's becoming my security blanket. That's just the tough part right now. We even talked about it today. This might be the road trip to put him in. I said that the last game and it just gets really hard because we're in one-possession games all the time."
UConn has a 6-9 shot-blocker (freshman Akok Akok averages 3.0 blocks per game) and a 6-11 center (Josh Carlton) that can create matchup issues. How do you deal with that?
"One of the things why I thought we won the (Cincinnati) game was they had to make a decision whether to play their big guy or not. During the first half they took him out. Kevin (Zhang, who hit 5 of 5 3s) was killing him. That's part of our nature is you've got to decide to play big or play small. Most teams have benched (their big guy). Memphis didn't play their center and then (Cincinnati's) big didn't play until the last seven minutes of the game. It's funny. Teams end up going small when we play them, and now you're playing Tulane basketball. We're not going to match up with UConn's size, but guess what? Now they have to match up with us. We beat Utah the same way. They ended up playing five guards, and so when they do that, then we won the battle and now you're playing our way. That's one of the reasons why we do it. That's one of the reasons why I've always done it because I've always been kind of the underdog when it comes to size. We're probably always going to do that. We're not going to recruit the same bigs that Memphis and some of these guys have, but my skill guys can be really good."