Bo Ryan Addresses Media on Monday
November 24, 2003 | Men's Basketball
Wisconsin men's basketball coach Bo Ryan addressed the media Monday at the UW weekly press conference. Ryan talked about the Badgers' season-opening victory over Penn as well as their upcoming home-opener against Eastern Illinois tomorrow night. He also touched on the play of the team's reserves, including junior guard Clayton Hanson.
A full transcript is below. Video is also available by clicking on the "multimedia" link located in the red menu bar above.
Coach, obviously its very early in your season, but in this week when people are getting together to give thanks what are you most thankful for in regards to this team that you have this year so far' 'Well I 'm just thankful that they're hanging together and that they're handling the physical adversity that we've been hit with because it happens to other teams, it happens at other times and they've hung in there together and really helped one another along and also helped the guys who are out by keeping their spirits up. So I'm thankful that I've got a bunch of guys that enjoy playing with one another.'
Bo, what kind of ball does Rick Samuels' teams play. You've mentioned he's been around a long time so I'm guessing you may have bumped into him along the way. This (Derik) Hollyfield kid went off for 27, what type of player will the badger fans see here tomorrow night' 'Well, we don 't say too much about the other team. I never have. So that's just an early plug in there for those that might want to keep asking these questions about the other team. I'll only tell you that they're good and that Hollyfield 's good. I don't give information that they put up in their locker room or anything like that. Obviously he can score and Eastern Illinois has had players who can score. They run a very god offense, they set a lot of screens, hard cuts, fundamentally sound that way. Defensively, they really do a nice job of helping one another from what we 've seen. I think that's what allows a coach like Coach Samuel to last a long time. Again in college athletics at Division 1 level if somebody lasts a while, that 's usually a pretty good sign. And he's lasted a while.'
Coach, what kind of challenges will Eastern Illinois give you ' 'Well, they've got a team of guys that want to be successful. They've practiced hard, they're a basketball team that tries to compete. So that's what they'll bring in here and put up there against us. It's the same thing that we would do as coaches if we were there coming here. You get them prepared, you've worked them hard in the offseason; you hoped that they've conditioned properly and that they're playing well together. It 's a team that has a coach that's been around and a coach that's been in some tough situations with where he's taken his team. So we expect to get every bit of the same kind of competitive level that we've learned to get from everybody else. They're going to give us their best.'
Bo, you scheduled Penn for the obvious challenges that it presented, what do you want to see now from your team coming up to these two home games ' 'Well, now that that game's over I can tell you why I really scheduled that game, if anybody ever asked I would have told them. You can think back to teachers you had in school that turned you onto a subject. I know astronauts, they talk about a certain professor that they had that turned them on to something, or anybody that became a doctor or some of you guys in journalism, men and women, talk about the professor that turned things around, or a learning experience that made something in your mind click to say that's what I wanted to do. And to get back to the Palestra and to have the person that took you there when you were four, five, six, seven years old, have a chance to be in the stands and experience that as a coach. That was the moment in life when I was turned on and my love for basketball started, in that building in 1952 or `53 somewhere in there. I can trace that back just like I can trace my love for history to a certain professor that I had. I can trace my love for basketball to the Palestra and what that building represented. So that was the real reason that we went in there. Oh, and we played a team while we were there. No, that's just a side bar to taking your team to a major metropolitan area for exposure. You never know where you're going to play when the regular season's over, so to travel to Alabama, to travel to Philadelphia, to travel next year to L.A. and trying to travel and get a home and home with a team in Texas. It's to go to different places and experience different things. That's really nice for the team. You can't play all home games, some teams try, but when you play on the road you want to play in situations where you players can hopefully walk away with a learning experience. So that's what we received, hopefully, from that. And your question is now that that's over where do we go ' well now we get a couple at home, on the road again, couple more at home and we 'll see what happens. I don't know how the players respond until you get a chance to actually respond. So tomorrow night we'll get a chance to respond to our first learning experience.'
When you looked at the film of the Penn game and you saw the shooting percentage and then you saw the number of shots that rattled in and out. When you compare the two is it nothing to make a big deal out of or is there something ' 'Oh we can shoot it better, but when your rebounding and your defense gets you your first win of the year on the road against a program that's used to winning, especially in that building, you have to say `alright there's definitely some good things we can take from this.' So it's not like I had a huge height advantage with the players I had on the floor as a coach. Dave (Mader) played 13 minutes, Zach (Morley), Mike (Wilkinson), Ray (Nixon), Andreas (Helmigk) a little bit at one of the bigs. So I thought the way they handled the glass defensively, the way they worked those screens they got'you take three of those threes away and you take our one three away, that was a pass, I thought defensively we guarded them pretty well.'
What are you looking for out of Clayton when he enters the game' 'Well, he's a prolific scorer. Right now he's not putting the ball in the basket the way he would like to, but he just scraps and plays defense and rebounds and does everything else. I know he's a good shooter and so do his teammates. He'll knock shots down, that's not going to be an issue. Defensively he's better than last year, he's improved. Rebounding wise he adds, and just makes good decisions with the ball too.
Bo, can you talk a little bit about the strong play you got from your reserves in the first game' 'Yeah I can refer to the effort of the team and that's one through whoever dresses, including the vocal support that we got from the guys who weren't dressed in uniform. Everybody contributed and Kam (Taylor) basically was the only guy that didn't get in the game. It wasn't for any particular reason other than sometimes you see match ups, sometimes you see different things going on, sometimes you look at experience. Coaches coach with their gut so many times when you get into the heat of the battle, but it 's all based on what you see in practice everyday. It's not like your hoping that something happens that didn't happen. I'll take the effort of our reserves when they go in there and play hard in the end like they did that's good for the team.'
Bo, when you're talking about your reserves, does this group give you any more versatility maybe than you've had before, or how do you look at that' 'Well, I've never tried to compare teams in all the years I've coached, as far as talking about this group to that group. Every team that I have been fortunate enough to coach'we've always received contributions from the bench. You can only start five, but if you could start ten you would, and a lot of those guys would be the same. It's still early to know the overall impact but I've been fortunate enough to have guys buy in to where if they 're only playing two minutes they make it the best two minutes they can give it. '
I guess I was thinking more along the lines of combinations you could use of guys off the bench in terms of versatility that way. Do you see guys being able to maybe give you things in different ways' 'When you 're in your third year guys know the system, they tend to know a little better, even if they weren't on the floor than the year before. They've had a chance to be around and see the film, the edited clips that we go over as our teaching points. So hopefully, even though they maybe don't have the minutes logged on the court they have the minutes logged in their minds of experience where they learned by watching what has happened to others. So I'm hoping that takes to effect more and more each year.'
