Bill Self Press Conference – February 20, 2014

Here are the notes from Bill Self’s press conference from today. If you wish to listen to it, scroll to the bottom:

Self on Ridley and KU’s first game against Texas..”I thought they had us on our heels the whole time. Their transition offense was better than our defense, and certainly our ball screen defense wasn’t any good at all. I thought he totally controlled the game, to me he was the guy that controlled the game. We did such a bad job on the boards, our ball screen defense and defensive rebounding killed us as much as anything.”

Self on Texas’ rebounding…“I don’t think it was all Ridley, if I’m not mistaken Holland wore us out and stole a lot of extra possessions for them. Cameron is a big guy, but we’ve played other big guys and teams in the past. I think in the league, we’ve out rebounded our opponents 12 out of the 13 games we’ve played and on the one game we didn’t we obviously got whipped on the glass and that was a big reason that they controlled the game.”

If you win the next two games you would be able to clinch (a share of the conference title) at home, is that motivation? “The big thing is, we can’t talk about anything past Saturday because if it doesn’t happen Saturday it’s a one game lead as opposed to a three game lead. To me, it’s not even about the league race on Saturday it’s about playing Texas and playing a team that’s already hammered us and one of the residual effects is that it’s big for the league race but it’s also an opportunity for us to try to play better against a team that smacked us around pretty good.”

Self on playing in February…“In basketball when you play 35 games or so you think you would be jacked up evrey game but you’re still not, still emotion plays such a big part of your energy level and when another team gives you their best shot and you’re off a little bit that definitely negates the talent level. Playing a team a second time it’s harder to get easy baskets. People are better scouted and they make adjustments from the first game. There’s something about how teams raise their level the second time they play somebody if they’ve been handled the first time. I don’t know why that is, but that’s how it always seems to be. You get everybody’s best shot especially if you’re a highly ranked team- I guarantee that’s what happened on Syracuse last night, although I’m not an expert on Syracuse.”

Self on being better offensively versus defensively…“I would say I’d rather be good at making it hard for people to score. To me, no matter what your field goal percentage is offensively you’re going to have some games like we had against Texas Tech that we’re not going to make shots and you have to figure out a way to win those games when you don’t make shots. Now, our guys mind is if we’re shooting well or scoring easy that game that we’ll out score them as opposed to making sure they play poorly, so if I had to pick one of the two I would say that I’d rather be great on the defensive end than the offensive end. I think that’s a better formula for success over time because you’re not always going to make shots, but like I told our guys, defense always travels so there’s no reason why you can’t be good defensively every night.

On KU’s defense…“It’s been frustrating for me. I would say, I figured we’d be really good defensively and average offensively and it’s kind of been the opposite of what I expected prior to the season. We’re still not great offensively, we still turn it over too much and we’re inconsistent shooting the ball a lot but we’re not as bad defensively as what I play it up to be when you look at us against other teams that we’ve competed against on a nightly basis. We’re right there leading the league in almost every category, and were playing a Texas team that’s right towards the top of every category. In order for us to be a great team we’ve got to get better defensively. That’s the biggest area of improvement we can make in my mind.”

“So much of it’s a mindset, but also when you look at our pieces, our pieces aren’t what they’ve been in the past. our personalities aren’t quite the same. We’ve got to change our mindset so that we can compete harder on that end because when you look at some of our starters, their personality is not what Thomas Robinson’s personality is or Travis Releford’s, their personalities are a little bit different and more laid back and we can’t be that way if we’re going to be great on that end.

“We’re better defensively when we suck offensively. To me, when we’re good offensively the mindset is we’ll out score them, and when you’re not any good offensively usually the mindset is that we have to guard.”

Self on point guard play..”I’d like to see our point guard play, basically cut the head off, and that all starts with our point guard and we haven’t always been able to do that, at all. You take Tyshawn for granted, you take Sherron for granted, you take Russell for granted, and Mario for granted sometimes even though Naadir has a big challenge ahead of him because physically he’s not as big, but he’s the one to me, and Frank, that can do a better job of making other teams play poorly because their point guard isn’t comfortable, and we haven’t done a good job of that lately.”

Self on how Joel Embiid is feeling..“Well, I said hello to him but I find out if you ask guys how they’re doing all the time they may give you the answer that you don’t want to hear. So a lot of time you don’t ask, and so that way you think they’re fine. I”m serious when I say that, I talked to him this morning and he said he’s going to class and everything is good so I assume his back is fine to then. But it’s not his knee, it’s his back that would give him problems if anything.”

Self on Joel’s shot blocking…“Those records to me are pretty meaningless because the reason he’s breaking the record is because he’s playing more minutes than other freshman have played. I would say Jo is good, but could be great and there’s still another step for him to take there. Eric Chenoweth is probably hoping and praying that he doesn’t block another shot (laughs).”

Self on Naadir Tharpe…“He has a better feel for what’s going on than anybody else on the team. Him an Jo have the best feel of everybody. Although he hasn’t shot it well last week, he’s probably our most consistent perimeter shooter and he’s our best passer to get guys shots off penetration. Naadir’s had a good year, he’s been really solid. He doesn’t have to be great for us to be good, but he needs to be good for us to be great and certainly he’s capable of doing that but I’m pleased with Naadir, he’s had a good solid year but defensively he can certainly guard the ball a little better.”

Self on KU-Texas all time series…”You stop and think about it, and there’s been some really good players playing in this series. I started thinking about all the great games we’ve had with them, and certainly we’ve had some. We’ve had games that actually meant something towards the league race and this is definitely one of those times. Hopefully this will be a classic as well after we sit back and look at it for awhile.”