Fran McCaffery 7-20-23
Iowa basketball coach
Category
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SportsTranscript
00:00 What's up man?
00:01 How you doing?
00:02 Good man.
00:03 It's early obviously, but the makeup of this team, what impresses you so far?
00:09 Well this is a unique summer because we're going overseas in August as you all know.
00:14 So what we have are more practice opportunities, but it also means we have to get more stuff in.
00:20 Normally we wouldn't put in now what we're actually having to put in.
00:24 So we're throwing a lot of stuff back then, and they picked it up really quickly.
00:29 Six new players, four freshmen, and they've picked everything up amazingly quickly.
00:36 That's impressive for me because a lot of times it takes a while.
00:41 When you're throwing quick hitters and zone defense and press, motion offense, defensive concepts, terminology, continuity offense.
00:53 We're throwing it all at them. Side out of bounds plays, out of bounds plays under the basket, all the counters.
00:58 It's pretty involved.
01:00 Normally we don't play until November, so you're not really worried about that, but we actually play in August.
01:06 So we'll get it all in.
01:07 Have you seen in your past when you've taken teams overseas, have you seen tangible value?
01:13 There's no question.
01:16 What you hope is you can go under four years as you know.
01:19 Sometimes it falls particularly well.
01:25 I guess you could justify it with a veteran team, get more practice, and then go over there and play and get your veteran team ready for a grueling big ten season.
01:36 Or you've got a young team, and it just gives us a little bit of a head start.
01:41 We've got some veteran guys, but it's a pretty young team. It's a new team.
01:45 A lot of those six new players are going to be playing a lot.
01:49 So I just think in this situation it's better.
01:53 You have a veteran team coming back. It's a bonus, but it has more impact when you have a young team than you've got.
02:01 What do you expect from Patrick? He is one of those veterans we talked about.
02:05 I expect him to be not only a consistent performer, but a leader.
02:11 We've had really good leaders the last couple of years, whether it be Luka, Jordan, or Connor, Chris, Keegan.
02:22 Those guys were all really good leaders in that sense.
02:26 So now those guys are all gone. Who's it going to be?
02:30 Obviously Tony, Peyton, and Patrick are the three guys to think about.
02:33 So that's what I'm expecting from them.
02:36 You've got quite a bit more frontcourt depth.
02:41 Does that change how you approach things?
02:45 No, it's just a welcome. We were really lucky last year.
02:51 When you think about it, Chris, Connor, and Phillip played 3,000 minutes.
02:57 We did not have a lot of depth in the frontcourt.
02:59 Had any one of those three guys gotten hurt, it would have really impacted our ability to make the NCAA tournament.
03:06 When we watch practice and review practice now, we're so much bigger and so much better on the glass.
03:15 Owen and Lodgy in particular, as freshmen, have been very impressive.
03:21 Ben is what we expected him to be. He's been terrific.
03:27 Across the board, there are so many different ways we can go.
03:31 We can swing Peyton, Price, Patrick. We can play two bigger forwards if we need to.
03:39 But just having traffic rebounders, physical size, and also a much more physical post presence.
03:46 Not that we didn't have it last year, but we were really seriously concerned about foul trouble.
03:51 Phillip or Chris, without foul trouble, that was going to be really hard.
03:55 When you look at this freshman class, with Price, Brock, and Owen, they're a little bit more known commodities,
04:02 given that they're a lot out here. With Lodgy, for folks that don't know a lot about his game, what would you say about him?
04:08 Lodgy's been really impressive so far. He's obviously a big body. He's probably 260 pounds.
04:15 But he's got a really good skill set. He moves it. He can put it on the deck. He can make threes.
04:23 But he has been a phenomenally impressive rebounder, every day since he got here, which is what we need from that position.
04:33 So has he exceeded your expectations in that great rebound?
04:36 No, I think that's what we expected. But I think in fairness to your question,
04:41 most freshmen don't come in and consistently rebound the way he has, even if it's there, we thought it was there.
04:49 It's just every day he's up over 10 rebounds of practice.
04:54 On a trip like this, you want to get everybody the same amount of rebound?
04:58 We're going to do something unique. I'm not going to approach every game where, "Okay, this is my starting lineup."
05:10 We don't have a starting lineup now. We don't have a starting lineup in August.
05:14 So we'll put three different teams together. When I say that, seven guys, they're going to play the whole time.
05:23 As a matter of fact, what I'm going to do is each one of my assistants is going to coach a game.
05:30 So we have three games. Matt will coach a game, Shurm will coach a game, and Courtney will coach a game.
05:34 We'll have different combinations, young guys, old guys.
05:39 We'll try to get guys like Amari on some playing time.
05:44 I want everybody to go over there and feel like they had an ample opportunity to play.
05:49 The other thing is, if they don't play today, tomorrow you're going to play 38 minutes or 35 minutes.
05:55 They're not going to some crummy, isolated village. You're going to three of the best places in the world. Is that by design?
06:04 It is. I think when you look at it, it's much more than a basketball experience.
06:11 It's a cultural, educational, team bonding opportunity.
06:16 I've been fortunate enough to do this more than a few times.
06:21 The impact is so much more impressive when it comes to the big picture than it is specifically related to basketball.
06:31 The games themselves are moderately important, to be honest with you.
06:38 That's been a shift. In the past, we used to go, we played it like it was the Final Four.
06:46 The last time we went, it was much more relaxed.
06:50 It's get guys playing time, build confidence, get young guys opportunity.
06:55 I don't really need to see what Tony Perkins can do. We know what Tony Perkins can do.
06:59 I don't need to find out what other guys can do. That's going to be more important.
07:03 You mentioned the freshman class picking things up quickly. Is that relatively uncommon?
07:10 I think it's uncommon that it's across the board. Some guys are naturally gifted in that area.
07:18 They just pick it up. It's not that you can't learn a play, but it's learning the counters and the nuances of it.
07:28 The motion offense is seemingly simple, but if you're not screening and moving and cutting with a purpose, it doesn't work.
07:35 It just looks like mush. A bunch of guys running around and there's no success in that formula.
07:41 These guys have innate basketball instincts.
07:47 If we're going to be a transition to motion teams, which we are most of the time, you have to be that kind of player to perform well.
07:55 If you're a mechanical thinking guy, you can do that, but that's not how we play.
08:05 The guy like Brock, he just looks like a kid in spirit.
08:11 He's always been that way. Very competitive. Phenomenally confident in himself and his ability to make plays.
08:20 Make plays by design or when there's nothing there and somebody has to go do something. He's really good in that area.
08:30 Appreciate it guys.