Quoting Lorenzo Romar on Utah, fatigue, Markelle Fultz’s big game and more
Here is everything Huskies men’s basketball coach Lorenzo Romar said today ahead of Saturday’s 5 p.m. game against Utah at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.
(On Utah) “They don’t help you at all. Well, what do you mean by that? What team is going to help you? A team will turn the ball over and help you. Teams will take bad shots. We talk to our team about that – you’re going to help the other team. Teams will break down defensively and help allow you to score. They don’t make those mistakes. Coach Krystkowiak and his staff do a marvelous job year in and year out of just playing very, very sound basketball, and they’re back at it again this year.”
(On takeaways from previous games vs. Utah) “Well, we’ve come out on top a couple of times. Certainly they’ve beaten us. What you take away from it is kind of what I just said and you try to make sure your team understands, no, you can’t have lapses. There are some games where there are a lot of possessions and the nature of how a team plays, they may be a very good team, but there are areas that you know they’re going to break in. Utah doesn’t have a lot of them. So it puts the onus on you as a team, their opponent, to just make sure you go into that game knowing that we just have to be on point in every area. This is not a game to experiment. They’re going to make you pay.”
(On what allows Utah to shoot 51.2 percent from the field) “For starters, they have good basket makers. They have guys that can make shots. You can run the best offense and be as detailed as you want, if guys can’t make baskets, it doesn’t matter. They have guys that make shots. That’s very helpful. They don’t usually shoot the ball first side if it’s not something available. If you break down early, they will. But they’re going to have the floor spaced and move that ball, and they’re very disciplined in that regard. They usually have a high-low attack. They can go inside and out. The last couple years, they’ve had Jakob Poeltl. Before that they had another guy, I forget his name. Now the new guy (David) Collette, their (junior) is coming along. They’ve always been able to go inside and play off of those guys, as well. So they’re pretty well rounded in their attack.”
(On Carlos Johnson’s strength allowing him to guard bigs) “For him it does. He jokes around about, when he was in high school, sometimes he was the best center in America at 6-3. He kind of messes around that way. He’s very comfortable playing all over the floor, but very comfortable playing around the basket and mixing it up with guys. I remember we played Oregon, and Dillon Brooks tried to post him up a couple of times, and Carlos, ‘you may score, you may be a great player, but this is not going to be easy just walking down here and posting up.’ And he’s not intimidated by it at all.”
(On giving up some rebounding when Johnson is in a four or five-guard lineup) “And down the stretch in the last game, we guarded, we were fine a lot of times, and then when the ball went up they would just reach, longer guys that reach there. They’re already there and the shot goes up, even though you’ve put a body on them, they reach over the top. Sometimes that happens.”
(On demeanor at practice after Wednesday’s win) “It’s been good. The demeanor has not been a whole lot different, though. After the (losses), guys are very disappointed, it’s tough. This team has been pretty resilient in that after 24 hours, you come back, guys are ready to go. Yesterday was kind of a light practice, we had guys play 40 minutes, 43 minutes the night before. So, 8 o’clock game. We didn’t use their legs a lot. So you couldn’t really tell a whole lot where guys were, but obviously guys were upbeat.”
(Focus more on the comeback, or what went wrong in the first half to get down so big?) “We will point out why we were successful, but probably show and go more into areas we weren’t successful. But we will point those out. Here’s where we did a good job, but let’s talk about where we fell short and how we could be better in that area also.”
(On the trend of bad first halves and better second halves) “I think it has been somewhat of a trend. It’s something that we look at. The trend has been, though, like 10 minutes left in the first half, from the 10 to the 4-minute mark, that’s when we’ve been not very good. In the second half, from about the 9-minute mark to the 3-minute mark, that’s where we’ve had our shortcomings. It hadn’t been as bad in the start as much as those times.”
(On why that is) “I think it has a lot to do with us trying to play the way we want, up-tempo, we exert a lot of energy, but I have not done a good job of giving guys rest. Sometimes these games have been so crucial, every possession, and you try to go with the hot hand a lot of times. There have been times when guys are just exhausted. They have to take a minute rest. Sometimes we’ll just call timeout – there’s your rest. But then other times when you don’t have that luxury you just have to take a player out. And you’ll see a lead go from … or the score is tied and right away they’re up 6 or 7. You get the player right in right away. So that can wear you down at certain points of the game. Also, we have to be better at fighting through the fatigue. Everybody gets tired. We get to that point, you have to be able to will yourself to fight through that.”
(On Markelle Fultz in particular playing a lot of minutes) “There have been a couple of games where you could just see it down the stretch where he still went out and competed, but he was exhausted. Just very tired. We ask him to do a lot in games, so we try to give him some rest at some point in the first half, give him a blow here and there. Again, our games have just been so close and been possession by possession games. We may get down 10, you’re trying to scrap, get back in, so you don’t want to let the air out of the balloon. You want to keep making progress. So that’s been a little tough.”
(On Utah maybe being without David Collette) “They’re already going to be a tough, physical team, but he gives them additional toughness. He’s a junkyard dog. He’s like a grown man out there playing. He brings a level of physicality to their team that even if they’re already physical, it’s going to be even more physical when he’s playing.”
(On whether Utah’s system is just plug-and-play when starters leave) “When they had Delon Wright, they depended probably more on him, even though Delon played with Poeltl for a year. But they still run a lot of pick and roll stuff. Lorenzo Bonam has become a very good guard. They have a group of guards that may not be household names, but they’re outstanding, and they make plays and create just enough space in that system. Brandon Taylor, who was with them last year, who is not playing in the NBA but was one of their more valuable players for their team because he know their system so well, is now being replaced where Bonam is doing some of the same things with them. So yeah, how did you word that? (Plug and play.) Yeah, that. They do a good job of that.”
(How much of your preparation is still focused on your team and not the opponent?) “Oh, the majority of it. We’re still learning but when we can focus for 40 minutes and not give in to the distractions, whether that’s being 1-for-12 from 3 in the first half or, man, I’m tired, or whatever the distraction of the day or the moment is, we can play through those. We’re not telling you we’re going to go undefeated, but we just feel we can be competitive in any situation. So I really believe it’s more on us.”
(On Malik Dime) “He’s been on the court doing conditioning drills. Today the doctor’s supposed to check him out, kind of re-evaluate where he is, so we’ll know a little bit more.”
(Still the same timeline for his return?) “I would think so, but they’ve not looked at it. This is the second week. This is the first time they would have looked at it in two weeks, so he should be on schedule.”
(On Matthew Atewe’s progression) “I think he’s coming along. Again, he just gives us – talk about Collette and the level of physicality, Matthew gives us a certain level of physicality when he’s in that game. Things are smoothing out for him a little more on the basketball floor.”
(How did you find him?) “There was a contact that Coach Chill had that contacted us about Matthew and said that he had gotten his release from Auburn and he was looking to transfer, so we looked into it, and it ended up working out.”
(On maybe taking a risk on him since he was hurt) “We didn’t think that he would not play again. We thought he would play again. We knew that he had pulled down 13 rebounds against Kentucky in an SEC game. We knew that he was big and strong and athletic. We knew that much. We felt that he hadn’t arrived yet. Potential was in front of his name still, but he was worth taking because with the package that he had, you just didn’t know how well he could develop. We took him thinking he would end up helping us.”
(On what Atewe’s ceiling is) “I don’t know, but Ben Wallace was a heck of a player for Detroit when he was in the middle of what was going on. That toughness that he brought, the defense that he brought, just that attitude that he brought. Matt I think can help us that way.”
(Did you expect more out of Sam Timmins this year?) “We were hopeful that he would be further along right now, but the biggest issue with Sam right now is just we haven’t been able to just let him go play. Again, freshmen make mistakes. Just as simple as that. Some are in situations where they can go out and play through their mistakes and stay in, like Marquese Chriss and Dejounte Murray were last year. They were in a situation like that. With Sam we haven’t been able to do that, and I think if he were in that situation where he was just able to play through his mistakes, I think he’d be further along. Because freshmen go through that. The nature of our games just haven’t allowed us to do that.”
(On Timmins being behind the curve because he didn’t face the same competition growing up in New Zealand) “Some of that. Sam is a very, very good passer, but with the long limbs that we have and teams that we’re playing, they get their hand on the basketball a lot. A lot of those passes that he was making for a long time have been deflected. They haven’t gotten through yet. Those will eventually get through, but that’s what I mean by playing through some of his mistakes. He’s strong down there on the block. He can seal, he can finish. You get your shot blocked a few times, you make adjustments. You go in there and you go a little harder, you seal a little harder. Those type of things just need minutes.”
(On the most impressive thing about Markelle Fultz’s 37-point game vs. Colorado) “I thought that was Fultz’s best game for us this year, and I would like to question him and wonder if that was the best game he’s ever played. Not because he scored 37. Markelle was all over the floor. He’s been blocking shots, we’ve seen that. But he was getting his hands on balls. He turned the ball over, went back and got it right back for us. His imprint was in that game in so many areas. That is what I thought was the best thing he did, is just get lost in the game and impact the game in just about every area. That’s what I thought. There are not many players in the country that can go out and do that like that. There are players that can go out and get you 35 or 40. There are players that can go get you 20 rebounds. But to be all over the place like he was, that was impressive to me.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2017 at 2:58 PM with the headline "Quoting Lorenzo Romar on Utah, fatigue, Markelle Fultz’s big game and more."