UW hoops: Quoting Lorenzo Romar on beating Texas, signing Markelle Fultz, cutting down on fouls and more
Huskies men’s basketball coach Lorenzo Romar met with reporters earlier this afternoon to preview Thursday’s game against Mount Saint Mary’s. Here is much of what he said.
(How was China?) “China was good. It was a good experience for our guys. Our guys had some idea maybe what to expect just from the class, doing a little research, but didn’t really know how the week was going to go, in terms of the length of the travel and all that. Other than Andrew, nobody had experienced that before. But I think all in all, culturally, educationally – it helped that we were able to win the game – I think the trip was good.”
(You guys adjust yet coming home?) “Yesterday was rough. Monday we were pretty good, but yesterday, we weren’t ourselves yesterday. So hopefully we get back on the right track here today. Definitely hope to by tomorrow. But I think we experienced a little jetlag.”
(Did you see what you expected from your team against Texas?) “I think there was a lot of what we had seen before. We didn’t know if we could take what we had seen in practice and then travel all that distance and against a quality opponent transfer it over, but I thought we did. We had seen that we were starting to get it in terms fo what we are trying to do defensively. We still have a ways to go to execute what we want, but what we are trying to do defensively carried over.”
(On Texas’ pace) “I don’t know if we’ll play anyone this year that will play at that pace. You watch the game and it’s up and down. They score, we’re right back. We score, they’re coming back. They miss, we’re coming right back. It was fun to play that way.”
“… I would have liked to have seen us take care of the ball better, but I really do believe there were some jitters early in that game. We had dunks, we had plays that were right there that we didn’t finish early. Once we settled down we began to do a better job of finishing.”
(What are you teaching to try to cut down on foul calls?) “We have to make sure that we eliminate the fouls that have nothing to do with defending the ball. So yeah, we’re trying to pressure you and they call touch fouls, when they’re calling closely-guarded calls. We understand that. But the fouls we get where we just jump over the top of someone when we shouldn’t, a guy drives to the rim and we just touch him trying to knock the ball down, we barely touch him and he gets an and-one, we’re out of position so then we reach at the last minute – those are the fouls that we’re concerned about more. We’re committing too many of those.”
(What about the hand-checking?) “Yesterday we talked to the officials that do our practices to call them just like they call them in the game. Very closely. So we’re working on it. But again, those aren’t the fouls that are hurting us right now. It’s the other ones that are hurting us that we need to do a better job of.”
“The intent was to do this a few years ago … it was like this early, but then officials kind of backed off a little bit, but this year …
“… Defensively we still didn’t do a good enough job. To me, I actually thought we did a poor job on the defensive glass, but attacking the glass …
(Is this the most depth you’ve had in the frontcourt?) “The most quality depth. I always say you can have 10 guys at one position, but is there a drop-off if you sub? In most cases, those that are in there are probably your better players. Not in all cases, because sometimes the less talented player makes your team better, because he fits in better with the other (players). Where the more talented guy plays selfishly and no one else gets better because he’s on the floor. But in terms of impacting the game right now we don’t have a huge drop-off. We definitely did not have a huge drop-off in the Texas game. Matter of fact, if we would have had a drop-off, we couldn’t have won the game, because Noah Dickerson and Marquese Chriss were in foul trouble, so Devenir Duruisseau and Malik Dime had to step up and play at a high level, which they did. So in terms of quality depth, yes.”
(On Devenir Duruisseau) “… When we recruited Devenir, we thought he was going to be physical, we thought he was going to be a guy who could step out and hit the shot, we thought he was going to be a guy who played hard and did some intangible things. We thought he was going to be solid. That’s what he was against Texas. So it was not a surprise that way.”
(On Malik Dime against SPU and then against Texas) “(Against SPU) Malik was thinking a lot. Am I in the right place? And when you think it handcuffs your initiative, it handcuffs your athleticism. And I thought what we saw against Texas was more of a free-flowing, non-thinking Malik. I didn’t say he couldn’t think, I said he understood what we were doing enough so he just reacted as opposed to thinking, ‘where should I be?’ Consequently, he played better.”
(On Dejounte Murray’s nine turnovers) “I see it this way – he had nine turnovers, but he had 10 rebounds as a guard. He had six assists. Yeah, he didn’t take care of the ball as well as I would have liked, but you’ve got to take the good with the bad sometimes, especially early on. He’s not going to turn the ball over nine times, maybe never again in his career. But I bet you he gets 10 rebounds again. I bet you he gets six or more assists again. That’s who he is. He’s a guy that can get a lot done on the basketball floor.”
(Do you just have to accept a certain amount of that?) “No question. Absolutely. And it’s a team that has to experience a lot of firsts, as I’ve said before. The first time we played in front of a crowd was SPU. The first time we played away from home in the first real game was in China against Texas. This is our first real home game. We’re going to have a first true road game we’re going to have a first conference game at home. We’re going to have a first road conference game. So many firsts for this team that we kind of have to learn on the fly. But if we can go out and learn on the fly and make our mistakes and still be successful like against Texas, until we get it, we’ll just go that way.”
(Who is your best low-post defender?) “I would say in terms of protecting the basket it would be Malik because of his ability to shot-block, but in terms of just positioning on the floor, it’s probably Noah Dickerson. Noah’s a very, very smart basketball player.”
(What are Noah’s strengths?) “I’ve said he’s our best low-post scorer. He just understands basketball. He made a move we’ve been talking about as a staff, the first play of the second half, where the play was designed for him to catch the ball and have the defender on the high side, and there’s no help, and he catches it and scores it. Well, the defender jumps while the pass is in the air to the side he was supposed to go to. Noah didn’t have to think. As soon as he caught the ball, instinctively, he felt that, and quickly turned to the middle without a dribble. He turns to the middle to be met with big Ridley, they 6-11, 270-pound guy, he’s right there. Noah plants and splits the two guys, gets an and-one. You can go to all the big-man camps you want to go to, you’re not going to learn that. That’s just instinctive moves right there. so he has a pretty good feel that way around the basket and can also step out and knock the shot down.”
(What makes Malik Dime a good defender?) “Seven-foot, 5-inch wingspan, for starters. Great timing on his blocked shots. And he blocks shots with his left hand, which is unusual. Most guys block shots with their right hand. He blocks shots with his left hand, so he kind of catches you off guard that way.”
(On enjoying coaching this team more than others) “It’s a fun group to coach. They just want to do the right thing. This team has a healthy respect for our program. These new guys coming in have a healthy respect for what we’ve accomplished, and it’s almost like they’re all alumni that want to come in and get the program back to where it was, even though they’re not alums. Several of them grew up watching the huskies and pulling for the Huskies, so there’s a little added incentive for these guys to come in and do something special. And that’s how they’ve approached everything.”
(Is this the most compliant group you’ve had?) “I would say so. I would say it is, as a whole. We’ve had compliant teams but then you have a few that kind of try to beat to their own drum, but ended up conforming. But these guys as a group, pretty compliant group.”
(Are you interested to see if they respond the same way once they lose a game or two?) “We’re hopeful. Again, we’ve only played one game, and it is such a long season. We’ve had it both ways where we started out not doing very well but ended doing great, and other years we started doing great, ranked, and ended up not doing very well – last year, and the 2006-2007 season. So we can’t draw any conclusions right now after one game, but I would like to think that the way this group has handled so many other situations going back to June when they first got here to now, I would think when times get rough with us, times get hard, that we’ll respond in a positive way.”
(On signing Markelle Fultz) “Markelle is a dynamic guard. There’s not anything he can’t do on the basketball floor. He can go up and jump over the top of you and dunk it. He can dunk on a 6-10, 6-11 guy. He can really pass the ball. He’s got now to where he can shoot the ball really well. He’s going to fit in very well with how we’re trying to pressure defensively with the length and covering the passing lanes, al that stuff. He has really good speed with the basketball, and he’s another kid that’s going to just say, ‘all right, Coach, you’ve got me, now what do you want me to do?’ Which is great to be able to have when you have someone who’s that talented.”
(On Fultz’s recruitment) “You’ve got to point right away to Coach (Raphael) Chillious. I don’t know if we get Markelle if Coach Chillious isn’t on our staff. We got in there early. Coach developed a great relationship with Markelle and his mom. Keith Williams, his trainer, he’s trained him since he was in 7th grade I guess, for a long time. Coach knew him since they were teenagers, I believe. Coach gets all the credit for that, for the recruitment, staying in there. I think it was important that we identified Markelle early as he had just finished his junior varsity year, where there were a lot of people who didn’t think he would be as good of a player as he was. But it was important to identify that early to get involved early, and to help him understand that we thought he was going to be special back then, and I don’t think they forgot that. It carried over throughout he rest of the recruitment. But you talk about the recruitment, that’s Coach Chill.”
(Obviously you knew early that you wanted him to play for you, but did you think at that point that he would turn into such a highly-recruited prospect?) “You just have to trust me – there are a lot of people who just say ‘oh yeah, I knew it all the time.’ (Laughs). Whatever happened, everybody knew it all the time. But I think if you were to talk to him and his mom and the people involved, they would tell you that we thought he was going to be special. when we went to go see him last September, when we saw him just playing at his high school, we had a good feeling this stuff was going to happen.”
(Early scouting report on Mount Saint Mary’s?) “Their head coach worked with Shaka Smart. So they do a lot of things the same way that Texas did. They aren’t able to get the level of athlete that Texas gets. So I think they compensate that with a little more structure and more of a premium on execution – not that Texas didn’t execute, but if you have players like Texas has, I think if you put too much structure on them, you take their initiative away. So you kind of let those guys go a little more. This group I think does a very good job of sticking with what they want to do and executing. They shoot the ball well. They’re picked to finish very high in their league. They’ve already been on the road a couple times against quality opponents they’ve played on the road. They haven’t won one against those two – Maryland and Ohio State – but they’ve been battle-tested a little bit with those two games.”
(Looks like they’ll test your perimeter defense) “Oh yeah. They will. It’ll be a very good test for us, especially coming off the road trip from China.”
This story was originally published November 18, 2015 at 4:01 PM with the headline "UW hoops: Quoting Lorenzo Romar on beating Texas, signing Markelle Fultz, cutting down on fouls and more."