Man oh man, coach Miller is one long winded guy. The press asks a question, he gives a mini-speech as a response. Great for informing the public. But a lot of stuff to pour through to pick out the juicy bits. Overall theme of the press conference? Arizona isn’t a dominant team right now, but it’s early, and all of the players are improving. Also, coach Miller relates a tale of a young basketball player, himself. On where the team stands.- "I don’t know if we are ready right now. I really think we have a great opportunity the next four days here to get a lot better from where we were on Sunday. We made improvement from a week ago from our scrimmage against Utah to this game, this weekend. So I anticipate the same amount of improvement." On injuries hampering practice time.- "One of the things that I’m anxious about is to get Kyryl back to practice. You know, he missed roughly a week with a concussion. He’s back today. And up until now, either Alex has missed because of his back or Kyryl has missed because of his concussion, and then Kevin missed a week. So really, I’m hopeful in the next four days we can have our entire team in practice. Not only does that make our team better, but I think It’d be good individually for those guys to really be able to get four consecutive days in." Plenty more quotes from coach Miller after the jump.
On the scrimmage against Augustana College.- "A lot of good things this weekend, a lot of things we needed to improve on. But Alex’s play was one of the bright parts to this weekend. It’s not because all of a sudden he became a great low post scorer, as much as …he’s got really good size, something our team really needs. He knows his role. He doesn’t try to be anything that he isn’t. And he can really have a fit for this year defending another teams post player."
On how he’ll use C’s Kyryl Natyazhko and Alex Jacobson.- "I think the combination of Kyryl and Alex, although they’re different players in some regards in different stages of their career, they really give us the same thing in a positive way. Both guys know who they are. I think they both really open up scoring opportunities for their teammates by setting screens. They know what to do, and they’re big around the basket. Defensively, they’re bigger. It’s not as easy to score up close to the basket if they’re in there. In particular if Derek’s at the four while they’re at the five, it makes us more of a legitimate, physically bigger team."
On the poor play of Momo Jones.- "It’s going to be easy right now for myself or everybody to kind of cast doubt towards MoMo. Because he didn’t play well the other night, I’m not sure what he did well, and I think Momo would be the first person to admit that. But it’s like that college QB that hasn’t played the position full time and now you’re asking him to do it. To me, there’s a transition period that you have to understand is part of the equation."
On the exhibition and scrimmage results.- "We’re zero and zero. There’s teams who lose an exhibition game, there’s teams who get that fools gold where they played really well, but in large part, it’s because the team they played against wasn’t very good. I think the good news here is we’ve played a scrimmage and an exhibition game against really solid, sound fundamental teams and because of that I think we have a better feel for where we’re at, good and bad. And that’s the objective here in October-November, to improve."
On freshman Daniel Bejarano not playing in the scrimmage.- "Daniel is a fantastic kid, but not everybody gets to play and the reason he didn’t play had nothing to do with his demeanor or his attitude. It’s just that in practice, he has not been able to have three weeks of practice worthy of playing."
A reminder from coach Miller that some freshmen have a ‘light come on‘ quicker than others.- "In the middle of November of my own freshman year, a long time ago, I questioned whether I could play in the University of Pittsburgh in the Big East. I can remember calling home saying ‘I just don’t know if I can do it’. Six months later, I was the freshman of the year in the conference, and it’s like, how did that happen? Well, your lack of experience is overwhelming sometimes in the beginning, and different players come on at different times."
On the upcoming match-ups.- "I know this, with the team we have and where we’re at, right now every game that we play is a dangerous game. Every team that we play, you’re going to have an uncomfortable feeling at some point in the game because we’re not at the point where we will overwhelm you with experience and depth and talent. I do think were a team that’s going to really get better as the season goes on, and pick up, in some regards, where we left off last year. But, every time we play a game it’s going to be meaningful."
"I will say that once we’ve come out of our first six games, we’ll really have seen a lot. We’ll have seen really good programs, we’ll have played away from home, played virtually four or five different styles. And I think the experience level of our team will dramatically increase."