Q. At point guard, are you expecting one to emerge, or do you think this could be a point guard by committee this year, not necessarily committee, but multiple?
COACH MCCAFFERY: We do have a lot of options at that position. I think we’ll see Tony there at times. I think Dasonte and Brock and Josh Dix can all play that position. Normally you don’t have that many options.
Fortunately, all of those guys can also make shots. So sometimes they’re sort of forced to be in a distributor position because no one really scores at all. But at the end of the day, we just want to push it.
I think those guys are good assist guys with no turnovers. Their numbers from when they started here, and then obviously since the young guys got here, they’re really good. And we track that stuff every day. So I trust all four of those guys to do a good job there.
Q. How much has Dasonte grown in the last few months, do you think?
COACH MCCAFFERY: I think last year for Dasonte, it was a good year in a lot of ways, but as the season went on, as you saw, we shortened the bench a little bit. In all honesty, I probably should have played him more. I said that before.
He and Josh Dix, I thought I should have played them both more. They both played a fair amount, but they both deserve to play more and should have played more. With Dasonte, we played him at both spots. Sometimes when you bring a guy in you only play him at one spot, he develops in that spot.
For him, we were moving him back and forth because he can score and he can distribute. I think the growth part of his game is he’s moving the ball. He’s getting rid of the ball more to our shooters, to our guys in the post, on the break, and he’s been really good. So I’ve been impressed with him.
Q. For people like me who haven’t seen Ben Krikke play, what does he do, and how do you see him fitting with you?
COACH MCCAFFERY: Well, he’s a perfect fit for us. And that’s why we went so hard at him out of the portal. Clearly, we needed that position with the departure of Kris Murray.
He’s different than Kris, but he’s big and physical. He’s athletic. He’s got an unbelievable motor. He can really score and never stops working. He’s very competitive.
I think most importantly he understands motion, and as you know, if you’re going to transition to motion, you have to have guys who understand how to play with four other people, how to play fast without making mistakes, how to move without the ball, how to screen and get people open, how to slip when they’re switching and that comes with experience, sometimes. He’s obviously an experienced guy.
So when you look at the fact that we have six new players — four of them are freshmen, so you have the learning curve that goes with any freshman — but when you get a guy like him, learning curve is a lot shorter because of the experience that he has.
Q. You played Payton a lot at the 4 on your foreign trip. How did that feel to you guys?
COACH MCCAFFERY: I don’t know if we said we played him at the 4. Maybe he lined up at the 4, maybe he defended the 4. But he did the same things he always does. He runs around and scores and moves well without the ball.
I will say this, to go along with your question, he is making a concerted effort to rebound a lot more. He’s always been good at that. Played him a lot at the 2 last year, it’s a little bit harder from there. So his rebounding numbers have been consistently good, in particular, on the offensive end. If you want to rebound you have to rebound offensively, as well.
I think he recognizes that we might be playing essentially four perimeter guys and a big at times. So that’s great because we can spread the floor a lot of guys can make 3s. As you know, somebody has got to rebound.
Q. What are your early impressions of how all the new faces are coming together out of the 4 and should be early impacters?
COACH MCCAFFERY: The young guys have done well. Not surprised. We expected all four of them to contribute. Brock has made a seamless transition. I think probably Sandfort, we all know what he is. Those two guys are Mr. Basketball in their state.
And Pryce can really shoot it but he’s also incredibly versatile. Owen Freeman, he’s going to be an impact player for us. A really good rebounder, physical. He’s starting to figure it out. And Ladji, same thing. He’s 260 pounds and knows how to play. He can put it on the floor. He can move the ball and cut. He’s doing a little more posting up.
He played a lot on the perimeter even at that size in high school. But along with Owen, those two guys are first class rebounders, big time rebounders. We obviously need that. When you look at the fact that Connor, Kris and Filip played 3,000 minutes, that’s a lot of minutes last year. And so we need some people to step in and make sure we can rebound in this league.
Q. For the last four years, 20-point All-American guys, is it almost an automatic that things are going to change in terms of balance, in terms of responsibilities and so forth?
COACH MCCAFFERY: I think that’s a possibility, a strong possibility because I think our team is deeper this year maybe than it’s been in quite some time.
We probably have 12 guys that I’d be comfortable playing, and that’s not usually the case. So that could manifest itself that way where we have a number of double-figure scorers, none of them averaging 20. But we have a number of guys who are capable of averaging 20.
I think starting with Tony Perkins and obviously Payton and Patrick, those guys are all double-figure scorers returning.
So depending on the minutes that they get and how much we go to our bench with our young guys, that will obviously determine whether or not they can be 20-point scorers but they’re capable of.
Q. Between those four freshmen, any of them start to really elevate? Do you see them carving out a role with this team early on?
COACH MCCAFFERY: All four of them are going to play. They’re all good players. They’re not mistake guys. They compete. Sometimes you have a guy whose body is not ready. They’re good, they’re going to be good, but it’s going to take a year. I wouldn’t say that for any of those guys.
And they all bring something to the table that’s a little different. That’s why I recruited them in the first place.
So I think in any given year — and I mean this — one of them may start, but any given year, depending on what we had, all four of those guys I would feel comfortable starting as freshmen because of their feel for the game and their body and their talent level. So I think they all deserve to play; they all will play.
Q. Have you seen Brock play on the court? When it comes to [inaudible] and winning a state championship in Illinois what is it about his intangibles that you saw that you liked and hopefully that you’re seeing now here?
COACH MCCAFFERY: There’s few players that are as good as he is with the ball in his hands. He just makes plays for people, consistently. And he keeps the aggressiveness that we want offensively all the time. He keeps coming at you, and he keeps attacking you. His decision-making is really good, typically.
He’s had some days where he tries to hit too many home runs and turns the ball over a little bit, but he comes right back. He’s going to keep coming at you.
The other thing is he can score. A lot of really creative guys off the bounce, they can’t shoot the ball outside. They can’t hit the pull-up and they can’t hit a 3. He can.
He understands if we’re running sets, if we’re running motion. He understands time and score. And it’s not often easy for a young guy to be a leader. He just has innate leadership ability.
Q. Over the years a lot of players have talked about you instilling confidence in them; you talk about instilling confidence in your players. As a coach, how do you do it early on with a freshman? And what’s the key to get them to have that level of confidence?
COACH MCCAFFERY: I think the most important thing, when they first get here, it’s new and you have to be patient. That’s the great thing about when the rules changed and we could start doing things in June, we could get those young guys ready.
There’s no screaming and yelling in practice. It’s teaching. It’s we’re going to get better. We watch film together and they learn and they grow. And they develop confidence because they’re not on edge that if I turn the ball over I’m going to get yelled at. If I miss this shot I’m going to get yelled out or I’m going to get yanked.
The only thing we will address, was it a bad shot. If you took a bad shot, well, that’s going to be addressed. But if you’re open, and as you know, I don’t care what the shot clock shows, if you’re open shoot the ball.
In the last four minutes things might change. Now we have to think. We’ve got to think a little more time and score, protect the lead or go to late-game package if we’re behind.
But I stay pretty positive with them. They stay pretty positive with themselves. I will oftentimes correct them if they passed up a shot. If they passed up an opportunity to attack. If I felt at any point in time that they were getting tentative, I would address that just as directly as I would if somebody made a mistake.
I think everybody’s comfortable in their own skin in this environment. And obviously as we get closer to the first game, there comes a little bit of a greater sense of urgency to do exactly what we need done.
But when you play the speed that we play and we’re trying to score in the 90s, there’s going to be some mistakes but as you know a couple years ago, we lead the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio. Connor did it twice. We’re going to make more free throws than our opponents attempt.
So that style is going to create some situations where guys might go off script a little bit. But if you don’t have the luxury to do that, you’ll never be the best version of yourself. And that’s my responsibility to get them to play with supreme confidence.
Q. What do you expect from Tony Perkins this year?
COACH MCCAFFERY: I expect a lot from Tony. I think he expects a lot from himself. We’ve had good leaders in the last couple of years, whether it be Luka or J-Bo or Connor. Kris and Keegan in their own way, they were both more quiet, but incredibly hard workers, incredibly consistent and played like veterans even when they were young.
So who is going to do that this year? It’s going to be Tony, Payton and Patrick. They’re our three veteran guys. So that’s what I need Tony to do, especially if he’s going to play some at the point.
