BATON ROUGE – LSU men’s basketball coach Trent Johnson met with the media Thursday afternoon to look back on Wednesday’s 76-71 loss at Mississippi State and Saturday’s 3 p.m. matchup with No. 1 ranked Kentucky.
The game will be televised on the SEC Network and broadcast on the LSU Sports Radio Network. Tickets are available at LSUtix.net and at the LSU Athletics Ticket Office.
Here are some of Coach Johnson’s comments from the press conference:
“I don’t know if you would want to call it a light day, but we are not going to do anything on the floor. The kids were out here early around 2 p.m. (this afternoon). A lot of them were shooting and had a little bounce to them, which is good. We had a (late) bus ride; we were supposed to take a charter (flight) back right after the game but weather didn’t allow us to do that. We had a long and quiet bus ride back (from Starkville) and had a chance to watch the game tape. Obviously, a lot of them had class early (Thursday morning). The most important thing for us right now, they are in video session which is going to be about 30 minutes with Coach (Donny) Guerinoni. Some of them will have optional weights (after) and then we will dismiss them to come back tomorrow at 3 p.m. (for practice). We’ll get up and down for about an hour and a half to two hours and then go from there.”
On the Mississippi State game…
“46-26 on the glass was probably the biggest difference. When it got away from us, and when I say got away from us, I mean when they got their lead, we had some transition problems. We always send our one, two and three (positions) back (on defense). We had some guys uncharacteristically chase the ball down as oppose to sprint back and cover the hole, cover the basket. That hurt us when they ran out and got a couple of dunks. In your reference to the flurry at the end, they were up five. One of the things I always talk about with this team is to take the five second count as opposed to throwing it away when you are on the road and playing against a really talented team like that. That way I can have timeouts going down the stretch. Well, I didn’t have any. (MSU coach) Rick (Stansbury) had called a timeout when they were up five. I drew it up because I knew we would be in a situation where we probably wouldn’t be able to foul a guy. We drew up who we wanted to foul 30 (Wendall Lewis), 22 (Brian Bryant), so on and so forth.
“Well, (Anthony) Hickey steals it and hits a three so now we just need to guard (instead of foul). You look out there. One guy is guarding, one guy is trying to chase and foul. I am at the other end (of the court) trying to get their attention to slow down because they don’t need to (foul), so it is time and score (situation). That was the flurry right there. When you look out there, the bottom line was even in the situation where we fouled the wrong guy, if we would have fouled 22 (Bryant) we still would have been ok because at that time he was their worst free-throw shooter. It still worked out in the situation where we still, thanks to Anthony’s ability to make a play, we were in a situation where we still had a chance to win it. Then, when all the other nonsense was going on and they were looking at the scorer’s table (whether Ralston Turner‘s shot was a three-pointer). What we wanted to do, we call it ‘free throw line run it’ because they were at the free throw line a lot. We tried to get in transition to shoot a quick three or get to the rim. We made an adjustment, and we wanted Justin (Hamilton) to set that on-ball (screen) higher. He set it at the normal spot where we usually set it. If he would have set it up higher, Anthony could have maybe split that thing and draw-and-kick. But he (Hickey) got too far over, obviously threw it back to Justin and they got a hand on it … Again, Mississippi State made plays. We had opportunities, we are learning from it and we will continue to learn from it.”
On this being John Calipari’s most talented team at Kentucky…
“I haven’t seen them close and personal. I haven’t seen (Anthony) Davis since high school, (Michael) Kidd-Gilchrist, and (Marquis) Teague. I would have to think that. One of the things John does well that I don’t think he gets enough credit for, forget how talented they are and forget about how talented the teams he had are, he gets a lot of guys that are really talented to play hard and guard. They play hard, and they take no prisoners. That’s the thing I have always been impressed with going back to when I first studied his teams from UMASS on. They play really hard. When you have that kind of talent, the kind of talent he has had, all those guys. I’m not saying this team is like that because I think this team is special. Most guys have a sense of entitlement, but they come after you now. There is some talent there.”
On if preparation for Kentucky is hard …
“When you say prepare and this is not bulletin board material, it is easy because you know what you going to get. There are no weaknesses. You know if you don’t do this, boom, you are done in that possession. From an individual talent level, I chuckle at this. The national experts say (Marquis) Teague is their weakness, really? Teague is going to play in the NBA in a year or two. All of that being said, there are certain things that we have to do. There are certain things we have to do well in terms of being aggressive, attack and play with some confidence. I fully expect us to do those things. If we don’t do those things well, just like anything else, we are going to struggle.”
On getting Johnny O’Bryant III back…
“If he is where he was in terms of practicing for the game (Wednesday) for Saturday that is good enough for me. He had fresh legs, he had a lot of bounce and he was really aggressive. I think the worst thing that has happened to him was when he got hurt because that light bulb was on. Quite frankly, I was surprised how well he practiced the day before we played Mississippi State. Just in terms of the breakdowns that he didn’t have from an offensive standpoint. He came up, shot a couple jumpers, knocked them down and came up again. He was in the proper spot at the proper time, and he showed no favoritism of his hand. Usually guys get real tentative with that type of thing, but he was real aggressive. I was a little fearful one time right in front of us when he went to the glass offensively and he hit it (his hand) on the rim hard. He is fine.”
On Anthony Hickey playing against Kentucky…
“For me, that (emotions) has always been something that you have to deal with during the course of the game. What makes him good is he is emotional, he cares and he has courage. I would rather try to slow him down during the game than slow him down before the game, if that makes sense. This is an emotional game, college basketball. The only thing that I am going to talk to him about, just like I talk to this team, this is another game on our schedule guys. I know what everybody else is saying. If we come out of here and get out of character, that is not good. I am not going to talk to him about it (emotions), I don’t need to. His mom and his dad are going to be here. He grew up there (in Kentucky), and he knows what that is about. But he also knows that if he is not on an even keel and not making good decisions, things aren’t going to happen for us and for him.”
On Andre Stringer coming off the bench…
“It was either going to be Andre (Stringer) or Ralston (Turner) (coming off the bench). Ralston had shown some life prior to. I just wanted them to loosen up, relax and play. They care so much, and I think it showed with Andre. Certain people might have thought it was because of size because of (MSU’s Rodney) Hood and all of that. He (Stringer) played against those guys in high school. Eddie (Ludwig) is pretty steady. Eddie has fresh legs because he hasn’t played a lot. He needs fresh legs because his lack of quickness at times hurts him versus certain teams, certain people. That position as it relates to Eddie, as it relates to Andre and as it relates to Ralston. All three of those guys have experience, and I know I can trust them at crucial times. John (Isaac) hasn’t been put in a lot of crucial situations. Sometimes, he thinks shot first, although he is probably a better defender out of all of our perimeters. It is almost where you have to pick your poison sometimes in terms of who you get in and the match-up … I haven’t made a decision (about a starting lineup for the Kentucky game). A lot of it might depend on who they (Kentucky) goes with. If they go with (Darius) Miller, I may go with the same lineup. If they go with (Doron) Lamb, because Lamb is a hand full, so we’ll see (Saturday).”