Indiana men’s basketball head coach Darian DeVries addressed the media after the Hoosiers’ 86-69 win over Kansas State on Tuesday night at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
Here’s what he had to say:
Q: Darian,
Tayton said Conor has been talking about this match-up defensively for, like, three days and his desire to go up against Haggerty. You’ve known him longer than anybody else in this room, has he always had that? And how quickly do you think he realized that that kind of mentality can help set a tone for a team as well as scoring, rebounding, etc. can?
DeVRIES: Yeah, I said from the beginning he’s so valuable to a team and that’s all he cares about. Like, he loves that challenge. He’s been that way his whole life. Just let me go guard him. Let me dive on the floor. Let me take charges. Let me do all the scrappy things that impact winning. He doesn’t care about scoring. He can score but he doesn’t care. He just wants to win. That’s why he’s the ultimate team guy. I love having him out there. You can see why watching him against a guy that averaging 28 points, coming into it, he did an unbelievable job.
Q: Yeah, can you talk about that, the strategy on defending PJ, what the game plan was and Conor is part of that but the overall game plan.
DeVRIES: Conor had done it before. He had done it when we were at Drake a couple of times. When the shot was up, we had him run to Haggerty on every shot so we jam him a little bit, make or miss, and not let them start their transition game. They were still really good at makes but he would get it to him and then on misses as well. He wasn’t the one that was going to be bringing it in transition. It takes a lot of discipline to be able to do that every time and I thought he was terrific at it. The risk of it too is when you run one of you get-back guys to a guy now you’re exposed on the back end if the other guys don’t do their job. I thought collectively the group really was able to execute that portion of the game plan tonight.
Q: You guys shot 71% on two. I know you want to choose threes but in a match-up like this was it your intent to test them after the balance, get to the line and Reed got to the line 15 times.
DeVRIES: Yeah, we talked about that at halftime. I think the first half we were a little anxious on a few of the threes. I think we shot 15 out of 18 shots or something like that. It was is lot, which is fine. We’re more than fine with that. We thought we needed to get more paint touches in the second half, so we wanted to run a little bit more of or stuff where we got Tayton going downhill getting to the rim. And then if we got some kickout threes, great, but we were able to create a little confusion when they were switching, and I thought Tayton did a good job of capitalizing on that.
Q: On that stretch I think you were up 20-4 and then it dwindled to 22-20. What did you see in that that kind of led on that run of theirs? And then when you guys, I think it was 39-27 at half, what kind of expanded that lead there?
DeVRIES: The start we did a really good job because they didn’t get in transition. We were scoring, which is part of it and we didn’t turn it over. During that stretch we had a few quicker shots than we would have liked that I thought we could have gotten better possession on.
And then some turnovers which led to broken floor opportunities, and that’s where they’re elite. You get them in the broken floor, you’re putting yourself at a big disadvantage. During that little stretch, that’s what happened. We didn’t get conversions on offense so now they’re not taking it on the net and we had a few turnovers as well. When you combine those two, they were playing with a broken floor every possession of that stretch.
Q: [something about Reed Bailey, lighting a fire] under him to be more aggressive?
DeVRIES: I thought Reed really took the challenge of, hey, there’s some open space. They were pressed out pretty good, making some of our ball reversals a little tougher so we wanted guys, hey, we’re going to create a little more room for our drivers to go. We took Reed, he still had a few, we took him off the top of the floor and got hem down in the corners and out in the wings a little bit and then he would come and get it and now there would be a little more space for him to go drive it.
I thought of the six games we’ve played, I thought by far, especially in that second half, this was the most aggressive he’s been and that was the things that excited us about him as we saw him this summer and fall. He was doing those things in practice and tonight was a time I thought you really got to see some of the things he’s capable of and it’s hard. When you’re that size and you got that type of skill set and he can drive it with the speed that he does, it gives us some opportunities to create some mismatches.
Q: There was a point in that first half you called a time-out and it looked like you were a little frustrated with Reed. Was there a point in the first half or in halftime where you challenged him specifically to be that aggressive in the second half?
DeVRIES: I think just normal coaching stuff. Just, hey. Be more aggressive. So he did. Good job, Reed.
Q: Yeah, Darian, with Trent Sisley, 12 points tonight, what does he do both offensively and defensively for you guys, specifically as a freshman, to excel in his role that’s so rare in these days of college basketball?
DeVRIES: What I love about Trent, he’s a freshman and we have Tayton and Lamar and Tucker and Sam and Reed. He doesn’t get really much plays run for him right now as a freshman but, man, he impacts the game. He will fall into double digits. He will fall into rebounds because he knows how to play. He finds his role and he really capitalizes on it and a lot of it is just with effort plays. I think he does a great job with that.
And he’s long, as you guys can see. He gets out and runs. He does a lot of things that, hey, you’re worried about all this and then all of a sudden Trent’s laying it in or Trent’s getting a rebound. He’s just getting better and better and more confident. You can see it in practice and it’s carried over into his games. For a freshman, he’s pretty poised out there for us.
Q: Kansas state got a couple offensive rebounds late in the game but it was never really a factor throughout the game. Were you happy with the progress you made in that regard?
DeVRIES: Yeah, I thought our defensive rebounding was much, much better. They did get a couple there real late. Outside of that, I thought the guys really did a good job of limiting them, especially in the first half they didn’t take as many threes. I can’t remember how many they got up, seven. So that’s part of it, too. When you don’t have those long shots, long rebounds and guys are running in there. We were able to keep guy guys in front of us a lot more because we could. Now we were in perfect box-out position as opposed to being in rotation where now you got to go find guys.
So still plenty of room for improvement, but I thought we’re taking some strides there.
Q: Coach following up on that rebound, you had six different guys with four or more rebounds tonight. So, it was a team effort. What led to that spreading out of grabbing those boards?
DeVRIES: Spirited practices. (Laughter) I think the guys did a good job of continuing to understand the things we have to improve on. We had that extra day in there so we were able to do a little bit more body on body type stuff so I think the guys embraced it. I thought they did a good job collectively.
Again, we have to continue to make that our mindset every night, we have to defensive rebound if we’re going to be good and I think the guys that get that, I think they’ve seen it enough now that we just got to continue to improve and improve and make it a priority.
