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The University of Utah Athletics
Quotes from Larry Krystkowiak's Weekly Press Conference
12/8/2014 12:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Dec. 8, 2014
On the daunting schedule:
This stretch of games really helps us simulate a tough Pac-12 road trip. We expect two hostile environments and we just want to keep following the blueprint. We survived against Wichita State and now we head in to two tough environments this week with BYU and Kansas.
On closing out close games:
We took a look at how we lost the close games last year. You count on having a solid plan so you know what you need to run. We've done a lot of situational work in practices. The coaches and players have another year under their belt so you hope that experience helps. Short of that there aren't any little things we try and tweak. We missed a bunch of things against Wichita. We had a chance to put that away and we didn't. Luck comes into it to a certain degree. When you feel like you're going to make shots, you usually do. I'd rather not be in a close game at the end after being up double figures. We blow an assignment and then miss free throws. A lot of factors come into play so we need to tighten things up.
On basketball taking center stage after no football game this year:
That's the first I thought of that. I'm not getting caught up in it. I'll stay off social media like our players and hopefully they pay attention to the people in our program and who matters. Externally, we are in the moment and not getting caught up in replacing football.
On Jordan's performance last season and what will be missing:
The rim was really big for him last year. Especially from 3. It added up quickly when you look at his stats. As a team, we were solid defensively and had great ball movement. We're definitely going to have to play great transition defense. BYU is one of the fastest in the nation at getting the ball and taking a shot. Tyler Haws is good as any guard in the country. What's the big thing we need to do? Probably the transition defense and having that as our mindset. Concentration during the game will be important. We need to get on to the next play. On the road those things can mushroom and it seemed like last year we rode that tide to a nice victory.
On Kyle Collinsworth:
He's a terrific player. He's really solid all around and plays point guard for them. It says a great deal about his determination and work ethic to return so quickly from his injury. Basketball is tough to come back to and on top of that, it looks like he lost weight. I'm glad he's back. It's good for them and this game. A key component to our defense will be trying to shut him down.
On the possibility of playing Jakob and Dallin at the same time:
They provide some versatility in the lineup. It's certainly feasible in these next two games. The "4's" and "5's" do the same thing in our offense, other than out-of-bounds plays usually. It's what the game calls for. If we aren't rebounding or doing well on the interior, then that versatility comes into play. If BYU goes small, we don't necessarily have to. We have a versatile roster that allows us to make decisions.
On postgame comments last week:
Everyone is different. Me cracking a joke shouldn't do anything. If it lit a fire, so be it. Coaches and players look for motivation any way they can. Once the ball gets tipped I don't know how much it matters. You want to have some gamesmanship. It's good for the rivalry. We can see if it fired them up after the game.
On BYU head coach Dave Rose:
I have a ton of respect for Coach Rose. I think talking about respect and being cordial with one another is one thing but we always want to win this game. We share the same backyard so it always helps with recruiting and headlines
On free-throw shooting:
We call it "taking our daily vitamins." We've been taking 100 a day and we've been working with guys who have struggled on routines. We are only making 2-of-3 tries at the moment, which is not good. I'm not happy with the turnovers either so when we mess up in practice, we do a little running, a little conditioning. The sloppiness has to stop
On playing at BYU:
It's a great environment. Their arena gets revved up for the rivalry game. We were fired up here last here thanks to our fans. There is always a lot riding on the game with tons of emotion from players and fans. It's a hostile place so you have to show patience and poise. You can't get caught up when momentum isn't going your way. Home court makes a difference. We saw it last week so we'll see what it does for them.
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