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Marquette coach Buzz Williams spoke to media in Washington, D.C., today about tomorrow night’s Sweet Sixteen matchup with Miami. Below are some highlights of the conference.
On the impact of Miami losing center Reggie Johnson to injury:
“Just one less wide body. I don’t think ‑‑ maybe it will. I don’t think that it will necessarily change how they play. 23 (Jekiri Tonye) will probably get more playing time would be the first thing. They will probably play small with 35 (Kenny Kadji) at the 5 like they did the last 5 minutes against Illinois, but I don’t think anything schematically will changed.”
On his use of rotations and what we can expect against Miami in that regard:
“It’s all game specific, scouting report specific. I think in a lot of ways we play like a football team as far as how we coach and operate. You know in practice we do offensive breakdown things, defensive breakdown drills. We have a special team segment.”
“All of the hullabaloo about the subs, we’re trying to win that possession. I think our job is to ‑‑ or my job is to put ourselves as best we can, in the best possible position to win. I’m also aware that we’re probably going to be in a one or two‑possession game, so an out‑of‑bounds play at 19:40 on the clock in the first half is just as important as the out‑of‑bounds play with 2.7 seconds left, sideline out‑of‑bounds. Maybe that’s radical in how I think, but it’s the truth.”
On Chris Otule’s and Davante Gardner’s progression and the impact of having both healthy:
“It’s gone better than ever expected throughout their careers because Chris has been able to stay healthy. This is the longest time in Chris’s career that he’s been able to be in every practice and be in every game.”
“His maturation through that process has skewed the development of our team in a positive way, because he’s been a guy that we can count on.”
“Those two guys working against one other every day has been healthy. Very few teams because everything becomes ball‑screen coverage, very few teams have true 5s and sometimes that’s against you. If the game is going fast and there are multiple ball screens per possession, sometimes you aren’t going to be able to play or have the impact with the 5s that you want unless on the other end you can make them pay for being small.”
“I completely understand that because most of our career here we have played small. Not necessarily by choice but that’s how we’ve played. I think having both those guys healthy from start to finish has been something we have never had. Chris got hurt December 8th of last year, Davante gets knocked down in the last possession at Villanova last year. We coached multiple teams last year because of injuries.”
“This year we have been fortunate, Van had a runny nose one game and didn’t play, but other than that everybody has played.”
On his team’s ability to perform in clutch situations:
“I don’t know that you can appoint it to one thing or two things but I do think that you can point to culture. What is your culture, what is your culture not in March ‑‑ you can’t just wait till March. It has to be ‑‑ your work is done in the silence, and that’s what’s so hard, because nobody sees it and nobody hears it. That work that you do in silence will come out, and it will be revealed positively or negatively, and so I think that in our tenure we’ve been accountable per day, not necessarily game day.”
“So that doesn’t necessarily mean that everything we do is right. I’m not saying that it’s that way, I’m not saying that it’s wrong, either. I’m saying it’s what we believe in. Whether you’re a recruit or a trainer or a manager, everybody understands our culture, otherwise they quit really quickly.”
On preparing for Shane Larkin and Durand Scott:
“They’re as good as any backcourt in the country, bar none. Statistically, playing time, defensively. Like I said in the opening statement which is a waste of time, those guys get so much notoriety offensively that you’re not able to express defensively how good they are.”
“Those guys are both pros. I would say probably both long‑time pros. They have great intangibles, you can see it by watching them play.They play great together. Everybody within their team understands their strengths and weaknesses, and when your guards understand that, I think that makes the players around them much better.”