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Coach Stallings Featured on SEC Summer Teleconference 7/19/2004
Coach Stallings Featured on SEC Summer Teleconference Vanderbilt Head Coach Kevin Stallings spoke on the Southeastern Conference’s summer teleconference of men’s basketball coaches on Monday. A transcript of Stallings’ comments follows. On Vanderbilt’s returning starters: “We return three guys who started for us late in the season: Mario Moore, our point guard; Corey Smith, our small forward; and Dawid Przybyszewski, who was one of our post players. We also return Jason Holwerda and Julian Terrell who both started a significant number of games last year. “For the first time since our staff has been here, we feel like we have more upperclassmen as returning starters than we had have (in the past), which is a good thing for our league. “We’re very excited about how our season ended last year with the Sweet 16 appearance and hopefully our players have carried that momentum into our offseason. I think they have. We’ve had a good spring and summer so far. You never know what’s going to happen one season to the next, but we like the mindset of our team right now. We’re looking forward to October so we can practice.” On the type of adjustment the 2004-05 team will have to make with the departure of Matt Freije: “Matt was a guy that for four years we could go to to get a basket when we needed one. Fortunately for us, as the season wore on, Mario Moore and Dawid Przybyszewski became two guys who were producers for us. We’ve always felt like Corey Smith has been very capable, maybe more capable than he has shown, of producing points for us. “Mario played very well for us, particularly in the SEC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament. He shoots the ball well from outside. He’s got the kind of quickness you want in a point guard in our league. He’s a very good overall player. “Corey brings toughness to our team. But with Matt’s absence, Corey will have to step up and score more points. Przybyszewski and Terrell will have to score more as well. “There’s going to be a point vacuum with Matt leaving and I don’t think we will have one guy that is going to assume that role. But collectively, our guys have grown and matured and gotten better. Hopefully, we’ll be ready to absorb the 20 points a game that we lost from Matt and distribute that evenly among the other players.” On how the newcomers will impact the team: “We’re excited about our freshmen class and we think that we’ve got some guys that shoot the ball very well. We’ve also upgraded our athleticism. It’s a class that is as good as (any) we’ve been able to bring to Vanderbilt in terms of speed and quickness. “Alex Gordon is a point guard that has deep range and great quickness. Shan Foster was very, very highly recruited and will certainly have an opportunity to impact our team right away. As will DeMarre Carroll, who is from Birmingham, Ala., and really has a great feel for the game. We signed two post players, Alan Metcalfe and Davis Nwankwo, that will give us some size and beef up front. Both guys are going to be big enough and strong enough to absorb the punishment that you take in our league. “We’re excited about this class and we certainly look for one or two, if not more, to impact us immediately next year.” On how the success of last year has helped set the mindset for the coming season: “The players really have been able to use that as a springboard. It has helped excite them to see what they could do and in what they were able to accomplish. They’ve taken that into their offseason workouts, in the weightroom, and really tried to build on that. “They are a confident group which is what we’ve wanted. I think the experience of how our season finished up was the key to that confidence. They are excited about the upcoming season. I think that they probably feel like they have a little bit to prove with Matt Freije being gone. Matt was a guy that got most of the credit for our success and he deserved a lot of it. Their mindset is wanting to prove to people that they can be a successful team without him.” On how recruiting has changed since the recent trends in the NBA Draft and the elimination of the 5/8 rule: “I don’t think it has changed anything for us because, at this point, we haven’t been able to recruit anybody that could go straight from high school to the NBA. The landscape is changing because the NBA Draft is becoming more about potential than it is about guys that are productive. I don’t know if that’s a phase that we’re in and we’ll return to something other than that in a few years or not. I think that remains to be seen. “None of those things have affected our approach in how we go about our business. We’re out there trying to find the best guys that we can that can do the job both on the court and in the classroom. Hopefully, we’ve been able to do that effectively and will continue to be effective in doing that.” On whether or not the events at Baylor brought to the forefront the fact that coaches need to have more access to the players: “There are a lot of things that occur that, if we had more access to our players, fewer devastating events like that one would happen. Unfortunately, with the wrongdoings of some coaches, the skeptics and the cynics are going to say that it will just going to increase wrongdoing the more access you have. I really believe the more access that we as coaches have with our players, by and large, will decrease the number of off-the-court incidences.” Was that a wake-up call to coaches: “Anytime something like that happens you take a look at yourself and your program and you say, ‘is there anything that we’re doing or not doing that could allow something like that to happen.’ I would like to think that we keep pretty close tabs on our guys at Vanderbilt, and probably unnecessarily so. But, it’s what we do. It’s what we enjoy. It’s why we coach because we want to have a relationship with the players and have access to them.” On who are the strongest returning teams in the SEC: “I would say Florida, Alabama, Kentucky and perhaps Mississippi State are the four teams that return the most and would be picked the highest in the preseason. The way Alabama finished last season, and with most of their guys coming back, they are going to be awfully, awfully strong. Florida’s got virtually everybody back from that team and they were obviously very good. Those two return the most and I think Kentucky and Mississippi State are also right there.” Click here to view a transcript of the entire press conference, featuring all 12 SEC men’s basketball coaches. |
