Nov. 10, 2008

BERKELEY - After viewing the tape of the exhibition game, do you have different thoughts than you had going in?

No, it was kind of what I thought. When Seattle Pacific made two or three passes and sprinted through, I thought we were in trouble because the pace of the game was different than what we've been playing in practice. There was a lot of stuff we hadn't worked on. We are probably behind a lot of teams because we're trying to get the basics in and give the team a template that covers as many situations as we can. When you are starting new, everything is new and harder to learn. We have big guy issues with Harper Kamp practicing only one every four days because he is one of our best big guys. It has me really concerned and we'll try to get him on the floor as much as we can. He is day to day. The question with him is how much the knee can tolerate and how strong we can get the quad. With Harper hurt it changes our lineup a little, makes us play smaller. I only have Jamal (Boykin), Omondi (Amoke) and Max (Zhang) to play along Jordan Wilkes, and that means Theo (Robertson) plays the four, which makes us play some long range guys at the three. We like what we've seen with Jorge (Gutierrez) going in, but he is only 6-3, so then how do you rebound the ball? So maybe we go bigger and move Patrick (Christopher) to three, but that presents new problems.

It doesn't change what you do, but it changes how you do it. We've got a lot of things we'll have to deal with. We'll get better as we go along with our execution. If we run into a big powerful team we're going to have to figure out a way to protect ourselves a little bit.

Does that mean Jordan [Wilkes] gets a lot of minutes?

Well, yes, we have numbers issues. We don't have a lot of depth, or a lot of big guys. We have Taylor (Harrison) and Harper on the sidelines, who are two guys who should be getting fairly significant minutes. We lost our two big guys from last year (Ryan Anderson and DeVon Hardin) and didn't replace them. There are three guys that you might have had that you don't, so we're going to have to work around that.

Are you worried about the other team for this first game?

We have to worry because Pacific is so well coached. They are a very veteran team. They're going to be able to execute certain nuances very well. If you make a mistake against Pacific, they'll make you pay for it. We're younger and we will make mistakes by contrast. They took a tour this year which gave them some extra practices and allowed them to integrate their system and mess around with some new stuff. They come into the season ahead.

The thing I don't know for sure is how he'll adjust to game level intensity and close situations. We have not yet needed a stop anyone and we are not ever threatened in practice against each other. Now the question is, who is going to step up and be better than we thought or be the dominant rebounder in a real game. We have some guys who will probably play better when the lights are on. We had a lot of breakdowns on defense (in the exhibition game), we haven't really gotten these guys to take defense personally. They're trying, but there's a difference between trying and refusing to let a team score.

Are you way behind on defense compared to offense?

No, its about equal. Some of our nuances on offense have had breakdowns. Some guys might be better equipped to make plays on offense than on defense, but it's the execution that is hurting. We've been working a lot on all of these things, and we have to back off now because these guys are starting to fatigue. They have been out there three hours plus everyday. We don't have a lot of depth. We need to back off and crisp it up a little bit.