[Rosiak's Blog] Media Day recap

[ToddRosiakSays]

Media Day recap

Written by: Todd Rosiak


Hard to believe, but practice officially opens on Friday and the season is just around the corner.

It's about time.

Anyway, MU had its annual media day at the Al McGuire Center on Thursday, and I guess the most striking thing was seeing all the new faces together in one place for the first time.

The Golden Eagles' roster remains pretty much the same, aside from three newcomers. Buzz Williams' staff, however, is almost completely new. Among those involved in the day-to-day basketball operations, only strength and conditioning coach Todd Smith returns from Tom Crean's former staff.

Other than that, it was a pretty normal normal day -- lots of questions and answers, some laughs and plenty of insight into a team that enters the season ranked anywhere from 15th to 20th in the nation according to various publications' polls. Personally, I agree with that, but I'm also quick to point out that polls are about as useful as the paper they're printed on.

Anyway, here are some of the highlights of the day:

-- Williams is clearly a believer in the strength of the Big East. "I think it's the best league in the country; I think the stats will bear that out over the next 4 1/2 months," he said. "Half the league's in the top 25, three teams are in the top 10. I think it's probably four teams that are legitimately top-10 teams."

-- Williams is also clearly aware of the challenges that lie ahead of the Golden Eagles with regard to their Big East schedule. "The Big East was good to us," he said. "They made sure we played at Pitt, at Louisville, at Notre Dame. We appreciate their kindness. If we're going to compete against the best, we might as well compete against the best with everything stacked against us. That's the way we'll operate as a program."

-- What will make or break MU this season will be how its new and unfamiliar faces perform in expanded roles, according to Williams. "I think what's going to end up happening -- and I'm not trying to be a prophet -- and determine the success in the league will be dependent upon the newcomers," said Williams. "Everybody pretty much knows what the returning guys are going to be. We have three returning 1,000-point scorers in our program -- we're one of two institutions in the country that can say that.

"Obviously Wes, Dominic and Jerel have done an incredible amount of work since they've been here. But I think how good we'll be, how good we'll become, is dependent on our newcomers, and included in that are guys that maybe didn't have as significant a role last year. I think you could probably say the same thing for every other team in the league."  

-- Because of fall break, MU is allowed to head off campus to practice. So following a tip-off dinner at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago tonight, the Golden Eagles will remain in the Chicago area for the weekend. They'll do individual work earlier Friday and then practice at the University of Chicago at 5 p.m. Friday, then utilize both a fitness club and an area high school on Saturday and Sunday before heading back to campus.

"I think it worked out great," said Williams. "Good thing about leaving campus is it's just our guys. I really like that; I think that's important in Year 1 that we're going to have the first 72 hours where they're going to eat really good food and sleep in a really good bed, and we're going to work the rest of the time. Similar to the same reason we're scrimmaging at Nebraska (Nov. 2) -- we can re-enact what a road experience is going to be. I think anytime you can do those sorts of things, the growth curve is at a much faster rate."

-- Williams isn't big on outside or long-term expectations. "What are expectation level is? I can tell you what our expectation level is today," he said. "We want to be the hardest-working, most competitive program in the country today. How that relates to other teams, are we supposed to go to the NCAA tournament, how good is Dominic, Jerel and Wes...I don't like talking about all of that because it's about us and how good are we going to be as a program, a team.

"In regards to expectations, I think that's what other people say, what other people write. What we talk about are things that they've heard every single day since I've been here. I don't think that it's a chemistry project. I think we've got to work up really early, work as hard as we can possibly work for today, then wake up real early in the morning and try to do it again. My expectation for them is for what God has given them that they're the absolute best that they can be each day."

-- A fair question is how Williams, with one year of head-coaching experience, is going to match wits with the likes of Hall of Famers Jim Boeheim and Jim Calhoun, and future Hall of Famer Rick Pitino in the Big East? Williams' answer when asked that on Thursday was devoid of any pretense, that's for certain. "I'm unbelievably humble, extremely grateful. I don't think there's anything I've done in my short career that's stacked up to those coaches," he said. "I think when you've had your name called and you're in the Hall of Fame, or when you're writing best-selling books, those are two things that you don't put in the summary of Buzz Williams.

"I'm grateful that I'm the head coach at Marquette. I'm extremely humbled by it all. I really, to be honest with you, don't think a lot about Coach Boeheim other than to have genuine respect for him, and for that matter every other coach in the league. What I'm consumed with on a daily basis is my wife and my three children, those 13 players and everybody that's involved in our program. How do I compare? The answer is I don't compare. But the real answer is I'm not scared of those guys -- because of those 13 young men.

"In the end, it's going to be about them. How do I stack up? I don't stack up. Am I going to be a Hall-of-Fame coach? No. Am I going to write a book? No. What I'm going to do is work hard today, then wake up and do it again tomorrow."

-- Williams continues to keep those for whom he once worked in the fold with him at MU. Most prominent would be Dale Layer, under whom Williams was an assistant at Colorado State. Layer is now one of Williams' assistants. Williams mentioned Thursday that Lewis Orr, the man who gave Williams his start in the coaching ranks at Navarro Junior College, will now serve as a consultant to him at MU.

-- Perhaps the funniest moment came before the event even kicked off. Thanks to the years of copy editing I have under my belt at this point, I noticed that Wesley Matthews' name on the back of his brand-new game jersey was misspelled MATHEWS -- an error that not even Matthews himself noticed when he'd slipped on the jersey just minutes earlier. What was even worse was Matthews had already taken all his pictures with the jersey on, so there was a scramble to get Matthews' game jersey from last season out onto the court for him, so he could re-take the pictures. Jerel McNeal especially got a laugh out of the situation, calling Matthews 'MATT-OOZ'.

-- For the first time ever at a media day I was interviewed by a player. You can find the hilarity here, as Matthews throws some questions at me for a podcast for the MU website. Between Matthews and Dominic James interning for 540 ESPN, I may have to begin looking for another line of work in the near future.

I'll have more posts over the next few days from media day, and hope to have an update on how the opening weekend of practice went in Chicago sometime Monday.



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