Rosiak / ND Game / Brey Intervew

[mu_hilltopper]

.. I didn't know the game on Saturday was ND's Senior Night.   Just what we needed.



http://www.jsonline.com/blog/?id=308

Notre Dame preview[/b

]Here are some excerpts from Notre Dame coach Mike Brey's news conference Thursday morning leading into the Marquette game.

The Fighting Irish, ranked No. 23 in the ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll, are 21-6 overall and 9-5 in the Big East.

What have you seen of MU and Dominic James on tape so far? They're so good I'm not even going to look at them. (laughs) They're really talented and it's not only him. The perimeter is a quick, active, slashing perimeter that makes them go. Then on the other end they can really guard you.

Did you really feel as though your team had a chance to be playing for a first-round bye in the Big East tournament this late in the season? Absolutely. Fourth of July I said to my wife after about four beers that we'll be playing for a bye against Marquette. Mark it down. (laughs) No, there's no way you probably thought it was going to unfold like that. I did think at Christmas, with how we played and where we were at Christmas before the Big East, I really thought then we had the potential to play for a bye. When we lost to McAlarney, I wasn't so sure about that, quite frankly. But how this group kind of reorganized itself in January, we've always kind of talked about that a little bit, that we'd be in position to be able to chase down a bye.

Are you worried about Russell Carter and Colin Falls maybe being a bit too pumped up Saturday, seeing as it's Senior Day? You talk to Russell and Colin. We'll discuss it a little bit. The thing is they've seen other guys go through it and talk to other guys that have gone through it and that probably helps. We'll address it but not overly. Our ceremony's not too long or too detailed.

Do you worry about Jerel McNeal as much as you do James? I think he's as dangerous, if not more. Those two guys really make them click. How they defend and how they can get into your lane, how they change ends. The thing that we tried to do and have done a good job with, but this will be the ultimate challenge is taking away transition. Slowing a team down. We have a lot of teams we've played that run on misses, and you can work on that. We make a lot, we make teams take the ball out of the net a lot so they can't run as much. This team runs as well on makes as it does on misses. So that's a big concern. But I'm as concerned about McNeal as James. They're both really good.

What makes McNeal so good? He lets the game come to him. Then with what he does stealing the ball, easy buckets, it's kind of demoralizing. Obviously at South Florida, there's one. He gets key steals at such key times. That one won a game but he gets them to break a team's momentum and gets them going. I don't want to downplay Matthews because he's a heck of a player too. But the McNeal-James combo, coming at you with speed and being able to take you off the dribble and get to the basket, and then how they can quickly and physically defend you is the first thing you've got to deal with when you talk about Marquette preparation.

Do you talk up the point-guard matchup with your freshman point guard Tory Jackson? The one thing that helps Tory is he's so competitive you want a little bit of that. He's a young man who's continually wanting to prove himself as a heck of a guard, and I think he's done that. He is a real challenge-oriented guy so to throw a little bit of the head-to-head in there to keep his heart beating is good, just to not let it distract him. Now, with as many games as he's played, my whole thing is becoming a college guard. He gets it, how to use his weapons. But knowing that those guys are coming, that'll have him ready to go. And I think that's a good thing to a degree.

What can you expect from a Tom Crean-coached team? I would say intensity, toughness defensively, rebounding. And it's a Michigan State, Tom Izzo theme, which is where he had his training. That would be the general theme. Organized on offense, sets, not necessarily motion. Sets that change throughout the year, and sets to get the right guys shots in the right areas.

MU coach Tom Crean, following practice at the Al McGuire Center on Thursday afternoon:

How can you slow down Notre Dame? We don't want to go there and trade baskets. That's not going to win a game for us. We've got to come down and learn from when we've been successful on the road we've had a mind set that's a certain way, and when we haven't been successful on the road I think we've had a different mind set. That mind set borders on how we come out and guard. If we do not come out with a great defensive mentality and a mentality where it's going to physical and we have to be aggressive on the boards...then we have to work the offense a little bit. We can't come down and have a lot of turnovers. We can't be overzealous with three-point shots. Those are the keys to beating a team like that. If we come down and get into a run-and-shoot match with them we're going to have a tough time because they're at home, they'll have a crowd behind them and they're very, very comfortable playing that way. We're not going to try to win the game 48 to 46 either, but we have to set a tempo that works for us.

Is that what you got away from at Georgetown and DePaul? I think Georgetown was an anomaly because we were playing pretty good basketball but we had the foul trouble and the sickness with two key, key guys and we could never get a rhythm. And then our shot selection wasn't great, we just weren't as good on the front line and they had too many guys that could make plays in that game. The game that we really squandered on the road was DePaul because our transition defense wasn't good, our communication wasn't good. We came out like we were playing our first road game of the year, and that's what was disappointing there. If you don't talk on the road and you don't come back and not only get back in transition but match up and stop people...what we've got to do here is really get back to the three-point line because they're so good at that. But I think that's what hurt us in those games. In the games on the road we were pretty good at establishing a tempo. And even when we were down the game wasn't getting away from us. It's so much about seizing momentum and when you don't have it getting it back and when you have it, keeping it. That's basically what hurt us the other night. We had momentum until the last minute of the game against Louisville and we lost it. They seized it, but we gave it to them. We gave them momentum because we didn't make a couple of key defensive stops and obviously the free-throw shooting's a part of that.

What's left for your team to play for in the regular season? There's so many things to play for. There's a lifetime of basketball left for this team. We want to play better. We've got some time to get better, and we've got some time to rest and heal. We're still dealing with guys that are sick right now. It's going around, it's all over. I don't know if it's all over Milwaukee but it's all over Marquette. We've got guys dealing with that so we really haven't had a full practice this week. Next week we've got a chance to really lock in and almost make it like a minicamp situation. Take a little time off, really lock into the fundamentals, scrimmage, get better and prepare for Pittsburgh. Then it's a quick turnaround. Then you're dealing with rapid-fire games. The players would prefer that anyways. We've had some really good, spirited practices. Short and pretty sufficient.

Is there still a chance of winning the regular-season title? I don't know that we would mathematically. We could share it. We want to find a way to win our last two and see what happens, knowing that both of them are going to be unbelievably strenuous games - going on the road and then playing Pitt. We just move on. Nobody's discouraged. Let's just move on. We're having an excellent season and let's keep building on it.

What kind of year is Dominic James having? Much improvement. I would say anybody that's facing the expectation level that he has and had the kind of year that he had a year ago, it's really hard to...it's almost like certain people expect a perfect game. That's not going to happen. He's too young. I think his game the other night against Villanova was in the conversation of the best games he's ever played here. Floor game, defensively, mind set - just a nastiness about him the other night that nobody on the other team could look forward to. That's what we need from him. He had great clarity in that game. He's learning so much about being a point guard and about making everybody else better while at the same time being able to do the things that he does. Then you have the incredible athleticism...I think he's having an outstanding year. And really, my opinion and what I see on film and what we see on film is all that matters to be honest with you anyways. We would not be at 22 wins without the season he has had, and he continues to improve. Now is he anywhere near where he's going to be? I don't think he is. I think he'll continue to get a lot better, and I think all our young guys are like that.

[PuertoRicanNightmare]

Thanks for posting.

I'm curious, anybody know how long MU practices every day? I see Crean referenced some shorter practices this week, I'm just trying to gauge what the normal length practice would be.

[WashDCWarrior]

He asked Crean about the possibility of still winning a regular season title.

Am I correct that it can't happen?  The best we could finish is 11-5.  Both Pitt and GU have 11 wins already and they play each other, so one will have at least 12 wins.  Right?

[NavinRJohnson]

He asked Crean about the possibility of still winning a regular season title.

Am I correct that it can't happen?