Below is a lightly edited transcript of Micah Shrewsberry's postgame press conference following Saturday's 67-58 loss to Florida State.
Questions are paraphrased.
MICAH SHREWSBERRY
Opening statement:
“Congrats to Florida State. I thought they came in here and really took it to us early. I didn’t think we responded very well early either. That’s a coaching issue. I have to get these guys ready to go. I have to get them fired up to play. Spend more time doing the things that we need to do to make us a better team and be able to respond from success. We had success, and I thought we stayed in the success instead of moving to what’s next. That got us early in the game.”
Could you sense that the energy and focus was lacking early?
“Unfortunately, yes. There’s no excuses. You don’t make excuses. You have to play the game no matter what happens. But I thought the moment Tae Davis got hurt in practice, the air just left the entire building. We were super energetic leading up to that point. We were guarding our asses off in what we were doing. And he went down and it like sucked the air out of the whole thing and we never got it back. Maybe I need to do more to help them in that way. You try to keep going. You have to practice, because you have to be able to prepare for Florida State. You have to be able to practice. But that’s part of, I guess, having a young team. We didn’t respond well to success. We didn’t respond well to adversity. That carried over for us at the start. That’s on me. I saw it coming. You could see it. You could sense it. You try and talk to guys about it. Hey, hey, hey. But also, you have to be a player-led team. It’s not always a coach-led team. You have to try and get the right guys to really rally this group when you see it. I didn’t think our energy was there. Obviously, our focus. You’re 1-of-8 from the free-throw line in the first half – that’s focus. You go 19-for-21 the other day, but you miss free throws the game before that. So it’s not a technical issue. I’m shooting free throws the same exact way. It’s a focus issue. It’s a discipline issue of me choosing to go box out or me choosing not to box out when the shot goes up. Everybody knows Florida State’s going to rebound. Sending four guys to the glass. Everybody but Darin Green is going to the glass. So if I’m guarding Darin Green, I don’t have to turn and check. He ain’t going. He’s getting back on defense. The other four guys are going to the glass every single time. It’s a choice: Do I go hit my man or do I not go hit my man? Ten offensive rebounds in the first half, we made that choice to not go hit our man. That crushed us.”
How frustrating is it to not have the extra gear to take the lead once you’ve made a run to cut it close?
“We got the extra gear. We’re using that extra gear to catch up. Then we’re running out of juice. Don’t put yourself in that hole. Play at the level you’re supposed to play at. And now be in the game. So that juice you have to go from 14 to 5, won’t you take it from a tie game to a seven-point lead, won’t you take it from down two to up five. We’re using that extra juice to come back. We shouldn’t be putting ourselves in that hole. That’s where we have to be a little bit better.”
At what point does the talent level limit you in situations like this?
“I can’t take anything away from Florida State. But it’s another game you should have won. If you do what you’re supposed to do. Now, they’re different. They play a style of basketball that’s so different than everybody else in the league that you have to prepare for them in a different way. It really puts you in a mental strain. This ain’t a game for sets. I told our guys when we came back for Georgia Tech, we took the day off and then we came back to practice, what you did offensively from the start of the season, scrap it. It ain’t going to work against these dudes. You have to come up with something else. You spend so much time as a group getting to the point where you don’t have to think and you start playing off instincts. They have to go back and think again. Now we’re not playing at the same speed. We’re not playing the way we have been, because we’re thinking too much. That’s what they force you to do. It’s a talent issue, because we have young talent. We made young mistakes. Green gets a 3 in transition when we know that’s how he really hunts 3s in transition. But it’s a young mistake that we take the corner away and we don’t take him away. That’s a young mistake. As we get older, we’ll take those away. But we’re in games, we’re playing in games, we’re doing the right things. I’m not an excuse-maker. I deal with what you got. We’re going to play hard and we’re going to try and win every single game. We’ve had a chance to win every single game in this league if we just do what we’re supposed to do.”
What did you try to do to improve the second-half start?
“We’ve changed our halftime locker room routine. We’ve changed when I go talk to the team. We’ve tried playing music at halftime. I don’t know what it is. It’s our guys just being able to somebody just grab us and pull us all together before we go back out there and say, ‘Hey, man, come on. This is it. This is our push. This is our chance to start well.’ We’re just not doing it. Maybe we don’t need to go out there at all. Maybe we just stay out there, warm up, talk on the bench like a YMCA team or something. I don’t have an answer for that right now. We’re trying different things. We’re trying to do stuff. Tae being hurt limits who you start, who you play and how you rotate. So that hurt us a little bit with changing personnel. I’m going to start cutting up oranges and giving them to people.”
Do you think you’re being hard on yourself or have you identified the problem you need to fix?
“I’m always going to shoulder the blame. Win or lose, you always go with the game plan. You always think about adjustments that you should make. You always think about the subs that are going in and out. You always think about the runs that happen. I’ll be the first to admit, I can be better. I make mistakes. I’m always going to do that. I’m never putting anything on our guys. They’re trying. They make mistakes too. I need to do my part to get them ready. I need to do my part to have them where their juice is right. If they don’t have enough juice, then that’s on me. I need to change how we practice. I need to change what we do in shootaround.”
Is there anything you can do to help Kebba Njie and Matt Zona’s free-throw shooting?
“No. Kebba was 0-for-3, but he was like 4-for-4 or 6-for-6 last game. Zona — we shoot free throws in practice, after practice, during practice. We’re on break. Guys are allowed to get in the gym and shoot on their own too. There’s guys on our team that spend a lot of time in this gym and work. You’re free to do it. Sometimes it’s a little bit of pain of discipline or pain of regret. But they’re not trying to miss free throws. It’s not intentional. You feel bad for them. I hate that they do it at home, because everybody groans. Like dude missed one free throw to start the game and everybody’s like, ‘Ughhhh.’ How’s he supposed to feel shooting the second one? Just let us get some confidence, a little bit of confidence. Because you once you start doing it, it starts snowballing. And everybody feels that weight. Everybody feels that weight a little bit. I felt like it was that way. J.R.’s a good free throw shooter. He goes 1-for-3. Kebba’s a good free throw shooter. Zona’s a good free throw shooter. It just came back to bite us today.”
Is there a guy you have in mind that you want to get this team going? Or is just somebody do it and do it quick?
“Best teams are player-led teams. We haven’t had that person, right? Yet. Quite yet. Everybody’s in different roles. Everybody’s trying to feel out that different role and what they’re doing. Sometimes that chance for me to step up and be a leader, I’m still making sure I’m trying to do my job the right way. It’s hard to lead other people. Sometimes it’s hard to lead other people when you don’t play as much. Sometimes it’s really hard to lead other people when you make mistakes. You’re still trying to figure it out. That’s kind of where we are right now. So just collectively. I think we’ll get better holding each other accountable as we’re able to do our own job. But right now, we’re kind of focused on doing our job, because we’re not always quite sure if I’m doing my own job. It’s hard for me to tell you that like, ‘Hey, man, pick your stuff up,’ if I’m still worrying about am I supposed to be trapping the box on a rotation? Am I supposed to be dropping and hitting a big? Where do I go during this play? It’s hard for me to hold somebody accountable. It’s hard for me to lead somebody, when I’m still trying to figure everything out.”
What is the status of Tae Davis?
“He landed funny yesterday. He wanted to play today. He’s day-to-day. We’ll see. It’s a quick turnaround playing Boston College on Monday. I appreciate that, ACC. Last I checked, us and Boston College are the only two teams in the league that play on one-day rest this whole season. Not that I went through everybody’s schedule and checked that to see if anybody else played on a one-day rest. But we do. And there’s no excuses for us. But hopefully he can take the rest of today and tomorrow and be back to help us. If not, we have to fight. No excuses. Zero excuses for us to not to go there and fight.”
How do you help the team regain that focus in a quick turnaround?
“It starts with right now. We’re doing what we need to do to get our bodies right and be at 100%. We have to play the right way. Guys had to play more minutes. Doing that and then putting a game plan together and then quickly trying to figure out what we’re doing defensively and what we’re doing offensively. You’re coming off a loss. That should get everybody’s attention. Right away, it should get everybody’s attention to where it needs to be. So that will be a big part of it. We’ll be fired up to play.”
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