What No. 19 Men’s Hoops Said at Friday’s Media Session
December 28, 2018 | Men's Basketball
by Matt Dunaway, Associate Director/Communications
STARKVILLE – No. 19 Mississippi State closes out the 2018 calendar year and the non-conference slate against BYU with a Saturday matinee at Humphrey Coliseum.
Tip time for the Bulldogs and the Cougars is set for 11 a.m. CT televised by ESPNU and available online courtesy of the WatchESPN app. Kevin Fitzgerald and Daymeon Fishback will serve as the announcing team.
Mississippi State has strung together a SEC-best eight-game winning streak this season and a 21-game non-conference home winning streak dating back to the 2016-17 season under fourth-year coach Ben Howland.
Visit www.HailState.com for the latest news and information on the men's basketball program. Fans also can follow the program on its social media outlets by searching 'HailStateMBK' on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Howland along with Abdul Ado and Nick Weatherspoon met with the media after Friday's practice. Below is a transcript of the session.
Mississippi State Men's Basketball Media Session
December 28, 2018 – Humphrey Coliseum
Head Coach Ben Howland
Opening Statement
BH: "This the last non-conference and another tough opponent. Just to give you guys a history lesson and an outlook on this game. BYU is the 11th winningest program in the history of college basketball. Every Mormon Church in the world has baskets in their sanctuaries. So, it's automatic. Everybody in the Mormon culture grows up playing basketball. I lived in Utah. I met my wife [Kim] in Utah, and I'm very familiar with their culture. It's a great, awesome [culture]. These guys are no exception."
"T.J. Haws' brother is the all-time leading scorer. His dad played there. It's very similar to us in that they have at least two or three former players' kids on the team there at BYU. The big kid that they have, [Yoeli] Childs, is the best big guy we have seen all year. At one point during their preseason, he went 31 at Weber State, 31 against Utah State, who they crushed and who is really good about 40 in the NET [Rankings] right now. They might even be a little better than that. Then, they crushed Utah, their arch rival, that they are no longer in the same league with. They were in the same league forever. I worked for Jerry Pimm, who was the head coach at the University of Utah as an assistant coach for 12 years at UCSB. I played at Weber State. Those inner conference schools in the state of Utah are a big deal. He had 31 three games in a row. [Childs] is a player He's going to make a lot of money playing basketball. He's really good around the basket, shoots threes. He's second in assists, and he's the best guy we've seen all year. Obviously, he is on the radar for all of the NBA teams."
"The kid that sat out last year, Nick Emery, is a very good player. Also, his brother is the all-time assists leader in the history of the school. Obviously, Jahshire Hardnett is from Mississippi. I'm sure that's one of the reasons that [BYU] is playing this game. You know, when we go on the road, every player gets an allotted amount of tickets to give to family. He's getting every ticket. So, he's using every single ticket of BYU's tickets for tomorrow's game. He's going to have a huge following here and obviously want to play really well for his family and friends who are coming down from the gulf."
"BYU has numbers. They have a lot of guys that can play that are good players. They have some young kids. Gavin Baxter is a really good player. I really like this kid [Zach] Seljaas, number two, who's really a wing playing four, so they're four out around one. If you go to BYU, it's a prerequisite that you can shoot the basketball. They're a really fine shooting team."
"Coach [Dave] Rose, who I have known since he was a [junior college] coach at Dixie [State] College, is really a good coach. He has won 72 percent of his games as a major college coach, which puts him at seventh of current coaches in the country in winning percentage. That's a big-time statement right there. He was a really good player. Played at Houston [from 1980-83], played on the Olajuwon team, played in the national championship game and was a team captain. He was a really good player, a really good coach, and a really good person. My hats off to him, he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that is typically a death sentence. 95 percent of all pancreatic cancer patients die within five years. He had a rare form. It's a little different, and he survived it now for close to a decade. Every time I see him, I talk to him about it."
Q: You mentioned [Yoeli] Childs. He's a really good big for them. What stands out about him?
BH: "He's got an all-around game. He's really good and physical in the post. He takes it at you. In other words, he creates contact to create space to score. We have some amazing highlights of him. He's a really good athlete. He's incredibly strong and a good passer. He can score off the dribble. He shoots 30 percent from three. You have to be out on him from the three-point land. He's a very good foul shooter. He's got a complete, all-around game. He's athletic, and he's skilled. He's a 4-man playing the 5 spot who can do a lot of different things. They are constantly running the offense through him."
Q: Nick [Weatherspoon] thought, offensively, you guys were better than last season. Defensively, he thought you guys might be a little bit worse than last season. Is that what you've seen?
BH: "I told the guys when they got back from Christmas that we're 95th in the country in defensive efficiency, which is not where we want to be to move forward to where we want to go, but we're 14th in offensive efficiency. That's good, it's among the best in the country. We need to get better at both, and we definitely need to get better defensively if we're going to go where want to go with our year."
Q: What are some issues you're seeing on the defensive side that you feel like you need to improve on?
BH: "Three-point field goal percentage defense, we're way down the list. Part of it is our opponents. We watched the Wofford game yesterday as a team. We watched some of the threes they made, the same with Wright State. Teams are shooting almost 35 percent as a team on the season thus far, that's way too high. That puts us in the bottom half of the country in terms of defending the three-point line. We were pretty good early on, but as competition stiffens, it's something we need to get better at. We have to do a better job in our rebound margin and continue to grow there."
Q: Nick [Weatherspoon] got a lot of experience last year in big games. How far do you feel like he's come in his one year so far and where do you feel like he is right now as a player?
BH: "I think he's really improved, especially his shooting. As we talked about before, he had his left thumb in his shot all last year. This offseason was all about getting it out of there. His three-point percentage is the highest on the team. You go back to the Dayton game, he makes the key shots to win that game. He's always guarding the other team's best player on the perimeter as he will again tomorrow in a matchup with [T.J.] Haws to start the game. He's our best guy at blocking out defensively. He came with that. He was well-coached in high school. He's grown as a player. He's getting better, and I'm really excited about Nick. His body looks great. Remember, he missed 17 days with one injury [before the season] and came back for a few days and got hurt again. He was out two days prior to the Arizona State game. He had some bum luck in terms of coming down on people just because of how he plays, so tough and so aggressive. I love Nick. I love Nick as a player, and I love Nick as a kid. He's a good leader. He brings it every day. There is no different gear than 'all-out' with him. He plays harder than anybody on our team on a consistent basis, every single second he's playing. I can't think of a better compliment."
Guard Nick Weatherspoon
Q: What's the mood around the team and the intensity of practice in the past few days after a close game with Wright State before the holidays?
NW: "It has been really intense. We've been trying to get up and down [the floor] a lot and trying to get our conditioning back. It was only three days, but people don't know that those three days will affect you. We've been really physical because we know this is a physical team that we're playing against."
Q: Is the team where you expected it to be at this point in the season, and what can be improved on with one non-conference game left?
NW: "I think we're where we were expected to be, but I think we can be better defensively. We know we're not the best we can be, defensively. I don't think we're as good as we were last year. I feel like we've got better offensively, but we lost some of our defense on things. We just have to pick it up defensively. Then, I think we'll be exactly where we want to be."
Q: What do you feel has been key to your success shooting the ball?
NW: "Being able to shoot those good shots, I feel like that's helped me. When I'm open, I feel like that's helped me make a lot more shots than if I'm shooting a lot of contested shots."
Forward Abdul Ado
Q: What is your health after sitting out the Wright State game?
AA: "I just couldn't move. We had a walkthrough before the Wright State game, and I got hit again at the same spot I had gotten hit during the Wofford game. That kind of aggravated it. We were warming up, and I just couldn't move at all. I'm 100 percent right now."
STARKVILLE – No. 19 Mississippi State closes out the 2018 calendar year and the non-conference slate against BYU with a Saturday matinee at Humphrey Coliseum.
Tip time for the Bulldogs and the Cougars is set for 11 a.m. CT televised by ESPNU and available online courtesy of the WatchESPN app. Kevin Fitzgerald and Daymeon Fishback will serve as the announcing team.
Mississippi State has strung together a SEC-best eight-game winning streak this season and a 21-game non-conference home winning streak dating back to the 2016-17 season under fourth-year coach Ben Howland.
Visit www.HailState.com for the latest news and information on the men's basketball program. Fans also can follow the program on its social media outlets by searching 'HailStateMBK' on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Howland along with Abdul Ado and Nick Weatherspoon met with the media after Friday's practice. Below is a transcript of the session.
Mississippi State Men's Basketball Media Session
December 28, 2018 – Humphrey Coliseum
Head Coach Ben Howland
Opening Statement
BH: "This the last non-conference and another tough opponent. Just to give you guys a history lesson and an outlook on this game. BYU is the 11th winningest program in the history of college basketball. Every Mormon Church in the world has baskets in their sanctuaries. So, it's automatic. Everybody in the Mormon culture grows up playing basketball. I lived in Utah. I met my wife [Kim] in Utah, and I'm very familiar with their culture. It's a great, awesome [culture]. These guys are no exception."
"T.J. Haws' brother is the all-time leading scorer. His dad played there. It's very similar to us in that they have at least two or three former players' kids on the team there at BYU. The big kid that they have, [Yoeli] Childs, is the best big guy we have seen all year. At one point during their preseason, he went 31 at Weber State, 31 against Utah State, who they crushed and who is really good about 40 in the NET [Rankings] right now. They might even be a little better than that. Then, they crushed Utah, their arch rival, that they are no longer in the same league with. They were in the same league forever. I worked for Jerry Pimm, who was the head coach at the University of Utah as an assistant coach for 12 years at UCSB. I played at Weber State. Those inner conference schools in the state of Utah are a big deal. He had 31 three games in a row. [Childs] is a player He's going to make a lot of money playing basketball. He's really good around the basket, shoots threes. He's second in assists, and he's the best guy we've seen all year. Obviously, he is on the radar for all of the NBA teams."
"The kid that sat out last year, Nick Emery, is a very good player. Also, his brother is the all-time assists leader in the history of the school. Obviously, Jahshire Hardnett is from Mississippi. I'm sure that's one of the reasons that [BYU] is playing this game. You know, when we go on the road, every player gets an allotted amount of tickets to give to family. He's getting every ticket. So, he's using every single ticket of BYU's tickets for tomorrow's game. He's going to have a huge following here and obviously want to play really well for his family and friends who are coming down from the gulf."
"BYU has numbers. They have a lot of guys that can play that are good players. They have some young kids. Gavin Baxter is a really good player. I really like this kid [Zach] Seljaas, number two, who's really a wing playing four, so they're four out around one. If you go to BYU, it's a prerequisite that you can shoot the basketball. They're a really fine shooting team."
"Coach [Dave] Rose, who I have known since he was a [junior college] coach at Dixie [State] College, is really a good coach. He has won 72 percent of his games as a major college coach, which puts him at seventh of current coaches in the country in winning percentage. That's a big-time statement right there. He was a really good player. Played at Houston [from 1980-83], played on the Olajuwon team, played in the national championship game and was a team captain. He was a really good player, a really good coach, and a really good person. My hats off to him, he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that is typically a death sentence. 95 percent of all pancreatic cancer patients die within five years. He had a rare form. It's a little different, and he survived it now for close to a decade. Every time I see him, I talk to him about it."
Q: You mentioned [Yoeli] Childs. He's a really good big for them. What stands out about him?
BH: "He's got an all-around game. He's really good and physical in the post. He takes it at you. In other words, he creates contact to create space to score. We have some amazing highlights of him. He's a really good athlete. He's incredibly strong and a good passer. He can score off the dribble. He shoots 30 percent from three. You have to be out on him from the three-point land. He's a very good foul shooter. He's got a complete, all-around game. He's athletic, and he's skilled. He's a 4-man playing the 5 spot who can do a lot of different things. They are constantly running the offense through him."
Q: Nick [Weatherspoon] thought, offensively, you guys were better than last season. Defensively, he thought you guys might be a little bit worse than last season. Is that what you've seen?
BH: "I told the guys when they got back from Christmas that we're 95th in the country in defensive efficiency, which is not where we want to be to move forward to where we want to go, but we're 14th in offensive efficiency. That's good, it's among the best in the country. We need to get better at both, and we definitely need to get better defensively if we're going to go where want to go with our year."
Q: What are some issues you're seeing on the defensive side that you feel like you need to improve on?
BH: "Three-point field goal percentage defense, we're way down the list. Part of it is our opponents. We watched the Wofford game yesterday as a team. We watched some of the threes they made, the same with Wright State. Teams are shooting almost 35 percent as a team on the season thus far, that's way too high. That puts us in the bottom half of the country in terms of defending the three-point line. We were pretty good early on, but as competition stiffens, it's something we need to get better at. We have to do a better job in our rebound margin and continue to grow there."
Q: Nick [Weatherspoon] got a lot of experience last year in big games. How far do you feel like he's come in his one year so far and where do you feel like he is right now as a player?
BH: "I think he's really improved, especially his shooting. As we talked about before, he had his left thumb in his shot all last year. This offseason was all about getting it out of there. His three-point percentage is the highest on the team. You go back to the Dayton game, he makes the key shots to win that game. He's always guarding the other team's best player on the perimeter as he will again tomorrow in a matchup with [T.J.] Haws to start the game. He's our best guy at blocking out defensively. He came with that. He was well-coached in high school. He's grown as a player. He's getting better, and I'm really excited about Nick. His body looks great. Remember, he missed 17 days with one injury [before the season] and came back for a few days and got hurt again. He was out two days prior to the Arizona State game. He had some bum luck in terms of coming down on people just because of how he plays, so tough and so aggressive. I love Nick. I love Nick as a player, and I love Nick as a kid. He's a good leader. He brings it every day. There is no different gear than 'all-out' with him. He plays harder than anybody on our team on a consistent basis, every single second he's playing. I can't think of a better compliment."
Guard Nick Weatherspoon
Q: What's the mood around the team and the intensity of practice in the past few days after a close game with Wright State before the holidays?
NW: "It has been really intense. We've been trying to get up and down [the floor] a lot and trying to get our conditioning back. It was only three days, but people don't know that those three days will affect you. We've been really physical because we know this is a physical team that we're playing against."
Q: Is the team where you expected it to be at this point in the season, and what can be improved on with one non-conference game left?
NW: "I think we're where we were expected to be, but I think we can be better defensively. We know we're not the best we can be, defensively. I don't think we're as good as we were last year. I feel like we've got better offensively, but we lost some of our defense on things. We just have to pick it up defensively. Then, I think we'll be exactly where we want to be."
Q: What do you feel has been key to your success shooting the ball?
NW: "Being able to shoot those good shots, I feel like that's helped me. When I'm open, I feel like that's helped me make a lot more shots than if I'm shooting a lot of contested shots."
Forward Abdul Ado
Q: What is your health after sitting out the Wright State game?
AA: "I just couldn't move. We had a walkthrough before the Wright State game, and I got hit again at the same spot I had gotten hit during the Wofford game. That kind of aggravated it. We were warming up, and I just couldn't move at all. I'm 100 percent right now."
Players Mentioned
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