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Notes from Oliver Purnell's media day
Posted October 7, 2008
Believe it or not, basketball season is upon us. Clemson will start practice Oct. 17 with "Rock the 'John," which starts at 8 p.m. at Littlejohn Coliseum. It's Clemson's version of "Midnight Madness," the first night of college hoops practice. That means, of course, it's time for Oliver Purnell's media golf outing/media day. I didn't play golf today, but got some interesting nuggets from Purnell's meeting with the media. K.C. Rivers and Terrence Oglesby also showed up, and I'll have more from them in the very near future. But first, Purnell:
On expectations:
"“One of our goals is to be better than we were last year. That’s something we’ve been able to accomplish every year since we’ve been here, and we want to make next year no exception to that. What that means is being above the second or third-best team in the ACC. That means not just participating in the national tournament but going deep in the national tournament with a chance to win it.
“That’s a tall order, as we all know, given the level we play in, the league we play in and the non-conference schedule, and on and on, but those are our goals, we feel our program has progressed to the point where those are reasonable goals. We’re looking to go above and beyond those goals.”
On replacing last season's impressive senior class of Sam Perry, James Mays and Cliff Hammonds:
Mays served as the point of Clemson’s full-court press, while Perry was a solid defender with a knack for clutch plays at the biggest moments. And Purnell calls Hammonds “the best leader/student athlete I’ve ever been around,” a shutdown defender who took on every opponent’s top guard.
“Leadership and defense, we can’t expect one guy to step up and get that done. We’ve got to do it as a group. On paper, offensively, we think we can be better without question, but defense is the big question.”
On making a return trip to the NCAAs:
“We’re a long way from being in the NCAA Tournament. We’ve got to build a team that is capable night-in, night-out of being successful. That’s how you get to the NCAA Tournament. We’ve got to be very careful that we don’t make any assumptions. That’d be foolish.”
On an up-tempo style:
"I think we’ll be a little more up-tempo on the offensive end of the floor. Why? I think we’ve got weapons and we want to get a chance to attack with those and score a bunch of points, and blow some games open. We saw that a little bit last year with our explosiveness and we should be more explosive, and we should be a better free-throw shooting team. As good as (the seniors) were defensively and as leaders, that group together was not outstanding on the free throw line. That may be an advantage because the guys gobbling up those valuable minutes should be better free throw shooters."
On senior K.C. Rivers and leadership:
"It's easy when you’re only practicing two hours a week, it’s a little harder when you’re going two-a-days and now we’re in the third week of practice and we’re going 20 hours a week. And guys are vying for playing time. Again, I’m not counting on K.C. to solely shoulder the leadership burden, whatever you want to call it. But he’s the most experienced guy we have, he’s been our leading scorer for the last 2 years, been in all those things we talked about in terms of positive experiences, he’s going to be huge there. But he also has to put points on the board for us, rebound, play defens, so on and so forth. He’s going to need and get some help in that leadership area."
On Catalin "Bobo" Baciu, the 7-foot-1 freshman center who is a key piece of the recruiting class (other freshmen are point guard Andre Young, combo guard Tanner Smith and forward Brian Narcisse):
"From what I've seen so far, he's going to be a fine player in our system and style. How he adapts to coaching, run plays, knows defensive schemes is going to determine how quickly he’s going to be able to help us. Right now he’s inexperienced. Experience is a huge thing. Hopefully he’s going to be a quick learner, gain some experience right away.
"The thing that really helped Demontez (Stitt) last year was that he had four really good players, more than that, four starters around him. So it was a little easier with Cliff Hammonds and K.C. Rivers standing beside you, as opposed to way back when Vernon Hamilton came in and he was by himself. So it’ll be, Bobo won’t be out there by himself, you've got Trevor Booker, Raymond Sykes, some guys who are really helping."
Hope you guys enjoyed this. More later.
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