Coach on the Big 550, Practice starts Sept 29

[HoosierPal]

I caught the last two thirds of the show tonight.  Biggest takeaway is that practice starts next month, Sat Sept 29.  They could begin 4 days earlier, but Coach is holding off until that Saturday.

Coach was talking about various players will be handling the ball.  team won't be defined by specific positions.  'Coach wants everyone to do everything.  He said Gordon has been given the green light, if he has a board and a break, to take it all the way.  Talked about Wiley a lot, said 2 years ago he was among the best players in the ACC.  But injuries then derailed him.  He is the shooter, per Ford, that we need.  (Later, Rammer said he has Jalen Johnson - 30 foot- range.)  Ford said 'we really, really needed someone who can shoot it."

Coach said everyone's minutes will be defined in practice. He has no notion right now, of who will be playing.  (Right Coach.)  He will play his '"top 6, 7 or 8, 25 to 28 minutes" and then "we'll play 10 but those guys wont get the same minutes."  "This isn't CYC ball." 

He did mention 'a healthy Elliott Welmer'.

Said Ingvi is bigger, stronger and a better shooter than his brother John Axel, (he shot 40.6% from the arc last season) but that John Axel creates better.  Ingvi is a combo guard.

Coach is very intrigued on the template that CUSA and the Sunbelt League are using for scheduling the last four games.  He said 'we' would be watching carefully what happens.  With the new Tier and Quadrant systems, you have to play tough schedules and you have to play tough road games.  

He is high on George Mason, with all 5 starters back plus a transfer from UVA.  Mentioned Grady as going pro after this season; he is that good.  Added St. Joe and Rhody to his list of tough A10 teams.  

 

[thetorch]

link to soundcloud audio of Travis Ford interview

 

[HoosierPal]

36 minutes ago, thetorch said:

link to soundcloud audio of Travis Ford interview

 

Thanks.  Some of the comments Rammer and Weise had after the interview were good, but they aren't on this cut.

[billikenfan05]

Good thing I had a beach towel in my car 

[bauman]

3 hours ago, HoosierPal said:

I caught the last two thirds of the show tonight.  Biggest takeaway is that practice starts next month, Sat Sept 29.  They could begin 4 days earlier, but Coach is holding off until that Saturday.

Coach was talking about various players will be handling the ball.  team won't be defined by specific positions.  'Coach wants everyone to do everything.  He said Gordon has been given the green light, if he has a board and a break, to take it all the way.  Talked about Wiley a lot, said 2 years ago he was among the best players in the ACC.  But injuries then derailed him.  He is the shooter, per Ford, that we need.  (Later, Rammer said he has Jalen Johnson - 30 foot- range.)  Ford said 'we really, really needed someone who can shoot it."

Coach said everyone's minutes will be defined in practice. He has no notion right now, of who will be playing.  (Right Coach.)  He will play his '"top 6, 7 or 8, 25 to 28 minutes" and then "we'll play 10 but those guys wont get the same minutes."  "This isn't CYC ball." 

He did mention 'a healthy Elliott Welmer'.

Said Ingvi is bigger, stronger and a better shooter than his brother John Axel, (he shot 40.6% from the arc last season) but that John Axel creates better.  Ingvi is a combo guard.

Coach is very intrigued on the template that CUSA and the Sunbelt League are using for scheduling the last four games.  He said 'we' would be watching carefully what happens.  With the new Tier and Quadrant systems, you have to play tough schedules and you have to play tough road games.  

He is high on George Mason, with all 5 starters back plus a transfer from UVA.  Mentioned Grady as going pro after this season; he is that good.  Added St. Joe and Rhody to his list of tough A10 teams.  

 

Interesting that he focused on Wiley as the shooter/scorer and not Isabell

[billikenbill]

2 hours ago, bauman said:

Interesting that he focused on Wiley as the shooter/scorer and not Isabell

Spoke highly of Isabel in the early part of the interview as a scorer and assist man. Expects him to have big scoring games, just not as many as at Drexel because he expects others to have big games as well.

[Taj79]

Some words on Dion Wiley ---- considering his close proximity to the couch in Maryland down in College Park these last four years .....

First off, Dion was Maryland's second-best recruit his freshman year, coming in a few rating points shy of Melo Trimble.  He was generally considered a four-star shooting guard from suburban DC, the 12th best player at that position in that class.  He went to Maryland over offers from Cincinnati, Georgetown, VA Tech, Umass, Miami of Florida, NC State, Rutgers, Texas and Virginia.  He quickly fell into the shadow of Trimble and did nto produce the same results Trimble did.  Both played 35 games their freshmen years ... Trimbled averaged 33 mpg and 16 ppg while Wiley countered with 13 mpg and 4 ppg. 

He sat out his sophomore year with an injury with a medical redshirt ergo his grad transfer status after three years at College Park. 

Maryland joined the Big Ten in 2014. That was their first year.  So coachspeak #1 is the claim he was one of the top shooters in the ACC.  Dion Wiley never played in the ACC.

  Coachspeak #2 ..... Dion Wiley was never confused with the best players in any league.  Blame it on injuries or what but Dion Wiley was a bust at Maryland given his hyped status coming in vis-à-vis actual production  After the stats noted above in his freshman year, he came back from his redshirt year and played in 20 games, averaged about a quarter per game, and averaged 3.2 points per game.  In those 20 games, he took 59 shots, shooting 38% (15-for-40) from three.  Last year, he played in 28 of Maryland's 32 games -- about a half per game -- and averaged 5.8 ppg on about 5 shots per game shooting 36-0f-98 from 3 for about 37% again. 

Finally, coachspeak #3 ... he is the shooter we need.  Frankly, everyone is the "shooter we need."  Because out sole shooter transferred to Louisiana.  My guess here is Ford is pumping up a guy who needs pumping up.  I would take his not talking about Isabell as a good sign.  Seems he is trying to positively back Wiley and Ingvi to get it going.  Which is fine by me.

I am not here to condemn Dion Wiley but just let folks know that while the signing is a good one, for depth and experience's sake, Dion has a lot of questions to answer as this season moves on.  Dion underachieved classically at UMd given his entrance hype.  Maryland has always struggled to be relevant recently since their last national title in the early part of this century.  Dion is a classic example of what the grad transfer rule was meant to do -- provide a kid one last chance providing he graduates from school #1 to take it to school #2 and go out in style.  The fact that Ford is not pushing Isabell or Jacobs seems to bode well for them in the realm of coachspeak. 

Reading between the lines says we have backcourt issues that need to be resolved.  And his input on Mason may answer some of the question raise din the other thread of team rankings currently coming out.  Five returning starters is a great place to start for Mason and anybody else for that matter.

Bottom line is we are five weeks out from practice starting.

[HoosierPal]

8 hours ago, bauman said:

Interesting that he focused on Wiley as the shooter/scorer and not Isabell

 

21 minutes ago, Taj79 said:

Some words on Dion Wiley ---- considering his close proximity to the couch in Maryland down in College Park these last four years .....

First off, Dion was Maryland's second-best recruit his freshman year, coming in a few rating points shy of Melo Trimble.  He was generally considered a four-star shooting guard from suburban DC, the 12th best player at that position in that class.  He went to Maryland over offers from Cincinnati, Georgetown, VA Tech, Umass, Miami of Florida, NC State, Rutgers, Texas and Virginia.  He quickly fell into the shadow of Trimble and did nto produce the same results Trimble did.  Both played 35 games their freshmen years ... Trimbled averaged 33 mpg and 16 ppg while Wiley countered with 13 mpg and 4 ppg. 

He sat out his sophomore year with an injury with a medical redshirt ergo his grad transfer status after three years at College Park. 

Maryland joined the Big Ten in 2014. That was their first year.  So coachspeak #1 is the claim he was one of the top shooters in the ACC.  Dion Wiley never played in the ACC.

  Coachspeak #2 ..... Dion Wiley was never confused with the best players in any league.  Blame it on injuries or what but Dion Wiley was a bust at Maryland given his hyped status coming in vis-à-vis actual production  After the stats noted above in his freshman year, he came back from his redshirt year and played in 20 games, averaged about a quarter per game, and averaged 3.2 points per game.  In those 20 games, he took 59 shots, shooting 38% (15-for-40) from three.  Last year, he played in 28 of Maryland's 32 games -- about a half per game -- and averaged 5.8 ppg on about 5 shots per game shooting 36-0f-98 from 3 for about 37% again. 

Finally, coachspeak #3 ... he is the shooter we need.  Frankly, everyone is the "shooter we need."  Because out sole shooter transferred to Louisiana.  My guess here is Ford is pumping up a guy who needs pumping up.  I would take his not talking about Isabell as a good sign.  Seems he is trying to positively back Wiley and Ingvi to get it going.  Which is fine by me.

I am not here to condemn Dion Wiley but just let folks know that while the signing is a good one, for depth and experience's sake, Dion has a lot of questions to answer as this season moves on.  Dion underachieved classically at UMd given his entrance hype.  Maryland has always struggled to be relevant recently since their last national title in the early part of this century.  Dion is a classic example of what the grad transfer rule was meant to do -- provide a kid one last chance providing he graduates from school #1 to take it to school #2 and go out in style.  The fact that Ford is not pushing Isabell or Jacobs seems to bode well for them in the realm of coachspeak. 

Reading between the lines says we have backcourt issues that need to be resolved.  And his input on Mason may answer some of the question raise din the other thread of team rankings currently coming out.  Five returning starters is a great place to start for Mason and anybody else for that matter.

Bottom line is we are five weeks out from practice starting.

Interesting comments from you two. First, as he usually does, Coach at least mentioned every player and praised Isabell.  I don't recall him saying Jacobs name, but I wouldn't read anything into that omission.

Second, interesting alternate take on Wiley.  Coach, and Rammer after the interview, certainly are high on him. Of course, now is the time to extol the virtues of every player.  Yes he did say he was one of the best in the ACC.  Interesting that he didn't play in the ACC.  Coach did spend time discussing Wiley's injury history and that we need him healthy.  Yes, you could tell from Coach's comments that improving our outside shooting is a major issue with this year's team.  (We lost our two top 3 pointers from last year 310th best shooting team in the nation.)

Just reading between the lines, Coach seems to really like Thatch.  Seems to me that Thatch is ticketed for top 8 rotation.  I did like the comment "I'm still the coach and this ain't CYC ball" when inferring that all 13 players (or even 9-13) aren't going to all get significant minutes.

One interesting side comment Rammer brought up, this team may lead the nation in Guard Rebounding (a stat that maybe Wiz needs to pick up).  He included Bess as a guard and mentioned Isabell's high board totals, and then added Goodwin and Thatch into the group.

[CBFan]

17 minutes ago, HoosierPal said:

 

Interesting comments from you two. First, as he usually does, Coach at least mentioned every player and praised Isabell.  I don't recall him saying Jacobs name, but I wouldn't read anything into that omission.

Second, interesting alternate take on Wiley.  Coach, and Rammer after the interview, certainly are high on him. Of course, now is the time to extol the virtues of every player.  Yes he did say he was one of the best in the ACC.  Interesting that he didn't play in the ACC.  Coach did spend time discussing Wiley's injury history and that we need him healthy.  Yes, you could tell from Coach's comments that improving our outside shooting is a major issue with this year's team.  (We lost our two top 3 pointers from last year 310th best shooting team in the nation.)

Just reading between the lines, Coach seems to really like Thatch.  Seems to me that Thatch is ticketed for top 8 rotation.  I did like the comment "I'm still the coach and this ain't CYC ball" when inferring that all 13 players (or even 9-13) aren't going to all get significant minutes.

One interesting side comment Rammer brought up, this team may lead the nation in Guard Rebounding (a stat that maybe Wiz needs to pick up).  He included Bess as a guard and mentioned Isabell's high board totals, and then added Goodwin and Thatch into the group.

Thank you HP for the summaries.

Hey Banks troll get off our site you bring nothing to this message board.

[HoosierPal]

4 minutes ago, CBFan said:

Thank you HP for the summaries.

Hey Banks troll get off our site you bring nothing to this message board.

If you have the 34 minutes, the link to the interview is worth listening too.  If you don't have the 34, then the summary works.

Banks has given me over 50 Troll Reactions in the month he has been registered.  I seem to have my personal troll, and guess I am highly honored.

[Pistol]

40 minutes ago, HoosierPal said:

If you have the 34 minutes, the link to the interview is worth listening too.  If you don't have the 34, then the summary works.

Banks has given me over 50 Troll Reactions in the month he has been registered.  I seem to have my personal troll, and guess I am highly honored.

That's insane behavior.

Maybe not all users deserve the same privileges. That seems wrong.

[Old guy]

The Wiz will pick all that needs to be picked up after the first 8 or so pre conference games have been played. Prior to having those initial game results and stats he will stick to his system which limits movement of a team to 2 grades in each direction. After the first few games are played, the projections and probabilities will change to fit the way we are actually playing. One of the keys of the Wiz's system is that it requires stats of the team in actual play in the current season before valid projections for the year are made.

From my point of view, I cannot see anything other than a significant improvement this year from last year's Bills 310th shooting ranking. 

Anything else we can say at this time is a matter analysis of prior performance of individual players a lot of which I believe may prove to be correct. I also believe that Ford is a gifted artist in both coaching and recruiting. We will do fine this year, how fine I really do not know but I expect a lot out of the Bills this season.

[Littlebill]

Here's my summation from last night - tried to jot notes down while I was listening

[BIG BILL FAN]

On 8/22/2018 at 1:45 AM, billikenbill said:

Spoke highly of Isabel in the early part of the interview as a scorer and assist man. Expects him to have big scoring games, just not as many as at Drexel because he expects others to have big games as well.

He caught my attention when he said that Luis Santos could be an all league player.

[gobillsgo]

48 minutes ago, BIG BILL FAN said:

He caught my attention when he said that Luis Santos could be an all league player.

I think we legitimately have 7 guys who would have a chance to be all league if they played starter minutes. It won’t happen for the simple fact that there won’t be enough minutes and scoring to go around. But we have at least 7 guys with that ability. 

Our best Majerus era teams didn’t even have that. 

[wgstl]

2 hours ago, BIG BILL FAN said:

He caught my attention when he said that Luis Santos could be an all league player.

@benfred 

[BIG BILL FAN]

1 hour ago, gobillsgo said:

I think we legitimately have 7 guys who would have a chance to be all league if they played starter minutes. It won’t happen for the simple fact that there won’t be enough minutes and scoring to go around. But we have at least 7 guys with that ability. 

Our best Majerus era teams didn’t even have that. 

he also said that he would put our front court players up against anyone in the country.

[gobillsgo]

17 minutes ago, BIG BILL FAN said:

he also said that he would put our front court players up against anyone in the country.

Long gone are the days of Brett Jolly, Austin Gillmann, Matt Neufeld, and Tanner Lancona.  Nothing against them as young men, but none of them were even half the player Welmer is, and he's our fifth big this year.

[bauman]

1 hour ago, BIG BILL FAN said:

he also said that he would put our front court players up against anyone in the country.

Wow, that speaks volumes about the quality of this team, given the ability of our backcourt also.  I hope it's not just over-the-top coachspeak. and that Ford actually believes that.  As I have written elsewhere in the last month or so, our starting 4/5 position players will NOT be the best combo in the country (although they will be the best combo in the A-10).  Let's assume that French and Gordon are those two players, add in Santos and Foreman to make a 4-man grouping of Bigs and I think that might be the best 4 Bigs group in the country.  If not, i'd like to know who is better.

I exclude SPUMAC, whose Bigs are way better than ours due to their vast experience edge!

[Aquinas]

2 hours ago, bauman said:

Wow, that speaks volumes about the quality of this team, given the ability of our backcourt also.  I hope it's not just over-the-top coachspeak. and that Ford actually believes that.  As I have written elsewhere in the last month or so, our starting 4/5 position players will NOT be the best combo in the country (although they will be the best combo in the A-10).  Let's assume that French and Gordon are those two players, add in Santos and Foreman to make a 4-man grouping of Bigs and I think that might be the best 4 Bigs group in the country.  If not, i'd like to know who is better.

I exclude SPUMAC, whose Bigs are way better than ours due to their vast experience edge!

I think that is what coach Ford is saying.  Our group of forwards are exceptional. He isn't saying that our starting bigs are the best in the country.  Bottom line, our bigs are good physical players and the drop off with a big coming off the bench  wont be much. 

[cgeldmacher]

This coming year will come down to shooting.  Our defense will be more than solid.  Rebounding will be great.   Our inside game on both ends will be more than sufficient.  If outside shooting is good, then we will have the success that many on the board are predicting.  If not.... that's where the high hopes we have may run into a bit of a road block.

[HoosierPal]

1 hour ago, Aquinas said:

I think that is what coach Ford is saying.  Our group of forwards are exceptional. He isn't saying that our starting bigs are the best in the country.  Bottom line, our bigs are good physical players and the drop off with a big coming off the bench  wont be much. 

You are correct.  Coach was talking about them as a group of five (he included Welmer) and said collectively as a group they would compare quite favorably  to any similar group. 

One orher tidbit, Coach said schedule is done except for the exhibitions. 

[Pistol]

On 8/21/2018 at 9:09 PM, HoosierPal said:

I caught the last two thirds of the show tonight.  Biggest takeaway is that practice starts next month, Sat Sept 29.  They could begin 4 days earlier, but Coach is holding off until that Saturday.

I forgot to comment on this. The 25th would be 42 days before the first game on 11/6, and by beginning on the 29th, it looks like Ford is choosing to compress his 30 available practice days a little bit. Instead of having 42 days for 30 practices, he's doing it in 38 days.

[brianstl]

59 minutes ago, cgeldmacher said:

This coming year will come down to shooting.  Our defense will be more than solid.  Rebounding will be great.   Our inside game on both ends will be more than sufficient.  If outside shooting is good, then we will have the success that many on the board are predicting.  If not.... that's where the high hopes we have may run into a bit of a road block.

You can have success without being a good outside shooting team.  The 13-14 team was a poorer shooting team from the 3 than last season's team.  I been just as guilty as everyone else when it come to worrying about our 3pt shooting the most.  That it is important, but I think just as important (maybe more) is improving our two point shooting.  We ranked 299th last season in 2pt%.  Losing Hines and his 33.6% 2pt% will help some, but Bess and Goodwin both need to raise their 2pt%.

[RealTalk]

Listening to the interview, I found myself hoping that Coach's enthusiasm is matched by his ability to actually coach. With our overall talent and heightened expectations, Ford will be under intense scrutiny. This is the question of his career on display this season; recruiter or strategist. Hopefully he and the staff are up to the challenge.