Hokies Hoops, Vol. 1 (Root Canal Edition) ...

So football is over. That’s the sad part. I love football. I play video game football quietly at night when my wife falls asleep, hoping she won’t catch me cheating on her with digital “recruits” in my burgeoning North Texas dynasty.

The good news? For the first time in my six years covering the Hokies, my bosses have left me out here in Blacksburg for the hoops season. The idea of touring around the ACC’s storied gymnasiums (starting with UNC tomorrow) is a pretty big thrill.

Since our technology apparently can’t sustain two different blogs with my picture at the top (it’s probably something about a hazard involving my hair gel), I’m going to be dropping in here on the “football blog” to give you some round-ball news and notes and quotes.

My role is sort of fluid right now, but it’s kind of an ACC-wide gig with a heavy Hokies focus. So that’s the good news.

More bad news? Starting next Friday, I’ll be completely out of commission for at least two weeks. Most of you read in this space about my tragic (or just really stupid) sledding accident and the ensuing elbow injury.

My docs first thought I could get away with a couple weeks in a sling and then a couple of months in a brace. My follow-up visit, however, revealed that I need surgery. It’s a fairly serious surgery. I’ll be in a cast, palm-up, for at least two weeks afterward. It’s my right arm and I’m right-handed.

So no typing from me for a while. Sorry about that. But I will be able to get you through the Hokies’ Carolina and Miami games.

On that note, below you’ll find Seth Greenberg, Dorenzo Hudson and Erick Green talking about Tech’s 12-1 start – its best in 14 seasons – and life without Malcolm Delaney and the meat-grinder that is the ACC schedule. Greenberg has a better term for it.

Delaney has only been out of his protective boot to shoot around this week. He hadn’t had a full practice as of Wednesday and his status remains a “game-time decision.” If the ACC’s leading scorer is out again, the Hokies will need a lot out of Hudson, the junior shooter, and Green, the true freshman back-up point guard.

Hudson has scored at least 11 points in the last four games, including a whopping 41 against Seton Hall (most by a Tech player since the amazingly-named Bimbo Coles in 1990). Green is averaging 27 minutes, 10 points and nearly three assists over the past three games.

It goes without saying that tomorrow night’s game in Chapel Hill is the Hokies’ biggest test to date. Most of the team’s previously exciting wins are looking a little less sexy lately. Iowa is 5-10. Penn State has lost 4 of 6. Seton Hall seemed like it would’ve been a great victory when the Pirates started 8-0 ... but they’ve lost 5 of 6.

Interestingly, the dominant win over Georgia is the Hokies’ most impressive so far. The Bulldogs (8-5) have since beaten Illinois and Georgia Tech. But as Greenberg points out below, the 16-game ACC slate that lies ahead is “a different animal.”

More from the Big Whistle and his charges ...

VT HOOPS COACH SETH GREENBERG

ON HOW DIFFERENT IT IS TO GAME PLAN FOR THIS UNC TEAM VS. LAST YEAR’S TAR HEELS: “It’s not very different at all. Obviously, the names have changed. But who they are is who they are. You better get back on defense. You better rebound the ball. You’ve got to defend the post early. You’ve got to be strong with the basketball. You’re playing against their players. Carolina is always going to have great players. Yeah, they graduated some McDonald’s All-Americans, some guys that are going to play in the NBA. And they replaced them with some McDonald’s All-Americans and some guys that are going to play in the NBA. It’s not like it changes drastically from year to year. What they do, sometimes they’re a little bit better defensively. Sometimes, they’re a little bit better offensively. They’re superbly coached, extremely talented, long, a little bit bigger than last year. They’re probably just don’t have the same experience. But they’re still a very, very good basketball team.”

ON THE EMERGENCE OF HEELS’ BIG MAN ED DAVIS, A BIT PLAYER LAST SEASON: “If Davis came out last year, he’d have been a lottery pick. He would have been the first guy from Carolina drafted.”

ON CAROLINA’S ATTACKING OFFENSE: “They definitely attack. The speed of their transition is very hard to simulate.”

ON THE STATUS OF GUARD MALCOLM DELANEY FOR SUNDAY: “We’ll know Sunday. Did you expect anything else?”

ON WHAT DELANEY HAS BEEN ABLE TO DO THIS WEEK: “He’s conditioned on the Alter-G and on the bike, and he has shot a little bit. He felt better yesterday. He didn’t feel as good today. We’ve got four days (interview was on Wednesday.”

ON WHAT HE NEEDS TO SEE FOR DELANEY TO PLAY: “I don’t need to see anything. It’s what he feels and what the medical staff feels.”

ON THE ODDS DELANEY, WHO HASN’T GONE THROUGH AN ACTUAL PRACTICE, WILL PLAY: “I don’t do odds. Like I said, we’ll decide on Sunday.”

ON DELANEY’S PROTECTIVE WALKING BOOT: “He takes the boot off when we’re here. We keep him in the boot all other times. He shoots. He’ll shoot this afternoon. We don’t want him to aggravate it at all.”

ON DORENZO HUDSON’S OUTBURST IN DELANEY’S ABSENCE: “Everyone gets caught up in the 41 points, which is obviously a huge number. But I was more impressed with Dorenzo just in terms of his leadership. Coming in and out of timeouts, he was really terrific. Talking to our guys in the walk through. The way he carried himself during free-throw situations. I thought he really grew in terms of leading and getting guys to follow him. The 41 points and the 20 free throws, that’s terrific. And he made some big shots. But the intangibles were as important as the scoring, quite honestly. He really carried himself like a terrific leader and that was really encouraging to me.”

ON WHETHER HUDSON IS MORE SURE OF HIMSELF LATELY: “He’s starting to be. He’s playing better. We’re trying to get him to be more aggressive and to attack more and to make more plays. And he’s doing that. He’s making more plays in transition. He’s making more plays off ball screens. His interior passing has improved. He’s making more basketball plays, which is important.”

ON HUDSON EMBRACING MORE BALL-HANDLING DUTIES: “I think he’s embracing it. It’s a challenging, but I think he’s embracing it. My thing from this summer was to play the point as much as possible in pick-ups and summer leagues and all that jazz, and what I call develop more of a ‘city game.’ And I think hopefully that’s helped him a little bit, and then the success he’s had. He’s had a pretty good month of December. I don’t know what his stats are compared to November, but his December numbers are pretty good.”

ON THE START OF ACC PLAY THIS WEEKEND: “The league, you’ve got 16 root canals. That’s just the way it is. You’re going to have to play at a high level 16 times. You can’t let one affect the other. You can’t get so caught up in the past. You’ve got to stay very much in the present. They’re totally separate entities. More importantly than the record … See, because the record a lot of times is a byproduct of your schedule. You could be playing great, but you could be playing an absolutely killer schedule and be 8-4. Or you could be playing terrible and be 12-1. The thing I’m encouraged by is that we played … If you look where we were in Philadelphia and where we are now, we’re a lot better. The key is to continue to improve. Don’t be satisfied where you are. Because it’s not the wins and losses. Winning and losing is a byproduct of how you play. We’ve gotten better. We’re more alert defensively. We’re rebounding the ball fairly consistently. We’ve gotten better executing in the half court. And we’ve got more guys contributing. I remember sitting on the bench in the Delaware game, wondering if we’d ever get 60 points in a game. We got 23 points in overtime the other day. We’ve improved without the leading scorer in the ACC. The guys we’re playing on Sunday, that’s a different animal. That’s the best of the best. We’re going to have to continue to get better. Right now, it’s hard getting better when you only have 10 guys at practice.”

ON DEALING WITH UNC BIG GUYS DEON THOMPSON AND ED DAVIS: “They’re pretty good. They’ll make a little money. They’ll make more than you scribes, combined, times four. What’s the NBA minimum? They ain’t making the minimum. The one guy (Davis) is going to be a top-five pick. He’s going to make $9 million, three years. The biggest thing about guarding their interior people is you’ve got to guard them early. If you let them catch it deep, you’re dead. You’ve got to defend them early. You’ve got to get them off their spot. And you’ve got to understand what they’re trying to do. The one thing about doubling is you’ve got to then rotate to block out. Three things: defensive transition, offensive rebounding and defending the post. Those three things are critical. Then you’ve got to handle their pressure. I don’t think the last week has been the kinder, gentler Coach Roy.”

ON OFFENSIVE REBOUNDING AGAINST THE HEELS: “We’ve just got to put a body on people. We’ve got to cut people out on the glass. We’ve got to be physical in our block outs. We’ve got to check them off early. We can’t let them get a run to the rim.”

ON WHETHER UNC IS AS FAST WITHOUT TY LAWSON: “They’re fast. The ball’s got to get up there, but the wing guys run hard. When Zeller is in the game, Zeller runs about as well as any big guy that we’ll play against. He’s conscious of changing ends of the floor.”

ON WHY THE SERIES WITH CAROLINA HAS BEEN SO COMPETITIVE: “I’m brilliant (laughing). Every game is different. We have a set way of trying to play against them. Whether we can go out an execute it, that’ll be the question. I think we’ve had guys make plays against them. We’ve taken them out of transition, and we’ve taken them off the glass. If you take them out of transition and take them off the glass, then they’re not scoring 90 points. Now they’re scoring 70. You can’t let them score out of your offense. You can’t turn it over. We’ve never turned it over a bunch against them. You can’t let them turn you over. You can’t let them run it down your throat. And you can’t let them shoot high-percentage shots on put-backs. You’ve got to keep them in front, contest their shots and not get stretched out too much and see if you can win a 70-point game.”

ON HOW FRESHMAN ERICK GREEN HANDLED THE POINT IN DELANEY’S ABSENCE: “I think there were plays he’d like to have back. But I think about (how) he starts the game; he knocks down a jumper. He made a huge 3. With four fouls, he didn’t do a great job in defensive transition, but he made two huge defensive plays. He blocked a jump shot, made sure we got the run-out. Then on one ball screen, he went under it and knocked it away, and we got a run-out. I thought he handled himself well. He’s got to continue to get better. But I thought he handled himself well.”

ON GREEN NOT FOLDING UNDER PRESSURE: “They (Seton Hall) were talking some trash to him, and he handled it pretty well.”

ON HANDLING THE GAUNTLET THAT IS THE ACC SCHEDULE AND KEEPING HIS TEAM FOCUSED ON THAT AND NOT THEIR 12-1 START: “We’ve played 13 games. We play 30 games. We’re starting our second season, and it’s a totally different animal. I won’t start talking about (making the NCAA tournament) for a long time. You don’t make the tournament in January. You’ve just got to win games. Winning games is who you play, when you play, where you play them. Winning games is continuing to get better. You’ve just got to work on getting better. If you worry bout the tournament Jan. 6, then you’re not making it. There are certain programs that probably don’t have to worry about it. In our situation, if you’re worrying about math, your strength of schedule, RPI, all that stuff now, you’re not making the tournament. You don’t have enough energy to worry about that and coach your team, keep your guys locked in, improve, prepare, recruit. You don’t have time for all that stuff. So right now, I’m working on the things I have control of. When they scramble coming out of free throws and timeouts, are we going to handle that well? Are we going to block out on free throws or are we going to back-tap it? Their underneath out of bounds play, are we going to guard the inside screen? That’s all I’m worried about.”

ON TWO OF HIS TEAM’S TOUGHEST ACC ROAD GAMES THIS SEASON BEING IN THE FIRST TWO: “Last year, we won five games in the first half (of the ACC schedule) and two in the second. Well, we played Duke, Carolina and Florida State. At the end of the 16 games, we’ll know. If we lose a game, you guys will have the sky falling; we didn’t play a tough enough out-of-conference schedule. I already have it down, what you’re going to write.”

ON HOW FORWARD CADARIAN RAINES, THE FRESHMAN WHO BROKE HIS FOOT JUST BEFORE THE SEASON, IS COMING ALONG: “He’s coming along great. It is a shame that he missed those 10 weeks, because would be in a really pretty special place, I think. He’s still kind of clueless in terms of defensive philosophy, across the board, like being alert, rotating, defending the post early. But every day, he’s getting a little bit more instinctive. He’s getting a little more confident. He’s doing really well. He’s not redshirting. He’s going to be a significant contributor in the next two or three weeks, I’m expecting.”

ON WHAT CAROLINA’S LOSS TO CHARLESTON THIS WEEK SHOWED HIM ABOUT THE HEEL’S VULNERABILITIES: “Well, they made a zillion threes against them. They played differently. They played at home. What a great win (for Charleston). Bobby Cremins is one of the all-time best guys in our profession. So even though you want your league to win, you can’t help but be happy for him. But it’s different (for VT). It’s a league game. Roy probably rested those guys thinking they could win that game and then get them back for our game.”

ON HIS TAKE ABOUT THE LEAGUE THUS FAR: “I think the league is really deep. I think there’s a lot of good teams in the league. I think Miami is very talented. I think Florida State is really good. Georgia Tech is talented. Clemson is talented. Obviously Duke and Carolina are terrific. Wake Forest is developing an identity. They’ve got a really good win at Gonzaga. Everyone’s saying, ‘The league is down.’ I don’t think the league is down. The league is good. Have we lost some games? Yeah. But we’re not the only league that’s lost some games.”

ON WHETHER HE FEELS BETTER OR WORSE THAN EXPECTED AFTER 13 GAMES: “I didn’t feel encouraged or discouraged two months ago. Two months ago, I was just worried about getting better. And we’ve gotten a little bit better. If I’m worrying about where are within the grand scheme of things in the ACC on Jan. 6 ... I’m worried about our next game. I know that sounds stupid and simplistic, but the reality is, (former Wake coach) Skip Prosser gave me very wise advise when we got into the league. We had lunch one day and he said, ‘We were No. 1 in the country and we lost our next three games in league. It’s not one game. It’s the collective grind of the league. You’ve just got to deal with it on a day to day basis.’ That’s what I’ve always tried to do. I thought it was really good advice. He said, ‘Seth, don’t look ahead; Don’t look behind; Deal with it on a day to day basis, because you’ve never played in a league where if you deal with it cumulatively, it’ll just suck you out. It’s overwhelming.’ That was our first year. We were in Orlando (recruiting). Just sitting there having having a burger.”

ON NOT LOOKING AHEAD OR GETTING TO BIG-PICTURE, BUT THE BOTTOM LINE BEING THAT 12-1 IS BETTER THAN EVERY ALTERNATIVE BUT 13-0 AT THIS POINT: “I was driving back from Washington, D.C., yesterday with oldest daughter. She drove with me recruiting. She said, ‘Dad, I’ve got to be honest with you: After Philadelphia, I wasn’t sure we were going to win another game.’ I said, ‘I appreciate that, Paige.’ So obviously we’ve gotten better. How much better? We’ll find out in the next eight weeks.”

VT GUARD DORENZO HUDSON

ON WHETHER HE REALIZED, AT ANY POINT DURING HIS 41-POINT GAME AGAINST SETON HALL, HOW MANY HE HAD: “I wasn’t aware of my points because there wasn’t a scoreboard (in Cancun, Mexico) that showed your points. I was just out there playing ball, for real. I wasn’t real aware of it.”

ON WHETHER HIS OUTBURST WAS SIMPLY A PRODUCT OF HIM RESPONDING TO THE OPPORTUNITY WITH SCORING LEADER MALCOLM DELANEY OUT INJURED: “Yeah, I mean, I just knew from the jump. I knew I had to step up. When I saw him go out in the Longwood game, I thought, ‘We’ve got to take care of this Longwood game, and then against Seton Hall, I’m going to have to step my game up two times, three times more than I’ve been doing.’ I was just ready for the opportunity to be honest with you.”

ON WHETHER HIS FINAL POINT TALLY SURPRISED HIM: “I felt like I had a lot of points. I wasn’t really surprised. Forty-one sounds real good to me, but I wasn’t really surprised that I had it.”

ON WHERE HIS 41 POINTS RANKS GOING BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL EVEN AND WHETHER HE HAS EVER SHOT 21 FREE THROWS IN A GAME: “Um, no, I haven’t. I had 49 in Boo Williams ... the (AAU) tournament my senior year in high school.”

ON SEEMING TO EMBRACE THE ROLE, BEING COMFORTABLE IN IT, AND LOOKING LIKE HE WAS HAVING FUN ON TV AGAINST SETON HALL: “I was just enjoying myself. We were playing hard, competing pretty good and my teammates were into the game. So I was just out there having fun with my guys.”

ON COACH SETH GREENBERG SAYING HE WAS IMPRESSED WITH HUDSON’S LEADERSHIP IN THAT GAME: “I’m usually talking in the huddle. It’s probably pointed out a little more because I had a good game, but I’m usually the one trying to keep everybody positive. On that note, being a leader, that just comes naturally for me.”

ON HOW DIFFERENT HE IS FROM THIS TIME LAST YEAR: “The offensive side of the ball is just clicking for me right now. My defensive end, I’m trying to focus more on that, trying to stop guys on that end. On the defensive end, that’s where I score most of my points. It kind of gets me going. This year, I’m just out there having fun and trying to play my game.”

ON THE TEAM’S MINDSET AFTER STARTING 12-1 IN NON-LEAGUE PLAY BUT HEADING INTO A STRETCH THIS WEEK AT UNC, HOME AGAINST MIAMI AND AT FSU: “We just know we’ve got to be really focused. We all know, the veteran guys know, it’s going to come down to the last couple minutes of the game. A missed box out, a missed free throw or something like that. So we just know coming into the game, we’ve got to be focused. We have to go after 50-50 balls. We’ve got to check people. We just have to make them feel uncomfortable the whole game.”

ON WHETHER DELANEY GAVE HIM ANY ADVICE BEFORE THE SETON HALL GAME: “He mentioned to the guys that we were going to have to play hard. The whole time I was down there, I was trying to get Jeff (Allen), J.T. (Thompson) and T. Bell and everybody on the same page and let them know we’re going to have to play hard together. I think we did that.”

ON WHETHER HE FEELS A LITTLE LOOSER THIS SEASON BECAUSE HE KNOWS HE’S GOING TO GET A LOT MORE TOUCHES, WHEREAS LAST YEAR HE MIGHT’VE BEEN PRESSING TO NOT SCREW UP ON FEWER CHANCES: “Yes. That game was a confidence boost for me. And I think Coach has a lot of confidence in me now, since he knows what I can do on the offensive side. I’m pretty sure he already knew it when I came in. I feel like coming into the next game, if I miss a shot, I don’t have to worry about what Coach is going to say. I’ll just come down and try to make the next one. I just feel like this is a really positive thing for me.”

ON WHETHER THE SETON HALL GAME WAS SOMETHING OF A RELIEF: “I just really wanted to have a good game. Before the game, I was talking to Coach Jackson, a couple of the coaches, letting them know I was fixing to go put on a show for the guys and let them know I can really play ball. So I think none of my coaches were too surprised because I already told them before the game that I was fixing to put some big numbers up.”

ON WORKING TOWARD AN NCAA TOURNAMENT INVITE EVERY DAY: “It’s a very big part of us right now. In practice, we have to get some of our young guys on track, let them know what we’re trying to do, trying to get to the NCAA tournament. I feel like we’re eight or nine (wins) away from getting that bid. And once we get the bid, we’ve still got to play hard. I’m just trying to get everybody focused on what we’re trying to do in the long run.”

ON FEEDBACK FROM FRIENDS BACK HOME: “They’ve texted me and said, ‘Nice game,’ and, ‘Nice breakout game.’ They’ve just been really positive to me for a couple days and just really supportive.”

ON HIS COLLEGE CAREER FINALLY STARTING TO CLICK: “It took a lot of weight off my shoulders, gave me a lot of freedom. I’m walking with my shoulders kind of high right now, kind of feeling real confident going into the next game. I’m just really feeling good right now.”

ON WHETHER HE KEPT ANYTHING TO COMMEMORATE HIS BIG GAME: “I kept a peso or two.”

VT GUARD ERICK GREEN

ON HIS THOUGHTS BEFORE THE SETON HALL GAME, STEPPING IN FOR STAR MALCOLM DELANEY: “I’m not going to lie; I was nervous at first. Malcolm helped me through a lot. Sitting on the bench, when there was a timeout or a dead ball, he’d stand up and say, ‘E, come here,’ or whatever. And he’d walk me through everything. Like when a dude was up on me, don’t extend my arm because I got two fouls for that. Just get him on my hip. If I can go by him, go by him. If not, get him and back him off. Things like that.”

ON HOW HE THOUGHT HE PLAYED: “I feel like I did a good job. I feel like I stepped up to the challenge. And I had to fill big shoes for Malcolm and led my team. I think my only thing is them dang free throws I missed. Other than that, I feel I did a good job.”

ON THE CONTINUED UNCERTAINTY ABOUT DELANEY ENTERING THE UNC GAME: “I’m preparing to start right now. If Malcolm will be able to play, he’ll be able to play. But right now, I’m preparing to start. He’s day-to-day, I guess. I really don’t know. I have no idea what he’s going to do. He’s out there shooting, so other than that, I really have no idea.”

ON THE NERVES INVOLVED IN PLAYING AT UNC FOR THE FIRST TIME: “It’s going to be different. Walking into that atmosphere, it’s going to be crazy. Once the jump ball goes up, I’ll be fine. Going up and down, I’ll be fine after that.”

ON SETON HALL PLAYERS TRASH-TALKING TO GET IN HIS HEAD: “It gets me kind of hyped. I like that. I don’t like to talk. I just play the game. But when someone’s talking to me, it kind of gets me going a little bit. I just forget and just play ball.”

ON BEING HEISTANT EARLY: “I think at first, I was kind of just timid to make mistakes. That was my biggest thing. I didn’t want to come out here and make mistakes. But (Greenberg) pulled me in the office; even Malcolm was like, ‘You’re going to make mistakes.’ When he was a freshman, he made a lot of mistakes. It’s just part of basketball. I think as the season got on and on, I just said, ‘Forget it. I’m just going to start playing.’ I think sometimes, I’m still not as assertive as I need to be. So I’m working on that.”

ON HOW HE WORKS ON IT: “I’ve got to get it in my head just to go. If I make a mistake, I make a mistake. Get it back on the other end. That’s how I see it.”

ON STAYING GROUNDED DURING A 12-1 START: “Honestly, I don’t think not one person has said we’re 12-1 in the locker room. We don’t look at it like that. We just go by who the next opponent is. And we’re just preparing for it. We go hard every day in practice.”

ON WHO SETS THAT TONE: “I think the upperclassmen, really. Just anybody. One day it’ll be Dorenzo. It could be Malcolm. It could be Jeff. It could be anybody. Dorenzo, he likes to talk more. He’ll say, ‘Let’s pick it up.’ You see Jeff going; he’s not going to really talk. He’ll pick it up by himself. He’ll get after it. Once you see these people get after it, you get after it.”

ON HUDSON’S LEADERSHIP BLOSSOMING: “I don’t think people see it. He’s always been a leader, since Day 1, since I’ve gotten here, he’s always been a leader. Malcolm was out. He had to step up even more. When sometimes I was down and made a mistake, he brought me back up: ‘E, let’s go,’ or something like that. Just getting everybody together. He did a good job of that, even when Malcolm was out.”

ON THE ACC SCHEDULE BEING A DIFFERENT ANIMAL THAN THE FIRST 13 NON-LEAGUE GAMES: “Yeah, I think it’s going be different. Other than the atmosphere – I know there’s going to be a lot of people in Chapel Hill – I think competition-wise is going to be the same. Of course they’re going to be a little better. But I think it’s going to be the same. They’re going to be up in me. They’ll want to play a fast-paced game and we’ve just got to come and play, really.”

ON EXPERIENCING A STEP UP IN COMPETITION WHEN HE TRASNFERRED FROM MILLBROOK TO PAUL VI FOR HIS SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL SEASON: “I think when I was at Millbrook, I might have had one good game in the district that was going to get me. At Paul VI, every night, it was a good game for me. I’m going up against kids going to Duke, North Carolina, anywhere in Division I. You never knew in the WCAC (Paul VI’s league) who’s going to get beat. We lost to the worst team in the conference one night. It taught me how to come to play. I couldn’t take any days off, because I was used to doing that at Millbrook. And it taught me I couldn’t turn it on and off.”

ON SOME OF THE GUYS HE FACED AT PAUL VI: “Kendall Marshall, Tyler Thornton. Terrence Ross; he’s going to Maryland.”

ON WHY HE TRANSFERRED: “My junior year, I was going to go, but I decided to stay with my friends and try to win a state championship. After we won the championship, my mom and dad got together, and they were like, ‘I think it’s time for you to get better competition if you’re going to try to play at the next level.’ ”

ON WHO ELSE RECRUITED HIM BESIDES TECH: “George Mason, St. John’s, JMU. I wasn’t recruited highly coming out of high school. I had already committed going into my senior year. That summer in Vegas (at an AAU tournament), a lot of people started asking about me. I showed off there, got to play against John Wall in front of everybody. People asked about me. But my mom told me I’m a man of my word. Got to stick to it.”

ON WHICH SCHOOLS STARTED RECRUITING HIM AFTER VEGAS: “Maryland, Indiana asked about me.”

ON HOW HE FARED AGAINST JOHN WALL, WHO IS NOW KENTUCKY’S SUPERSTAR FRESHMAN: “I did good. Coach Greenberg always brings that up. He’s like, ‘If you can play against him, you can play against anybody.’ I didn’t guard him the whole entire game, but I got to guard him a lot. ... He’s a very good ball player.”

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