I was at practice today, and here's what HC Bobby Hurley and guard Kodi Justice had to say about Hurley's Monday comments:
Hurley
“Coaches use different tools, different techniques to motivate. You hope that you don’t have to go to some tough words, and you make a point not to single anyone out. It certainly was a team thing, not one individual. It was multiple individuals, it was coaches, it was everyone. I said what I felt after the game, and I’m not going to change that or how I feel. There’s just different tactics coaches use. He might take away the locker room from guys after a week like we had in the Bahamas and in New York. He might take away the guys’ practice gear. Just different things that I [as a player] had to go through and didn’t feel great about. I think it was a pretty mild way of expressing how I feel and my guys responded.”
“A lot of it is effort, but some of it is just shot-making and stretches early in the game. Early against Pudue, we were right in the middle of the game and we missed some shots. We took some quick shots, which, for a stretch of three minutes in the first half we lost track of the game a little bit.”
“The guys practiced a little harder, but it can’t just be because something bad happened. We have to come out here every day. You want to build a culture that’s based on how hard you play, your work ethic and that has to be consistent every game.”
Justice
“The things he said, we kind of took to heart. We just had to look at ourselves and ask what we were doing wrong for the games to end up like that and for him to say what he did.”
Hurley
“Coaches use different tools, different techniques to motivate. You hope that you don’t have to go to some tough words, and you make a point not to single anyone out. It certainly was a team thing, not one individual. It was multiple individuals, it was coaches, it was everyone. I said what I felt after the game, and I’m not going to change that or how I feel. There’s just different tactics coaches use. He might take away the locker room from guys after a week like we had in the Bahamas and in New York. He might take away the guys’ practice gear. Just different things that I [as a player] had to go through and didn’t feel great about. I think it was a pretty mild way of expressing how I feel and my guys responded.”
“A lot of it is effort, but some of it is just shot-making and stretches early in the game. Early against Pudue, we were right in the middle of the game and we missed some shots. We took some quick shots, which, for a stretch of three minutes in the first half we lost track of the game a little bit.”
“The guys practiced a little harder, but it can’t just be because something bad happened. We have to come out here every day. You want to build a culture that’s based on how hard you play, your work ethic and that has to be consistent every game.”
Justice
“The things he said, we kind of took to heart. We just had to look at ourselves and ask what we were doing wrong for the games to end up like that and for him to say what he did.”
