Fresh off the Vols’ dramatic overtime win at Vanderbilt on Wednesday night, head coach Donnie Tyndall joined RTI Radio on Thursday afternoon to discuss that and more with Reed Carringer and Houston Kress.
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Here’s a transcript of Tyndall’s comments:
On if he got any time to enjoy the Vandy win:
“Absolutely. I’ve said this before, when you get a road win and you’re on the bus, you call it the happy bus, and if you’re on a plane, it’s the happy plane, so we were on the happy bus for about three hours enjoying away and already watching LSU tape, getting ready for the Tigers on Saturday.”
On his team’s identity being tough and finding ways to win:
“I certainly would like to think so. My teams have in the past have always been a tough, gritty group, and I think that’s the case again this season. We’ve said over the course of the summer that we wanted to be the most overachieving team in the country, and when you look at our roster with only nine scholarship players, three true freshmen having to play, Derek Reese is really a four-man having to play most of his minutes at the five – in my mind, we are overachieving and that’s a credit to our young guys. And I don’t think we’re going to be in a situation this year where we’re able to put away a conference opponent early and win by 15, 20, 25 points, that’s just not going to happen. We’re going to continue to hopefully be in close games and give ourselves a chance to win, and last night was a perfect example of that.”
On Derek Reese and Josh Richardson bouncing back:
“Well, I’m a heck of a lot better coach yesterday than I was at Georgia when those guys do that, don’t you agree? It makes life a lot easier, that’s for sure, and that’s what you’d hope your upperclassmen would do. Josh has been fantastic all year and Derek is a guy that, to be perfectly candid, because of his practice habits at times, digs a hole for himself and then he responds and has a couple good weeks and plays well and earns significant minutes, and then can go back and have a bad few days on the practice floor and that’s affected him in regards to his consistency. But he’s gotten much better the second half of the season and he certainly played well last night.”
On wearing the orange blazer:
“You guys are my guys if you’re going to tell me how good I looked, but I had a lot of people say I resembled a pumpkin in that thing and I don’t think that’s a compliment. You know, I’m a pretty secure guy and I can laugh at myself, and I’ll just simply say this: As long as I’m the head coach at Tennessee, I’ll continue to do that. Obviously honoring the tradition and the history that Coach Mears started and all the great things he accomplished, so I’m proud to be carrying on that tradition.”
On the last few seconds of regulation:
“Well, I’m telling you that it was such a blur that finally this morning I’m able to put it together, and I think with about 16 seconds to go, we’re down five, we make a 3 with about 12 to go, so now it’s a two-point game, they throw it in, we foul, we were fortunate they only made 1-of-2, so now it’s a 3-point game with 8.6 seconds left. We inbound it, they decide to foul with about six seconds left, we go to the free-throw line and make them both, I think it was Josh, so now it’s a one point game with six seconds to go. We foul, they go to the free-throw line, we’re fortunate they go 1-of-2, so now it’s a two-point game and Robert (Hubbs) drives the length of the floor to tie it at the horn, so we actually scored seven points in the final in that last 15, 16 seconds of that game if I’m not mistaken.”
On Robert Hubbs’ improvement:
“Well I think the biggest thing is this, and we talked about it early on, Robert is a very, very coachable young guy, even when things weren’t going his way early in the season, his body language stayed good, he stayed receptive to coaching, he continued to practice the right way and he’s gotten better and better. People forget this: Robert didn’t really get a freshman year with the shoulder injury, he played in 10 or 12 games and then his season ended prematurely and he spent all offseason rehabbing where he couldn’t even go through workouts or pick-up ball, so this is like his freshman year and he’s really turned the corner the second part of the season. He’s been really good in conference play and the thing I’m excited about is knowing how coachable Robert is and the way he works on the practice floor, he’s just going to get better and better as we move ahead.”
On the importance of playing better at home and getting a good crowd:
“Well, it’s huge. It’s obviously very important, and I’m as disappointed as anyone that we’ve lost three tough games in our building this year. I haven’t lost three home games in the last two years combined up until this year, so I’m not used to that. Our fans have been amazing. There have been four or five games where if they weren’t into the game helping us get through it, giving us the energy they did, we wouldn’t have won those games and we’ve got some exciting games coming up with obviously LSU is a very talented team, and then Kentucky on Tuesday and South Carolina I believe for Senior Night. I certainly hope and expect our fans will come out in a big way. I’ve said this: We’ve got the best fans in college basketball. They’ve truly been amazing this season, and I think they’ll help us finish this thing up the right way in our last three home games.”
On he and Coach Justin Phelps being heroes on Twitter:
“Coach Phelps, now known as Big Gulp, I’m sure follows Twitter pretty closely. I post a thing occasionally here or there, but I really don’t follow it and read Twitter a lot because my daughters, unfortunately, give me the updates and say, ‘Daddy, how come people say bad stuff about you – why do they say this, or why do they say that,’ so I tell them not to read it and I don’t read a whole lot of it either. Occasionally a guy on my staff may show me a picture – one of these pictures people put together – and I’ll laugh a little bit, but I’m so busy, I don’t read a whole lot of Twitter stuff, but I do have to admit that I’ve quickly found out that the Big Gulp has become a hit, a superstar, I guess you should say.”
https://twitter.com/LoneNutVolFan/status/565850291153936384
On the challenges of facing LSU:
“They have two big kids that are 6-9, 6-10ish, (Jarell) Martin and (Jordan) Mickey, that are, in my opinion, two guys that will be first-round draft picks, probably sooner than later. They block shots, they challenge shots, they’re great on the offensive boards, they both can score around the rim, and obviously with our lack of size and lack of physicality on the front line, that’s a very, very big concern for us. But the thing is, their guards are good. (Josh) Gray and (Tim) Quarterman and (Keith) Hornsby, those guys can make shots, they can make plays off the dribble, so they’re a balanced team. They’re not a super deep team, they’re going to play seven, seven and a half guys, but their front line is probably one of the five best front lines in America and two guys that are going to be NBA players, so we’re going to have to contain them and that’s obviously easier said that done with the lack of size on our roster.”
