Capel, Carrington and Hinson on the win, the Zoo and more

Jeff Capel, Bub Carrington and Blake Hinson met the media after Pitt's win over Notre Dame on Saturday night, and here's video and a full rundown of their remarks.

Capel: Well, first and foremost, I’m incredibly grateful for our crowd today. They were tremendous, especially the Zoo. So really, really happy and appreciative and grateful for them. Really proud of our team. I thought we fought and did some really good things in this game and really proud of the win. I thought for the first 35 minutes, I thought our defense was outstanding. The attention to detail that we had, the things that we went over in scouting, I thought we did an excellent job of executing that. I thought we got good looks early; we just missed them. And I thought the last five minutes of the first half, we unlocked some things and were finally able to see the ball go through the basket. I thought our offense was really good in the second half.

So just really, really proud of the win, proud of our guys for finishing the week out and being efficient, especially in the second half offensively against a really good defensive team.

Blake, this is four wins in the last five games; does it feel like this team is really hitting its stride right now?
Hinson: For sure. But we have more to give. I mean, the way I feel, we should have five. We made a great comeback effort in that one game and I’m not going to talk about it. But yeah, we have more to give. So we’re hitting our stride, for sure, but it’s not our best.

Bub, you guys were 0-for-9 to start the game from three and the one you hit toward the end of the second half kind of started that momentum. How do you guys feed off of that kind of thing and how did things change for you once you hit that first three?
Carrington: I feel like just belief in yourself and your teammates, like we all preach before games: expect the best from yourself, expect the best from your teammates and everything else will fall in line.

Blake, what can you say about the growth and collective toughness of you guys as a team, facing more physical opponents?
Hinson: Yeah, it comes with the game. It comes with being in this league. I expected this out of us, and we’re growing into the league perfectly and we’re doing good.

Blake, what do you guys have to do to avoid the slow starts, to avoid the five-minute periods of no scoring?
Hinson: Some of the best players in the world, best teams in the world, have slow starts. It’s part of the game. Just make sure you overcome the slow starts is what’s important.

Blake, what’s your thought process when Notre Dame sends double teams at you?
Hinson: Get rid of it. Somebody’s open. Just like the general rule of double teams. I mean, sometimes I can get through it, but just trying to get off the ball and not turn it over, which I did that four times today, but try not to turn it over.

Blake, how important was it when Bub hit that first three?
Hinson: Yeah, I told Bub, ‘I’m waiting on you to hit a three so I can start.’ And that’s what happened.

Carrington: He never said that.

Bub, did you guys make any defensive adjustments? It seemed like Notre Dame was getting some penetration early and you guys seemed to slow that down.
Carrington: I guess one would be kind of going small, being able to switch every ball screen and handoff, just giving ourselves another wing out there that can really guard one through five. I guess that’s kind of the adjustment that we made.

Jeff, what was your assessment on the ball movement today?
Capel: I thought it was good. I thought it was good. I thought we generated really good looks. I thought we generated some really great looks in the first half. We were wide open and we just missed them. Like you guys mentioned, Bub kind of opened it up for us; he got that one in transition and then I thought we did a really good job of moving it. Blake’s two, off of skip passes; his first one, I mean, he got doubled and he threw it out and we had great movement there. We swung it, swung it, and then we drove it and found him opposite on another skip pass.

So I thought we did a good job of that.

What can you say about Jaland’s effort? He wasn’t hitting shots early but he was distributing the ball.
Capel: Yeah, again, there’s so many ways that you can have impact on the game, and I thought his ball movement - I mean, the very first play of the game, he made a great pass to Zack and we got a wide open shot in the corner. We just missed it. So I thought he did a good job of that. Got to be stronger, especially at the end of the game; you can’t get sped up, you have to make sure we’re organized. He’ll continue to get better with that.

Do you feel like Fede gave an improved effort today?
Capel: I thought Fede did well. He had nine rebounds, three blocked shots, I thought he did a good job of screening. I thought he did some good things for us today.

You have Jorge hurt and you lost Mike this week. When you’re down in numbers, how tough of an adjustment is that to make this late in the season and how do you feel you guys responded?
Capel: It’s not a tough adjustment at all. It’s not at all. This point in the season, we’re not practicing for a long period of time. If this would have been earlier in the season, it would have affected us. But we have 10 scholarship guys that are able to play and we have walk-ons that do an outstanding job to help us, so it doesn’t bother us at all. Jorge’s does, because he was a rotation player and he was a guy at his size that can spread the floor and make some plays. But we’ll be okay.

How does that affect your rotations in the front court?
Capel: It doesn’t. We never played Jorge in the front court. He was a guard, like a wing, for us. Our rotation is still solid there with Federiko, with G, now we can put Will there with Blake, if we need to slide Zack back down, we can do that. I feel good about where we are with that.

Similar to what I asked Blake, do you feel like you guys are really hitting your stride right now?
Capel: I don’t know if we’re hitting our stride. I think we’re playing well. It’s great to be able to win two back-to-back games at home against two different type teams. Wake Forest, I think, is an elite offensive team, and Notre Dame has shown that they’re very good to elite level - look at the numbers - defensive team. So to be able to perform the way that we did against both teams, defensively against Wake and then to be able to score 70, 42 in the second half, again, I think we’re doing some good things. We’ll enjoy this and we’ll get back Monday and start getting ready to go on the road.

I asked Bub this; what did you see your guys do differently against the penetration that Notre Dame was getting early on?
Capel: Yeah, to start the game, we did not do a good job of containing penetration, and that was just strictly of understanding personnel. I thought we did a better job once we got to a timeout and we were able to talk about what we’ve worked on for the past two days in preparation, understanding personnel. We still didn’t do it right all the time. Late in the game, we flew at a non-shooter, he shot-faked and was able to drive us. We have to do a better job of understanding personnel right from the beginning, but especially as the game goes on.

You put in Bub when he had two fouls late in the first half; what does it say of a first-year guard not fouling then?
Capel: Yeah, I trust him. I trust him. I trust him to make plays and to be smart, and I think he’s earned that. Really, it’s the only way he’s gotten it is that he’s earned it. I thought he did a good job. He hit that three that unlocked us and obviously he’s a threat for us out there. It was great that we were able to make that last three and get the timeout to get him out for that defensive possession. But I thought he did a good job of playing without fouling. In that moment. Not the rest of the game.

What have you seen from your guys throughout the year of the ability to make adjustments in-game? When it’s like, ‘Hey, we worked on this, it’s not working, let’s get off this.’
Capel: Well, again, when we try to prepare, we try to look at different things, just in case what you’re saying happens - if that’s not working, then we can go to something else, whether it’s a different lineup, whether we want to switch things, whether it’s, okay we get into the game - you know, for instance, when we played Wake Forest, they did something defensively that I had not seen them do and no one did to us all year. They literally almost - it was like it was a box-and-one on Blake, so we had to adjust to that. So we work on different things in practice, and I think our guys have become pretty smart of understanding when we need to make adjustments and being able to execute those.

Coming out of this game, what do you think you need to work on going into the N.C. State game?
Capel: Everything. We need to get off to better starts. We need to be able to make shots right away. We need to be able to understand personnel, like I mentioned. We didn’t do a good job of containing penetration early. We have to rebound. We have to defensive rebound. I didn’t think we did a great job of that in the first half. The numbers only say two, but we didn’t get some clean, where we were able to get out in transition. So we have to do a better job of that.

Do you think your ceiling is much higher than it is right now?
Capel: I think so. I think we still have a large room to get better and we’re going to try to work every day to try to make that happen.

When teams are doubling Blake, how do you balance trying to get Blake more shots because he’s an effective scorer against looking for other options to score?
Capel: Well, again, he’s got to accept the double and make the play. That’s basketball. I thought he did a really good job of that for the most part today. I thought he had a really efficient 17 points.

Blake has seen all kinds of different things with how teams have defended him this year. And again, for him to be able to make those adjustments, to not get frustrated, to not get rushed - I think the first 15 minutes, he didn’t score, and then all of a sudden, the last five minutes, he gets seven points, he hits two three’s, he gets fouled shooting a three, so he has the ability to go on these spurts for us, and that shows growth in him.

Win number 300 in this building; what does that mean for your program?
Capel: It’s awesome. It’s awesome. I’m grateful for the little bit that I’ve had to do with it. There were a lot more before I got here, with Ben and with Jamie and what they were able to do here. It was really awesome to have the 1974 team here and the 2009 team, to be able to spend some time with them yesterday, last night. Some of the guys were at our shoot-around today.

This is a very proud program, and it's a really, really good program. I’m honored to be the caretaker of it and to be a part of it, and hopefully we can get a lot more wins here.

Early in the season, you talked about how the younger guards still speak with the older guys, do you still see that?
Capel: Oh yeah, no question. See it all the time. I mean, we were at - where were we at? Georgia Tech? When did the Lions plays? It was Georgia Tech? We came down for a meeting, a night meeting or whatever, and Bub is on FaceTime with Greg Elliot. Greg’s a big Lions fan; that’s how I knew it had something to do with the Lions, because it was getting ready for that.

So yeah, they talk all the time.

You talked about the energy from the Zoo; how do you feel like that helps fuel the team and helps with momentum?
Capel: Yeah, anytime you have a great crowd, you can feed off the energy. Now, you have to give them energy, too. Earlier in January, I don’t think we did a good job of that, and the Zoo still continued to show up, so I’m really, really grateful for that.

But it does, man. When you have a good crowd and you walk out and you see that - for me, when I start walking out of the tunnel, the immediate thing I see is right across, right up near my office, and it was really cool and I felt really good to see that there were people there. Sometimes I walk out and I count them sometimes; there might be like 15 people in that whole area right there. That’s not good. But the Zoo has been tremendous all year. Incredibly grateful for them. They come out and support all of the sports here and I think all of the student-athletes and I know all of the coaches are incredibly grateful for it.

Bub’s got 16 or more points in three out of his last four games. Is that just confidence and him hitting his shots, or are you seeing him get to his spots better?
Capel: Yeah, I mean, he’s a good player. I expect it. He’s a good player. So I think it’s a combination of him being a talented player, him understanding the conference now a little bit more, experience - you know, we’re in February now, so these guys to me, especially playing a lot, like, you’re not freshmen. You’re still a freshman, but you have a lot of experience now. You’ve been in moments, you’ve been in high-pressure situations, so I trust his ability and expect him to perform at a high level.