Utah Men’s Head Coach Jim Boylen Weekly Press Conference Feb. 22, 2010

Opening statement: “I’m excited about this week. I’m excited about practice today. We’re in the middle of the grind of the conference schedule. We have four games left, two at home and two on the road, and we have to keep getting better and growing. We played good basketball last week. I was excited by the fact that we outrebounded both of our opponents, one at home and one on the road. The growth of our team, rebounding-wise, is exciting for me. That’s something we’ve been working on and stressing. We have to keep going in that direction. Evaluating our game at San Diego State, we had opportunities to win that game but we could not take advantage. We made poor decisions at the end. We had a non-penetrating foul by [Luka] Drca that gave them the lead back. That was a big mistake by a veteran guy and then we were unable to score down the stretch. Jay Watkins had two good looks and just could not get a ball to go down at the end. Finally, the two cutouts in a row hurt us. They got the ball back, score, take the lead, take some time, all of those things. They didn’t make every free throw in that situation after they got the ball back but our ability to control the game was hurt by that. We have to keep getting better at the games inside the game. We have to keep getting better at special teams, which is out of bounds defense, out of bounds offense, press breakers, free throw cut outs, all of those things have to continue to grow and get better as we go down the stretch. We’re close. Our margin for error has improved some because our rebounding and offense has improved but still, we need to do everything right, to give ourselves a chance to win games. We’re close.”

On Kim Tillie: “Kim [Tillie’s] athleticism and physicality were terrific in the UNLV and San Diego State game. He brought energy and some toughness to our front line, which we need. I was proud of his play. He finished plays at San Diego State. He did not finish plays against them here. That was a big part of our second-half run. He had two great finishes at the rim and played through contact to finish plays. He’s getting better and working hard. I’m proud of him.”

On team’s improvement not translating into a win at San Diego State: “That’s basketball. My job is to evaluate my team. Are we getting better? Are we growing? Is that evaluation stamped as correct when you win? Yeah. That’s the game. That’s the life we live. I understand that but my job is to make my team better, to develop this group and we’re doing that. We played well enough against New Mexico to win here, but we didn’t win the game. It’s frustrating. We beat UNLV and then had the lead with four minutes to go at San Diego State but didn’t win the game. There are reasons why we didn’t win the game. My job is to coach those reasons and hopefully not have them happen again. We are playing good basketball. We got off to a bad start, in some ways, at San Diego State, but teams are going to make runs. What we have to do is keep team’s runs to four and six points. When team’s runs are six and eight points, we struggle. The games we’ve won, we keep team’s runs down. That was a big part of the UNLV win. They never really had a big spurt and San Diego State had two big spurts that were hard to battle back from.”

On playing a zone defense against San Diego State: “My dilemma is that if you go zone and make them shoot from the outside you have to the ball. We’ve been working on our man-to-man defense, our man-to-man defense into cutouts, and we’ve improved that. You should play some zone against them, but did I feel that with our team right now that that was the answer to doing it? I didn’t. Last time here, we went zone at the end of the game, they got an offensive rebound and then a three on the next possession from that. We have to keep working on our zone. Hopefully, it’s a weapon for us down the stretch. We can arm chair quarterback all we want and say that we should have played some zone and you wouldn’t be wrong to say that.”

On the remaining four games of conference play: “We want to win all four games. That’s what we want to do. We’re going to prepare for them one at a time. Air Force is a very difficult opponent to play. They are playing better basketball. They are healthy. Their style makes them a difficult game. We have to go there and try to play good basketball and win. We have to come back home against Wyoming and try to play good basketball and win, and right on down the line. To give you a goal, to me, the goal is to win all four games. Inside the goal, the goal is to play good basketball, keep growing as a team, and to keep guys going in the right direction.”

On gaining momentum heading into the MWC Tournament: “It’s huge. We’re trying to put two and three wins together at a time and we need to do that. The tournament is another season. That’s one thing I like about is that you have non-conference, conference, postseason tournament, and then maybe you have another postseason tournament. We have to get momentum and confidence by playing good basketball and I’m going to try to get my team to do that. Do I want to win these games? Of course. That’s what I’m here for, but we lost on Saturday and I feel like we have momentum right now because I think we’re playing good basketball.”

On Air Force: “Their ability to shoot the ball with their ‘bigs’ [Grant] Parker and [Mike] McLain to shoot the ball, stretch our defense out, get David [Foster] away from the basket, that’s their game plan every year I’ve been here. They want to get [Foster] away from the basket and exploit our defense with their five man shooting the ball and the one thing they did against us here is that they ran the ball pretty well. Their transition offense was good. They’re playing a lot of switching man defense and then they also have their zone. They’ve played a little bit more switching man this year, rather than just all zone like last year. Against us, they play a combination of the two. Being able to figure out what defense they’re in and being able to execute against it is big.”

On preparing for Air Force compared to other teams in the MWC: “It’s different. They have a different style and system. They play a lot of guys so preparing for their personnel is important. They put our centers in very difficult situations. We can’t have our centers by the rim or plug the lane, like he usually does in a lot of situations. The ball changes sides and they cut with force. You have to do your work early. You have to be alert and communication is very important in this game defensively. You have to communicate defensively because there is a lot of stuff going on. It’s a hard system to guard.

“My guys respect Air Force. They know they have to go on the road and win a game. We had a good game with them here the last time and they were shorthanded. Now they’re full strength. We know what we’re in for. That will be established with them and talked about. It already has been in our meeting on that. We’re at a time of the year where we have to play with a sense of urgency, but we expect that all of the time.”

On David Foster’s performance over the last four games: “I’m concerned about him. David has given me everything he has. He practices hard. He plays hard. He has played through contact, fatigue and some injuries. He’s done a great job this year. To me, he’s the defensive player of the year [in the MWC]. It’s not even close. Nobody impacts the game more than him at the defensive end with his shot blocks, alters, and presence. But we have to watch him down the stretch, absolutely. I have to watch his minutes in practice and just watch him and talk to him. He’s 231 pounds, I’m concerned about his weight. He plays hard. He’s big. He’s back from a mission and this is his first time in this system. There’s a lot of newness to him. People are trying to go at him so he’s involved in a lot of plays. In our defense, he’s involved in more plays than most centers are involved in plays on other teams. You’ve seen what we’ve tried to do. We’ve tried to play him, play [Jason] Washburn and play Tillie at the five some. Last week you saw that so [Foster’s performance lately] was on my mind before today.”