What Tennessee AC Rod Clark Said Ahead Of Kentucky Game

Photo By Andrew Ferguson/Tennessee Athletics

Tennessee basketball assistant coach Rod Clark met with the local media on Monday afternoon as the Vols prepare to face rival Kentucky on Tuesday night in Knoxville.

Clark put a bow on the Auburn loss, discussed Igor Milicic shooting struggles, the strong defensive week and much more. Here’s everything Clark said.

More From RTI: Tennessee Basketball Falls In AP Poll After 1-1 Week Against Top 15 Foes

On what Kentucky looks like under first-year UK coach Mark Pope

“They’re super talented. Obviously they’re older this year, which is different from the last regime, obviously when Cal (John Calipari) was there, because they got some good transfers in. But you know, they’re fun to watch. They’re innovative. They space the floor, shoot a lot of threes and get up and down, play a pretty good pace. So he’s doing a great job, man. I think Coach Pope, I got a lot of respect for him. I remember watching his teams at Utah Valley and he did a good job there. And obviously he has climbed the ladder and now he’s at Kentucky, his former school, where he’s doing a really good job of getting those guys to play pretty hard for him. I don’t think any other coach that came into that situation would understand this rivalry more than Mark Pope does.” 

On Tennessee’s responding from the loss at Vanderbilt with two tough defensive performances against Mississippi State and Auburn  

“I thought it was great, man. I think the guys, they put their hard hats on and really locked in and focused. And they knew we had a game where we left a lot of meat on the bone and didn’t compete the way we probably should have against Vandy. And I thought that they responded in a high-level way. Obviously, two teams that were in the top 20 in offense in the country and we did a good job of limiting them, limiting their opportunities and taking away the threes and making it tough for them. So I was proud of the guys, honestly. I thought we had a really strong week last week.”

On what Igor Milicic needs to do to get back on track offensively

“Honestly, with Igor, we just got to get him to understand taking the right shots, understand where to pick your spots. And honestly as a staff and especially with the teammates for sure, we just got to push him to stay aggressive. Because we need him. We need him, bottom line. I think anytime you see games where we don’t score the ball as well or as effective, I think you look back and you say, okay, what did Chaz Lanier, what did Jordan Gainey and what did Igor Milicic do offensively? And I think that if we scored the ball well, all three of those guys had pretty good nights. If we don’t score the ball well, one or two of those guys didn’t have a great night. So that’s something important for us where we got to keep those guys going in the right direction offensively.”

On if Igor Milicic shooting issue are mental or physical

“Honestly, I think that’s a player specific question. Because only a player knows when it comes to the shooting. You got to have confidence when shooting the basketball. A lot of times that comes from within you. He puts in a lot of work when it comes to shooting the basketball. And honestly with some of his misses, when you see it come off his hands, it looks like it’s going in, right? So it’s a little bit of bad luck when it comes to that. But as a player, like I think about when I was a player it just came from you have to get confidence in your reps and your preparation. 

So you could be missing shots that just means that when you’re out of practice or after practice when you’re getting your individual work in, you just got to shoot more and build back your touch and your confidence from that. Igor will be fine.”

On how important the two home games this week (Kentucky and Florida) are

“They’re huge. Honestly, every home game you get is huge in this league. Because I think Bruce Pearl said it the other night, it’s hard for anybody to win on the road in this league. I guess it’s hard to win road games in general, but then you try to win road games in the SEC and it’s just hard. It’s tough. We got great environments in this league. We got great coaches in this league. You have guys that take a lot of pride in playing at home in this league and some of these home courts are different than they’ve been in the past due to whether it’s new coaches or a new spark in the program, whatever the case may be. So it’s hard to win in on the road. So when you have home games, you got to take care of your home floor, you got to handle it. You got to use the energy that you get from your crowds to your advantage. So our focus is just to try to come out and play good ball, happy that we don’t have to pack our bags for the next three games. So we’re excited about that.”

On what Kentucky does so well

“I think they spread you out offensively. They play with a wide floor, have a lot of (dribble hand-offs) going on on the side, guys flying off of zoom actions, is what we like to call them. With teams that spread you out and shoot a lot of threes, you know, they’re playing five out a lot. It keeps you from being in gaps. It keeps you from being on what we call the white line, but on the midline. It keeps you from being able to help because you have to get overextended from guarding guys that like to shoot a lot of threes and they always keep at least four guys on the floor that shoot a ton of threes.

“So that makes it tough to prepare for ’em. It makes you have to have a little bit more urgency when it comes to your closeout game, and helping the helper with guys when they drive the basketball. But, you know, we’ve played teams like this in the past. Honestly, it’s different. They’re different teams, but like we prepare for Alabama that does some of the similar things as them over the years. So it’s not anything that we’re nervous about, and don’t feel like we can guard ’em. We feel like we can still put our best foot forward and be good defensively. It’s just a matter of understanding tendencies and understanding some of the actions that we’d really like to get to.”

On how important it is for Igor Milicic Jr. and Darlinstone Dubar to shoot the ball with confidence in order to help Tennessee’s offense have adequate spacing

“They both are really important. We’ve had conversations with both of them. We need them to produce in the four spot because they give us, just a different punch and a different look offensively. When you have four guys that can stretch you out and shoot the basketball, and guys that can put it on the floor and make decisions, you gotta be able to use that to your advantage. And honestly, if you look at basketball over the last few years, the four spot is a pivotal position because usually when you can get a guy with size, they can dribble, pass and shoot. It makes everything more effective because how many four men are picking up full court? There’s a lot of guys at the one, two and three spots that do. But when it comes to the four spot, that doesn’t happen a ton. 

So, you know, there’s times when we like to throw the ball at the top to Igor and Stone, and kind of let them facilitate and handle the offense and make decisions.

“But they both know they gotta get better. They gotta get better at handling that responsibility. They gotta get better at producing on a consistent basis and you know, that’s gonna come from them putting in extra work and continuing to get better and understand the game. And it’s going to come from us as a coaching staff to push them to do that and have confidence in them to make those plays.”

Similar Articles

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *