Tennessee basketball assistant coach Steve McClain and shooting guard Amaree Abram met with the local media Tuesday morning. The Vols are coming off a loss at Kentucky before traveling to Mississippi State on Wednesday to face a struggling Bulldog team.
Ahead of the matchup, the duo discussed lessons learned from the loss at Kentucky, Nate Ament’s emergence and much more. Here’s everything the duo said.
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Steve McClain
On what Tennessee coaches saw after watching the Kentucky film
“I think there were a, a lot of positives in the sense of you go on the road, you want to get off to a great start. We got off to a great start. I think the fallacy in basketball, and you use the Oklahoma-Vanderbilt (game) as an example. (Vanderbilt is) down 19 with three minutes to play and almost win the game. In college basketball, a 12-point lead, a 14-point lead, anymore it can evaporate quickly, and all it takes is a couple bad possessions. You miss a shot, they make a shot. But when you think about the Kentucky game, they got back in the game over 10 minutes. So it wasn’t like all of a sudden we gave up a 10-0 run. It was them grinding back and the game became a possession game. At the end of the day, one out of every four games in the SEC right now is coming down to a one-possession game. No matter how the other 38 minutes go, it’s going to end up a one- to two-possession game. And at the end we had opportunities and they didn’t go in for us.”
On Bishop Boswell and Nate Ament saying after the Kentucky game that Tennessee’s offense got passive in the second half
“I don’t know if we got passive. I think when you miss shots, you feel like you got passive. We had some great looks when you go back and look at the film. And I think it’s the opportunities when you’ve got to knock them down. Again, when games become possessions, there’s not going to be as many opportunities. And so I don’t know if you would say it’s passive. It’s you’re only going to get so many opportunities. You’ve got to take advantage of them.”
On if there has been more good than bad for Tennessee in possession games this season
“I think when you look at the last five weeks, there has been. And because when you look at the last, let’s say four weeks, of every game we’ve been in, it’s come down to right at the end, except for the Ole Miss game. And yet the final score there wasn’t indicative of the game. It was a back-and-forth game for almost 32, 33 minutes. So yeah, I think we’ve done a great job of executing at the end in tight games. And again, if you go back and watch the film, we got two great shots at Kentucky with the clock going down. A difference in games, they didn’t go in. And that’s part of basketball.”
On Ja’Kobi Gillespie scoring one point in the second half after scoring 14 in the first half
“I think, again, when you, when you watch the film, that’s the advantage that coaches get, that sometimes fans and the person out there just going, ‘Well, how does Ja’Kobi only score one point?’ He had five wide-open looks that he had in the first half. They didn’t go in and hat’s part of it. Now, is the wear and tear of a game part of it? Yeah, that’s part of it, too. They were all in the second half. You’re fighting hard. And you watch our team play on defense, we’re playing really hard right now. I think that’s the fun part for us is as you continue to watch this team grow, we were really good defensively in a lot of spots in that game. Because when we were struggling to score, they were also struggling to score. But he got good looks. They just didn’t go in for him. That’s the bottom line.”
On how Nate Ament is a different player right now than he was a month ago
“Well I think, you know, and I’ll go back to even the last time I was in here with you guys, and everybody wanted to ask about Nate. And Coach Barnes, Coach Gainey, Coach Polinsky, Steve McClain all said, ‘the kid’s, he’s growing. Give him time,’ and nobody wants to give any player time right now. They want you to magically be as good as you can be, and that isn’t real. It isn’t real at this level. It isn’t real at the next level, and so what has happened, the game has slowed down for him, and he’s seeing the game at a whole different level. And now his teammates are seeing the game at a whole different level with what he can do.”
On if Nate Ament has overtaken Ja’Kobi Gillespie as the go-to guy
“No, I think our system’s built to create opportunities, and that’s where Nate is so good. If you’re going double him, he can make the play for somebody else, and so, no, we have belief in any of our guys. Bishop has stepped up, and I’m not going to be concerned if he has a shot at the end of the game. And I think that’s where this team is growing right now, is when teams think they can just play Ja’Kobi and Nate, we’ve got other guys that can step up and be really good.”
On his assessment of the front court at Kentucky, missing shots around the rum
“Well, here’s what I would tell you because, again, people would say they didn’t finish enough in the paint, and no question, we got to finish better. But you’re not going to finish against six-foot guys. Kentucky’s got a real front line, and I thought at times we went in there, we shot the shot we wanted, we didn’t get it. We got 19 offensive rebounds. It was the part we couldn’t convert those into points, and when you talk about the difference in the game, you get 19 offensive rebounds, you’re hoping you convert that into 12, 13, 14 points, and we didn’t do it in the game. And I think the other thing we’ve stressed with them is, at times we’re tipping balls when we could just be going to get them, grab it, go back up and score it. So I think, again, those guys— I always talk about JP a lot. He is now getting the most extended minutes he’s ever got in Division I basketball, and so he’s going to have growing pains during that, but yet it’s going to teach him a lot, and he’s just going to keep getting better and better, which makes our team better.”
On what stands out about Mississippi State
“Well, they’ve got a guard (Josh Hubbard) that’s one of the most electric guards in the SEC, has been for the last four years. He’s capable of coming out and getting forty. They’ve got other really good players around him. Now they’ve got two guards (Jayden Epps) that are capable of either one of them getting forty. And so when you play a Chris Jans team, you know they’re gonna be lined up, ready to compete for forty minutes. I’ve known him since he was a junior college coach. It’s who he is, it’s who his teams have always been. You’re going on the road to play in the SEC, and when you get to this time, it’s the greatest time of year in college basketball, ’cause everybody’s playing for something. So it doesn’t matter if you’re at home or on the road, you’re gonna have to bring your A effort every night, the next five, six, seven weeks, to get where you wanna get.”
On why Tennessee only had 12 second-chance points off 19 offensive rebounds at Kentucky
“Well, I think a lot of that was what I said. We were tipping balls instead of just going and grabbing them. Every tip counts as an offensive rebound. Well, there were times DeWayne (Brown) and J.P. (Estrella) tipped it three or four times in the same possession. Again, I always go back, it’s easy to say you should go grab it. Well, I’m not in there against (Malachi) Moreno and those guys battling. But it is one thing we’ve tried to focus on, is at times we could be grabbing those balls and finishing them.”
On the message to the team coming off the loss at Kentucky
“Well, your message this time of year is, it’s (the) next game, and how do we get better? I think if you’re not watching this team and seeing them grow and getting better, then you’re not seeing the picture of this team from November till now. Back to what I said, everybody’s playing for something right now. So you better never think you’ve got an easy one coming in this league. I think Oklahoma proved that Saturday at Vanderbilt, because it comes back to get you, and so you gotta line up ready to play. That’s the message.”
Amaree Abram
On what stood out about the loss to Kentucky when they went back and watched the game
“Just giving up a 14-point lead. Have to build and grow from when we have leads and know how to maintain them and manage the game.”
On how Tennessee freshman forward Nate Ament is different than he was a month ago
“I feel like the game has slowed down for him. He’s finally starting to figure out where (to) get his shots, figure out the offense, how he can be productive with playing with his teammates.”
On how he would assess where his game is at right now after dealing with the flu
“I’m better. It was a rough four days, but I’m glad to be back on the court. Glad to be a leader as an older guy.”
On what he is emphasizing in his individual game as he gets back on the court
“Just energy from the bench, being a leader. I feel like there’s not one leader. I feel like everyone has to be a leader, especially in times like this. We’re getting closer to tournament time, so it’s time to really lock in and hone in on the things we need to focus on.
On what stands out about Mississippi State
“Just their guard play. They score a lot of points. They play fast, shoot a lot of threes. We have to maintain their guards. We also have to limit them to one shot. They’re a good offensive-rebounding team.”
On what the guards can do to help the big men
“Just guarding the ball, helping each other, keeping the guards out of the paint. Feel like we allowed too many paint points. Just being locked in and focused on the scout, knowing what our opponents do.”
On how they can help the big men on the offensive end
“I feel like with Mississippi State, they don’t really guard well, so just attacking them, drawing fouls on them, playing fast, getting stops, getting out early.”
On what preparation looks like after a loss
“It’s the same as a win. We think next game mentality. So even if we would have won that game, we still have to move on to the next game and lock in on our opponent. We really have to focus in these next three games. Feel like these are big for us as far as what our next step is, so really have to win these next two, three or four games.”
