Nov. 1, 2012

Tweet

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - The Pac-12 Conference held its annual Men's Basketball Media Day on Thursday at the Pac-12 Studios in San Francisco, Calif. Head coach Craig Robinson and senior center Angus Brandt were there to represent Oregon State, and the following are their quotes from the interview session with the print media.

THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and get started with Oregon State. We'll start with an opening statement from Coach [Robinson].

COACH ROBINSON: How is everybody doing? [We're] very excited to be here and seeing all this wonderful new Pac-12 Network stuff. It couldn't be a more exciting time for our program and for this conference. I'll start out by saying to Commissioner [Larry] Scott, this is just a terrific venue, a terrific season you've had so far, and we're looking forward to being a part of it.

Now, with regard to our team, I'm pretty excited. And I'll answer your first question: Even without Jared Cunningham I'm pretty excited. He'll be a tough guy to replace, but I'm confident and positive that every single player who is coming back knows how tough that is and has raised the bar for themselves. So, in an instant, you lose a prolific defender and a good part of your scoring, but the scoring part I don't think will be hard to replace. The defense is going to be tough. And we're dedicated to being a better defensive team, and I think if we can be as dominating on offense as we have been and get four more stops a game, I think we're going to be a pretty darn good team. I'm looking to this guy next to me to do a lot this year. He's put in a lot of work. I think you'll see a completely different Angus Brandt. I think the difference you'll notice first and foremost is the basketball attributes have gotten even better, but more importantly, the confidence level is there. Those of you out there who have played and coached know what I mean. When a player thinks he's good enough, he's good enough, and this guy on the right is definitely good enough. And then we have got a couple of pieces that are coming back. I'm real happy with our experience. This is a team that's played a lot of games together and only has two seniors. So with that, I'll open it up for questions.

THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and take questions from the group.

Q. Did any seven-footers call you after the DNC?
COACH ROBINSON: That's a very good question. I got about four calls from seven-footers, but I got about 11 calls from people who said they were almost seven feet tall.

Q. Kind of continuing along that same line, if you could walk us through a day in the life of Craig Robinson leading up to the election. Will there be practice on November 6th?
COACH ROBINSON: Oh, yeah. Are you kidding? We've got a game on November 9th; there will be practice. And you guys should know that my personal life is like your personal life; it doesn't get in the way of my professional life. A day in the life of our practice--these guys get up at about 6:30 in the morning to lift. I'm usually there having done my workout and waiting for these guys. And then we practice at about 11:00, and then I get all my regular work stuff done.

If you're wondering about campaign stuff, I usually do that on my off days, the days these guys have off, or I'll do it after. We'll have practice in the morning, and I'll do something later on in the day, but we haven't missed a day of practice because of campaigning.

Q. Coach, Jared Cunningham aside, what are the main differences you see in this team from last year's team?
COACH ROBINSON: The biggest difference that I see is that we're a better team defense -- we're a better defensive team from a team standpoint. I thought last year we did a pretty good job converting from being a mostly zone team to a mostly man-to-man team, but it was the first time these guys did it for an extended period of time. What I saw with our trip to Europe and with our early practices, [was] that we're much better defensive team, guarding the ball as a team and not as an individual. That's first and foremost. Secondly, I think this is a better rebounding team than we've been. As I mentioned at the outset, the biggest part of that is our collective raising the bar on what we're doing both defensively and rebounding.

Q. Where will you be next Tuesday?
COACH ROBINSON: Where will I be next Tuesday? That's classified information. No, I will be in Chicago for election night. But we are practicing Tuesday. In case anybody wants to know. We are practicing from now until our first game.

Q. Following up on Jeff's question, I'm assuming you would predict an Obama election, but how close do you think it's going to be?
COACH ROBINSON: With all due respect to the sportswriters here, and all the political pundits out there, it's probably going to be pretty close. But I'm biased.

Q. The other guy from Chicago, Ahmad Starks, he clearly can score the ball. How do you see his role next year?
COACH ROBINSON: That's a terrific point. As you mentioned, Ahmad is a point guard who could easily replace all of Jared's points if we asked him to do that. But we need him to run the team. I think he'll be one of three or four guys who will pick up that 18-point slack. I would expect him to get another four to six points a game. I expect Angus to make up some of that slack. Roberto Nelson will be available to make up some of that slack and also Devon Collier. So we have got four guys that we're sort of dividing 18, 19 points between them. So, as I mentioned earlier, I don't think offense is going to be our issue, it's going to be being able to guard better.

Q. Is this the best frontcourt that you've had in your time, and how much of a challenge is that going to be divvying up minutes?
COACH ROBINSON: Not only is this the best front court I've had since I've been here, this is probably the best team I've had, and this is probably the deepest team that I've had. You look at, it starts right here with Angus who has got a considerable amount of experience and will be sort of anchoring the offense and defense. For those of you who don't know, the center spot for us sort of gets a lot more play offensively, and [he] has the ball in his hands a lot. But then you look at -- I mentioned Devon Collier. Devon is an extremely respectable post-up player. He might be one of the best that I've coached. He has a slippery way about him. He knows how to get fouled, and he can score points in bunches. You've got Joe Burton who is also going to see significant amount of time, might even start for us. And then you got Eric Moreland. So I've got four front court players who all could start and I think all can play at a very high level in this conference.

Q. You talked about defense. Who is your best defender?
COACH ROBINSON: Right now I would say our best defender is Ahmad Starks. But we have got a freshman, Jarmal Reid, who is from Atlanta, Georgia, who is going to surprise a lot of people with his defense. He is long. He's about 6'6", 6'7", long arms, and has a real knack for playing defense. And his defense is going to get him on the court this year and get him on the court early.

Q. Angus, I'm not going to let you skate without answering one. As a fellow Australian, Brock Motum coming up next. When you go home, who has got the better reputation?
Angus Brandt: We're from different parts of the country, so maybe we have equal reputations from where we are from, but I know Brock went to the AIS, so maybe he has a little bit of an edge on me.

COACH ROBINSON: And for those of you who don't know, the AIS is the Australian Institute of Sports. And you went to?

Angus Brandt: I went to the New South Wales Institute of Sports.

COACH ROBINSON: So it's a little bit like Oregon State and the neighbors down the way. (Laughter.)

THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, that will do it. Thank you so much.

COACH ROBINSON: Thanks a lot.

Support Oregon State University Athletics by making your tax deductible donation to the Beaver Athletic Student Fund. For more information follow this link or call 541-737-2370. Former Student-Athletes are invited to join the Varsity O Facebook Page for upcoming Alumni events.

Follow Oregon State Athletics On YouTube.

Follow this link to find out more about the Pac-12 Networks.

procad("http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/CSTV.ORST/SPORTS.MBASKBL.SPECREL;sect=mbaskbl;pos=story;sz=300x250;dcopt=ist;",0);