![]() I don't know how you get around it, though. So, yeah, you do have counseling set up for a lot of players. It's tough, man, because it's hurting a lot of athletes I think.īut they can't get away from it. WOODSON: I wish it was that easy just to tell them to leave it alone, but it's not. You got to at least fight and put yourself in position to win a game. You can't have games like Kansas and Arizona and Rutgers. The way to do that is we got to play hard. There's about five or six games I could rattle off where we just didn't finish. You lose two buzzer-beaters, the Iowa and Rutgers game, you lose a big game in Wisconsin when you're up 20. I harp on last season because that's the only thing I can really talk about based on my first go-around. Again, that's a game that I got to close. We just gave a 7-, 8-, 9-point lead with six minutes on the clock down in Indianapolis there to get to the Big Ten championship round. I mean, we were up 7 at halftime, and the second half we just threw the ball all over the gym. The fact that they're coming home, they play extremely well at home. Those are the most dangerous teams because their backs is somewhat against the wall. WOODSON: Listen, I've experienced it all in the NBA in terms of teams that struggle. I'm just hoping for the best to get him back and keep him mentally positive about his approach. Already he's doing some things probably maybe a little ahead of schedule. But I wouldn't count him out, put it that way, because he's a tough competitor. I'm sure X will be smart about his approach in coming back. People thought I was crazy in coming back in eight weeks, but I knew my body at that particular time. He's feeling probably the pressure of getting out on the floor, and I get it. It's his last year, his last go-around in college basketball. I was kind of backed in a corner and had no choice but to push to come back. My situation was a little different because when you got doctors telling you got a 50/50 chance of ever coming back and playing, that's a little different. Only he will know that, strictly how his body and his foot accepts the therapy that he's putting in, the rehab to get back on the floor. I don't think anyone knows what the turnaround is for X right now. I was here watching film on the computer, trying to get ready for Iowa, seeing how we can beat Iowa. I came back New Year's morning and had practice and spent dinner with our team.įor me, I'm strictly basketball. Went back and checked on my home in Atlanta that day. I left for one day, and that was New Year's Eve. I went and looked at a couple high school games. In those three games, we just never gave ourselves a chance. We just got to make sure when we show up on the floor to play, not only do we get off to a good start, but we maintain it throughout the game. Out of the five games, we behind one, I think. I mean, that was the difference in the game. On the flipside of that, the Xavier game and the Carolina game, we out-toughed them. We got out-toughed in those three games, and that worries me going against really good teams. I'm just looking at the three games that we lost. Sometimes they awfully tough where guys are not real happy with me, then there are times when practice you just kind of breeze through it and you get through it and you get ready for the next practice. Sometimes that's got to come within, too, because I can't play for 'em. WOODSON: I'm always looking to motivate and push guys to play harder. Again, we were banged up a little bit, too, so it's given guys like Trayce an opportunity to kind of recoup and hopefully get ready to go starting on Thursday. When you think about it, I mean, it's good and bad. I've always been one that really wants to play. Guys that are a little banged up, gave them an opportunity to recoup, then we came back and went to work while other teams were still playing. But we gave the guys three, four days off. If it was up to me, we would have stayed here for the Christmas holidays and practiced like the old days and continued to work. Below is a full transcript of the Zoom press conference with Indiana head coach Mike Woodson on Tuesday, Jan.
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