What did you take from that sort of this new Darren Peterson with him?

I didn't like that.

And I like him.

I like him a lot.

And we interviewed him when I was with Sirius XM NBA Radio when I was at the draft.

I love watching him play, but I didn't like that.

Like, you don't need to do that.

Do you think there's value when you see that eye-popping factor?

Yep.

It's going to be about you.

It's going to be about the position they want you to be in, especially if you're a first-rounder, even possibly a second-rounder.

It's going to be about the second-year guy that they're trying to build back up.

And so everything gets run around them.

And you get into the wrong situation and somebody starts to climb up into you and it becomes a problem.

And everybody says, well, that's growth.

Coach, do you think it'll be any point in the near future where guys like yourself that are X and O driven and development driven can get back to just that in the

When you're sort of recruiting, when you're recruiting and you're seeing these, these kids, like, what do you look for that says that these guys can be somebody like that when they're in a, a pro?

Well, I think it's once you start to get to know them, because there definitely has to be something in them that, that is m- that everybody wants to make the NBA.

But like in OG's case- He was, he wanted to absolutely know the plan.

And, and he wanted to know basically that you believed in him the way that he believed in himself.

And a lot of that was because he was so under-recruited.

I think Jalen Brunson i- is a lot of that.

I think because he was always a great player, always a known player, but there was, there was just something about him.

What do you do with Wemby? What would be your message to him to make, take that next step in his progression?

[laughs]

Yeah.

I, I... 'Cause they're different.

They're different than him.

I think Emmanuel Sharp...

I think every one of those guys is gonna play.

Tyler Bilodeau is a phenomenal shooter.

What was it about each one of those two that you saw that did translate that may end up being the case with some of these top four guys that we're looking at this year?

What most stands out to you about Iowa's late game execution and how much of that is coaching?

Well, you could watch basketball another 50 years and maybe never see it with four players on the court at one time.

And they were the beneficiary of some bad luck for Nebraska on that.

But I think even with the press offense, like they had the corner open throughout the game.

They just didn't throw it to them.

And Florida probably should not have let Bennett Sturtz catch it going downhill, downhill on the court where they had to overhelp.

But I think it's just a matter of they get open.

Since they are likely to hire outside the family for the first time in any of our lifetimes, what does your criteria look like for a fit, and who might fit that mold?

Coach, what about Alabama surprised you yesterday? Anything jump out and grab you?

Yes, I'll tell you what it is.

When you lose a guy like Aiden Holloway that's a legitimate score, he's averaging 17 a game, and it's pretty consistent.

And when he was off the floor in the conference games, they were a minus 39.

They needed him in the lineup so many times to play the way they wanted to play.

And I think yesterday inside of that game, early on, it was like everybody was trying to find the way they were going to get to 17 on their average rather than make sure the ball was moving at a high rate.

And I say that a little bit facetiously.

What do you look at and admire about Todd Goldman and the job he's done this year?

Oh, interesting.

Plus, like UC San Diego... Oh, absolutely. UC San Diego averages 11 threes, they're excellent defensively, and as good as Danny Wolf is for Michigan, he can be guarded. Like Illinois proved that. They put Kylan Boswell on him as a 6'3" guard and it really took Danny out of the game, I mean, basically. But Vlad Golden is a whole different deal, and if you don't have a post double scheme for him and if you don't have a real good ball screen answer for Danny Wolf and Vlad Golden, like you're not gonna beat them. So, like, those are the things that you watch, is does the defense of the other team take away strengths of their opponent, not just they're good defensively? Okay, because every... "Well, yeah, they're good defensively and they're only giving up.94 points of possession," and that's all cool, but can they stop people? Do they have a defense that can legitimately stop guards, bigs, forwards? Do they have schemes that are hard to deal with?

And I, I, uh... From a fan's perspective, well, I guess what you're saying is you gotta shop pretty carefully as a program for a head coach that still values that.

I think so. Yeah. Absolutely. Because it's gotten harder, and I really noticed this my last couple years at Georgia because we were starting to get more transfers. And my last year was the first year of the portal. We got, just drilled in it, right? Where we l- lost guys and we brought guys in that we didn't really know, and it's... They were good people. But what I found was really, really hard, and I've talked to other people about this. Because of the, the, the amount of moves that people make, and they make the moves long before they get to college. They make them in high school. They make them on AAU teams. They make them in prep schools. It's so hard. If you get a person that is not willing to change, like one of the people you saw when you came up was a kid named Max Biefeld. Max is from Peoria, Illinois. Went to Michigan. He was a, a he- a backup five, graduate of Michigan, and he ended up being an NBA graduate of the Indiana, uh, s- uh, Kelley School of Business, and he shot 27% at Michigan. Like, when I watched him on film, I said, "This is fixable. This is absolutely fixable." So, he comes up on a visit. He and his dad are in there with us in the film room, and we're showing him the things that, that... We're showing him why he's missing. And then we go on the court 'cause you could work the players out at that point if they were on an o- unofficial visit ins- inside of that transfer part. And we get him out on the court, and like, he was enthralled with it. There was energy from it, even in that workout.