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Q & A With Fran McCaffery By Matt Weitzel What excites you the most about this team? We have tremendous chemistry and that's not always an easy thing to accomplish as a group, especially when the group is as talented as this one across the board. There are a lot of players who want to play, a lot of players who deserve to play, and a lot of players who are going to play. The concern you have then is, are they going to play enough? It's incumbent upon me to institute a sense of fairness to make sure the guys who deserve to play a little more, but we're also going to play a style that is going to require some rest and the guys are going to need rest in both halves. We're going to need certain guys fresh for the stretch run, but that has been the interesting thing about this team… last year and with our foreign tour, we had different combinations on the floor in crunch time. I'm not afraid to play various combinations and different people in crunch time. I think very few coaches have that luxury, because typically the guys coming off the bench don't score as well as those who are starting. For us, we have scorers across the board. Anybody on any given day can go for 15 or 20 (points) and that makes us difficult to prepare for. to play defense the way we did two years ago, and that was partly a result of the fact that we weren't as big and weren't as deep. We were putting a lot of pressure on certain individuals to score. Last year, we had fresh bodies ready to stop people, and continue to play at the pace we want to and press. That's a luxury that not everybody has, because when it's all said and done, a lot of coaches talk about going to their bench, but they really don't have as much confidence going to the bench when the game is in the balance. I don't hesitate, because I have complete confidence in 12 guys. Did the Europe trip give you good feedback on certain combinations that worked well together? The thing that I was unhappy about is that Mike Gesell was unable to play. I wanted him to be in that mix and play both positions (point and off guard). He was playing well during the summer until he broke his finger. What it did was give us an opportunity to evaluate Peter Jok, who handled himself amazingly well. He scored consistently and shot the ball well. I also wanted to get Josh Oglesby the kind of minutes and shots that I felt he needed to take the next step, and he was fabulous. Each player was really good. I wasn't disappointed with anybody. They all fulfilled the role I defined for them. I moved guys in different positions. I wasn't as concerned with finding a combination as I was with moving players around in different positions to make sure they can play with various combinations of players. In the end I could go big, small, put out a defensive team, offensive team, zone team, or press team, and they can all play together. The reason they can is because they are an incredibly unselfish group. Do you like the leadership qualities of this year's senior class (Devyn Marble, Melsahn Basabe and Zach McCabe)? I'm confident in our senior class and their leadership capability. I think in particular, Devyn has grown in that capacity. All three were excellent overseas. That was the first time that it was officially their team. They had an opportunity to play six games, in some cases playing in difficult environments, and all three played well. They were great examples and excellent leaders for Josh didn't shoot the percentage he would have liked the young guys. last year… do you feel the addition of Peter will take pressure off Josh? Is this the deepest team you have had as a head Josh had some games where he couldn't get it going and coach? Will that allow you to play even more upthat ultimately hurt his percentage. He had some games tempo this year? where he did shoot well. The thing that impressed me I want to push the ball even more and play at an even was he kept shooting, which I told him to do right up higher level of intensity defensively, which was clearly to the end of the year where he helped us win games. improved last year. There's no way we could continue 21