Vanderbilt head coach Kevin Stalling joined VandyMania’s Bill Trocchi to discuss the Commodores’ upcoming 2005-06 season.
By Bill Trocchi
Vandymania: Talk about what Ross Neltner can bring to the team and describe his game.
Kevin Stallings: Ross is a player in the mold of guys we’ve had here in the past. Dan Langhi, Matt Freije, Dawid Przybyszewski, guys with good size that have good perimeter skill. Ross is pretty athletic. He’s done a great job with his body in the two years he was at LSU. I think he’ll bring a level of toughness that will be good for our team.
I think he’ll bring some rebounding, particularly offensive rebounding, that will be good for our team, in addition to the perimeter skill set that he has that we think will be very effective in the way that we play our offense.
VM: Are you surprised schools like Florida, Illinois, Georgia Tech and Michigan were pursuing a guy that averaged 2.9 points per game?
KS: There is a two-part commentary there. I think one is the market for big guys this spring was not very good.
Secondly, and more importantly, he was a guy who was capable of doing much more. He just happened to be on a team with two of the very best big guys in the Southeastern Conference. He was on a team with THE best big guy in the SEC in Brandon Bass, and then Glen Davis was Freshman of the Year. So that was a commentary on his point totals and rebounding totals.
I think all the coaches that saw him play, coached against him, felt like he was capable of more, but he had a couple of other guys there that were terrific players.
VM: Can Shan Foster be a First-Team All-SEC guy at some point?
KS: I would like to think that he can, yes. I think Shan has a lot of ability and Shan has a lot of desire to get better. He’s very coachable and very driven to become better. That is obviously a good combination to possess. He probably did what we thought he could do as a freshman. He might have exceeded our expectations a little bit, but not a lot, because we had high hopes for him initially anyway.
I see him as a guy that if he maintains his work ethic and great attitude, that he’ll have a chance to be an All-SEC type performer.
VM: Mario Moore and Julian Terrell seem to have opposite personalities when it comes to being a leader. How do you see that playing out next year, the talker and the quiet guy?
KS: Both of them have to make some modifications in their behavior in order to increase their ability to be leaders. The modifications are sort of relative to the things you are talking about. We have one guy that is high-strung and verbal and one guy that is, in a way, laid back, so they are going to have to modify and improve some of their own weaknesses to gain credibility in their leadership roles.
I think their hearts are in the right place, so I think they will try to do what we think is necessary for them to do in order to provide us with some effective leadership.
VM: What team stat disappointed you the most last year and what stat pleased you the most?
KS: The team stat that disappointed me the most was one of two. It would be either our rebounding margin or our lack of free throw attempts.
The one that I liked the most was our defensive field goal percentage, particularly until the last conference games of the season. We were second in the league in defensive field goal percentage, and we defended poorly at LSU and we ended up fourth or fifth because there was a bunch of teams very close.
But if you don’t finish off the defensive possession (with a rebound), it doesn’t do you any good.
VM: Alex Gordon had a stretch where he scored 0 points, 30 points and 0 points. Was this a team where you never knew who was going to show up?
KS: It was difficult from a coaching perspective from the standpoint that you didn’t know where your points were coming from. It is difficult to coach a team and have a team be consistent when you don’t know you can get consistent scoring from particular players. And we never had any consistent low-post scoring, which made it even more difficult.
Those were the problems offensively. Not knowing from one night to the next who would and who wouldn’t. You knew who could, but you didn’t know who would.
KS: Why do you think Dan Cage’s production went south in the latter part of the year?
VM: I don’t know. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about that with Dan and amongst ourselves as coaches. I think Dan lost his confidence. I think it can just be summed up in that – he lost his confidence.
Dan is a guy that over-thinks. Guys that over-think overreact. He probably overreacted to a couple of sub-par shooting performances and then, as we like to say, he thought himself into a new way of acting. Which is not good. We try to act ourselves into a new way of thinking rather than think ourselves into a new way of acting. That is one of our things.
Sometimes you can out-think yourself. Paralysis by analysis. I think Dan got into one of those mental wars with himself and lost his confidence.
VM: I guess the re-telling of the Wichita State story has been fun for you this summer.
KS: Very unusual and unique thing that is fun when you are on the right end of it. It has been fun telling that story even though I tell it at the expense of a friend. Their coach is a good friend of mine. It would have been much more fun to have done it to someone you didn’t care for, but it didn’t work out that way. It has been fun telling it.
VM: Third in the SEC East did not get you in the NCAA Tournament this year. Will the SEC will good enough next year where third would certainly get you in?
KS: I don’t know. With all these guys going pro … if everybody stays in the Draft, our league is not going to be perhaps as strong. So, it could be another year like this year, where only five teams get in.
That’s really a good question. Generally speaking, third in the East is going to get you in, but it didn’t this past year. Obviously, we didn’t deserve to be in. I don’t know what will happen next year because you just don’t know from one year to the next how your league is going to fare against the other leagues.
I would have thought going into the season third in the East was a shoe-in, because I didn’t think there was any way we wouldn’t get six teams in, but it didn’t work out that way.
VM: Can you compare Derrick Byers to another recent Vandy player and describe what the fans will see next year?
KS: I can’t describe him to a recent Vanderbilt player because we haven’t had anyone with the same makeup that Derrick has. The thing that is the best about Derrick is he knows how to play. A good offensive player a lot of times can be defined when a guy knows when to pass and knows when to shoot. A lot of times, if a guy just knows that, he can be a good offensive player, and Derrick seems to have a good feel for that.
He’s a good passer and he’s a good shooter. He can put the ball on the floor. He has good range. He’s good on the block. He’s good in transition. He just has a lot of things going for him offensively.
In some ways, you could compare him a little bit to Shan Foster. Derrick is a little bit bigger and faster. But they’re not really similar players. That is probably a bad comparison.
Derrick has a very complete game. He’s a complete player offensively. Defensively, it will be interesting to see what he brings to the table and rebounding-wise, it will be interesting to see what he brings to the table. He’s a guy that is very athletic and shoots the ball very well.
VM: You ran your offense through Dan Langhi, you ran your offense through Matt Freije. Are you going to try to run your offense through Derrick?
KS: I’m not ready to say that. After a partial year of practice, because he was recovering from shoulder surgery during the first half of the season, I’m certainly not ready to say that. But I will say this: Between Shan, DeMarre Carroll, Derrick, Dan Cage and we hope you can throw George Drake into that group, we feel like the wing position has a chance to be the strength of our team. Obviously Mario is a senior and Alex has been through it, so now we have two very capable point guards. So we feel like our perimeter has the chance to be very strong.
I’m not ready to say we could run the offense through Derrick. Derrick potentially has those kinds of capabilities, but he will have to prove it on a daily basis if he is going to be looked at in the same light as a Langhi or a Freije. Those guys were everyday guys. It is hard to run your offense through somebody that is not an everyday guy. Dan Langhi and Matt Freije were everyday guys. They came to kick everybody’s butt in the gym every day, and that is a rare quality.
VM: What interested you about Ohio State last summer?
KS: My Big Ten roots. That, as much as anything. Having played and coached there. That was the overwhelming attraction.
We have some very close friends who had been (in Columbus) for a very long time and loved it. My wife’s best friend had lived there for a number of years and her husband was on the football coaching staff there. They are gone now, but we’re pretty in tune with what the place was like because of them.
But sometimes your greatest blessings are when God does not answer your prayers. That would be the case for us. Not that I was praying for that job. That is a figure of speech. I’m thankful that it worked out the way that it did. I’m truly happy that I’m here.
VM: Which incoming freshman has the best chance to adjust to this level of competition the quickest?
KS: Well, we only have two. We’ll just have to see. George Drake’s body gives him a chance to adjust a little more quickly. Kyle (Madsen) is a thin guy that will need to put on some weight and strength. I might give the edge to George, because he has a ready-made body for college basketball, but we think both of them in due time will be good players for us.
VM: If you are going to make the NCAA Tournament this year, what three areas do you have to excel in?
KS: I don’t know if I can answer that question. An easier question to answer is, ‘What three areas to we have to improve in?’
I think we have to improve low-post scoring, our rebounding and the consistency of individuals, which comes in the frame of mental toughness.
I think you have to be tough to be consistent, and I look back at guys like Freije and Langhi – they were tough guys because they went out every night and competed and were consistently productive. You have to have toughness to be consistent. Anybody can be really good for one night when the stars and moon align and everything goes right. To be consistent, you have to be tough.
We have too many guys at this juncture in their career that have shown the ability to be good on occasion and not on a game-in, game-out basis.
In any given season, the three things that will determine your ceiling are toughness, leadership and chemistry. We call it TLC, but it is a different form of TLC. Those are the three things I would like for us to excel in. If we can do that, we’ll be pretty doggone good, but it is easier said than done.
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