University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Jay Ladner's Preseason Press Conference
10/14/2019 4:45:00 PM | Men's Basketball
HATTIESBURG, Miss. -- The Jay Ladner era for Southern Miss Men's Basketball is set to begin Tuesday, Oct. 29 against Mississippi College. The new leader of the Golden Eagles sat down with media on Monday to discuss his first six months on the job and what he has seen from the preseason.
Southern Miss will also hold its annual Hardwood Club Tip-Off event at Brewsky's on Thursday, Oct. 24. The event will begin at 5:30 p.m., and admission is free along with hot dogs, chips and soft drinks.
Opening statement
"The time is here. We are real close to kicking it off. I've certainly answered this question before, and I think I can speak for every Division I coach in the country, but I wish we had more time. Whether we are ready or not, it's here. We are an incredibly young and inexperienced team with a new coaching staff. We have a lot of challenges ahead of us, but the players have been great. The biggest question mark is how much we will be able to grow. I think our non-conference schedule is challenging, and when handled the right way, it will give us that forged-from-fire aspect that will help in conference play. Our overall goal is to become a national power, and playing that type of schedule will be consistent with what we do from here on out. We are not quite as prepared for that at this moment because of our youth, but that's okay. We will welcome that challenge with open arms, and I can't wait to get started."
On having 11 newcomers
"Anytime you have such a lack of experience with freshmen and first-year players, guys that don't have a lot of college game experience, it will be tough. Our freshmen are just trying to figure out where The Hub and their dorms and classrooms are. I don't care how good a high school or junior college program they came from, the demand on a Division I player is tough. That can be a shock to them - them being away from home for the first time, so that's one of them - just the newness. Their newness to each other, obviously trying to figure out others, just starting with their names and so forth, just trying to figure out who can play and who can't play, who's a little more ready, who's not, and learning a new system of play. Not only are they new to each other, they're new to our coaching staff, and certainly our style of play, our terminology and way of doing things. So, across the board, everything's new. And it's new to the coaches too, so I hope that shed a bit of light on that, I could probably talk about that for a long time."
On his overall assessment of the freshmen and other first-year players
"Well if you look at our roster, we have two seniors on our roster, Leonard [Harper-Baker] and Boban [Jacdonmi], and we have four juniors with two of those guys have had an opportunity to ever play. So, the rest of the guys are freshman and sophomores, some are walk-ons and so forth, and that's a big question for us that we're gonna address a lot I think. But I think out of the gates, if we had to start today, I think and certainly you're going to see Artur Konontsuk. He's got an opportunity to play right off the bat. Hunter Dean, who's 6-foot-10 and growing and a true freshman from Mandeville, La., has really progressed. Tyler Stevenson was on the roster last year as a walk-on, earned a scholarship, and if we had to play today, Tyler would probably be in the starting lineup, that's how far he's come, and I think he's got a great future. I think a young man, Jay Malone who played his first year at Southwest [CC] is gonna play a lot. I think Auston Leslie is as gifted an athlete as we've probably had here in a long time as far as athleticism, running and jumping, it's just unbelievable, and I feel he has a chance to make an impact early. Those are the guys who I think have just kind of risen to the forefront as far new new faces, and again, I threw in Tyler as a new player on the team because he did not play very much last year."
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On Artur Konontsuk's style and fit
"At first, when we signed him, he's 6-foot-7, we knew he could play the four, but he shoots the ball extremely well, typical of a European player - skill with a basketball. His challenge will be to guard an opposing team's small forward, play the three-position, so we may have to do some cross-matching at times with him, meaning that he would guard a smaller or a stretch 4 for the other team, it all depends on who we're playing and what our scheme would be."
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On Hunter Dean's size and skillset
"I think eventually he's gonna be able to do that, he's already able to step out face the basket shoot the 3, do some things that we'd like our 4s and 5s be able to do, but I think also because of his size, he's quite strong as a true freshman he'll be able to give us some good minutes inside, I think eventually, we will head that way with him."
On sophomore forward Tyler Stevenson
"We were very familiar with him [from recruiting at Southeastern Louisiana]. He has come a long way. His offensive game has gotten a lot better. He can face up now and shoot the mid-range. He just plays so hard and is active. Do I wish he was 6-foot-9 or 10? Absolutely. But with his added bulk and his quickness, we just asked for him to play to his strength."
On adjusting to the new job
"It's just a different culture. I have the greatest admiration for Coach Sadler, and I thought he did a good job mitigating the situation here. It's just a different style of play now. The way we play is strategically and we like to run good offense. We want to best offense for our shooters to make the best shots. So, it varies a little bit. We aren't a vanilla type team. I don't think it's rocket science to figure out who your best players are, but our philosophy is if you are going to battle, and you want to fire off your cannon more than your BB gun so to speak. We gave everyone a blank canvas when we walked in. I didn't have any prejudice, good or bad toward any of the players. All I knew is that we had mostly new faces. What we've been able to do is say that your conditions that you play under are not conditions I've set but one's you've set since the time you started playing basketball. What we want to do is help define that and put this team in the best position. This is a difficult question. It just takes time. The biggest challenge is setting the culture: setting the standards and values that have been successful in the past and in future, and how we go about doing things every day, as a team."
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On how he feels about the program at this point in his tenure
"Yes, I've been very pleased. We've had very little kickback. It's a very similar situation we had at Southeastern Louisiana, a team that lost a lot of players. A background of probation and scholarship reductions that just began to emerge from that. So, it was familiar. What we want to do, is lay the foundation for not just now, but for future success where we can compete every year. And to do that, it's certainly recruiting but it's also, how you go about doing things every day. It's about every phase of their life. Our goal is to develop great young men. Students that achieve to the best to their ability, so they are successful later in life when the ball stops bouncing. But of course, being the best of their ability in basketball players as well. It takes a lot of work. It takes s a lot of people to do that. What we want them to do is simply understand and demand their absolute best in every phase of their life. That is our job, to reach their potential. We want them to understand that we won't tolerate anything less than their best effort on the floor but also, in the weight room, classroom, the way they carry themselves outside of this university and it is a commitment. That's really how I think you set your standards and establish a championship culture. So, it's not really about us changing the culture. This isn't to throw shade at the times before, we are setting our own standards and values and creating the culture we expect."
On his style of basketballÂ
"We have a simple philosophy. It's important that we give the basketball into the hands of the guys that can do the most damage. It's not democratic. There is a misconception that playing fast, means lack of structure. That's not it at all. For instance: LaDavius Draine. He's going to do most of his damage in transition. And the reason is, everybody in the world that we play knows he's going to shoot the ball. They will be locked into him. We want to push the basketball at every opportunity, but that doesn't mean we will throw up a quick shot. We want to have the philosophy of either score early or score late. We have a tremendous amount of firepower. We have to make sure we are efficient on the offensive side. Defensively, we want to pressure. You'll see a lot of full court, half court pressing to try to disrupt the offense. We want to use things strategically to our strength."
Â
On coming home and his history in Hattiesburg
"My dad was a coach at Picayune High School, and I moved when I was 5. I went to kindergarten here on campus. I went to Oak Grove all 12 years. From 1971-1988 I lived here in Hattiesburg. I graduated from USM in 1988 and began my career then. I coached a year at Oak Grove and two years at Jones JC as well. The Lord has blessed me that I have never been far from this town. It's been a blessing."
Â
Southern Miss will also hold its annual Hardwood Club Tip-Off event at Brewsky's on Thursday, Oct. 24. The event will begin at 5:30 p.m., and admission is free along with hot dogs, chips and soft drinks.
Opening statement
"The time is here. We are real close to kicking it off. I've certainly answered this question before, and I think I can speak for every Division I coach in the country, but I wish we had more time. Whether we are ready or not, it's here. We are an incredibly young and inexperienced team with a new coaching staff. We have a lot of challenges ahead of us, but the players have been great. The biggest question mark is how much we will be able to grow. I think our non-conference schedule is challenging, and when handled the right way, it will give us that forged-from-fire aspect that will help in conference play. Our overall goal is to become a national power, and playing that type of schedule will be consistent with what we do from here on out. We are not quite as prepared for that at this moment because of our youth, but that's okay. We will welcome that challenge with open arms, and I can't wait to get started."
On having 11 newcomers
"Anytime you have such a lack of experience with freshmen and first-year players, guys that don't have a lot of college game experience, it will be tough. Our freshmen are just trying to figure out where The Hub and their dorms and classrooms are. I don't care how good a high school or junior college program they came from, the demand on a Division I player is tough. That can be a shock to them - them being away from home for the first time, so that's one of them - just the newness. Their newness to each other, obviously trying to figure out others, just starting with their names and so forth, just trying to figure out who can play and who can't play, who's a little more ready, who's not, and learning a new system of play. Not only are they new to each other, they're new to our coaching staff, and certainly our style of play, our terminology and way of doing things. So, across the board, everything's new. And it's new to the coaches too, so I hope that shed a bit of light on that, I could probably talk about that for a long time."
On his overall assessment of the freshmen and other first-year players
"Well if you look at our roster, we have two seniors on our roster, Leonard [Harper-Baker] and Boban [Jacdonmi], and we have four juniors with two of those guys have had an opportunity to ever play. So, the rest of the guys are freshman and sophomores, some are walk-ons and so forth, and that's a big question for us that we're gonna address a lot I think. But I think out of the gates, if we had to start today, I think and certainly you're going to see Artur Konontsuk. He's got an opportunity to play right off the bat. Hunter Dean, who's 6-foot-10 and growing and a true freshman from Mandeville, La., has really progressed. Tyler Stevenson was on the roster last year as a walk-on, earned a scholarship, and if we had to play today, Tyler would probably be in the starting lineup, that's how far he's come, and I think he's got a great future. I think a young man, Jay Malone who played his first year at Southwest [CC] is gonna play a lot. I think Auston Leslie is as gifted an athlete as we've probably had here in a long time as far as athleticism, running and jumping, it's just unbelievable, and I feel he has a chance to make an impact early. Those are the guys who I think have just kind of risen to the forefront as far new new faces, and again, I threw in Tyler as a new player on the team because he did not play very much last year."
Â
On Artur Konontsuk's style and fit
"At first, when we signed him, he's 6-foot-7, we knew he could play the four, but he shoots the ball extremely well, typical of a European player - skill with a basketball. His challenge will be to guard an opposing team's small forward, play the three-position, so we may have to do some cross-matching at times with him, meaning that he would guard a smaller or a stretch 4 for the other team, it all depends on who we're playing and what our scheme would be."
Â
On Hunter Dean's size and skillset
"I think eventually he's gonna be able to do that, he's already able to step out face the basket shoot the 3, do some things that we'd like our 4s and 5s be able to do, but I think also because of his size, he's quite strong as a true freshman he'll be able to give us some good minutes inside, I think eventually, we will head that way with him."
On sophomore forward Tyler Stevenson
"We were very familiar with him [from recruiting at Southeastern Louisiana]. He has come a long way. His offensive game has gotten a lot better. He can face up now and shoot the mid-range. He just plays so hard and is active. Do I wish he was 6-foot-9 or 10? Absolutely. But with his added bulk and his quickness, we just asked for him to play to his strength."
On adjusting to the new job
"It's just a different culture. I have the greatest admiration for Coach Sadler, and I thought he did a good job mitigating the situation here. It's just a different style of play now. The way we play is strategically and we like to run good offense. We want to best offense for our shooters to make the best shots. So, it varies a little bit. We aren't a vanilla type team. I don't think it's rocket science to figure out who your best players are, but our philosophy is if you are going to battle, and you want to fire off your cannon more than your BB gun so to speak. We gave everyone a blank canvas when we walked in. I didn't have any prejudice, good or bad toward any of the players. All I knew is that we had mostly new faces. What we've been able to do is say that your conditions that you play under are not conditions I've set but one's you've set since the time you started playing basketball. What we want to do is help define that and put this team in the best position. This is a difficult question. It just takes time. The biggest challenge is setting the culture: setting the standards and values that have been successful in the past and in future, and how we go about doing things every day, as a team."
Â
On how he feels about the program at this point in his tenure
"Yes, I've been very pleased. We've had very little kickback. It's a very similar situation we had at Southeastern Louisiana, a team that lost a lot of players. A background of probation and scholarship reductions that just began to emerge from that. So, it was familiar. What we want to do, is lay the foundation for not just now, but for future success where we can compete every year. And to do that, it's certainly recruiting but it's also, how you go about doing things every day. It's about every phase of their life. Our goal is to develop great young men. Students that achieve to the best to their ability, so they are successful later in life when the ball stops bouncing. But of course, being the best of their ability in basketball players as well. It takes a lot of work. It takes s a lot of people to do that. What we want them to do is simply understand and demand their absolute best in every phase of their life. That is our job, to reach their potential. We want them to understand that we won't tolerate anything less than their best effort on the floor but also, in the weight room, classroom, the way they carry themselves outside of this university and it is a commitment. That's really how I think you set your standards and establish a championship culture. So, it's not really about us changing the culture. This isn't to throw shade at the times before, we are setting our own standards and values and creating the culture we expect."
On his style of basketballÂ
"We have a simple philosophy. It's important that we give the basketball into the hands of the guys that can do the most damage. It's not democratic. There is a misconception that playing fast, means lack of structure. That's not it at all. For instance: LaDavius Draine. He's going to do most of his damage in transition. And the reason is, everybody in the world that we play knows he's going to shoot the ball. They will be locked into him. We want to push the basketball at every opportunity, but that doesn't mean we will throw up a quick shot. We want to have the philosophy of either score early or score late. We have a tremendous amount of firepower. We have to make sure we are efficient on the offensive side. Defensively, we want to pressure. You'll see a lot of full court, half court pressing to try to disrupt the offense. We want to use things strategically to our strength."
Â
On coming home and his history in Hattiesburg
"My dad was a coach at Picayune High School, and I moved when I was 5. I went to kindergarten here on campus. I went to Oak Grove all 12 years. From 1971-1988 I lived here in Hattiesburg. I graduated from USM in 1988 and began my career then. I coached a year at Oak Grove and two years at Jones JC as well. The Lord has blessed me that I have never been far from this town. It's been a blessing."
Â
Players Mentioned
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/ Men's Basketball
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/ Men's Basketball
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/ Men's Basketball
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/ Men's Basketball
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/ Men's Basketball
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