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 Head Coach Mike Montgomery |
Jason Teague (Santa Rosa, CA)
Coach, you always hear about the background of many coaches and who theytutored under. Are there any coaches you worked under that made asignificant impact on you and your coaching style?
Coach Montgomery: Nobody specifically. I worked under a lot of good people. It seemed like alot of them moved on. Everybody always tries to bring up somebody famous assomebody they worked under. I worked under a lot of people because I movedaround a lot. I learned a lot from everybody. I'm a product of myexperiences, but rather than mention one person, I don't think there's anyone person who had more impact than others.
John Chandler (Dana Point, CA)
Congrats to you, your coaches & players for moving up to #1! My questionis: how do you as coaches react to having the team named #1 in the nation?Is it good, bad? Does it make little or no difference as far as how wellthe team plays? Noted a mixture of player reactions reported in the media.
Coach Montgomery: Well the media gets so excited about it because they created it. We are agood basketball team and we are proud that we could be considered to be thebest basketball team in the country. But it is a product of a variety ofcircumstances. It shouldn't affect the way we play at all. We just go outand try to win each and every game and do the best job we can. So as longas the kids understand that and don't get caught up in it, we'll be fine.But it's early, and as everybody says we would like to be there at the endof the year, and that would be our goal.
Tom Chandler (Torrance, CA)
Your program has been notable over the years for having signficantcontributions made by true freshman. How are you able to take players fromvarious high school programs and acclimate them to Stanford's style of playin such a short time? I'm particularly interested in the defensive side,since so many high school players today are not being taught how toproperly play defense.
Coach Montgomery: Well we've had good senior leadership, senior-junior leadership,upperclassmen, and they've set the tone for what's important here.Basically if you can't defend or won't defend or won't play hard, youpretty much won't play, and I think kids figure that out pretty quickly.Plus the other thing is, most of the kids we recruit are quality kids thatjust want to do what it takes to win, and are not selfish kids. So they'lllook around and soon figure out that we play defense here, that it'simportant to us, and they'll work real hard to try to get that done.
Jeff Berez (Croissy Sur Seine, France)
First off, I want to congratulate you on the magnificent job you have donein building the basketball program into one of the best in the country.Stanford has truly become bigtime!!! My question is: is there a certainstrategy you use in preparing the team to peak come march madness time? Yousee a lot of teams that seem to fade late in the year. I know winning thePac-10 is goal number one, however winning the national championship hasbecome obtainable. Could you please shed some light on the type of things acoach can do to bring the team to their highest potential come March?
Coach Montgomery: You have to keep working at improving all through the season, stressingcertain things that you don't do well so you have a complete team, and thatwill come with time. The other thing I think is significant is keepingpeople healthy. If you are healthy at the end of the year physically, thenyou can maybe play more players, get people rest so you have fresh bodies,fresh legs, fresh minds going into the tournament. And that I think isreally important for you. Because when you're competing for a championshipor trying to win games and you don't have very many players to rely on, Ithink it becomes a real drain on your team and you get to the tournamentand they just can't reach down and get that extra bit of energy. So stayinghealthy and having depth is really one of the keys.
Paul C. Klays (Fowler, CA)
Coach, What is the prognosis on Mark Madsen's hamstring injury; how is therehabilitation going; and when is his anticipated return? The team isplaying very well during his absence; a tribute to the depth and quality ofthe program.
Coach Montgomery: We should have him back to practice after Christmas. We'd love to get himsome full practices. We get three after Christmas and then two games andthen a full week of practice before conference. Right now the target isthat he'll be able to come back and practice at 100 percent afterChristmas, although if something were to happen and the strength isn'twhere we feel it will be we may have to wait. But that's our anticipatedgoal. I think we are taking a fairly cautious approach to it but I thinkthat's sound considering Mark's future, considering the fact that we'redoing pretty well right now without him, and rather than risk injury, Ithink that's the way we'll go.
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