Stanford University's Official Athletic Site - Men's Basketball

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Head Coach Mike Montgomery

John Chandler (Dana Point, CA)
I've wondered for years about the pros & cons of a team playing a toughpre-league schedule (as you have done last year & again this year, againsttop 10 teams). I notice Coach Lavin at UCLA this year is taking a lot ofheat from the media for playing a weak schedule. If memory serves mecorrectly, Coach Wooden did the very same thing for years during his mostsuccessful tenure at UCLA. Would love to hear your position on this.

Coach Montgomery: First of all you have to be confident that you're going to have the kind ofteam that can compete against the better teams in the country. Not everyonecan do that. Year-in and year-out, there are only select programs that aregoing to have players pretty much guaranteed that can take on a schedulelike that. And you can schedule yourself out of a job, or you can scheduleyourself to where you lose games and the kids lose confidence. Inrecruiting, I think players want to play in good venues, against betterpeople, against the better players. I think they enjoy that; I thinkthey're excited about that. For us, with the neutral-site games againstquality opponents, in really nice venues, it's been a good situation forus. I think you have to have a mix: you can't play it every night but youdo have to get yourself ready for conference, because the level of play inconference is obviously going to be top-level.

Steve Stiglitz (Cambridge, MA)
When you decide how many minutes each player gets, how much do you considerhis age and experience level. Even this year, when the freshman class isextremely talented and getting more playing time, I feel like there is abias towards the older guys. For instance, Moseley has just not played aswell as Jacobsen, but he continues to start and get more time on thecourt. And, even though Barnes has made some freshman mistakes, he is morecomposed than Giovacchini bringing the ball up the court and more explosivedriving to the basket. Why does he get less PT?

Coach Montgomery: That question's about individuals and I'm not going to answer that becausewe deal from the standpoint of a team situation. And the guys on ourbasketball team, the thing that has made us successful is how we do as ateam. What's important is howour team feels about what we're doing and getting people ready to play. Asfar as loyalty toward older players, there always will be and should be.Those kids have put four years of their lives into this basketball programto help make it successful. Any freshman that's here now, that's here downthe road will be accorded the same respect, and that's what I think makes agood basketball program.

Matthew DeFraga (Kensington, CA)
Your teams have generally been given by the media the deserved reputationof being tenacious defensively. Your man-to-man base defense is one of themost effective in the country, in my opinion. You briefly tried to utilizea zone defense either last year or the year before, with limitedsuccess. Do you currently work on zone at all during practice, and do youanticipate using some form of zone defense during this season at some point?

Coach Montgomery: I wish we could play a little bit better zone. I do think that man-to-manlends itself to individual responsibility. I think you have to be a goodman team to win. I don't think you can play zone consistently and winagainst good teams. Good teams with good players will rip a zone at somepoint in time, once they get into a rhythm. I think zone can be a big partof your overall scheme. We do play against zone every day to get ourselvesready, but also in anticipation of other people playing it against us. Weprobably should zone a little bit more; there are probably instances whenwe could get a little more out of it. But I like playing man. I think itgives kids an incentive to play hard.

Bill Streeter (Morton, IL)
Is there any chance of you scheduling a game or two in the midwest in thenext couple of years? It gets cold out here and we need some action to warmus up.

Coach Montgomery: We're always looking for quality opponents. The midwest has very goodbasketball. For some reason it seems like we've been east more than we havein the midwest. We would look for a good quality home-and-home situation.We're always looking for people that we could play that would come back andgive our fans a chance to see basketball played in other parts of thecountry. So if anybody has any suggestions for anybody, let us know.

Michael Clarke (Stanford, CA)
When can we expect to see Julius Barnes getting more playing time? He'sfun to watch, has good ball handling skills, and the offense seems to movewell with him at the point -- especially in transition, which is anexciting new aspect of Stanford's game. With this year's more athleticfrontcourt, it seems like we have the freedom to move away from thehalf-court offense and utilize a potentially great point guard likeBarnes.

Coach Montgomery: Again, I'm not going to answer questions about individuals. We're realhappy with Julius; we think he's going to be a real good player in ourbasketball program.

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