- 7 minutes ago
The K&C Masterpiece was joined in-studio by SMU men's basketball head coach Andy Enfield. Enfield discussed SMU's 3-0 start, recruiting local Texas talent, Homecoming weekend, and more.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Now we are joined in studio head coach of the 3-0 SMU men's basketball team.
00:07It is Andy Enfield. Good morning, coach.
00:09Good morning.
00:10Thank you very much, first of all, for jumping in studio with us.
00:13It's great to be here. Good to see you guys.
00:15Absolutely. Now, I know we have some things on the agenda later in the season.
00:21You've got a game with Duke. We've got some other high-ranked opponents.
00:24But how important is the start to the season to not only get the feel for your team,
00:28but build off of a lot of momentum from last year?
00:31Yeah, we had a very good team last year. We went to the N-Subway tournament.
00:35We tried to build on this. We have 10 new players.
00:37We had to replace five starting players and are very good players.
00:40They all average double figures. So it's a brand-new team.
00:43We have four returnees and 10 new guys.
00:45So it's a different team, but we like our team right now.
00:48How, I guess, long did it take you then to get a feel for the guys throughout practice and everything,
00:55seeing as how there are some returners?
00:57But like you just said, we wiped out a lot of talent from last year.
01:00This is our deepest team by far. We have a lot of good players up and down the roster.
01:04There's not a lot of separation, so it's hard for coaches to figure out who's in the starting lineup,
01:08who's in the rotation.
01:09But we had three big-time preseason scrimmages and games,
01:13and that's a chance for our players to learn how to play with each other,
01:17as well as the coaches to learn what the strengths and weaknesses are as a whole.
01:20Yeah, my co-host, Kevin, is a huge college basketball nut.
01:25He'll text me and say, are you watching this southern Cincinnati and eastern Michigan?
01:30And I'm like, no.
01:30He makes fun of me when I texted him that, and I was like, it's in triple overtime.
01:34And he goes, get real.
01:36But he's one of those guys, we've known each other for 20 years.
01:39When we worked at a local newspaper together in Plano,
01:42he would always take off the first day of the NCAA tournament.
01:46And I would be like, why does every year it's this time?
01:49I'm sitting here watching these games, and he's not working today.
01:52And then I figured out, oh, he's at home watching that.
01:55Those are the best two days of the sports year.
01:57How much anticipation do you want for him to be excited to see your team this year
02:03on the first day of the tournament?
02:05Well, first of all, I understand that excitement because when I was a head coach
02:09at Florida Gulf Coast University, FGCU, we were a small school, a brand-new school,
02:13and went to March Madness and won a couple games.
02:15And so I have a full appreciation for the smaller schools around the country.
02:19They're very good teams.
02:20They have a lot of good players.
02:21In basketball, all you need is two or three guys to get hot at the right time,
02:25and you can beat a bigger school.
02:27Football's a little different because of the size of the guys and the size of the team.
02:32But our team at SMU this year, we're really excited about.
02:35We have, as I said, a deep team.
02:37We can really shoot the ball at a high level.
02:39We have good size and length.
02:41We're much bigger than we were last year, much better defensively.
02:44And we share the ball.
02:45We're leading the ACC currently, even though it's a small sample size,
02:48in assists and field goal percent because we are sharing the ball.
02:51You know, and a lot of those players, correct me if I'm wrong,
02:54those are high school, DFW high school basketball players, are they not?
02:58All six of our signees are Texas players.
03:03And so we have four from Dallas, one from Houston, one from Corpus Christi.
03:07Today is actually signing day, and we're anticipating two more Texas.
03:10And you're here?
03:11Man.
03:12Yeah, how about that?
03:13I don't need to bear.
03:14And then, obviously, one from California.
03:16So we are recruiting the DFW area very hard.
03:20We have some transfers that are from Texas, including the DFW area.
03:23So that's the bulk of our team.
03:25We probably have almost 70% of our team is from the state of Texas.
03:30That mixed in with a few guys internationally and transfers from other states.
03:34And we hope to have a good team.
03:36We always feel like we've, you know, growing up here, it's always been we're a hotbed for football.
03:41But we've seen DFW and the Texas area become an even more hotbed for basketball.
03:48When did you see that kind of turn happen?
03:51Texas has always been a football state.
03:52Look what Kevin Jennings has done.
03:54Oh, for sure.
03:55From Oak Cliff here at SMU.
03:56We also had on to start the season.
03:58Yeah, he's been terrific.
03:59Incredible young man as well as an athlete and leader.
04:04As far as the basketball, Texas has always been a basketball state as well.
04:07And if you look at all the NBA players that come out of this state,
04:10the DFW is a hotbed.
04:13And when I was at USC for 11 years, we recruited Los Angeles and Southern California.
04:17In fact, probably 90% of all our NBA players, we had 12 or 11 or 12 NBA guys.
04:23And I think 10 out of 12 were from Southern California.
04:26So we're trying to do the same thing here at SMU in the state of Texas.
04:29We think we can just go to the state of Texas and get really good players to help elevate SMU
04:35into a national brand of basketball.
04:36When we were at the newspaper, I know firsthand we both got to see Marcus Smart, Julius Randle,
04:42and then you look forward to people like Anthony Black and other folks like that.
04:46You're right.
04:46There is a ton of NBA talent that has come out of the Metroplex.
04:51Now, I don't know if we want to single out just this player,
04:54and you can talk about whoever the heck you want.
04:55But one of the names I know has caught people's attention, Jermaine O'Neal Jr., obviously famous
05:01father and everything like that.
05:03What can he bring to this team?
05:04Or what does he bring to this team?
05:07Jermaine O'Neal Jr. has improved.
05:08He had a good freshman year last year, was a rotation player off the bench.
05:13And this year, he's in the starting lineup and averaging double figures.
05:16He's improved in a lot of areas.
05:18Obviously, his dad was a longtime NBA veteran and all-star.
05:21I've coached some pretty good NBA players' sons over the years,
05:25Bronny James and LeBron and DJ Rodman.
05:28His dad was pretty good, too.
05:30And we're just signing day today.
05:33We have another Hall of Famer's son.
05:36Hopefully, we'll sign.
05:37I'm not allowed to talk about him until he actually signs.
05:40He probably already has.
05:41But anyway, so those guys that have – they come from basketball families.
05:46They have a high IQ when they're on the court.
05:49And they're also very hard workers and wonderful young men.
05:52So Jermaine O'Neal Jr. is off to a great start this season.
05:56Do you feel like guys like that are often trying to prove themselves
05:59to what their parents were?
06:01And that's why they like and they work so hard because of what they had before them?
06:09I think it goes both ways.
06:11If you're from a family, it's hard to put pressure on your son to try to be who you were
06:18as a player.
06:19Yeah, for sure.
06:19So if you're a Hall of Famer or an NBA All-Star dad, it's really challenging
06:24because you want your son to succeed.
06:26But at the same time, there's a balance there because it's almost impossible to live up to
06:32that type of career that you had as a dad.
06:36You're one in a million almost.
06:38And so to have your son reach that is very challenging.
06:42But I think the fathers that we've been involved with, LeBron was great with Bronny.
06:48I think Jermaine Sr., he runs dynamic prep here.
06:53He's a high school coach, AU coach, and runs an incredible program.
06:57So he's looking at it from a father and a coaching angle towards his son.
07:02And I think that there's a lot of benefit to that because he doesn't have his daddy eyes on all
07:06the time.
07:06He also looks at that as a coach and understands that Jermaine Jr. needs to improve in certain areas.
07:13And he's been able to mentor him along the way.
07:15I think that's a credit to you as a coach then, that fathers have sought you out,
07:22that have played in the game, have sought you out and wanted their kids to play for you.
07:26Because all the best coaches and managers that I've ever talked to said,
07:30what's your piece of advice for a dad who's got a kid in sports?
07:33And they always say, find the best coaches and let them coach.
07:36Don't be a coach yourself because the coach is going to figure out ways to mold them into something special.
07:42You just be dad.
07:43And I think that served me well with my kids as they've gone along.
07:47Some of them failed as athletes.
07:49That's fine.
07:50They're okay with it.
07:51And some of them are better than I expected them to be.
07:53But I always think that when you watch a good coach coach,
07:57you see the development in the player along that time.
07:59So I think that's a real credit to what you've accomplished.
08:01Well, thank you very much.
08:02It is a fine line as a dad.
08:04And my daughter plays beach volleyball at the University of South Carolina.
08:09She's a freshman.
08:10And I would try to give her coaching earlier in the day.
08:13And she said, Dad, you know nothing about beach volleyball.
08:15So I stopped.
08:16But I just let her be.
08:18And she found a great coach that recruited and a great staff.
08:21So hands off as a dad.
08:23I'm just a fan now.
08:25But I do appreciate the parents on our teams at the college level to let us do our job
08:31and let the players develop because they all get better if they do the right things.
08:34You know, I know you're not allowed to say anything about it.
08:37But this is just a side note unrelated to anything we've been talking about.
08:41I always thought Hakeem Olajuwon was a heck of a basketball player.
08:44Dude did the single most difficult thing to do in all of NBA history.
08:50Winning an MVP and finals MVP, defensive player of the year all in the same year.
08:54No other players ever accomplished that.
08:56He had a kid that could play college basketball next year.
09:00That'd be neat.
09:00That would be neat.
09:01All right.
09:02Back to our interview.
09:03Unrelated to any of the stuff that we were talking about.
09:06All right.
09:07Friday.
09:08Well, it's homecoming weekend.
09:10I don't just want to say Friday, although I do want to talk about the game against Ball State.
09:14But it is a huge weekend for SMU.
09:16You've got a big-time football matchup against Wake Forest.
09:20Walk us through, and then the game against Ball State on Friday evening.
09:24Walk us through the homecoming extravaganza that's going down at SMU.
09:28Well, it's a special time for SMU.
09:30The momentum is so strong academically, athletically.
09:33Just the vibe of the university with our new president, Jay Hartzell, Damon Evans, our athletic director.
09:38They have us on the right path.
09:40And the city of Dallas, SMU, when I was in Los Angeles, USC was downtown, and UCLA was across town.
09:48And we had two of everything, two NBA teams with the Lakers and Clippers, two hockey teams, the Rams and
09:53Chargers.
09:55In SMU, we only have one university here, a major university, and that's SMU.
09:59So the city of Dallas, SMU has become Dallas' team.
10:03And it's an awesome feeling to see guys like Kevin Jennings come here, the basketball team.
10:07We have so many Dallas young men on our roster.
10:09And so there's a connection between the city of Dallas and SMU, and I think that we'll be on full
10:14display this weekend.
10:15We have a home game tomorrow or Friday night against Ball State at 8 o'clock, and our football team
10:19plays a huge ranked matchup against Wake Forest.
10:22It's homecoming week, and there's a lot of SMU people that still live in this city.
10:26So it's a special and fun time to be a Mustang, and this weekend will be great.
10:30Fair to say you guys would all be pretty stoked if the people going to the basketball game could wear
10:35red and blue to really kind of hammer home that advantage.
10:39That'd be nice.
10:408 o'clock against Ball State.
10:42My ex-assistant coach, Chris Kapko, it's his first year as a head coach, so it's a fun time for
10:46him and us.
10:47I got the chance to, I took my niece and my sister and her husband.
10:51We went to see Spikes Under the Lights.
10:53SMU volleyball was playing in that.
10:55I got to work with a lot of people with that.
10:57I got to interview the volleyball coach there, too.
10:59She's fantastic.
11:01An event like that, that big, is that something that you think really propels the sport to another level,
11:07being able to play your game in maybe a different type of venue that you're not typically used to?
11:13Well, I think all that helps on a national scale, national television.
11:17Obviously, the football and basketball games were all on national TV.
11:20We have so many ESPN games this year.
11:22But the other sports, like men's soccer, who's ranked number one in the country,
11:25women's volleyball team's top five and played in that venue,
11:28that just helps the brand recognition of SMU on a national scale.
11:32And joining the ACC, that's very important because when they're in a mid-major conference for the last 30 years
11:37before joining the ACC, and this is their third season,
11:40it's helped a lot to have those bigger games, bigger showcases for our national brand.
11:45It's crazy, too, Kevin, because a lot of times some coaches kind of silo themselves.
11:50Yes.
11:51It seems like every one of the coaches I've talked to at SMU are very supportive of what they are
11:56across the board.
11:57They are in love with the sports around them.
11:59How important do you feel like that is, not only for you, but for the entire university?
12:04I'm sure you could just coach just fine if not were the case,
12:07but that does feel like it helps prop up the university athletic department.
12:12Yeah, athletics are the front porch of any university.
12:15You get more exposure on national television if your teams are good and they constantly are on TV.
12:20And obviously you have to win.
12:21You don't want to be on there losing every game because that could hurt the perception.
12:24But it's amazing to see the excitement of the students attending SMU or the incoming freshmen happen to know three
12:31or four of them personally.
12:33They're just excited to come to a university that has the vibe, the academics, the city of Dallas, but also
12:38has big-time athletics.
12:39There's a lot of students out there looking to go to universities that have that big-time feel for it.
12:45And now that we're in the ACC and our sports are successful, those students have that vibe and that feeling.
12:51Do you mind if I ask you a question about the NBA and the new coach, Dusty May?
12:58He has a 19-year-old on his team, and he seems to connect with that.
13:04And I'm kind of curious, being from college, if he has that ability to connect on that same level,
13:11even though the guy's in the pros, because of what he did working with 19, 18, 19-year-olds throughout
13:18his career.
13:19Well, Dusty May is an outstanding coach.
13:21He was a great assistant coach, head coach, and now he's an NBA coach.
13:25And he's done very well with his communication skills, his X's and O's.
13:30I think the 19-year-old you're talking about is Cooper Flagg.
13:32Yeah, that's him, yeah.
13:33I just looked at his stats.
13:34He's averaging 26 points, 7 assists, 7 rebounds.
13:37A 19-year-old, I couldn't believe he was still 19.
13:39I think that says more for Cooper than it does Dusty, even though Dusty is incredible.
13:44Cooper Flagg is a special young man.
13:46He communicates with everybody, Dusty May included.
13:49And I think that says a lot about who Cooper Flagg is as a player, a leader,
13:54and his ability to make players around him better at such a young age.
13:59Yeah, and I just think that level, what you guys do with the college players,
14:03you're a different age.
14:05You come from a different era, but you get that respect pretty quickly from a player.
14:09And that's kind of what you need to do is get that respect,
14:11but also know I'm about to take you to another level,
14:14and you're about to see yourself turn into a different person.
14:17Yeah, that's a great point.
14:18I started my basketball coaching career in the NBA as a shooting coach and assistant coach.
14:24And so I spent nine years off and on in the NBA before I became a college coach,
14:28and that helped me a lot because you see the difference of communication in a college game
14:33versus the NBA game and the difference in styles.
14:35And the college game is more of a community, a feel, a campus life.
14:41You have, like we have this homecoming event this weekend with all the sports and the alumni.
14:46You don't have that in the NBA.
14:47Right.
14:48Yeah.
14:48So I prefer the college game to be involved in because it's more than just about your team.
14:54You have a whole university, a whole city of Dallas here supporting you.
14:58The NBA is, you still need those communication skills as a coach
15:02because a lot of these players are younger now coming, like a Cooper flag who's 19.
15:06You have a lot of 19, 20, 21-year-olds.
15:08And so you really need to communicate with these young guys
15:11and teach them how to be pros at the NBA level.
15:13And now in college, some guys are staying longer because of the NIL payments.
15:18Oh, for sure.
15:19And the transfer portal.
15:20So now you have some of the NBA style and how you communicate with players is now in college
15:28because these guys are getting paid.
15:29And so I think we have a very experienced coaching staff at SMU, a lot of NBA experience.
15:35Jason Hart, my associate head coach, played in the league for 10 years.
15:38Coach Mobley has two sons in the NBA, including Evan Mobley, an NBA all-star.
15:41And so I think our staff does a pretty good job.
15:44But you're right, the communication of how you deal with the personalities, the playing time, the NIL,
15:49the transfer portal is very important.
15:51Kevin, I didn't even mention that you're a Duke fan.
15:53So is that...
15:54Ooh, yeah.
15:55So that's complicated.
15:57I was going to ask if I would be invited to that game on February 9th, but I feel like
16:01probably not, right?
16:03You have to wear SMU gear if you want that.
16:04Hey, I got a shirt and a blanket.
16:06I'm ready to go.
16:08It's got to be a fun battle in that ACC, always back and forth.
16:12It's got to be a blast to be able to be at that level where you're like, we can take
16:18them down and we can do it pretty well.
16:20Yeah, the ACC is...
16:21I grew up an ACC fan, grew up in southern Pennsylvania, followed the ACC back in the old days when
16:26I only had eight or nine teams.
16:28Now we have 18 teams.
16:29But Duke and North Carolina, everything runs through Tobacco Road.
16:32We were fortunate enough to beat North Carolina last year, sold out crowd at Moody Coliseum.
16:36Good job.
16:37It's Caleb Wilson.
16:38I know you like that as a Duke fan.
16:41And so we've had incredible home crowds, beating Louisville by 10 last year at home, another sold out crowd.
16:47They were ranked.
16:48And then we were ranked as well until we had the injury late in the season.
16:52So we're expecting another fun-filled season at Moody Coliseum.
16:56Duke does come to town this year, and that'll be a waiting list only, sold out standing room.
17:01Sounds like I'm not invited.
17:03If you want to stay in the whole game, we'll get you a seat.
17:07And I just want to make this clear.
17:09I do know that it's homecoming, but they welcome everybody, whether you went to SMU or not.
17:14It's an extravaganza this weekend against Wake Forest football team on Saturday.
17:19Ball State on Friday night.
17:21That game tips at 8 o'clock.
17:24Wear red and blue.
17:26Red and blue.
17:27Coach, thank you very, very much for jumping on with us.
17:30Thanks, guys.
17:30Really appreciate it.
17:31And you're the best.
17:32Really enjoyed listening to you.
Comments