-This year’s team has already spent a lot of time together which was intentional with 8 new guys.
-There’s a lot more physicality to this group and a lot quicker to the ball. He expects them to be a lot better rebounding team.
-This year’s team has more room to make mistakes and recover from them.
-Leaders have been: Anthony, Carlson, and Brenchlet. Gavin Baxter has been great even though he can’t play yet. Of the young guys, Lazar is really trying to be vocal as a leader.
-He talked about just focusing on being 1% better each day. He said he took a long trip recently that allowed him to watch all of their practices and the incremental improvement in each practice was really evident.
-They’re really excited to have Chris Burgess on the staff. He feels like that hire is already paying off.
-He has a really tight staff with camaraderie and chemistry. It’s okay to disagree and be respectful about it. He also talked about, as a staff, what it’s like to learn the league.
-They should have the versatility to play a lot of different ways.
-They’re always going to have their core, culture, and what they believe in. But, then you need to adjust to your personnel.
-He echoed what Carlson and Anthony said without being told what they said about the new guys. He said they’re all doing great things—and different new guys step up each day.
-They’re coming into the season with one open schedule. It’s not a philosophical thing.
-Boston Holt recently got cleared to play. Baxter is close to being cleared in about 3-4 weeks.
-Smith won’t say any one specific guy who did better improvement wise than any others. He did say the freshmen don’t look like freshmen. He won’t say it’s all roses though, either.
-Because of the transfer portal, it’s tough to really know which opponents are going to be good.
-Unlike Larry K, Smith is insistent on playin BYU every year.
-He thinks the fans will like the product. Smith likes it, says he doesn’t completely love it, but it’s great for where they’re currently at.
