What Kenny Payne, Louisville Players Said After 61-55 Win vs. Florida A&M

Read what the head coach of the Cardinals, forward Sydney Curry and forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield said after their win vs. the Rattlers:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Thanks primarily to a 13-point and 19-rebound effort from forward Sydney Curry, the Louisville men's basketball program was able to hold off Florida A&M long enough to capture a 61-55 win and establish their first winning streak of the season.

Here's what head coach Kenny Payne, Curry and forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield had to say following the win:

Head Coach Kenny Payne

(Opening Statement)

“First of all, I want to congratulate football for winning their bowl game and I also want to wish the volleyball team well tonight in the championship. Two great feats, two great accomplishments for both of those teams to be doing what they’re doing. It says a lot about team chemistry, fight, will to win – they both deserve it.

Florida A&M played us tough. Their coach said, ‘I thought your guys would probably try to overlook us.’ I’ve been saying for the last couple days that I don’t know how we can overlook anybody. We have a tendency when we’re being pressed, we get tentative and for a stretch, we weren’t. We were attacking it, and then all of a sudden, they kept in it and we stopped embracing them pressing us. It’s supposed to be the easiest thing that you face when a team is pressing you. You can just get into the middle, attack it, and go have fun playing basketball, but our guys want the game to be easy. They want it to be ‘Let’s run a set, let’s not face people running at us, jumping at us, trapping us.’ That’s a problem we’ve got to fix. We have to be able to handle people pressing us and have fun doing it. Again, most really good teams want you to press them, and most good defensive teams are nervous about pressing somebody that’s really good.

On the flip side of that, I got Syd Curry on a diet. I’m happy about that, made my day. I’ve been calling him every night at 1:30 in the morning saying, ‘Syd, you better not cheat.’ I see a little difference in his energy, I see a little difference in his desperateness to rebound and fight and even to go after that blocked shot that they called a foul. That says a lot that he was somewhere above the rim.”

[Four days ago, you were 0-9 so how do you balance being excited about getting another win and wanting to build a little bit more on the game against Western Kentucky?]

“First of all, I told the guys this. Don’t overlook any wins. To win in college basketball is hard. The parity in this thing right now is ridiculous. That team [Florida A&M] has played every high-major program probably, and they’re looking to play more, so they’re not going to be afraid of you. They’re going to be aggressive. They’re going to play their style of basketball and try to come at you. When I watched them on film, I saw it against Florida and I saw it against Georgia, where it was a dogfight at times during the game. I knew they were going to come in here and be aggressive against us. I knew they wouldn’t be intimidated by us, and they got after it. Hats off to them. I’m glad that we responded in a sense, especially in the beginning of the second half. I wish we had finished better, but we’re learning. Again, we’re learning. At times, I would rather win and learn than lose and learn.”

[Has Sydney lost weight and other than that, what else has changed for him?]

“He has lost weight – I think the number is somewhere around nine or ten pounds over the last week and two or three days. I just think he’s understanding, his energy is up, and you can see him coming along. The way he’s been rebounding the ball even before this game: him going after balls with two hands, grabbing it and getting it and being strong with it once it hits his hands. It’s important for us. Rebounding has become another Achilles heel that we’ve got to start addressing, other than the turnovers. He negates some of that with the way he rebounds the ball. He could’ve easily had 22 or 23 rebounds.”

[How can Sydney improve when teams attack him in pick and roll situations?]

“I just think he needs to get used to moving his feet. It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s play a zone in a ball screen and let the guard handle it by himself.’ That’s cheating. If we’re going to be a good defensive team, I need Syd Curry up on the ball screens and moving his feet. I’m not going to cheat him. It’s one of those things that we may do it in a pinch, but overall, I want Syd Curry to feel confident that he can be up on a ball screen, which I know he can since he does it in practice, and have confidence.”

[Is tentativeness against the press the common theme on the 22 turnovers tonight?]

“I think tonight was a little different. Typically, it happens in the flow of the game when we get three or four turnovers, and they may not press. Tonight, it was more about guys being nervous about throwing an over-the-top pass back and forth and being hesitant. They’re being hesitant and trying to make sure the guard opposite is flying up, or Jae’Lyn [Withers] winding up a pass to throw up the sideline when a guy’s coming up. You’ve got to fake a pass, make a pass. You got to be confident, and really, you’ve got to face up and be ready to beat it off the dribble, and then look to pass. We’ll continue to work on it; we’ll continue to try to get better at it. I’m a little bit upset that we came out, and I’m trying to help them build confidence. I don’t want us to play a game and I’m looking at them and saying, ‘Guys, that look on your face. Get it off.’ I want you to be confident. I don’t care about the mistake; I care about the way it looks. The way the mistake looks is like you’re nervous and you’re tentative. You should not play basketball like that. We’ve got to build confidence.”

[How did you get El Ellis going to finish with 13 points after a scoreless first half?]

“First of all, the game plan for El was to get us all going offensively. I thought he did a pretty good job initially, and then he had a spurt where he was in panic mode, rushed in his mind, and playing a little faster than I would like for him to play. There were times down the stretch where he made three or four baskets at the basket driving it rather than them trapping him, but there were times when they collapsed where he could’ve easily pivoted, made a pass, and gotten somebody a wide-open shot. Again, this isn’t going to be a fix overnight. It’s going to take El time. I’m asking him to do something that he’s uncomfortable doing, and he’s embracing it at times, but there are other times where the instincts to be a scorer come out. I need him to be a smart, under-control player that can make both things happen: I can score, and I make sure guys get good shots.”

[Sydney has been one of the bigger enigmas of this season so far. Has that been a matter of getting in shape or understanding what you want from him?]

“I think that part has been clear – he knows what I want from him. For his weight to drop nine or ten pounds, you can see his energy, maybe the way he’s feeling about himself, the way he carries himself, the way he’s running, and the way he’s attacking balls. Again, I go back to the blocked shot. The ref called a foul, but that was an impressive play from him that we hadn’t seen much of until this point. I need more of that. It just goes to show that we’ve got to do whatever we’ve got to do whether it’s a diet, stretching, more conditioning, or more massages. Whatever it is to get guys to play at their best and with energy, we’ve got to do.”

[How do you get a guy like Kamari Lands of getting out of the habit of just wanting to dribble when he gets the ball?]

“You mean when he dribbles as soon as he catches it and drops his head? It drives me crazy. First of all, I think Kamari is a willing learner. He’s trying. He’s admitted that he’s always played with the ball in his hands, and now I’m asking him to do something different. I’m asking him to play basketball in an efficient way. I’m asking him to use his jump shot as a jump shot shooter to beat people off the dribble instead of a live set-up dribble, which is the hardest way to beat people off the dribble. He's trying to get it, and I thought today there were a couple plays that he made when he caught it and right away, he attacked the basket. There was no set-up dribble first. That’s how I need him to play. I need him to catch it, look, and know that when he’s open, shoot it. To know that when he’s got a lane to drive it, then drive it. To know that when he’s got an extra pass, make it right away. You don’t need set-up dribbles; it makes the defense collapse. Nowadays, in the basketball world in the level above us, they call that ball-stoppers. And everybody is trying to stay away from kids that are ball-stoppers.”

Forward Sydney Curry and forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield

(Kenny (Payne) was just sitting here telling us that he put you on a diet, he said you lost nine or 10 pounds he thought in a week and a couple of days. What has that entailed and what's that been like for you?)

Curry: “It’s been well, just being on a diet and just watching what I'm eating, so I have been having a healthy diet. Keeping track of that and coach has been helping me out and it has been going very well.”

(He (Kenny Payne) said he has been calling you at 1:30 in the morning?)

Curry: “Yeah, he has been calling me at 1 or 1:30 in the morning, definitely true.”

(Does he just ask what you have had to eat? Just make sure you aren’t eating the wrong things?)

Curry: “Making sure I am staying on top of it and encouraging me. Basically encouraging me and making sure I am staying on top of what I am supposed to do.”

(How did it feel to be dominating on both ends as much as you were today?)

Curry: “It felt good, coming in with a good mindset to just play hard. When you play hard, everything else takes care of itself. It felt good to come in, win a good game, and get a good win.”

(This is the way you played last year a lot of the time. Are you feeling better about yourself and feeling like you can become the same player you were last year?)

Curry: “I’m definitely feeling that way and getting my confidence back. Definitely feeling that way and it is good for me.”

(How much do you say, a win is a win, and how much of it is kind of a disappointment that you didn’t build a little more on the Western Kentucky win and play better?)

Huntley-Hatfield: “These past two games have been good for us to get these wins for our team and for us to feel good as a team. We still have a lot of room for improvement. We’re going to go back to practice and look at the film, try to correct those mistakes, and try to go on a winning streak.”

(What have you seen from Sydney (Curry) in the last couple of games and what does that mean for this team moving forward?)

Huntley-Hatfield: “Seeing him playing with a lot more aggression. I’ve seen him back in the facility, and as he said on the diet plan and stuff like that it is really working out for him. He has more energy and is playing with more aggression. When he plays with that aggression all of the time and with how strong he is, no one can really stop him and he can have a game like this on a nightly basis.”

(Anything they made you cut out (of your diet) that is hardest to not eat?)

Curry: “No, I wouldn’t say there is anything that is hard to not eat because I was on it last year. It’s definitely not hard, just sticking to it would be the big thing for me.”

(Coach (Payne) said there are times when there was a look of confusion or a lack of confidence on some of your guys' faces. Can you tell when those moments are coming? What can you do to snap out of moments where the confidence may be waning a little bit?)

“We try to trust our work. Trust the work that we have put in during practice and not get too high or too low. Really trust each other and try to slow down our minds, stop trying to think so fast. I feel like when we think too fast we start making mistakes. When the game starts coming really fast, we have to come together and slow down.“

(Do you feel like it is progressing? Like you are taking forward steps?)

Huntley-Hatfield: “Yeah, I feel like we are and these past two games have shown that. We have to lean on each other in times of need and like I said, just trust our work and everything will take care of itself.”

(Have the last two and a half days been more enjoyable? After winning that game have you taken a lot of pressure off yourselves and had more fun?)

Huntley-Hatfield: “Yeah. It always feels good to win. We really just want to build on these last two games see what we can improve on and see what we can cut out, like our turnovers, we have to do better controlling the ball. But everything else we are doing a pretty good job of. Our defense is pretty good, we got a couple of shut-outs today. So really just playing harder, thinking the game better, and trusting each other”

(What is the key defensively when teams are trying to get you in ball screens in the middle of the floor, what do you need to do better in those situations?)

Curry: “I’d say just being up on the ball screen helping my teammate if he is behind. Being up on the ball screens, being there for my teammates, and being in the right position.”

(19 boards, have you ever had that many before at any level)

Curry: “During junior college, I think I had 18, so this is the most.”

(Photo of Kenny Payne: Jamie Rhodes - USA TODAY Sports)

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