Mike Boynton Jr. previews UConn

I believe so. He was able to practice yesterday, which was encouraging. And I expect him to practice here when we take the floor in about 30 minutes or so. So barring anything, you know, some other setback between now and then, the expectation is that he will play.

Yeah, it'd be great. Obviously rebounding has been an issue. This is, you know, even going back to the national championship game, we believe that we probably could have had a better margin of victory had we just defensively rebounded the ball better. And this is obviously talking about one of the better, more physical rebounding teams than we've had in our now 3 years here.

So certainly an issue we've addressed verbally and video, and now we've got to put into action that we can actually execute it better because it needs to be something that becomes a strength of ours because we can. We still have good size. We have guys who've been good rebounders, and it's now a matter of how Going out there and actually doing it consistently.

Um, again, not having Moustapha is one thing, but, you know, Roddy Gayle, uh, I think didn't have a defensive rebound the other day, uh, which is certainly something we need from him. Uh, and then really the truth is, guys, like, good rebounding teams usually have good guard rebounders because generally speaking, your bigs almost always rebound, at least at an average level.

But teams that are really good— and this is the reason why UConn's a good rebounding team— yeah. Because they're not— it's not just Hines, right? Braylon Mullins really kicked our butt on the glass in the national championship game. He was a big part of the reason they were in it. He's back and I'm sure we'll be trying to do the same thing.

Because like, yeah, yeah, I think that's part of the challenge that we all are going to have as, as we accept this team, right? It's just, again, the constant reference to the automatic Continuation, right? That's just not realistic. Um, and I think I've got to do a good job as the leader is making sure that message is reinforced every day.

It's like Trey is still Trey McKenney, but his role on our team is different. The way people are gonna prepare for him is going to be different. I mean, he was hiding in plain sight as one of the most efficient freshman college basketball players in the country last year. Yeah.

But you really didn't mean— if I'm another coach in the Big Ten, I'm not spending a whole lot of time saying, how do we stop Trey McKenney on last year's team? Just not doing it, right? There's like 7 guys before I get to him, as good as he is, that if he beats us, you kind of like, it's just not gonna be our day. If I can stop Morez and Yax and Elliot, then all right, the guy's gonna have 20, which he was capable of.

And now it's different. Like, he's at the top of the scout report. The scout report is to like not let him get Comfort shots, be maybe physical with him, and he's got to adjust the way he approaches that and uses his ability and the gravity he's going to draw to make the game easier for JP, make the game easier for Quinn, make the game easier for guys like Ricky and, and, um, and Oscar who won't be having as much attention on them and may have some of the looks that he had last year because the attention's on him.

And I think that's the same for Elliot, who we'll ask to score more than maybe we did last year. Same for Roddy, who were asked to playmake more than we did last year. And again, this team will take a couple of weeks before it's also established exactly who they are and their roles for this team.