Mike Boynton Jr. press conference

I'll say this. I tried the best I could to to lower the expectations as far as possible with him, knowing that the history of his medical— that when he was coming in, you know, dealing with the cancer. And so because of that, I think I've probably been more positively impressed by him as I have with anybody. And that's not against anybody else.

I just, again, I just assumed that he wasn't going to be able to play basketball for a while. And he doesn't seem like he's missed a beat. And obviously at his size, the skill level is real. He's different than some of the other guys we've had.

Vladislav Goldin and Aday Mara and Morez Johnson, they hadn't shot 3s prior to getting here. And obviously that's already a part of his game. He's still got to get stronger, but certainly his skill level from a shooting and passing standpoint is very impressive. You got 10 extra practices leading up to this trip, is that correct?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're allowed to. Yeah, I don't know if we'll get to quite 10, um, but we'll be 8 or 9, somewhere in there before we leave. Has it been helpful, I guess?

Yeah, to get this group. Yeah, yeah, it's, uh, it's been really helpful. Um, just, you know, this team, you know, totally different, right, in terms of the pieces and even the roles for the guys returning. And so both the new guys and the guys returning in those new roles need some time to figure out how that looks for each of them.

I think of a guy like Oscar, who's probably, in terms of our program, as experienced as anybody we have, including even Trey and Elliott. He was here— he's been here longer than they have. And but now, you know, he hasn't really been out there in a meaningful role for our And I expect that to change this season. So the practices have given him an opportunity to see what that looks like, and hopefully these games will translate for him.

I mean, I think I can talk about him because we coached him for 2 years. But obviously under these circumstances, I don't know exactly what it all means. If there's an opportunity for Roddy to be back and he wants to be back, we certainly will have him back.

Well, we did get a pretty positive report on him last week from the doctors that he's, he's way ahead of schedule. The initial thought was it would be like a late December kind of ramp up. And I think we're going to get the green light when we get back to start doing some contact, you know, live stuff with him. And he may be ready to start at the beginning of the season.