Dusty May’s Monday press conference previewing Wake Forest and TCU

I'll begin with the second part of the question. I feel like we're a much better basketball team than we were one week ago. We did some good things at home, especially shooting the basketball, but there we had— after analyzing the film, we knew we had a lot to clean up on and build upon. So we were certainly better than we were Wake is going to be a very challenging matchup for us.

They're physical like Cincinnati. They're going to push us off our spots. So obviously our ability to take care of the basketball is going to be pivotal. They also have smaller, versatile bigs.

And as the first 3 games have shown us, that's been a little bit of a hole in our defense. You know, we've got great size. And on the other end, we've been able to take advantage of that size around the rim. But on the defensive And we've got to find a way to contain these small, versatile, athletic wing type of bigs. And so it's just another good test for us going forward.

I think I was pretty clear early presenting what I thought our challenges with Wake would be. I don't— you know, Aday Mara is going to be— he's a really good player. He hasn't done that well enough yet for us to be in a championship level program. And so he has to improve his ability to contest threes, to sit down and guard.

I mean, we've got to do a better job of supporting him as well because obviously there's matchups on both sides of the ball. And, you know, on the other end, Wake is going to have to double-team him most likely and whatnot. So that is an area of concern in November. But like most areas of concern, if you can get exposed this early, then you have more time and more intentionality to improve.

And those guys have done that. Like I said, I think we're better in a lot of areas since last week. We're not where we need to be, but I do think we're inching in the right direction. Anthony.

Would you expect that Yaxel Lendeborg is fully good to go tomorrow with no restrictions? And also, where is Winters Grady in his recovery? Yes, Yaxel Lendeborg should be close to 100%. Winters Grady is back practicing now.

You know, Winters loves ball so much that he was injured and he kept reinjuring his foot in a minor way. And basically our medical staff just held him and said, "It's not going to— you're not going to be able to play well, move well as long as it's— you're going at 50, 60, 70% or whatever the case." So he went— he sat out longer than he wanted to.

I think it probably drove him crazy because he loves ball so much. Oakland would have been a great game for him to play. Because of their zone. And, you know, I think with Winters, if you can get him a clean look, there's probably as good chance of the ball going in as anyone on our team.

But yeah, he's still trying to figure out where he fits in with the numbers. And obviously when you're a freshman and you miss a couple of weeks, it gets more difficult. But he's going to help this team.

Other than yesterday, I think we've shot it well every day of the week. I think one day we had a 20-for-44 day from 3. This is all just off just scanning the stats after practice. But yeah, I think they're good.

If we take the right ones, we're going to have some big shooting nights. Will Tschetter, Nimari Burnett, those guys can shoot the ball. I mean, Yaxel Lendeborg, mid-30s on low volume, and we're encouraging him to shoot more, and he works on it every single day after practice. So we think, we thought that that was probably a little bit overblown in the offseason as far as us being a poor shooting team.

Now, we never thought we were built to be an elite shooting team, but Trey McKenney was brought in here as a high-level shooter. The USA Basketball coaches told me last year they felt like he was probably the best shooter in their camp. And this is before we had him in the fold. Winters, Grady, obviously that's what he does.

L.J. Cason makes shots in practice. So we— and I'm probably missing a couple guys. Elliot Cadeau shot it better than we anticipated. When he takes on-balance threes, he's shot it well.

When he shoots off-balance threes and even the play before half when he made the three against St. John's, that is what we need him to be able to do at the end of late shot clocks. Was it St. John's game when he hit the three right before half? Yeah. Yeah, that's what we need him to be able to do.

And he's added some creative ways to create space to get those shots off in those special situations. But, you know, we were probably more concerned with some other things than shooting threes. As long as we take the right ones, then I think we'll be a pretty good shooting team. And that's what we did against Oklahoma. We had really good in-rhythm threes off mostly good ball movement.