Dusty May press conference after win over Oakland

No, I was extremely worried about this game. I know Oakland gives teams problems every year with their zone defense. And obviously when you bring back a post player who's Player of the Year, and I said it ad nauseam this week, he's going to be trying to face up and drive our bigs and go make plays. And I thought he did tonight.

He was 6 of 16. A couple didn't drop, but he walks out of here with 18 and 5. And, you know, he made a couple— he made 3 threes against us. He's not typically a 3-point shooter.

So even though that's not his game against our bigs, it became his game. So going forward, that's a great— it's a great matchup for us to learn from. But no, I didn't expect us to be this cohesive whatsoever.

Yeah, L.J. could have played tonight and we had him ready for emergency purposes. He said he could go and he said he was 100%. He's been cleared to play, but he— it wasn't— he hasn't looked great in the last day or two and hasn't played enough. So we just felt like with 8 days in between now and week 4 is he'll get a couple practices under his belt, he'll get his wind back.

And we just didn't, we didn't want to risk it if we didn't have to. Winters, I believe, starts practicing tomorrow or the next day, maybe off tomorrow, I don't know exactly, but he'll be practicing the next couple days. He had a minor foot injury that we were being very cautious with, like we do early in the season. You know, these guys could play if they absolutely had to, but we're more thinking long-term and we have so much depth that we're not going to put a guy out there 75, 80% unless we absolutely have to.

Woj? You saw it. I mean, he played left-handed yesterday. It was his first day back at practice after missing a few.

He played left-handed and I thought he was a borderline All-League player with just one hand going left-handed. To be honest, he was trying not to use it at all yesterday. He was trying to see if he could practice so he could play today, and he literally was making unbelievable passes with his left hand and catching with essentially one hand and fanning opposite and whatever.

Like, he literally can play with his weak hand, and then there's no break or anything like that, so it's, it's not as if we're, um, concerned with long-term damage other than just another random injury. But, you know, we also told him today that a lot of times when guys have a thumb injury or finger injury, they— a lot of times they shoot it better for whatever reason.

I think it probably eliminates a little bit of the noise in our minds. And so I thought all of his threes were clean. He went 2 for 2. I was saying he went 2 for 3.

Yeah, he went 2 for 2. He went 2 for 2 from the line. So I thought he played a very intelligent basketball game with the hand injury that he's had. But it's day to day.

I mean, same thing. We pulled him out. We limited his minutes just because we wanted to minimize risk.

Trey did it tonight. Roddy Gayle did it all offseason and he did it really well. And L.J. also will be a guy. In a perfect world, the, you know, at FAU, a lot of, probably at least half the games we played without a point guard.

It was whoever rebounded, pushed, and then we were interchangeable and we were playing positionless basketball, with exception of the 5-man. And so I, I would like for us to evolve to that. Yaxel Lendeborg's a good enough ball handler and playmaker where he could, he could play point guard in a pinch, initiate offense, whatever the case.

But yeah, I'm very comfortable with Trey, Roddy Gayle, L.J. Um, you know, we called a couple things that were slower developing for Roddy Gayle in against Cincinnati, and we didn't help him. And so that's on me as much as anything. But yeah, I'm extremely confident And especially when you factor in that we have a couple pressure releases in Aday Mara and Morez Johnson.

So it's, you know, get it up the floor and find the weakest defender and initiate offense with that guy is probably what I would answer today. But that's why I was pleased with Trey McKenney tonight. I thought he kept us organized. I thought he had a real plan when he caught the ball.

So it'll be by committee. Elliot Cadeau's at true point. MJ is evolving into that because he's always been a scoring combo guard, and I'm fine with that too because I'm not changing his bread and butter. But, you know, it's going to be by committee.

But it's a great question. You know, against pressing teams, we'll have to be creative and find different ways.