End of season Q&A with Brian Gregory part IV
On Thursday, one week after the college basketball season ended prematurely, BullsInsider.com spoke one-on-one with USF Bulls men’s basketball head coach Brian Gregory about his thoughts on a variety of topics.
In this, the conclusion of our conversation, Gregory talks about non-conference scheduling for next season, filling a staff opening, and his off-season “to-do” list.
BullsInsider: With the dead period and without being able to do any player development right now, one thing that you can work on is the non-conference schedule for next season. You have a return game at Boston College, two games in the Fort Myers Tip-Off so that leaves 10-games to schedule. Would you like to announce any other opponents today?
BG: [laughs] I would love to, but I’m not at liberty to.
Where we're at right now is that, if you take a look back, teams like Wofford and Furman and our one way games put us in a pretty good situation. Then the tournament stuff. So, we are currently looking at, either at least two of those other 10 games doing either a one game exempt, like we did against Florida State against a quadrant one team and maybe getting a second one of those as well. Or maybe being able to start a home and home, starting at our place, against a quadrant, one or quadrant two caliber team. Again, with our one way games, always being able at the end of that to have multiple quadrant two or quadrant three, stay away from the quadrant four type teams. I think that's imperative for us to do. I would say, if you take a look at our league, I would say that we've had a couple quadrant four for teams in our league. I think that's not going to be the case next year. Those teams are going to be dramatically improved.
So we're in a process now and we’re in a position now where we build our non-conference schedule to put us in position to have the strength of schedule, to have a resume to play in the postseason. That's what we're at right now, as a program and we'll build that schedule accordingly.
What's on your to-do list as you prepare for the 2020-21 season? I know one of the things that’s got to be on the list is making a decision on the Director of Basketball Operations. What else is on the list?
BG: Right. Well, you always evaluate the staff and obviously we have an opening right now. So you need to do a good job of building the correct the correct leadership team in terms of what's going to impact the players and most and impact the program and in the best manner. At this time too, you get a little more opportunity to, study yourself. What is working after three years? What areas do we need to improve in? What areas do we need to maybe emphasize more? And you do that throughout the year. You keep a checklist. Hey, we need to do this better. We need to do this better this spring and summer. These are key things that we gotta get better at. So, you always have that list, but now you have a little more time to maybe dig deep into your program in terms of what we need to get done.
I think obviously, at the top of the list is, we need to really make a big jump on the offensive end. In particular taking care of basketball and getting and getting more shots up at us at the rim. I think going back to some of my roots is does. You saw it in the last, you know, second half of the season becoming a dominant offensive rebound team. I think that's an area that we can make a big jump in with a greater emphasis on sending three or four guys to the glass. You know, I think that's huge for us. I think that's a critical, critical area. To do that is a mindset, you know, where you're going every single time. I think that's on the top of the list, that's going to be one of the things that we really emphasize during these months until we start practice.