South Florida men’s basketball coach Brian Gregory held a media availability via Zoom Tuesday to preview the Bulls’ next opponent, UCF, address his team’s turnover problem, getting more shots for Alexis Yetna and more.

Below is a transcript of Gregory’s comments.

On team turnover problems…

Yeah, it obviously puts your defense in a terrible situation, it skews all the statistical stuff for your defense. I think it's 46 to 11, the last two games, you know, points off turnovers.

It’s not like, it's one or two guys with five or six. It's everybody with one to three turnovers. You know what I mean? So, sometimes that's a little more difficult, because it's not, like I said, one or two guys that you can show them, he, we're forcing things here or whatever. It's, you know, one a half. But if you're playing eight guys, and everybody gets one a half that’s 16 turnovers, and that puts you in a tough spot.

Have you seen anything different in UCF than what you saw when you prepared to play them in early January?

I think three main things. One, when we when we played him in early January, Perry was just kind of coming off of an injury or wasn't playing. Obviously he's been their leading scorer over this last month now. Very aggressive to score. Dynamic scorer off the bounce. Off the catch his shooting percentages are way up. So, that's the first thing that is very noticeable.

The second thing that's noticeable is their ability to offensive rebound. In the last couple games different guys from Adams to Mobley to Walker is playing extremely well, so active and athletic on the glass. So that's another area

They've gotten into a good rhythm with, you know, guys coming off the bench that are making huge impacts whether it be Fuller one game, Adams the next. Reynolds has started some so that brings Mobley off the bench. They've had some, you know, guys come off the bench that have given them big lifts and that helps when you have this the steadiness of a Greene and have Mahan. And now obviously, much more consistent scorer in, in Perry as well.

On Alexis Yetna and his low number of shot attempts against Houston and Tulane…

Well, you know, he's averaging of just under one shot less a game than he did as a freshman. He is taking more threes than he did as a freshman. You know, some of it goes to the first question. If you turn the ball over, there's less opportunities for a guy like Lex to get off offensive rebounds, to get dives and cuts to the basket and different things like that. But in those two games, again, the worst thing you can do for a guy who's missed 12 months of basketball, to have them go two months of basketball, and then to have them go 30 days without basketball, you know, and he's, he's a little bit out of sorts, when he got the ball on a couple flashes against Tulane in the lane, he kind of mishandled the ball a little bit. Stepped out of bounds on a on a really good power move around the baseline, and a really good shot fake pull up that he missed. His free throws are down a little. Again, a little bit of just rust combined with not as smooth and as consistent in what he what he needs to do. At the same time, we got to keep getting him the ball. We’ve got to get him the ball in the post more. That means we got to feed the ball into the post.

I thought he was much better, Will, on the glass in that game (Tulane). So that was good to see. But again, one of the things in our first game against UCF, I think we had 13 offensive rebounds, but we had 24 second chance points. Or maybe it was 15 and 24. Against Tulane, you get 11 or 16 offensive rebounds and only 11 points. You're working so hard to get to the glass, we got to finish some of those plays. And that's an area to that Lex can build up the shots and the numbers of points.

On how you do a better job of turning offensive rebounds into points…

You’ve got to finish better around the basket. I think in the past, we also maybe had a little greater awareness if we got an offensive rebound. Justin was great at it last year, if he got an offensive rebound, and he didn't have a quick stick back, to kick it out. It's amazing how many open threes you get on offensive rebound, kick outs, and then one more pass.

I think just with the lack of seven missed games and the lack of practice, there's a quickness that we're playing with that you get an offensive rebound, now it's a quick shot instead of a power move. Those are, you know, some things that hopefully through some more practice and a couple more games that we get better at because and that's why, you know, again, there's always a light at the end of the tunnel there. You can't do what we did on the glass in both those games, Houston, and Tulane and take a step back and say, okay, there's not a great effort, there's not great energy, because you can't rebound like that, unless you're playing hard. We have to not only play that hard, but we have to make better decisions. And we have to play with a little more discipline, in terms of again, what we're trying to get done on each offensive and defensive possession.

On how you go from out of sorts to getting everyone back in sorts now that you’ve had a couple of games with big games coming up…

We’re playing three games this week. So it's hard to, really get a lot of practice reps in because you're playing Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday. I think that the two guys that have the biggest challenge, one I already talked about, Alexis, and the other one I mentioned at the end of the game (Caleb Murphy). It's difficult as a freshman to play the point guard spot. Every practice, every game, you learn something different.

And you gain from that experience. Be it a good experience or bad. When you miss those 30 days of practice, and you miss seven games, that's a lot of learning experience for Caleb. And I think, you try to compensate for with some film stuff, and different things like that, but nothing beats being on being on the court.

For us, we got to, you know, continue to play hard continue to compete. And then really, instead of the big picture, kind of narrow in on two or three things that we need to improve on right now and make a focus on that. Obviously, the turnovers, taking care of the basketball is going to be big, you know what I mean? And then the second thing is just our defensive concepts in terms of our gap positioning on ball coverage, ball screen coverage, which is critical and every game has to really kind of get back to where it was prior to the shutdown.

On Russel Tchewa’s improved play…

It's pretty evident to see, he's playing better, because he's putting a lot of time in right now. Spending extra time every day on his game, either conditioning wise, trying to come back, getting an extra conditioning, getting an extra shooting, getting an extra film, or staying after practice, or coming in during the day before practice.

I would say since he was able to come back, which was about a week before our first game against Houston, he's been our hardest worker. Because of that he's been playing better and he was playing well before it as well. So, a guy that didn't play a lot last year, didn't get a lot of quality minutes, got some early in the year, in some, you know, 20 point wins and so forth.

So I, I just I like his work ethic. I like his ability to take what's being coached and then transfer it onto the court. You're starting to see him play better and better as he gets more practice time, more experience, more game experience.

On how much big picture stuff does he address with the team in this kind of year…

Yeah, that's a good question. I think at times you address the big picture and then you have to make some adjustments. Either with the games, or if games are being postponed, or, you know, you'd like you saw in our league, you know, I think teams are planning to play somebody and that team gets shut down. So now you flip it and you're playing somebody else. Or we plan on playing at home against SMU, now we're going to play five out of or last six on the road, as of right now.

So, with where we're at right now, you talk about getting back on track, you know, as a team playing at the level, we were, you know, and for a good amount of time prior to the shutdown.

Prior to the shutdown at 3-3 (in the AAC), you're really two possessions away from being 5-1. You make a free throw in either one of those two games, you win the game.

But now you kind of take a step back, and now maybe the focus is on let's, as we get back on track, let's start playing our best basketball as we get to mid-February and the beginning of March.

There’s a lot of teams out there that have gone through the same stuff as we have. So we're not unique. And then you’ve got to focus on playing your best basketball at the end of the year.