Jeff Capel Q&A
Oklahoma coach Jeff Capel had a lot to say at Big 12 Media Day on Wednesday in Kansas City. Here’s a few things that won’t make tomorrow’s paper:
Will it be a struggle to keep big man Tiny Gallon in the paint when he likes playing on the perimeter?
You must have seen Tiny play somewhere.
That is something — he is a versatile guy. He can do a lot of different things. One of the things he can do is shoot the basketball. But it is something that we have to remind him of, or we’ve had to remind him of so far is don’t fall in love with just being on the perimeter because you are 6′9″. You do have a 7′4″ wingspan, and you are 290 pounds. And to use that.
I haven’t seen any 6′9″, 290 pound shooting guards out there. LeBron is close, but, you know, by any means, he’s not LeBron. There’s only one of those guys walking the face of the earth.
It is something that we’ve had to remind him, and I keep using the word “had,” past tense. Hopefully it’s not something, as we get into November and December and January and February, that we don’t have to continually remind him of that.
What have the two big-name newcomers, Gallon and Tommy Mason-Griffin, shown you in early practices?
Tommy Mason-Griffin has been as good as anyone in practice for us first six days. He’s been that good.
I knew he was good coming out of high school. One of the things I thought about Tommy was I thought he had a large room to grow to get better. Same thing with Tiny.
Once those guys got into a situation where they were forced to work consistently, and that’s where they are right now. And because of that, Tommy’s made a little bit bigger jump right now than Tiny. Tiny’s coming, and Tiny’s very talented. He’s worked to get his weight in check. He’s at 290. He was 360 going into his senior year. He’s at 290.
We weighed him on Sunday. He’s 290 pounds. He’s awfully proud of that. He’s very talented. Has an incredible skill set.
One of the things with Tiny — as with all freshmen — they have to get used to the speed of the college game and the sense of urgency that you have to have in the understanding of how important every possession is. But those two give us a lot to work with immediately.
How has Tony Crocker developed over the summer heading into his senior year?
Crocker will always have a special place for me because he’s the only (recruit) that stayed (after Capel was hired).
That was a difficult time when all that stuff happened when I first got here. We’ve talked about that. But Crocker’s had a good career so far, and I hope he has a great senior year.
He’s stronger now. He finished our preseason conditioning at about 215 pounds. He lowered his body fat, improved his vertical, was more explosive and quicker.
Yesterday was the first time he practiced. We’ve had a little flu thing going on with our team. He’s been out.
Yesterday was the first time. So I don’t know how much weight he lost or things like that. But we need him to be more consistent.
And one of the things I challenged him with at the end of last season was, in my opinion, in order to become more consistent, you need to work more consistently. You need to do the things that you can control on a more consistent basis, getting in and working on your game. So we’ll see if he’s done that.
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