Mike Woodson joined Nebraska’s Fred Hoiberg and USC’s Eric Musselman for a panel discussion at Big Ten Media Day on Thursday in Chicago.
Here’s a transcript of Woodson, Hoiberg and Musselman had to say:
THE MODERATOR: Welcome in Fred Hoiberg, Eric Musselman, Mike Woodson, kind enough to join us. Fred, you made it public last week that you are going through what you called a minor procedure. Obviously I know you well enough to know you take everything humbly, especially when it’s about you. Folks do want to know how you are doing? You look great.
FRED HOIBERG: Thanks, Rick. Great socks, by the way. I feel really good. It was a procedure on Friday to replace my pacemaker. I went in there, and it was about a 30-minute procedure. Biggest thing right now is just being careful. I’m coaching a lot on the sidelines trying not to get hit. I just can’t get hit in the area where they did the procedure, but feeling great.
THE MODERATOR: A few years ago we played golf together at Olympia Fields. He was coaching the Bulls, running late. Trunk slammer; straight from his trunk to the first tee. Goes birdie, par, birdie, and tried to convince everybody that he was just lucky.
FRED HOIBERG: I was. I was very lucky. Hasn’t happened since.
THE MODERATOR: We got a chance to meet for the first time, Eric, out at Terranea in May. Don’t try to work out next to this guy in the gym because you won’t look good. You shared a story then that you ended up in almost the same location, a stone’s throw from where you were when you got your very first job out of college.
ERIC MUSSELMAN: Yeah, first job out of college was selling tickets for the L.A. clippers, and I lived on 44th and Highland in Manhattan Beach, and now we’re on Sixth Street in Manhattan Beach. Kind of full circle. Super cool for myself and our family.
THE MODERATOR: Mike, you have been obviously very busy, you and your staff in the offseason with the transfer portal. It’s always important to get time to recharge the batteries. You know about keeping the pace being in this business for as long as you have. I understand you were able to recharge those batteries not far away in California as well a little bit this summer.
MIKE WOODSON: Out in Desert Island dealing with the heat. It was all fine. I’m talking about averaging around 110 a day. But my wife likes it out there a lot, so we spent about three weeks out there this summer.
THE MODERATOR: You obviously did spend some time in the portal. Talk about some of the amazing transfers you have coming in Oumar Ballo, Carlyle is on that list. Myles Rice, so many on other guys. How were you able to do that? What’s that process like now when it is so important to get into the portal and get players that can fit immediately into your program?
MIKE WOODSON: Well, we had no choice. I mean, I lost three players to the portal. I lost two seniors in Kel’el Ware, who was drafted to the Heat as a 15th pick in the draft.
I had to go out along with my staff and start, you know, really working to try to build our team back. We were able to come West and get Big Ballo, as you mentioned, and Myles Rice and Kanaan Carlyle.
Then we were fortunate enough to get Goode to come back home, which he is a Bloomington kid. Then we got a freshman in Bryson Tucker, who kind of fell in our laps late. I had looked at him a couple of years ago when he was at IMG. We were able to get him on board.
I mean, we’ve built basically through the portal with one freshman, but it’s been a work in progress. Our summer program I thought went extremely well, and then we gave them a month off. Now we’re back at official practicing.
It’s been a good run so far. We just got to put it all together and see where it leads us.
THE MODERATOR: Eric, no one was busier than you and your staff in the portal, out of necessity, obviously. Give us a sense of the guys that came in and also how difficult it can be and what the challenge is when you are trying to build chemistry with so many guys who haven’t played together before.
ERIC MUSSELMAN: I think from a chemistry standpoint it’s about what you can do in the eight-week offseason program. Every Friday we tried to do a non-basketball-related activity, whether it was wiffle ball on the beach or boxing together as a group, or spin class. We tried to do something outside of basketball and then follow that up with a meal of some sort.
Then in the transfer portal out of necessity certainly with the way the roster was with one returning player. We had to go to the portal. We’re excited about a lot of guys. But a lot of guys that need to play with a chip on their shoulder. Obviously nobody on any of the Big Ten teams right now that were recognized with the top players, and we discussed that. We discussed where we were ranked preseason. So we — I hope that our team kind of has that chip on their shoulder from day one.