So yesterday afternoon, I headed over to McDonough for the Hoyas’ Preseason Media Day. It wasn’t too exciting, since the team isn’t even allowed to begin practices yet, but it was the first chance to hear from Coach Thompson and the players about the upcoming season, what to expect, and how they are trying to learn from last season’s setbacks.

Before I go into some quotes from one-on-one interviews with the players and a 20 minute free-for-all with Coach, here are some of the highlights for you:

Funniest Moment: Greg’s missed shot bouncing into a section of young reporters and knocking one of their tape recorders to the ground, sending the tape and batteries flying.

Most Awkward Moment: Liz Clarke asking Coach about Assistant Coach Rob Burke’s departure and the lack of an official press release – hint, he didn’t say much.

Most Hoya Pride Moment: Coach heading over to the bleachers to give Patrick Ewing, Jr. a hug before coming to address the media.

Here are those quotes I promised.

Chris Wright

On what he’s learned:
What I’ve learned as a player … is that at certain points of the game, there are certain plays you have to make… You have to understand the time and situation and that every point no matter if it’s the 19 minute mark or the 30 seconds left on the clock in the 2nd half, every possession is very important, and I think some time we as a team took some possessions off and it hurt us.

On what he’s taken from last year:
This year, when things get tough, we have to be more focused in the clutch and be prepared for whatever’s thrown at us. That’s about it man. Last season’s over. We’re just ready. We’re ready for another season.

Austin Freeman

On preseason workouts:
People are making shots. That’s something we didn’t do last year. Everybody’s been working on their shots. I feel like we’ll be fine. We’ll be ready.

On communicating with each other:
That’s something we didn’t do last year as much. We didn’t communicate. Communicating has been a big focus on our team this year. Everybody’s been working on it. It has to get better though. Myself too. I have to talk too, talk more actually. Because actually, I’m more of a quiet guy. This year I have to talk more, encourage my teammates, telling my teammates what’s wrong, what’s right. That’s something me and Chris and Greg have to do too.

Coach Thompson

On this team:
I’m excited to get going with this group. I think that they’ve worked hard and smartly over the spring and the summer and the fall. They are anxious to get going, they are – this is probably an overused phrase in sports – they’re hungry.

On last year:
The program, because of [gesturing to Patrick Ewing, Jr. in stands] the people who’ve been here, we have a foundation set such that we can go through a year like last year, and the sky’s not falling in. That being said, this group was affected by last year – we all were. And this group hopefully will learn the lessons, and hopefully the steps that were taken last year will put us in a position of growth for this year’s group but not to have the same ending.

On the Big East:
The league will always be tough. I spoke to a group in New York the other day and I said ‘You know what, to be honest, if I’m lucky enough to be sitting here 10 years from now, I’ll be saying the same thing.’ I think what the difference is at this point between this year and last year we had probably three or four teams where we could sit here and say they’re gonna make the final four, they’re gonna win the national championship, and you’d say ‘Okay. I can see that.’ I don’t think the conference has that right now. We may get to that as a league, as the year progresses we may get to that.

But the big difference is that the teams that traditionally have been the bottom of the league are the veteran teams are the experienced teams and they’re gonna be significantly better. Once again I think the Big East, at least at this point, is a jumbled mess.

On trust:
Trust in each other is key to winning regardless of whatever sport you’re in, regardless of what system you’re in, regardless of what age it is, regardless of what sex it is, trust in each other and the team concept is imperative for success.

On whether there was a lack of trust with last season’s team:
[Smiling] I think this group trusts each other.

On new Assistant Coach Mike Brennan:
I’m glad to have Mike here. He worked with me at Princeton, we won some championships together there. Since then he’s won a couple more at AU. He knows the game; he can teach the game; he’s a huge asset in terms of development individually as well as collectively.

On Hollis Thompson having practiced with the team last season:
I think that’s a very good thing, a very good positive. He’s a freshman, but he’s not a freshman. He’s a freshman but he understands what’s it’s like going through half a year of practices. He knows what we’re trying to accomplish and how we want to accomplish it, so that learning curve is shortened. He understands what’s going on, so in that regard it’s very good. He’s acclimated to college life.

As a kid, he missed his second semester senior year. That wasn’t always easy. Take him and put him into an environment on the team, up campus, around college where all of a sudden everyone has settled into their routines. That was an adjustment for him. But now that he’s gone through that, the fact that he has gone through that, he’s more advanced for obvious reasons than any other freshman because he knows what we’re doing.

On this team’s experience:
I am glad that we have a core group with a lot of experience. And I’m not just talking about Chris, Austin, Greg. Jason played key minutes last year, Henry played key minutes last year, Nikita played key minutes last year, Julian played key minutes last year. So we have a group that is not bright-eyed, bushy-tailed.

We had a lot of people who played significant minutes last year who hadn’t gone through cycles, who hadn’t gone through the demands of the league. Us being young is not an excuse by any means. It’s not an excuse, but it is a reality.

And a better word than young is experienced, because they’re still young, but we have collectively across the board more experience this year, and there’s no substitute for experience. There is no substitute for experience.

On why last year’s team had troubles in the clutch:
That was new for me. My teams have always been terrific in those settings – when it’s time to win. I take pride in that. So that was different. Now at the end of the day, you can go back, and there was no common thread. Experience is a part of that, trusting in each other and what we’re doing is a part of that, being lucky as hell sometimes is a part of that. And so it was a lot of different things.