Freshman Ziaire Williams announced his presence with authority and Stanford dominated Alabama 82-64 in the season opener at the Maui Invitational in Asheville, North Carolina. Williams scored 13 of his 19 points in the first half and his silky smooth jumper was on target from the jump. He dropped in long rainbow threes that had the Stanford bench feeling like they were dancing on the beach.
The King took notice. (Williams was a teammate of Lebron's son last year.)
Bryce Wills took over in the second half when a lull out of the break gave Alabama a chance to close to within seven after trailing by 12 at halftime. Wills scored seven straight points and Alabama didn't get closer than 15 after that. Wills finished with 15 and Daejon Davis and Oscar da Silva each had 13.
The defense frustrated a very talented and experienced opponent and covered for the turnover problems that showed up even before the game was out of reach. Although, eight of Stanford's 22 turnovers came in the final six minutes when the game was far out of reach and then when the third team came in it got ugly. Alabama shot 35.8 FG and was decisively outrebounded by the Cardinal: 47-31.
Head Coach Jerod Haase
JEROD HAASE: Obviously a great way to start our season. It was our closed scrimmage, it was our exhibition game and our game that was cancelled, there was certainly some signs of rust from being off a long time, but I think there were a lot more signs of, reasons for optimism and excitement around the program. I think Alabama is a heck of a team, well coached, lots of talent, difficult to guard. For us the transition defense piece was going to be really important. I thought we were good, maybe not great, but Alabama, it's hard to prepare for that just in practice and so I thought we did a good job considering. I thought we did a nice job on the boards. And then offensively, turnovers were a problem. It's been a problem for awhile, but I think our guys are continuing to learn to understand that part of it. But for us as a program it's a fantastic win and a great way to start our season.
Q. Ziaire was obviously a very highly-recruited player out of high school, but sometimes it's hard to expect how a freshman will perform in their opening game. What qualities of Ziaire have you noticed in practice that have contributed to his success thus far? And what do you expect from him going forward?
I certainly have high expectations. The transition really at any level from middle school to high school or from obviously high school to college, college to the NBA, there's always challenges and the physicality of it and the whole bit. But Ziaire's game-ready on day one.
Certainly he knows that he can continue to improve, but he also comes in as a fantastic player. Expectation-wise, we're going to continue to coach him hard, continue to try to put him in positions where he can be successful, and we need to continue to try and get the ball in his hands. But I do think it's nice because I think there's a lot of pieces around him that are awfully good as well. But I've talked a lot about his ability. I think his ability is off the charts, but I also know that his character and the kind of person he is, I think really is the foundation for how he's built his game.
Q. I know you talked all about Ziaire, but the second half that Bryce turned in, I thought was remarkable. Your thoughts on him coming back after a slow first half and really carrying you guys for a stretch there in the second half.
Absolutely. It's funny, one message I gave the team a lot was, Let's play really, really hard. Let's try and do the right thing and execute our a simple game plan but understand we're going to make mistakes.
There's no way around it. We had over 200 days where we never touched a hardwood floor as a team and our pre-season was great we got a lot of work done, but you never know how it's going to be the first time you get in front of the bright lights and putting the team out there together, so I was not surprised mistakes happened.
Bryce it was really funny he kept, in the first half almost apologizing to me. I said, Relax, it's going to happen, just keep playing hard. But he really took ownership of his play, and in the second half, I thought turned in a really good performance.
Q. Your thoughts about connecting with Roy again. I know it's happened before, but here you go again and what's the emotions like for this?
I haven't put a lot of thought into that yet because we have done it before, and it will be a similar type deal that when we tip it up, it's just play as hard as we can, and I'll lose myself in the game, and really focus on our team. But having said that, the quote "lose yourself in the game" comes from Coach Williams, so -- so much of what I've done and the opportunities I've had are because of him. So many of the things I do now as a head coach are because of him. It's not easy, maybe not possible to express my gratitude towards him, but also just what I think
of him as a person and our relationship. So I was certainly cheering for them because I never will ever cheer against Coach Williams, but I also know that it's not my ideal situation to have to play against them either. But once we tip it up, we understand it's a great opportunity for us.
We're playing against a great team, a great coach, great players, and that's the way we'll treat it.
Q. I'm just curious, I know turnovers aside, how close was this to the vision that you have for this team and how important was it for it to look as close to that vision as it did in the first time out?
I don't know. The vision's an ongoing thing. This is not a destination we're going for. This is an understanding we're just going to keep growing. My vision's a lot bigger and greater than just tonight, but I love the step forward. I thought last year was a step forward for our program, but I think the plan is to continue to grow the program. This was a fantastic win. It's a major step in the right direction, and I think it helps us build confidence, but I think the vision for the program has many more pieces to it, but this was a great start and I think it does show that we're building the program in the right way.
Q. Could you just dig into a little bit the work on the boards tonight? I think they only had five offensive rebounds the whole game, and I know that was a priority coming in.
It certainly was. And to be honest with you, in practice we tend to get back a lot more than go to the offensive boards, so I was really concerned about that because we haven't just, we haven't worked on it every day in practice because the other team we're playing against, ourselves, we're not always going to the boards. So we emphasized it. We did work on it, approaching this game, but I was very, very pleased with the way we swarmed the boards and had, some guards got some good numbers on the boards, too, and we need that. We need a group, gang rebounding kind of mentality.
The King took notice. (Williams was a teammate of Lebron's son last year.)
Bryce Wills took over in the second half when a lull out of the break gave Alabama a chance to close to within seven after trailing by 12 at halftime. Wills scored seven straight points and Alabama didn't get closer than 15 after that. Wills finished with 15 and Daejon Davis and Oscar da Silva each had 13.
The defense frustrated a very talented and experienced opponent and covered for the turnover problems that showed up even before the game was out of reach. Although, eight of Stanford's 22 turnovers came in the final six minutes when the game was far out of reach and then when the third team came in it got ugly. Alabama shot 35.8 FG and was decisively outrebounded by the Cardinal: 47-31.
Head Coach Jerod Haase
JEROD HAASE: Obviously a great way to start our season. It was our closed scrimmage, it was our exhibition game and our game that was cancelled, there was certainly some signs of rust from being off a long time, but I think there were a lot more signs of, reasons for optimism and excitement around the program. I think Alabama is a heck of a team, well coached, lots of talent, difficult to guard. For us the transition defense piece was going to be really important. I thought we were good, maybe not great, but Alabama, it's hard to prepare for that just in practice and so I thought we did a good job considering. I thought we did a nice job on the boards. And then offensively, turnovers were a problem. It's been a problem for awhile, but I think our guys are continuing to learn to understand that part of it. But for us as a program it's a fantastic win and a great way to start our season.
Q. Ziaire was obviously a very highly-recruited player out of high school, but sometimes it's hard to expect how a freshman will perform in their opening game. What qualities of Ziaire have you noticed in practice that have contributed to his success thus far? And what do you expect from him going forward?
I certainly have high expectations. The transition really at any level from middle school to high school or from obviously high school to college, college to the NBA, there's always challenges and the physicality of it and the whole bit. But Ziaire's game-ready on day one.
Certainly he knows that he can continue to improve, but he also comes in as a fantastic player. Expectation-wise, we're going to continue to coach him hard, continue to try to put him in positions where he can be successful, and we need to continue to try and get the ball in his hands. But I do think it's nice because I think there's a lot of pieces around him that are awfully good as well. But I've talked a lot about his ability. I think his ability is off the charts, but I also know that his character and the kind of person he is, I think really is the foundation for how he's built his game.
Q. I know you talked all about Ziaire, but the second half that Bryce turned in, I thought was remarkable. Your thoughts on him coming back after a slow first half and really carrying you guys for a stretch there in the second half.
Absolutely. It's funny, one message I gave the team a lot was, Let's play really, really hard. Let's try and do the right thing and execute our a simple game plan but understand we're going to make mistakes.
There's no way around it. We had over 200 days where we never touched a hardwood floor as a team and our pre-season was great we got a lot of work done, but you never know how it's going to be the first time you get in front of the bright lights and putting the team out there together, so I was not surprised mistakes happened.
Bryce it was really funny he kept, in the first half almost apologizing to me. I said, Relax, it's going to happen, just keep playing hard. But he really took ownership of his play, and in the second half, I thought turned in a really good performance.
Q. Your thoughts about connecting with Roy again. I know it's happened before, but here you go again and what's the emotions like for this?
I haven't put a lot of thought into that yet because we have done it before, and it will be a similar type deal that when we tip it up, it's just play as hard as we can, and I'll lose myself in the game, and really focus on our team. But having said that, the quote "lose yourself in the game" comes from Coach Williams, so -- so much of what I've done and the opportunities I've had are because of him. So many of the things I do now as a head coach are because of him. It's not easy, maybe not possible to express my gratitude towards him, but also just what I think
of him as a person and our relationship. So I was certainly cheering for them because I never will ever cheer against Coach Williams, but I also know that it's not my ideal situation to have to play against them either. But once we tip it up, we understand it's a great opportunity for us.
We're playing against a great team, a great coach, great players, and that's the way we'll treat it.
Q. I'm just curious, I know turnovers aside, how close was this to the vision that you have for this team and how important was it for it to look as close to that vision as it did in the first time out?
I don't know. The vision's an ongoing thing. This is not a destination we're going for. This is an understanding we're just going to keep growing. My vision's a lot bigger and greater than just tonight, but I love the step forward. I thought last year was a step forward for our program, but I think the plan is to continue to grow the program. This was a fantastic win. It's a major step in the right direction, and I think it helps us build confidence, but I think the vision for the program has many more pieces to it, but this was a great start and I think it does show that we're building the program in the right way.
Q. Could you just dig into a little bit the work on the boards tonight? I think they only had five offensive rebounds the whole game, and I know that was a priority coming in.
It certainly was. And to be honest with you, in practice we tend to get back a lot more than go to the offensive boards, so I was really concerned about that because we haven't just, we haven't worked on it every day in practice because the other team we're playing against, ourselves, we're not always going to the boards. So we emphasized it. We did work on it, approaching this game, but I was very, very pleased with the way we swarmed the boards and had, some guards got some good numbers on the boards, too, and we need that. We need a group, gang rebounding kind of mentality.
