Mike Woodson addressed the media on Friday morning in advance of Indiana’s exhibition opener on Saturday afternoon against Marian University.
Watch the full media availability with Woodson below:
A full transcript is available below, via ASAP Sports:
Q. Just to start off, what are the key things you want to see from your team in these two exhibition games?
MIKE WOODSON: Well, from a coaching standpoint, you like to see if they’ve picked up some stuff that we’ve put in from this summer. All the work that we’ve put in up until this point, we want to see from a defensive standpoint if they’ve picked things up and can carry over in a ball game as well as the offense. We want to see if they are able to execute.
There are a lot of things that we’re looking for come tomorrow at 3:00 to see if these guys obtained a lot of the stuff that we’ve taught.
Q. Curious how everybody is doing from a health perspective, and also how just as a coach how do you approach exhibition games? Is it your goal just to try to — obviously it doesn’t count for the record, but you’re out there trying to mix and match lineups. How do you approach the rotations and distribute minutes tomorrow?
MIKE WOODSON: Well, right now we’re a little banged up. Trayce is a little banged up. Tamar Bates has been sidelined for the last couple practices.
You know, we’ve kind of been going at each other, and it’s been a long run from the summer in terms of competing against another one. So now it’s time to see where we are against an opponent.
I don’t know; I don’t know how many minutes guys will play. I’ve got to get a rotation in play before we open up. I’ll be using these two games to look at different combinations and just see where we are.
Q. I wanted to ask you about Malik Reneau. What impresses you about in particular his perimeter game? Seems like you guys are comfortable with him bringing the ball up off of rebounds. How advanced is he for a kid his age in his ability to play inside and outside?
MIKE WOODSON: He’s a little ahead of the game, but he’s still young. I’ve dealt with young players so much over the years that you’ve got to get young players to understand how hard they have to play. Malik is at that point right now. He plays hard in spurts, and we’ve got to get him consistently playing hard on both ends of the floor.
He is a talented kid in terms of being able to do a…