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The Big Ten's annual media day was held this year on October 15th and all the Big Ten coaches and selected players were able to give their thoughts on the upcoming season and their respective teams. It's a very exciting event and signals the official start to the college basketball season.
BTPowerhouse will be posting the various transcripts of each coach's statements to the press. Including below is the transcript from Nebraska's Tim Miles.
Tim Miles On Big Ten Media Day
Q. Coach, you have a couple Chicago kids on your roster, Glynn Watson and Ed Morrow, another freshman. But what do you expect out of them this year and what do they mean to your team?
COACH MILES: Well, because we have four returners, I think they're very important to what we're doing. Ed is the kid from Simeon, who has played at a very high level in high school and with the Zane program. So I think that he'll be ready to go and compete in the Big Ten. And Glynn is a guy that led a team to a state championship with Jordan Ash, who's at Northwestern. He worked with Glynn, he's a play-making guard. And I am excited about his future with us.
Q. We talked a lot already about the rule changes in basketball this year. And I wonder, not about the changes, but about the overall flow to the game. It seemed like that is some of the intent of some of the changes. Do you feel, looking back on maybe the last couple years, that the game -- just overall speed up and better flow, maybe, especially toward the end?
COACH MILES: I've been an NAIA coach, a Division II coach, and just about every level you can imagine, and Division I. And the best games are always the most physical games. So for whatever reason, the two most talented teams are highly charged, very athletic, and willing to do battle.
So the rules changes are interesting to me. I think that in the NIT you saw some members where scoring went up, but not necessarily because of the clock, because of the charge line with the fouls. I'm not sure I love the no timeout deal. And, you know, there's some of this timeout stuff I like. Within a certain amount of time of a media break, it counts as a media break. But at the same time, the no live ball thing; it's kind of our livelihood. So I think I'd prefer to have that control. But at the same time, I understand we need to have our guys ready to go. And the hands-off stuff has been -- you know, the freedom of movement is what they've been working on. And you know, I don't know if -- you've got to either tighten it up with the officials or make it a bigger court, and I don't think they're going to make the court any bigger.
Q. Coach, to what extent do you expect Shavon Shields to carry your team this year?
COACH MILES: I don't know where that came from but thanks, brother. Shavon Shields is a very good player. He's underrated and deservedly so. He is -- I think he has a chance to be an NBA player. I think that he is -- can score a whole bunch for us. I think as he improves his outside shot, he's only going to get better and better. Well, our entire team -- I think I'd probably deem it as a horrific year last year from the 3-point line. So I would expect it to get better.
Q. Speaking of Shields, he was able to go to the Pro Football Hall of Fame during the summer and watch his dad get inducted. Did he express what that meant to him, to you, and what did you think when you were watching that?
COACH MILES: Well, I thought it was -- you know, Shavon and I talked about it in the middle of summer about making time for it, and this is a neat moment for the whole family. You know? It's --there's such a small group of people that make the NFL Hall of Fame, and to have your dad in that has got to be an amazing thing. For Shavon to be there and participate with his family and get a chance to speak on his dad's behalf the night before, I think it was one of those incredible moments and a feeling he'll never forget. In fact, in the elevator last night, we talked about autograph seekers and who's going to be giving autographs and this, that, and the other thing. He said, "Coach, this is crazy, they even want my autograph." Not mine, his. I think it's one of those things, I think it's part of the moments you'll never forget.
But there's not a better representative of college athletes, whatever it is, than Will Shields. He's a great dad. He's a great father -- I'm sorry, he's a great husband. He's just -- I mean, so supportive. And you know, it would be easy to pressurea kid, and he never has. He's just a supportive person. And you could see that's who he was, too, in his speech. It was unassuming, it was "I'm on honored to be here," and that's Will Shields.
And that's what Shavon is like too. He's a first-team Academic All-American. The fact that he's not considered one of the 10 best players in our league is a surprise to me. At the same time, he's fine with that. He's just going to go -- like his dad, he's going to go out and do his job, and you're going to be surprised how great he's going to be.
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Read all of BTPowerhouse's preview coverage for the 2015-16 Big Ten season here.