Talkin' to Takayo: Magnificent Maleeck, Handling a Streak and Prepping for Charleston
Here's what UNCW coach Takayo Siddle had to say on his radio show Monday
Amid preparations for one of the most anticipated matchups in Trask Coliseum’s history, UNCW coach Takayo Siddle joined radio voice Mike Vacarro for his weekly radio show on Monday afternoon.
Along with the Seahawks’ date with No. 22 Charleston on Wednesday night, Siddle discussed the victories over Elon and N.C. A&T, Maleeck Harden-Hayes’ breakout performance and how his program is handling its school-record 13-game winning streak.
As always, Talkin’ to Takayo airs via Facebook Live from Buffalo Wild Wings at Noon on Mondays, with the full broadcast available here.
A few notes on Wednesday’s matchup…
This marks the fourth time an opponent ranked in the AP Top 25 has visited Trask. (No. 17 Wake Forest, 1977; No. 21 Charlotte, 1992; No. 9 North Carolina, 2019).
All public tickets sold out on Monday morning, making this the 60th all-time sellout in Trask Coliseum.
UNCW is 46-13 overall in those games, including a victory over East Carolina this season. In home CAA sellouts, the Seahawks are 41-8.
Charleston has been the visitor for five previous sellouts.
On the evening of Jan. 9, Charleston stood at No. 51 in the NET rankings while UNCW comes in at No. 86.
Charleston’s 15-game winning streak is the nation’s longest, while UNCW’s (13) is tied for second with Florida Atlantic.
Here are the highlights from the conversation:
What’s the biggest challenge in facing Charleston?
Our biggest challenge — and I just told some of our fans — our mentality. Making sure, mentally, we’re in the right place. Making sure our approach is the right approach, and then, can we be emotionally mature enough to not get out of character and execute our gameplan?
They’re a really good basketball team — they are. They’re ranked No. 22 for a reason. We’re a really good basketball team, and i think we’re at the top half, at the elite half of the conference. It should be a really fun game. We have a lot that we have to prepare to get ready for them, and they are doing the same on their end, for sure.
How to you make sure your team maintains its emotions?
These next two days of preparation. I told them in the locker room about an hour and a half ago, ‘The game will be won in these next two days. It will be won or lost in the next two days.’
It has to be businesslike approach to our preparation. We can’t have any nonsense going on; we have to be locked in and focused on the right things. These next two days will be huge leading into the game.
On the matchup between Charleston’s offense vs. UNCW’s defense…
What they do so well on offense, other people don’t do so well with defending that stuff, like getting back in transition defense. That’s the most uncomfortable and the toughest thing to do defensively, and they do that at a high level. Then, guarding the 3-point line; the way they get their threes off is something that we have to focus in on — they make 10 a game.
Then, blocking out and rebounding every single time, because they’re relentless on the glass. People don’t like doing that — those are tough things to do, as consistently as they go.
So, we’re going to have to really lock in on those things. I don’t know if we can completely eliminate and wipe them out in those areas, but we have to make sure we hold them in check.
A comparison between the current winning streak vs. last season’s…
Well, I think it’s a little different from last year. A lot of those were come-from-behind wins.
Pretty much … most of these, we’ve been out front and were able to close the games out. Very proud of the team right now. We’re playing some really good basketball; we still have a lot of growing and maturing to do — but I love where we’re at right now.
Is it easier to coach your team in a comeback or with a big lead?
I wouldn’t say either is easier, but when you’re coming from behind, you have more of a sense of urgency, and you play in panic-mode a little bit more. Now, with the kids of today’s time, when you have the lead, they like to get complacent and think the game is over — so they both have their challenges — but I definitely like being up and playing with the lead a bit more.
On the value of road wins…
Winning on the road is tough, and like I told our guys, you don’t know how good you really are until you learn how to win on the road, and we’ve been able to do that. Our guys are mentally in a good place. I think our toughness has grown over this run, but we’ve been facing some adversity on these road wins that we’ve had, and our guys have responded the right way.
Has this success changed how opponents view UNCW?
When you’re on a streak, everybody wants to be the team that can break the streak, so we’re getting that kind of force and intent, we’re getting that from every one of our opponents. They’re probably plastering it in their locker rooms and talking about it a lot, being the team that’s knocking the team off with the streak, so we’re getting everybody’s best punch. I think we’ve handled it, for the most part, pretty well.
On the different ways UNCW has won games during this streak…
I think our culture is really shining right now and that’s something that I pay close attention to. We try to improve it every single day. When you look back last year, that’s why we were able to go on a run, because our culture is really, really good — in a really good place.
I think that’s what you’re seeing now; our culture shining from an overall standpoint, from an offensive standpoint, from a defensive standpoint. I think that’s what you’re getting right now, and our guys are buying into what we’re preaching.
On the foundation for defensive success…
In the summer from Day 1, we start installing our defensive principles and start locking-in. That’s one of the first things we do when we come out in the practice court in the summertime, is they understand defense is the most important thing to us. We installed every day in the summer and in the preseason, so we can have a solid foundation.
We worry about what the other team is running, but we rely on our principles to help us be successful on that end of the floor.
Do you spend any time talking about the winning streak?
I think it’s important that they understand why we’ve been successful, so I try to go back and point out what we’re doing well on both ends of the floor, what we need to improve on, more so than talking about, ‘We’re on an 11-game win streak; we’ve got to get number 12.’ I don’t talk about that a lot.
I did as we approached the Elon game and talked to them about how special it could be, but I focused more on what we needed to do to be successful. The same thing goes into the A&T game — we talked about what a special accomplishment it would be to set another school record, but here’s what we need to do to be successful today. We focus more on that than anything, and I think our guys understand me and understand our approach to every single contest.
What improvements are you most focused on making right now?
If you talk to any winning coach, they talk about toughness more than anything. I think we can toughen up both mentally and physically on both ends.
It would take me a while to go through the list of things that I’m thinking about, but from an overall standpoint, the maturity and the humility — continuing to grow in those areas are the things I’m focused on more than anything.
Before we even played a game, going into it, I knew those would be our challenges. We’re not where we need to be in those areas at all, but as long as we’re taking a step forward each day to try to reach our max potential in those areas, I think we’ll be playing winning, championship-level basketball when it’s time to.
On veterans stepping up and leading this team…
It does, and they’re starting to be more vocal with it and they’re starting to be better with their approach to everything that we’re doing, but you only gain experience in those areas going through it day-by-day and me pointing it out to them and showing them what it looks like. I think that’s important.
We’ve taken a bunch of steps forward; I thought in the game the other day, we took a step back. That was addressed about an hour ago. I think we’ll be better moving forward, but it’s just a process.
Did you talk about the recent history at Elon and the loss there last season?
We did talk about them breaking our streak last year a little bit before the game, but we focused more in on our gameplan. We knew that it was going to be tough enough, we knew they were going to zone us for 40 minutes, and we knew we had to have a great attack against the zone, and I thought we did a tremendous job of attacking their zone.
On how they were able to attack Elon’s zone and score 81 points…
We were able to get some stops when needed to so we could get out and run; I thought our pace was really good. We were able to pierce the middle of the zone and get in the short-corners — those are the weak-points of any zone for the most apart. We wanted to make sure we got the ball right at the nail or right at the short-corner, and we did that on a consistent basis, and we were able to get really good shots.
When we did miss, we had 16 offensive rebounds, which was a part of our gameplan. Our guys did a great job refusing blockouts. We were able to get 17 second-chance points, so that helped out a lot. I thought we played a really good game.
On Trazarien White’s career-high 26 points at Elon…
Last year, he was really shaky against zone defenses when we put him in the middle. He’s really grown with his poise at that position. He was able to get going early; when he caught it, he made quick decisions.
He made a couple mid-range jumpers, he was able to drive the post guy who came up to guard him in the middle of the zone, get to the rim, get to the free throw line. He was really comfortable right there; I think that’s the thing that stands out to me the most right there, his comfort in the middle of the zone.
On Amari Kelly’s continued improvement…
He’s really matured just overall, both on and off the court. When you look at off the court, his maturity has helped on the court; he’s more businesslike, he’s approaching things the way that I need an upperclassman to approach it. He’s starting to become a leader, he’s playing with great energy, and we’ve asked him to up his energy level on the defensive end, and it’s leading to some really good things for him.
On the difficulty they had with finishing the A&T game…
After the game, yesterday, I was kind of sitting back thinking. I never make excuses for them, but I think we were a little fatigued — that was our second game in four days, three out of four on the road. We had been on the road for five days, so I think they were a little fatigued.
I thought we fought as hard as we could, we made plays when we needed to, we were able to get out there and set a school-record.
Overall, is rebounding improving as the season goes on?
We need it to. Obviously, last year that wasn’t one of our strong suits, so we wanted to make sure going into the summer and preparing in the preseason, we made better effort on the glass as a whole.
I told them, ‘We don’t need to be first in defensive rebounding percentage, but we need to be at the top half of the league to give ourselves a chance to compete for a championship.’ We’ve been locking-in on it; we emphasize it every day and hope to continue to grow at it.
On Maleeck Harden-Hayes’ exceptional play as of late…
If you watch Maleeck, he’s just like some of the other guys we have on our team. He prepares with the right focus; his mindset is in the right place, he gives himself a chance to play well in every game because he prepares the right way. He had bigtime energy in our shootaround and the practices leading up to the game.
Am I going to sit here and tell you I thought he was going to have a career-high? I’m not going to say that, but I knew he was going to play well.
What’s the feeling in those huddles late in a close game?
You don’t ever want to go into a game — and this is how I am and how our coaching staff is — we never want to go into a game and our guys haven’t experienced the situation in front of them or they’re only experience it for the first time and that’s when it comes up.
So, we try to put them in those situations in practice, and everything you see us run at the end of games out of timeouts, we’ve already — we call it skeleton — we already skeleton it, they’ve seen it, they’ve drilled it a bunch of times to try to make them a little bit more comfortable in those situations. We try to prepare them for those moments. Obviously, the game pressure is a little bit different, but I think we’ve handled them pretty well so far.
On preparing for late-game situations…
Well, just trying to prepare them a little bit more. When you’re in games and you’re up, the other team is going to be in panic mode, they’re going to be pressuring you, they’re going to be trapping you, so just trying to get them more comfortable with those situations when they come up.
On Trazarien White’s acrobatic bucket late vs. A&T
That’s one of our plays … we just try to put one of our most athletic and bigger guys at the front of the rim — especially when we have a short shot clock to work with — that was pretty much all we could do. Donovan (Newby) delivered a great pass, everybody else did their job being a decoy and Trazarien made an unbelievable shot.
On the excitement around the community for this team…
Very exciting time for us.
I’ve always said when I took over the job, this is Wilmington’s team. It’s a team that I want them to be proud of, the way we conduct ourselves on and off the court is something that’s important to me. The most special thing about being the UNCW head coach is the way that the community rallies behind the team. It’s sort of like having a pro team; we’re the biggest show in town.
When we’re winning, it seems like there’s a good buzz around the city, so I’m very happy and excited for the people around the community and on campus to be able to enjoy some good basketball.
Player of the Week: Maleeck Harden-Hayes
I think more than anything, you talk about his numbers, you talk about the way he’s been playing, he’s a guy you don’t see him posting a bunch of stuff on social media. He goes about his day-to-day as businesslike as anybody. He’s an unbelievable kid of faith; his family is tremendous; he’s been brought up the right way. We call it ‘OKGs’ — our kinda guys, and he’s definitely one of those.
Is it easy to talk to your team about improving during a winning streak?
You can say it. I think it’s easy to say it, but, ‘Are they really listening and hearing what you’re saying?’ is something that you think about, and I think they are.
That’s something all winning programs, you have to stick to the process every day. You can’t get blinded by the results. I think we’re doing some really good things, but we have a long way to go, and we have to continue to improve on the day-to-day.
On putting the streak in perspective in terms of how long a season is…
That’s why we focus more on the day-to-day, the process of getting better and the process of doing everything that’s in front of us in that day and doing it well, and not getting caught up in the results. Making sure we punch the clock every day and have good days.
I talk to them about trying to reach an elite status, and in order for us to do that, you have to do elite things every day, all the time. That’s what we’re focusing on more than anything with the guys, so when we do go play on the road in a hostile environment at Monmouth or A&T, that mentally and as a team we’re in the right place, the right mindset to go out there and try to be dominant.
We’re working toward it — we’re not there yet by any means — but I think the message is getting to the guys, and I think they understand.
On the difficulty of adjusting to how games are being called…
Well, the great Jerry Wainwright told me, ‘When I coached here, everybody on our team was physical, so they didn’t call it as much. When you have one guy that’s physical, they call it a lot.’
So, we’ve been trying to get everybody more physical, everybody making tougher plays so that can be a team identity of ours. So, the refs have to know that going into the game, that’s who we are, and maybe they’re a little more lenient in making calls.
On the art of working a ref during a game…
It just depends on who you’re dealing with, but I do try to explain to them that, ‘That’s who we are; we are a little handsy, we are trying to be more physical, we do try to play with a level of toughness — that’s who we are.’
I think for the most part, some of them understand how we’re going to play.
Who embodies that toughness, who sets the tone?
Shykeim. Shykeim Phillips, he does. Then, Noah Ross — they set the tone.
Trazarien will dip in a little bit, Maleeck the same way. Donovan (Newby) has become tougher and more physical, so those guys are doing a good job.
Is it a benefit to have a freshman (Ross) setting the tone?
It is, it is. That’s his role on our team. He’s starting to throw in some threes, but what has him in the lineup and what has him playing so many minutes as a freshman is his competitive and his toughness.