Tech Talk Live Notes: Justyn Mutts And Mike Young Discuss Duke Win

Justyn Mutts joined Tech Talk Live on Monday to chat with Zach Mackey and Mike Burnop. (Ivan Morozov)

On Thursday night, Virginia Tech basketball head coach Mike Young and senior forward Justyn Mutts joined Zach Mackey and Mike Burnop on Tech Talk Live at McClain’s at First & Main. They discussed the win over Duke ahead of Saturday night’s rematch with Syracuse.

Justyn Mutts

Where can people buy merchandise related to you?

Tech Sideline was selling those posters for a little while. I think they’re offline now. But they’re still around. If anybody’s interested, you could just contact me. The shirts, those are out. I think I have a drop going on today or tomorrow.

I have not done the best job promoting it, but I will definitely promote that. As soon as tonight actually, I’ll do a better job of getting that out there. That should be open for about a week or two, then they’ll ship them out.

The reason you can do all this stuff is because you came back for another year, right? Walk us through that process:

That was a very tough process, going through the whole summer, having an opportunity to meet with multiple different [NBA] teams. You have an opportunity to have those meetings and just get that conversation. It was super beneficial to me, extreme blessing, getting to travel throughout the country just to just to play basketball, just to play a game. That was awesome, just to be able to do things I’ve done in college, just off playing basketball. I mean, you really can’t ask for much more.

A lot of teams really liked me, they really had a good feel for my game and stuff like that. They told me what I need to work on coming back, so I’m make my best effort to work on those things as well, just continue to take steps in the right direction.

What was some of the feedback you heard that made you want to come back and improve upon?

A lot of teams really like my versatility, my ability to guard multiple positions, ability to pass the ball, score the ball. Teams wanted to see me shoot the ball more than I shot it last year, and at a better clip. I’m shooting like 40% this year from three, but my problem has been that I pass up a lot of open ones, I always try to find the best shot every possession. Sometimes that means that my open shot is that best shot, so I just need to be more of a willing shooter. That’s coming along. I trusted my shot, I just trust in Hunter Cattoor’s shot a little bit more, so I always just try to look for what’s going to be there, when it’s going to be there. Just try to flow and play the game the best I know how to.

There are a few games where you’ve been more of a facilitator in the first half. Does Mike Young get on you at halftime and tell you to be more aggressive?

Yeah, he definitely tells me to be more aggressive. A lot of those games, there have been games where I took zero shot attempts the whole game, one shot attempt. But I mean, I’ve got no problem doing those things as long as we’re winning the game. At the beginning of the year, that was happening.

I just try to continue to play the best I know how to play, along with some really good players. We got Sean Pedulla, Grant Basile, Darius Maddox, Hunter Cattoor, MJ Collins coming along really strong now. Lynn Kidd is playing great basketball. So with really good players like that, that pushes me to want to be even more unselfish and not really look for my shot. What can I do to help these guys be successful as well?

We’ve had Grant Basile and MJ Collins on the show over the last couple of weeks. They said one of the biggest adjustments was knowing that when Mutts is on the court, they could get the ball at any time:

A lot of guys in the country, a lot of big men just become black holes. The ball goes inside and they know for sure it’s not coming back out. There were a couple of times when Grant first got here, we were playing pickup, just playing practice playing together, and I threw it to him and he wasn’t looking, it hit him in his face. It just hit him in his head, and that just comes with conversations that we have to have off the court about like, “I know, you’re a great shooter, I know you’re a sniper.

“I know where you come from, I know your resume. And I know your strengths. I want to help utilize them to the best of our team’s ability, you know what I mean? In certain areas, I know that I draw a lot of attention, and I want to use that to your advantage.” Those were just conversations that we all needed to have.

I think me and Hunter Cattoor great on-court chemistry. Now, this being our third year together, I think I know his game fully, I think he knows my game fully as well. So he’s one of the main people always telling me that I need to be more aggressive trying to score, I need to be more aggressive looking for my three-point shot and stuff like that. I love player with Hunter. Whatever happens next, I hope we end up on the same team at some point in time, that’s my guy.

You talked about how you guys are an older team. Do you think that helped you get through the tough losing streak?

I think also just the fact that we’ve been there before. That’s just the game, a lot of these games we weren’t losing by a crazy number of points. A lot of these games are coming down to the end of the game. As a leader of the team, I take a great amount of that on my shoulders, I feel as though a lot of that with my fault and I have to just try to push through and now bounce back. What can I do as a leader to help us rally back together and really get back on track?

Coach Young is doing a great job just keeping us together, he did a great job throughout that whole stretch of keeping our spirits up. Honestly, going through that whole experience, that whole seven games, I wouldn’t rather have done it with any other group of guys. I love my team. I love these guys as people outside of basketball, these are all just amazing people to be around. We’re basketball players, but the end of the day, we’re really just people.

Coming off a 78-75 victory against Duke in front of a sold-out crowd, how fun was that for you?

Super fun. It was awesome to see Virginia Tech come out, show love and so much support, sold out and all that, it was amazing. The atmosphere was indescribable. I remember looking over at Hunter at one point in the game, he’s like, “Hey, it’s a tie game, at home, against the Duke. I wouldn’t ask for anything else.” This are the things you kind of live for, these are things you grow up thinking about, there’s all those experiences and stuff like that, and this is our real life. It’s amazing, it’s just truly a blessing, everything is a blessing. Even the losses are a blessing because there’s just so many lessons in them.

Justyn Mutts played well for the Hokies in their huge win over Duke. (Ivan Morozov)

Take us back to the Clemson game, tell me about the flop:

I’m not going to lie. I did flop. After watching the film back, I can say that it was a flop, but it’s so crazy that we got three technical fouls in the first half of that game. It’s just interesting. I don’t think we’ve had many technical, we have probably had three throughout the whole year. But we have three in the first half of that game. We need to do a better job controlling ourselves.

What are some of the similarities from last year to this year?

Absolutely. We were just talking about last year, I remember our losing streak, the last game of that streak was the loss to Miami on a buzzer beater, I just think it’s really interesting how we kind of lost to Clemson on a similar buzzer beater type shot. To me, I don’t know if Coach and I have a different vibe, but to me that’s kind of good juju. It’s kind of a good feeling to know that we made it through the storm, I feel like we made it through the storm.

You only become stronger through going through tough times as a team together. For me, it’s really exciting. Last time we went through a storm like that, we got big rings, huge rings. At the end of the day, all you have to do is get hot at the right time. This is basketball, other sports run it a different way. With basketball, getting hot at the right time is the difference between a successful look on the season and not such a good look on the season, so I just play one game at a time. That’s all I can do.

How important is it for you to have guys like Lynn Kidd and Mylyjael Poteat come in and give you great minutes?

It’s amazing. Kidd and Poteat are probably two of the hardest workers on our team, those guys are in the gym probably more than anybody else, so to step on the floor with them when it comes game time and know how much work they put in, to know that I could trust them on the floor is such a huge blessing. I think those guys work so hard.

They’re really good finishers inside, they finish a lot of the time. So again, I’m happy, I love playing with them. I really love playing with them, outside of that. Like I’ve mentioned earlier, I just love being around in the locker room and all of that, just hanging out with them, they’re funny. They’re just good people. I think that’s what makes it even better.

Kidd and Basile were so good that Young kept Mutts on the bench for over seven minutes in the second half vs. Duke. (Ivan Morozov)

It seems like the mental side just comes easy to you. You’re almost like another coach on the court:

I think a lot of that comes with the trust that the coaches are putting in me, with me being in college for so many years, I’ve seen a lot of different things that teams are looking to do, teams have to offer. Our coaches really trust me a lot when it comes to different things. But at the same time, I trust in their scheme and our whole team really buys into it, to what we have going on, to the plan of the game. When you have a whole team that’s willing to buy into a game, it’s hard to break that apart on offense, on defense and transition. It’s really hard to break up a team that’s connected and knows what they want to get done.

How many degrees do you have now? You’ve got more than us and Mike Young combined:

I currently have three degrees. I have by bachelor’s degree in psychology and then I have two master’s degrees. My most recent thing is educational psychology. I’m really interested in the study of the mind, understanding people, understanding myself, more importantly. But you don’t need a degree to be successful in life. That’s the most important lesson I’ve learned from my time.

I spent most of my time now just trying to read and just trying to learn as much as possible about the world, about life, about the financial aspect of it, and just trying to make myself into the best person I can be. And a lot of great knowledge comes outside of the classroom, so yeah, degrees are awesome, I feel like they add to my resume, they do a certain thing for me I guess, but at the end of the day, the person I am isn’t determined by that stuff, and nobody else either. It’s definitely a blessing to be able to do all of that debt free, I think that’s the biggest blessing of it all.

How loud was Cassell against Duke, especially when there’s free bacon on the line during free throws?

It was crazy. I don’t remember who was standing next to me from Duke, but he was all he was telling me was it’s crazy. He was just saying, “This is wild.” I felt like it was shaking. Even on the court I felt like it was shaking, but for the dude to step up and knock that free throw down, good for him. That was definitely amazing. A lot of college players don’t get to experience anything like that. I think we as a community need to do a better job of allowing the women’s team to experience that as well. They work hard, they’ve won a lot of games, they have really great players. Shoutout Elizabeth Kitley for setting a new program record in field goals made, so I think they deserve that and even more moving on.

Victory was sweet for Mike Young and the Hokies on Monday. (Ivan Morozov)

Mike Young

That was a fun game Monday night inside Cassell?

It was good. We played more Virginia Tech basketball over a long stretch than we did against Clemson. I thought we played good basketball, needed to make a couple more plays, so good against a quality opponent. I think Duke is really good again. Justyn may dispute this, I thought the [Kyle] Filipowski kid was the best player we had faced this year, and not because he scored 29 points. The other things that he did, he’s a seven-foot man that plays like a guard. Fortunately, we have to go back down there. We’re not going to play him many more times. He’s not going to be in college much longer. Wow, what a basketball player, Holy Toledo.

What was going on in the locker room after the game?

MJ Collins had a flurry down the stretch. I thought he had a terrific ball game. There’s so much going on inside that game. We started Lynn, Justyn, Grant, to counteract their bigger lineup with Mark Mitchell, Filipowski, Ryan Young. I knew we would go to MJ Collins, who was going to have to match with Mark Mitchell, who is 6-9, long and tough. MJ did a remarkable job on him. Not so much the defense he had on Mitchell, but just keeping him off the offensive glass was a big, big deal.

[MJ] had the big three in front of our bench, and then he puts us up two with that nice drive to the lane when he got up in the air and got that thing home. I wish he could have gotten those two foul shots home, which would have put us up four with three to play. But of course, being young people, they want to see the old man sweat a little bit more, and he planks the second of two, now we’re up three, and we’ve got some more things we’ve got to manage.

But it all worked out great for the Hokies, and I think the locker room was much more relief than anything, they were happy for their teammate, they were happy for a young man that had really helped us win. Now let’s do something with it. A good Syracuse team comes into town on Saturday. We had a good practice today. We’re excited about the opportunity to compete again. We’ll be ready to get it on.

MJ and his progression, to take that shot against Duke with 10 seconds left, of his confidence:

You see them evolve as they go along. Without fail, with the exception of very, very few, the freshman year, it goes a little like this. And his did. He had a time there where he couldn’t get the ball in the basket. We’ve talked about it, freshmen think that they have to score to keep them on the floor and impress the coaches. He embraced, and has for a long time, “I can stay on the floor if I guard, if I rebound, if I take good shots, if I don’t turn it over.”

He embraces that, adheres to that. As his freshman year goes along, he’s played 20, 21, 22 games, he’s seen a lot of plays as a defensive player. He has a better idea of what this thing’s all about, and he’s handling himself with great poise and confidence. I’m thrilled for him. He’s doing a great job.

MJ Collins sealed the game for the Hokies. (Ivan Morozov)

Collins missed a free throw that would’ve put you up four. Fortunately, Hunter got the steal, but what was your strategy? Does it all depend upon the game, where the ball is?

That’s a big topic of conversation amongst coaches. Some have a hard, fast rule, that they’re going to foul. If I’ve been in that situation 30 times, I’ve probably fouled 10 and not fouled 20. Here was the bottom line for me against Duke and why it wasn’t good to foul. It’s interesting. The officials we get are, by and large, very, very good. Kip Kissinger, a taller, bald gentleman asked me, he said “Mike, are you going to foul?” I said, “Kip, I’m not.”

We came out, Duke called timeout, we came out and we had Lynn over the ball. How they’re set, it appeared to me that they were going to have some action around mid-court and Ryan Young was going to try to throw the ball to the top of the key to Filipowski. I have 29 times out of 30 had somebody over the ball so it’s not a dart, but I put Maddox in for Lynn to put like a monster, a football monster at the top of the key along with Justyn just to disrupt that pass to Filipowski, I didn’t want him to catch it and play one-on-one. The reason I wasn’t going to foul is they are the number three rebounding team nationally behind Tennessee and Kentucky, Houston who is ferocious on the glass, is number four. Duke is number three.

I’ve seen it time and time again, the little things we evaluate in our film study leading up to the game. The only way we lose is foul, they make the first, they get a favorable carom and that thing comes jutting out of there and [Tyrese] Proctor or one of those guys gets a three down. So I roll the dice and Cattoor broke on something, Ryan Young was looking he was looking at Filipowski coming to the to the top.

He didn’t like it and threw the ball to one of those guards coming toward half court and Hunter got his hand on it. Did you see how he stabbed it with his right hand to leave his left arm out? He stabbed it with his right hand and then retrieved it with his right hand and continued to bounce it. That arm is still coming around. It’s doing better and better. So that’s how it all unfolded.

It’s a tough decision to know whether to foul or not in late game situations:

I get the biggest charge out of those that, many of which, probably all of which, have never coached the day in their lives. “You always foul up three.” No, you don’t. There’s really not a lot of hard and fast rules in this thing. I mean, it’s fluid situation. There are so many things that go into it. We’ve got a pretty serene, as serene as it can be in front of 10,000 people, whatever it is, the Blue Devils down there, we’ve got that situation. I don’t want a lot of noise. Kids need structure, they need concise information. We give it to them, and they did a really good job. It is game-by-game, situation-by-situation. Again, if I had 30 of those fouls, 10 times I haven’t fouled, the other 20 I had.

I had a game at Xavier late in my time at Wofford, I had a great team. Kevin Giltner by mistake fouled a Xavier player, we were up three, that kid made the first and it rolled around and around and around and fell in the basket. Then he had the most incredible missed shot off the back of the iron. So help me goodness, that ball went above the square. The Xavier kid tipped it up himself, threw it up while falling down, and went in overtime. I lost in four overtimes. So, it’s the game. You live and learn. I thought that situation against Duke was rather interesting, and one that we spent a lot of time talking about as a staff and talking to our team about our thinking and what we were trying to accomplish.

MJ Collins might’ve gotten a tad bit carried away celebrating, but it didn’t cost Tech. (Ivan Morozov)

Speaking of situations, talk about MJ celebrating a bit at the end of the game and the incident with Filipowski:

It could’ve cost us. I mean, are we trying to police emotion, are we trying to take emotion out of it? That kid had absolutely no idea that Kyle was behind him. He just made maybe the biggest shot in his career. That kid had dreamed of being in that situation. Lo and behold, he gets in the middle of the lane, he rises up and he makes a shot to put the Hokies up two and he’s following the path of that ball and sees it goes go in. Without turning, he extends his hands, and he hit Kyle in the throat.

They got it right. That kid had no intent. He was making an emotional reaction after a great play, and we call it a break. I’m not sure we catch the same break if that’s in Cameron Indoor Stadium. I do think that the part of that decision, where those three officials were thinking to themselves, if we call this an F1 and Duke has two foul shots and the ball out of bounds, how in the world are we going to get to our cars and with all these Hokie fans, that may not go over very well. I think that had something to do with. I’m just kidding, obviously.

What have you seen out of Syracuse?

They’re playing pretty good basketball. The North Carolina game I watched, I went down to see a kid in North Carolina on Tuesday with Coach [Christian] Webster and was able to watch it on my phone, which is pretty unique. I’ve been able to watch anything on the phone. Joe Girard is playing very good basketball, Jesse Edwards is playing very good basketball. [Judah] Mintz, the point guard, I thought was making a lot of mistakes, freshman mistakes and kicking it around a little bit, shot selection wasn’t great.

Like MJ Collins, he is now 22, 23 games into his freshman year. He’s not playing like a freshman anymore, he’s playing pretty good ball. He’s got good size, he’s got that. Jim Boeheim Syracuse Orange size for a point guard, he’s 6-3, 6-4, wiry, gets his hands on a lot of balls. They’re playing well, they gave North Carolina all they could handle the other night. We’re going to have play a good ballgame, but we’ll have them ready.

The guys couldn’t seem to make outside shots last time around, but Justyn Mutts was fantastic:

There not a better person in college basketball to having in the nail, the nail is the foul line in the middle floor. There’s not a better person. I went back again and watched our game with Syracuse a year ago at our place. That was a pretty dynamic duo with Justyn in the high post and [Keve] Aluma in the low post.

We had a lot of that game one. We have to shoot the ball better. There were two first-half made threes, and we didn’t make our third until a prayer at the buzzer that that went in from Basile. We weren’t quite right in that one up there. But we’re going to play a lot better on Saturday. We’re going to do everything we can to find a way to win.

Lynn Kidd and Grant Basile had great games at Syracuse last time. They’ll need that production again on Saturday. (Ivan Morozov)

Basile goes for 26 against Syracuse, Lynn Kidd gets 10. Do you expect big games out of them again?

You continue to learn and continue to explore and see the lights come on. The lights didn’t come on for Basile against Duke, the lights have been on and he has put together a good year for us. But as I told him on Monday in the training room, where he was with Sean just doing some maintenance stuff, I said, “You know, fella, for a young man on that stage, to have that kind of game, 24, 26 points.

“And to guard very, very well, to guard Ryan Young some, to guard Mark Mitchell, that’s got to put another level of wind in your sails to carry you through here.” That’s a big-time performance against a big-time team and I am proud of him. He is a great fellow to coach and that was one heck of a performance for Basile.

Speaking of guarding, will Hunter Cattoor get most of the minutes on Joe Girard?

You come over, watch film for five minutes, and you’ll determine who the best player is for the next opponent. The backcourt player, that’s who Cattoor is going to guard, now that gives us the opportunity to play Sean on Mintz, and MJ Collins and others on [Chris] Bell who had a good game against North Carolina, hit 15 and shot the ball well. Justin Taylor hurt us at Syracuse in our first meeting, so that’s a big matchup we’ll have to do well with that matchup.

What do you see about the zone that you’re going to be able to take advantage of?

Well, again, you have to puncture it. If you’re contented, just pass the ball along the perimeter. You’re going to have some of that out of necessity. We call it hot potato, just moving it and moving it from side to side to side, and make that zone shift and twist and turn a little bit. Then if we can go through the nail to Justyn, and we’ve got some activity away from the ball, we’ve got a post player down on the baseline, that’s going to change blocks to confuse some things for Syracuse now.

The guy who has been doing it up there since 1964, or something like that, he has seen everything. I think the world of him. He is a delightful man and a great coach. To see that thing, expand and see it contract, it’s as though they adjusted after every media timeout. You have to adjust with it, we’ll have a good plan for it. I’ve always thought that we were good enough in spurts at Syracuse to win the game. We’ve got to defend at a much better level, and we will on Saturday in the Cassell.

You did a great job of rebounding against Duke, 12 offensive rebounds?

Sometimes that rebounding statistic is skewed. We could throw the thing in the bathtub up there. There were a lot of caroms, but we did do a good job. I thought it was a real step in a great direction here as we head into the midway point of ACC play to rebound the ball as we did against Duke, who again, as I said earlier, number three in the country in rebounding the basketball. That’s real stuff. They’re very good at that part of the game.

1 Responses You are logged in as Test

  1. Justyn Mutts & Coach Young – two of my all-time favorite people in VT sports. Hope we kick Syracuse’s tuchus on Saturday! GO HOKIES!!

Comments are closed.