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Pitino talks Onuaku, deflections and depth

Jeff Greer
@jeffgreer_cj
Louisville's Chinanu Onuaku struggles to control a rebound inthe seond half against Pittsburgh.  Feb. 11, 2015.

Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino joined the ACC coaches teleconference on Monday and took about 10 minutes of questions.

Scattered between some old stories about his time at Syracuse, Pitino shed some light on his current team's issues. Louisville (20-5, 8-4 in the ACC) just dropped a surprising 74-65 loss to NC State on Saturday and is gearing up for a Wednesday road trip to Syracuse.

Related:An in-depth look at Louisville's NCAA tournament profile

Here are Pitino's quick thoughts on three subjects:

On a lack of bench scoring: "We don't get scoring out of our bench because we don't play our bench that much. It's the first time since I've been at Louisville that we've done this. Our starters are so much more experienced than the rest of our team."

On his team not creating as many turnovers: "This team is very inactive with their hands. There's five areas of deflections: blocked shot, loose ball recovery, back tip from press, altering the path of the ball, and then the steal. Like I said the other day, we've been averaging over 35. This year we're averaging 27. Our 1s and 2s are averaging 5 a game, when in previous years, they'd averages 8 to 11. We're not as good a pressing teams as we have been in the past. It's not the best pressing team I've had."

Related:Louisville has a turnover creation problem

On freshman center Chinanu Onuaku: "He's a lot like his brother was at Syracuse. He struggles at the foul line, but he's a physical presence. He's getting better as he learns to catch the ball. He's developing nicely. We think he has a nice career ahead of him. His brother was an extremely hard worker, and Chinanu has to learn how to work hard."