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For a sports reporter in a college town, no access = no job. by Kayo

Because of that simple rule, the media people avoid controversial questions. They fear being frozen out of interviews.

Having sat in coaches' media sessions for a lot of years, I'm amazed by the poor quality of questions. Most are designed to fill a space in an article that's already written, which I get and which is why I stopped writing game stories a long time ago. However, questions can be phrased to get information without being confrontational.

Like most professionals, coaches love to talk shop. This is the opening that reporters don't exploit. Instead of asking why there was a change, ask about the coach's philosophy of shifting tactics. The former will get standard coach BS at best and defensiveness at worst. The latter is likely to get the coach to tell you how he thinks (hopefully not "if") which can be applied to the situation in question.

An example of how I've done this with Mike Brey when he isn't playing a young guy who looks pretty good when he gets a rare chance. Instead of asking why Joe Schmotz wasn't playing, I asked how he gets freshmen ready to contribute and how he knows when they're ready for more meaningful playing time. That got me a 5-minute response about executing offensive and defensive assignments often enough in practice instead of the standard evasion. The response told me the player was a weak link too often, not based on talent but because he was out of position a lot.

I'd be asking Kelly about contingency game planning for big leads and other situations and see if he'll talk about a thought process that explains what happened Sunday night.