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PUERTO RICO TIP-OFF MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 12, 2014Dan ShoemakerTIM SIMMONS: We have Dan Shoemaker. Talk a little bit about Puerto Rico and the tip‑off and obviously starting with the Armed Forces Classic. DAN SHOEMAKER: Well, the first thing I can tell you is that I was there yesterday, and the weather was truly outstanding. Frankly I got sunburned. Be careful while you're down there, Tim. The tournament, actually I had been involved with the old Puerto Rico shootout a number of years ago, and in talking to the teams that we had in those tournaments in those days, I think everybody agreed that Puerto Rico was a great offshore venue. I had a speaking engagement yesterday with the Puerto Rico tourism company and a number of travel folks that they deal with, and we talked about some of the advantages of being in Puerto Rico from a travel standpoint. If you're a coach bringing players down, you like the idea that you don't need a passport, you don't have to go through the hassle of making sure everybody has got a passport, got their papers in order and that kind of thing. You spend American dollars, which is an advantage, and yet you still get a cultural experience. You definitely get the feel of being in a different country. But everything from the federal judicial system to the currency is very American. A lot of advantages in going to Puerto Rico. The weather is terrific. The facilities are terrific. The hotels are great, the food is good. It's just a great place to take this tournament, and we're going into our eighth year this year. I think fans really like the venue at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum. It's a great place to watch a basketball game, and I think a really good tournament. We're looking forward in a couple of years to a 10th anniversary down there, and this is the second oldest, following the Orlando event, this is the second oldest of our exempt events at ESPN, and it's one we really, really enjoy and one coaches and teams have really enjoyed. You asked about the Armed Forces game coming up this Friday. Great game. A little bit different from a Puerto Rico standpoint in that it's on a military base. A lot of the local fans, of course, will be watching it on TV like the rest of us because it is confined to the guys that are on the base. But I know our folks are down there right now building an arena in a plane hangar, very similar to what we did in Germany a couple of years ago. You've got to actually bring in a floor, bring in bleachers, bring in baskets, bring in scoreboards. It's a unique experience, and this game has a tremendous story line in that you've got father and son going against each other in the two Coach Pitinos at Louisville, the one everybody knows, and at Minnesota, the one I think a lot of people are going to get to know in a hurry. TIM SIMMONS: Talk about the bracketing, how you develop it. We do get questions from folks. How do you determine the bracket? We released it the 1st of August, so how has the bracket developed each other for these ESPN events and this year here in Puerto Rico? DAN SHOEMAKER: It's not as simple as putting names in a hat and drawing them out, nor is it as simple as trying to seed teams. In the beginning we tried to take a look at who we thought were the most likely teams to make it through to the finals and try and seed the teams so that you got the best match‑up that you felt like you could get and give teams a little bit of an advantage in terms of how you did project their ranking to be. Everybody talks about their power index and that kind of thing. But we really tried to take a hard look at the teams that we thought would be the best match‑ups and particularly with some thought about the finals, you'd like to see in any tournament the best match‑up that you have in the championship game. A couple of years ago because it was really important for the coaches, really important to some of the teams, we went to a format where we have a bracketed tournament that's three games over four days, and that's what you see on the neutral floor, and we are‑‑ our ESPN tournaments are some of the last of the really true neutral floor type tournaments. But we did allow teams to play a fourth game, so you'll find, for example, West Virginia University and the College of Charleston are playing a fourth game this year. They're playing it at West Virginia. We've had teams start home and homes this way and use this first opportunity as a non‑counter game because it doesn't count against their schedule, so the exempt events are allowed to play four games. So we play three on a neutral floor and then give teams the option of playing the fourth game, and we typically have two, four, sometimes six teams that take advantage of that and do it. We don't slot that game for them. They get together and kind of do it themselves, which I think the coaches really like, and there are a lot of different ways they can set that up. The rules are that all games in the tournament have to be played from the start to the finish within 14 days, so we monitor that and we make sure that that's the case so that we're within the NCAA guidelines. But when we have a situation like that, we try to make sure that those teams will not meet each other in the bracketed tournaments unless they're playing for the championship or on the other end of it, if they're playing in the first game on championship day. That automatically will place a team like the College of Charleston and a team like West Virginia in opposite brackets. So then you try to make your match‑ups and your seedings with the same thing in mind. You'd like to see the best teams get the opportunity to play in the championship game, but we do take into consideration that those non‑bracketed games that we also sponsor. TIM SIMMONS: And you also did that with Dayton and George Mason since they're in the A‑10? DAN SHOEMAKER: That's correct. TIM SIMMONS: Just like someone last year was in a tournament from Orlando just because of the conference‑‑ DAN SHOEMAKER: Yeah, we're still having a few hiccups with conference realignment. I think we've got one tournament maybe next year where we had three teams when we signed the contracts that were all in different conferences that are now all in the same conference. It creates an interesting dynamic, shall I say, but I think we're about to work our way through the realignment issues, assuming that we don't have another rash of teams moving, but the Big East has been an example of a league where we've had to make some adjustments, certainly the A‑10 as they've added to their roster significantly. We've had to try and make those adjustments. The NCAA has been very good about waiving the rule if the teams sign those contracts prior to changing leagues, and we've tried to work around it as best we can. We've offered some teams the opportunity to move from one event to another event, and sometimes that's been the case, and we try to bracket them so that they're not likely to meet each other as best we can. Q. You had spoken to me about the logistics about transferring and getting some teams like North Carolina, some teams like Duke, but that's difficult. Could you explain in detail to the people how difficult it is to get Duke into a tournament like this? DAN SHOEMAKER: Well, we've had North Carolina in the Puerto Rico Tip‑Off, and to get the national champion, the reigning national champion, Connecticut, was a tremendous get. We've had Villanova the year they played in the Final Four, we've had Memphis the year they played in the Final Four. I think we've had a really good mix of high‑caliber outstanding teams in Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico has been a place where we've been able to get really high‑quality teams and teams want to go there and play. But there is a level of teams, and Kentucky is a great example, Duke is a great example, that are very difficult to get into the neutral site tournaments because they have the opportunity to play in a lot of the other tournaments that frankly aren't so tournament‑oriented. They don't really crown a champion at the end like we do in these events. And outside of Maui and the Bahamas tournament and the ESPN tournaments, there really aren't any other neutral site events. And the Dukes and the Kentuckys particularly like to play in events where they get a couple of home games out of it. We just haven't had those kind of events to offer them. We have actually had conversations with Duke about playing in Puerto Rico, and it is something that we're continuing to have conversations on. We'd love to get Kentucky back in Puerto Rico. We had them in the Puerto Rico shootout a number of years ago. But those teams' home games are so important to them. If you look at Kentucky, for an example, playing in a 21,000‑seat arena, there's a huge payday associated with playing a home game, and then if you take Duke on the other hand, they play, as does Kentucky, they play in our champions event, and that gives up a home game opportunity for them, so home games are something that they really covet. On the other hand, they really do like to go out and play great competition early in the season, but typically it's done as a one‑off and they'll do it in a Madison Square Garden or they'll do it in the new Brooklyn arena or in a major arena around the country. It is tough, no doubt about it. We've continued to have conversations with them of them. We've had the University of Kansas now in two of our events over the last three years. So we're making some progress in that. But we absolutely expect to continue to bring high‑quality teams, very competitive teams to Puerto Rico, and I think that's evidenced by the fact that we've had teams that have consistently played in the Final Four and have played for the national championship, and in this case have won the national championship in Connecticut. While we wait for Coach Miller, I'd be remiss not to include the University of Dayton who went deep into the NCAA Tournament last year. This is an emerging team, and Dayton has been a terrific basketball team over the long‑term and a team that travels incredibly well. Q. Are you guys planning to do stuff outside of the area of San Juan? You had spoken to me about other possibilities of doing it outside of San Juan. DAN SHOEMAKER: It's something that we have discussions about all the time. We've looked at facilities in Mayaguez, we've looked at facilities in Humacao and Fajardo.  One of the things you notice about Puerto Rico is you travel across the island, there's some great basketball facilities. There's a beautiful basketball facility in Arecibo, the basketball arena in Humacao is a very, very new 10,000‑seat arena. It's very much an American‑style arena that most colleges in the United States would love to have on their campus. It is something that we continue to look at. But in San Juan you have the proximity of an international airport, you have great hotels, great restaurants, and again, I think it's something that we'll weigh every year, but we like being in San Juan. The teams like being in San Juan. But I will tell you, there is certainly some attraction in going to the Conquistador in Fajardo and taking a look at the arena in Humacao, Ponce has a great facility and great hotels. It's something we continue to look at. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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