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NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR MEDIA CONFERENCEMarch 28, 2011Brad StevensDAVE WORLOCK: We have Brad Stevens on the phone. We appreciate your time today. Congratulations on making it to the Final Four for the second consecutive year. COACH STEVENS: Thank you, David. Appreciate it. DAVE WORLOCK: We're ready for our first question. Q. One of the things I've noticed that automatically happens with you or anybody at the mid-major level, when you have any level of success, you have a shot clock on how long you're going to stay there. It seems inevitable everybody in your position wants to and will leave. As a coach in that position, do you get tired of that automatic perception and do you think we'll ever get to a point where we'll automatically think that's a great job, a destination job, and stay there forever? COACH STEVENS: There's a lot of factors that go into everything. You have to choose to figure out what's best for your family, are you happy where you are, do you feel empowered when you go to work, do you like the people you work with, do you like where you are, the city you live in, everything else. There's so many factors to go into it. It's easy to get caught up talking about the coaching carrousel when you're not directly affected by it. I've lived that as an assistant. I think one of the things I guess I'm really happy is that I have to answer these questions every year. This is the fourth straight year now that we've had a great run and have had to answer questions like that. Do I get sick of it? I don't think I get sick of it, but I understand you have to ask and I understand it's something a lot of people want to talk about. But it's certainly something that is so personal that you're usually probably going to get very PC answer. I think that's the right thing to do. I've said this many times. Indianapolis has been home for me for most of my life. Butler is an unbelievable place to work. I feel incredibly empowered. Every year we're striving in an upward direction with an upward vision led by our administration. I'm happy to be a part of it. Q. It does seem to me for a long time, 25, 30 years, the power brokers of college basketball had an unspoken monopoly of even the Final Four. Now mid-majors are getting really close. Do you think it's good for college basketball that perhaps maybe there's an inevitability to this that somebody is going to break through and get that thing that had been reserved for the bluebloods? COACH STEVENS: You know what, I don't even look at it that way. It's hard for me to say. I think the teams that play the best basketball in the tournament are the teams that have a chance to win the tournament. It doesn't matter where you're from or how big your football program is or how much money is in your athletic department. It's about a group of kids coming together that five guys play on a court a once hopefully believing together that give you a great shot to compete. It's the wonderful thing about college basketball. Every year we get into the argument about football, what if Boise had a shot, what if TCU had a shot, whatever the case may be. There's no politics in this. There's a 40-minute basketball game. That's the beautiful thing about it. Q. I want to know not about the program, the players. I want to know for you specifically what reaching another Final Four means to you. I don't know if there's any validation or anything like that. What does this mean to you? COACH STEVENS: I'm thrilled for our players, thrilled for our school. The two years prior to last year's Final Four run our website had 3.5 million hits a year, last year we had 111 million hits on our website. Who knows what the impact will be. The positive attention it brings to your school and city is immeasurable. We're certainly so, so thrilled that we can do that, that we can be a small window where people can see Butler University. As far as me and validation, I'll be honest, I'm not looking to be validated in that way. I'm a guy who believes in faith and I've got great friends, a wonderful family. My validation needs to come from those things, not from what is accomplished in a job. Q. Wondering about last year's experience of getting here and how much that helps this year, been there, done that, not a new thing that you're a Final Four team. COACH STEVENS: I don't think it plays a big role at all to be honest. Last year we were at home. We had every reason to be distracted. We had never been to a Final Four. A basketball game could easily have broken out in the middle of a circus. Our guys were focused all week and played great both games. It's hard for me to say that experience plays a great role in how you play. Last year we didn't have any and played great. I hope we can play great again. It's very little to do with the week. It's a lot to do with how you prepare heading up to the 40 minutes you play. The bottom line is that at 6:09 you better play well. Q. Out of left field a little bit. I'm wondering in the last 10 years since you made that crazy switch to Eli Lilly, have you run into any of your former coworkers and are they chuckling? COACH STEVENS: I ran into them a lot. Seems like I still have a lot of friends that work over there. I have a lot of childhood friends that I went to high school with that now work over there. It's one of the major companies in the City of Indianapolis. Certainly a lot of people that I've seen, a lot of them are season ticketholders, a lot of them come to a lot of games, I hear from a lot of them. It really makes it fun. The best part about it is they have supported me as much as they supported me when I left. I was told by multiple people, Try it, see what happens. If it doesn't work, hopefully we can find a spot for you. So that support has not changed just because we've had some success. They've been incredibly supportive all the way through. Q. What kind of different Shelvin Mack has made to this team? What makes Shelvin a special player? COACH STEVENS: Well, I think he's obviously been a huge part of our program. He started immediately at a freshman. He's a guy that was not heavily recruited. I watched him play in the summer. I understand why, because he was a facilitator on a really good team. He's not selfish. He makes the right pass, the right play. But when you watched him play, you saw his savvy, his strength. Recruiting is sometimes an inexact science, but you knew as you learned more about him his work ethic. I think his work ethic is outstanding. He is in the gym all the time to the point where you have to tell him to take days off himself. He's the guy that oftentimes turns on the lights and comes on his own. He's a really special guy in that regard. Here is how hard he works and how important I think it is. If we have a time limit on an open practice, we'll stop the practice early so he can get his shots up that he wants to get up individually because I know how much it means to him. Q. Do you think there's a special validation from his point of view being in the same Final Four that UK is in? Do you think there's a desire on his part to possibly face UK in a final? COACH STEVENS: I'm not going to speak for him in that. I think he knows how good VCU is. If you reseeded the tournament based on how people played, VCU would be a No. 1 seed. They have rolled over everybody. I think we'll worry about all that stuff if and when it happens, if you're fortunate enough to play well and get by who is the hottest team in the tournament. I think certainly, just like I said earlier. I don't think Shelvin looks for validation. I think he tries to play well, be a good person and student. He's three for three. Q. I know during the course of the season the last thing the head coach is watching a lot of games of other people playing, following scores. Was there any point where you saw some video or clips of VCU, that's a good team? COACH STEVENS: Yeah, I did. I did. I know Shaka. I'm more likely to watch them than I am the teams that are on TV every night. I think if I can find a VCU game that I get a chance to watch, I'd rather watch that than watch a BCS school that has been on 10 times in the last two months. I just think I certainly have a lot of respect for all of those teams, but I get just as much enjoyment and pleasure from the CAA to compete because I know what they're going through, how hard it is. He's done a remarkable job, incredibly bright guy. His team takes on his persona. I have a lot of respect for him. That's not because of what he's done this year, it's because I known him since he was an assistant at Akron. It was evident he was a bright, up-and-comer at that point. Q. Obviously this isn't going to be a first-time experience for your kids. Could you speak to kind of comparing and contrasting the difference in playing at Hinkle Fieldhouse and playing on that Final Four court in such an enormous setting and stage. What, if anything, is disorienting or more thrilling or different in a way for the kids playing the game? COACH STEVENS: Well, I think the amount of people kind of gets lost because there's so many. It's just kind of like once you get past 10,000 or 15,000, you know, 10,000 or 15,000 in Hinkle Fieldhouse is loud, and loud as loud gets. So 70,000 in a bigger arena or place, it doesn't change how loud it can get, per se. I just think you're playing in a dome, and the last thing that you're talking about to your team is playing in a dome. You're talking about the court, everything is the same. It's the hold Hoosiers reference: Free-throw line is the same, basket is the same, you just have to go out and play. I think the greatest answer I've ever heard to someone who said, What it's it like to shoot in the dome, was by A.J. Graves, who played here and graduated in '08. He said, I've shot outside my whole life. There's a lot more depth in that background. Our guys have shot a lot of shots outside. They're not too concerned about the new environment. Q. Was there a moment this year, a practice or a game, where you felt like they had really galvanized or sort of turned the corner? COACH STEVENS: Yeah, you know, I thought that we had the second half we played against Detroit at home was really good. We were really tough. We were really in tune. We played really well. We followed it up by squeaking one out at Green Bay on the road which you have to do in league play, then playing well at USC on the road. At that moment in time I thought we were hitting a good stride. You never know where that can take you and how far it can go. I think one of the things we've talked a lot about over here is your losses get magnified so much if you're in a non-BCS league during January. It's hard to win when people don't know you, it's hard to win a game. It's why you prepare so hard for each and every one. Our guys, after they started that win streak, I think we had won maybe seven in a row or whatever going into the conference tournament. I thought they had started to really build off of what was some tough times, you know, there in late January, early February. Q. Having a second chance at the Final Four, for a school in your situation, it's smaller, non-BCS, non-football school, what does it mean to have a second chance to do this for building a program, building a school? Applications go up, kids get more interested, you get better prospects as a result of it. How does getting a second chance, how much do you have to make of it? COACH STEVENS: I think first of all you have to qualify the idea of 'better prospects.' We have a lot of guys that have played in two consecutive Final Fours. I don't know that there are better prospects out there. Now, they may have been ranked higher than some of our guys. I certainly think our prospects, the people that joined our program, are of the highest caliber. I think that's something that I'm really proud of them for because they've kind of played with a chip on their shoulder in a lot of ways. As far as what it does for the program, what it does for the school, I think those are long-term things. I don't think you're going to be able to evaluate that next January. I don't think you're going to be able to evaluate in two years. I think it's going to be long term. One of things we prided ourselves on here is we were a great school and basketball program long before last year's national championship game. It's not always because from a basketball standpoint, because of the results that you achieve, it's because of the kids that have come through here, what they've gone on to do after, the way they've conducted themselves, represented Butler. It's resulted in a heck of a lot of NCAA tournament runs in the last 15 years. Q. The word 'parity' in the last few days takes center stage because of who is in the Final Four. As you know, budget is not parity. On that realm, when you have a school like Kentucky who can spend almost half a million just on recruiting, can you talk in that essence about the parity is not there for that, but when you get a special team with good leadership and players and coaching, that's where the parity comes in? COACH STEVENS: The term 'parity' is an interesting term in college basketball. You're comparing two different things. You're comparing budgets and then you're comparing teams that are on the court. Only five guys play in basketball at a time. You may have 13 McDonald's All-Americans, but you can only play five at once. As deep as you are and everything else, you still have to play and be good with those five, and they have to play as a team. I think that's something that VCU, Butler, teams that have made these runs, they really understand that. They're trying to better their programs in a lot of ways, we're all trying to maximize our resources that are available, and hopefully continue to grow in that area. But at the end of the day it's about playing. I do think there is something to this. I think VCU and Butler played with a lot of pressure in January and February. When you get into the tournament, that pressure may flip a little bit. We're playing loose, we're playing for the first time in a lot of ways in a couple months where you've already been playing basically where you feel like you can't lose. So you're already used to that. So the NCAA tournament is a welcome. I think both teams have played really, really well because of that. Certainly they've got a lot more reasons than that. They are a loaded team that is really well-coached. Q. When you speak on the budgets, obviously you want as much as you can for your program. Does it give you a sense of pride because of what you've been able to do because you know what others have? Do you ever stop for a second and say, We want that, need that? Where does that come into your thinking in terms of what you'd like to have? Does this make you prideful that you've done it without as much as other people? COACH STEVENS: One thing that I think is really important is when we went to the national championship game last year, everybody asked me, Are you going to be able to recruit a different level of player, which we've kind of discussed already. Are you going to be able to do this, try to do this? We're Butler. We're going to be Butler. We're going to be as good as we can be. But we're not trying to be somebody else. We want Butler to be unique. We want Butler to be something that people look at and say, I don't know what's going on, but it's special. I think that's hopefully the way people have viewed it. So I think it's a fine line. I think why are you where you are? We're not where we are because of dollars spent on practice facilities and those type of things. We're where we are because we have unbelievable people. People are greater resources than any amount of dollars. DAVE WORLOCK: Thank you, Coach Stevens. Appreciate your time today. COACH STEVENS: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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