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NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR MEDIA CONFERENCEMarch 28, 2011Jim CalhounDAVE WORLOCK: We have Coach Calhoun on the phone. Thank you for your time and congratulations. We'll jump right into the Q&A with the media. Let's go ahead and take our first call. Q. Coach, you did this when you first arrived at Connecticut. How difficult is it to get to this point for one of these smaller schools and how much do you have to make of this moment in order to build what you've built at Connecticut? COACH CALHOUN: First thing, you seize every moment. In our first 13 years, we had some great players, Ray Allen, just some terrific players in our program, didn't get to a Final Four. My advice for my three sons would be this, my two sons plus my problem child, I'm the oldest of the group, that's what I feel like, very simple point being that you always think it's a natural thing. I didn't. I was at Northeastern for 14 years. In '86 I came to UConn. Got hit by a Christian Laettner shot in 1990. Lost to Oakland in 1996. Lost to a terrific Carolina team with Vince Carter and company. We were really close and couldn't get there. Then we finally got there. I enjoyed every moment. Brought a team in on Tuesday night and we made sure in Tampa, St. Pete, to really enjoy it. Then we were fortunate to go back in 2004, 2009. You just don't know whether you're going to go back or not. A lot of things can happen. I think of the great John Cheney who never got to a Final Four, who is in the Hall of Fame, rightfully so, great players that haven't been to a Final Four. I would say soak up the moment, enjoy every single moment, make sure your kids enjoy the Final Four. One thing as far as small schools. If they have five really good players and a pretty good bench, there's no such thing as a small school in the sport of basketball. Q. Over four months ago now you sent the huge statement by finishing off Maui with a victory over Kentucky. How different are these teams? How much can you learn from looking back on that game? COACH CALHOUN: Well, nothing, absolutely nothing, except I enjoyed the last four minutes of the first half. I have a pretty good memory. I remember when we were really playing well. I think we went from plus five or so to putting up 50 points. We had I think an 18-point lead at halftime. It was not an indication of what they've become, not an indication of what we really went through. It's two different teams playing each other. I'm sure they remember maybe even more than we do. I don't know that. I don't remember when we played or didn't play a great game. They came together a different lot. We're different. Jeremy Lamb wasn't a factor. Big star was quite frankly Niels Giffey. I don't think there's anything in that game. Technically we ran, got ahead, everything else kind of fell in place for us. I guess the point I'm making to you is I don't think that game means anything in this particular game. They're now a terrific three-point shooting team. I think one of the things John has done is particularly good is run, control halfcourt offense, and of course they make threes like crazy. They always could drive, but now they drive. If you try to take that away, they're going to make shots from the outside. They use really their veterans exceptionally well to help their young freshmen who are no longer young. They're very good players. That game means nothing, no. Q. Coach, you mentioned your two sons, Coach Cal. The fact that Brad and Shaka have both gotten here at such young ages, what does that tell you about them as coaches and what do you know about them? COACH CALHOUN: I know Brad pretty well in the sense that I got to know him a little bit, see him on different occasions. He's the personification, in my opinion, of what I hope -- I shouldn't say sunset, because that's an awful thing to see. I started to see my career not winding down because we're going to the Final Four, but a different perspective. Brad is the epitome of what you want our profession to represent. Obviously what's happened at VCU I love because it's something I would have thought about doing, didn't by the way, to burn up a month. I love it. I love it. And John Calipari, who always has been an aggressive, incredible personality has developed into a terrific basketball coach. That's kind of how I know them. All I have to do is watch the VCU team play and I know they're an extension of their coach. I don't have to know them that well. I think I've met him once. I've known John for a long time. But, no, it's a different group than I've normally been there with when I've been fortunate enough to be in the Final Four. You know, they're reflective really of this game. As we started to have kids leave earlier and earlier, I think what it's done, without noticing this much, this year we noticed, there's been less and less power teams. I said all year there's some terrific basketball teams, Pitt, Ohio State, Kansas, et cetera. But they may not be a great team. If it's not a great team, it opens up the field for everybody else. Thus, that's what happened. They should be congratulated, thoroughly enjoy it. There's no guarantees you're going to get back. I don't care who you're coaching, it's tough to get there. Q. When you are that young, what is the biggest challenge you have as a coach? COACH CALHOUN: I think the biggest thing is keep being yourself. I don't think there's any change in playing in the Final Four or playing in an exhibition game as the season starts. There's a lot more responsibility, different type of things. But the best thing to do is be who you are as a coach and understand what got you there. If you had a terrific win somewhere over Old Dominion, I'm using VCU as an example, that's what you need to get now to try to beat Butler. Butler has tremendous wins over whomever it may be. That's really what you need to do. I think both John and I come from at least playing against 'big-name' teams. One of the greatest championships I ever won was when (indiscernible) High School won its 18th straight game to win the league championship when I was 24 years old. I tell people that, they laugh at me. The coach is the coach, the game is the game. If you treat it like that, you'll be just fine. Q. Having been around as long as you have, having some security there, are you able to enjoy or appreciate the fact there are so many teams now, whether it's in football or in your sport, there really does seem to be something that the establishment has almost lost its complete control on winning the championship? COACH CALHOUN: You're right. And it has. It's changed greatly. In our sport because I think kids have gone out early, all you have to do is go to the NBA today, grab a Derrick Rose, O.J. Mayo, and I think what would Griffin be, a senior, to grab some of the kids in the NBA and maybe the establishment would still be the establishment. That's not the facts. The facts are simply you're right, whether it be football, TCU, Boise State, any other schools, certainly with VCU this year, there's an opportunity for teams. I think that's good. I think it's healthy. In my 14 years, when I started real young at 28 at Northeastern University, making our way through, yeah, we always felt 'the elite' were the elite. Just to play them was great, not just to beat them. Now everybody can beat everybody. I think it's good for the sport. I still believe the kid should be in for three years or go right from high school, but that's just my opinion. It's better for both games, for the NBA and college basketball. With the way it is now, it's kind of like the wild, wild west. May the best team win and it doesn't need to have pedigree attached to it. Q. I'm sure you've been around long enough to see this and get a chuckle out of it. If a college basketball coach has been in a power conference for a long enough time, they get painted with broad strokes. The young, up-and-coming guy is the saintly, fresh-faced kid who does everything right, graduates 110% of his players. Is there an inevitability that it doesn't matter what you're doing, is there something about that, that you see that it's a can't-win proposition? When you're 30 and young and hot, everybody loves you. If you coach long enough, you're going to be a bad guy to somebody. COACH CALHOUN: To somebody, no question. If you stay a long time at a place, they get upset you only won 24 games and didn't get to the Final Four. It's the best, quite frankly, analogy I've heard of why sometimes after, in my case, 39 years as a Division I head coach, particularly the last 25 years at UConn, there's no way you're going to please everybody. That's what you really find out. If I please my God, my family, that's very important to me, and then please my players and my university, then I'm fine. You have to develop that. If you don't, it's going to make coaching long-term-wise very, very difficult. What I'm sometimes painted at or perceived as, clearly I don't recognize that person (laughter). You get stuck with something. All of a sudden that becomes you. It's so far away from you, it's unbelievable. By the way, that's good and bad, too. There's some good things, too. Bottom line is, without question, the shine will wear off the car. That's a Boston car, by the way. And you'll get nicks and dents and bumps. Hopefully when it's all said and done, you can look back, see what you did for your kids, university and community. I've been involved here for 25 years at UConn. You're a hundred percent right. Right now it's shining, new. The paint is so fresh that obviously they could never, ever even use a curse word. I saw it with myself in the early days. Always I was a miracle worker. 20 years later, I still know the game. Things change. But I'm delighted that I have had the opportunity and want to continue to do it, to coach this wonderful game with some incredible people at this university. Q. (Indiscernible) COACH CALHOUN: Jimmy's win, they beat us, they beat Wichita State, North Carolina and Michigan State. That's a pretty good résumé for a lifetime, never mind a mid-major school or a run that Jimmy had. Q. I guess could you expand on what you just said, is there any feeling of déjàvu? COACH CALHOUN: We are playing them right off the gap. We are playing a pretty good Kentucky team. I see that happening more and more. You can go back to UNC Charlotte with Maxwell. I'm really dating myself. I'm saying it happened before. Sometimes we're really surprised. I think it's happening more and more as long as we continue to have our league players. Kemba Walker is an elite player. We just played against Derrick Williams. God, is he good. Fredette is a great player. There's just not as many of them on one team anymore. You're going to do this ride. If the rules stay as they are right now, you're going to see this ride a lot more times. It's wonderful. I don't know what at VCU they're following. They're a terrific basketball team. At one point they we're the 250th defensive team in the country. Now they beat the heck out of you. This is what 39 years of experience does. When you get on a run, it builds upon itself. I've always said this. When I was at Northeastern, we played in the tournament five or six times. We played 10 games or something over that period of time. When we were down 6, we had you just where we want you. Now at UConn, when we're up 6, I start to feel dry mouth (laughter). You know what I'm saying to you? Q. I do. COACH CALHOUN: In all those games, the shoe has definitely fit differently. So maybe it's good that Cal and I are playing each other. Q. Jim, I know both Brandon Knight and Doron Lamb visited Connecticut their senior years and considered it. How frustrating was it when those guys chose not to go to Connecticut and at that point how confident were you in Shabazz Napier, that he could play at a high level? COACH CALHOUN: Funny you mention those two kids. There was a great deal of disappointment. One time we were recruiting a kid named Brandon Jennings. He committed to us as he did with the other two schools he visited. At one time we determined that Brandon didn't make his mind up so we went after a kid we thought we could get, named Kemba Walker. He turned out okay, to say the least. When we got Shabazz and Jeremy Lamb, we think we got two pretty good players. Next year, Shabazz is going to mold into one of the best point guards in the country. Jeremy has already molded into one of the best freshman in the country. The one thing I would guarantee you after 39 years of doing this, you get a lot more nos than you do yeses. You have to make sure you're going after enough good kids that have great potential. They give you those years just to make a difference. No question, we were disappointed. Ironic we're playing two kids we went very hard after. Q. When you recruited Kemba, did you have any idea that this kid would have that type of upside? COACH CALHOUN: I think all my kids are. If you've heard me in the press conference talking about Kemba, years ago Ray Allen, Rip Hamilton, Omeka Okafor, Ben Gordon, all the grade players we've had, you recruit them because you think they can someday be special. That's what I do anyways. I believe in them. I think that helps to some. Kemba was quick and fast. Some guys are quick and some guys are fast, he's both. He's competitive as any kid we have recruited. The thing that, I'll be very honest with you, that I didn't know was his competitive drive also allowed him to put in a summer, like where he played for the national select team, and to put in two to three hours every single day shooting the basketball. That's changed in many, many ways so much of his game. He was a terrific player last year. Obviously you're right, right now he's as good of a player in the country, midrange jump shot, he can make threes. To me he's the most valuable player in the United States. So when I recruited him, I thought I was going to get a quick New York City point push guard, defender, all that type of thing. And he's evolved into even more than that. Q. Everybody is talking about the Cinderella coming from a VCU or Butler. You were ranked 9th a couple weeks ago when you hit the Garden for the Big East tournament. What has that been like? Have you used that to help motivate your team? COACH CALHOUN: I haven't used that as much. True sense, we thought we had something to prove. We thought we lost two or three real close games that could have made us a team with a double seed. We were two games against getting a double bye in the tournament. We had beaten Texas at Texas, Tennessee, Michigan State, Kentucky. We had some great wins. Bottom line is that, yeah, we felt we were just an afterthought in the Big East. We went to Madison Square Garden to prove something different. Nine games later we proved something different. These kids have been incredible, resilient. They have as much energy on a Saturday night to beat Louisville as Saturday to beat DePaul. This has been a great ride for me and these kids have been absolutely special. Q. Questions about recruiting. If you ever thought about if history changed, if Brandon had said yes, how that might have changed the way the team looked. What would you have done with Kemba? Did that ever enter your mind how they would have worked together? COACH CALHOUN: It really hasn't. I think if I spent all my time on the kids we lost, I'll fantasize, we would have won a lot of championships because we lost a lot of good players. I'm more interested in the kids we get. I really think about who we have, what they're going to do. Kemba and Shabazz, how they work together. They work pretty good. Won 30 games. Shabazz has been sensational for us, quite frankly taken a lot of pressure off of Kemba this year, allowed us to play him other than as just a point guard. Q. There's no guarantees you ever get back. This is your fourth time. Two years ago you had a shot to win it for that third time. Have you given much thought to your legacy, what it would mean to be elevated up into that category? What would that mean to you? COACH CALHOUN: I said this before we played Arizona very simply that I wanted to go back, without question. My staff, I wanted them to go back, first time a couple of them. I wanted this team to go back. This team has given us an incredible year, our university, the fan base. They've been a loveable team. Given everything they possibly had. I want them to go to No. 1. Any legacy stuff I can look at later. Right now I just can't wait to get this team to the Final Four, to have them see something they've never experienced in their life. Only Kemba and Donnell played in the Final Four in Detroit. Q. You and your players spoke a lot in Anaheim about that practice after the Notre Dame game. You mentioned that you said to them, I'm not going to quit on you and I'm not going to let you quit on yourselves. Did you say that at the beginning of the practice? Did you see something in practice that said, I've got to stop this? COACH CALHOUN: You're right. We came out of that Notre Dame game, led most of the way, lost the game. For the first time I thought they looked down. This team has not looked down. It's been amazing resilience for the entire ride all the way through. We're pretty good. We were 21 games. Knew we were going to the NCAA tournament. The heck with this. We're not going to put our heads down. For the next two and a half hours, the basketball wasn't as important as the activity, how physical we were with each other, how we really went at t and said we're going to do it tomorrow, weren't going to quit,. We just attacked the new season, that became post-season, then Madison Square Garden, then the Verizon Center, then the Pond out in Anaheim. Thank got now it's become Houston, Texas. Q. Did you say that at the very beginning of that practice? COACH CALHOUN: Yeah, that's how we started practice. Usually the thought of the day. I kind of went on that day just about this journey, the things they accomplished. You've got new life. Very few people have a second chance. We automatically have a second chance because we have the Big East tournament. That's our second chance. We'll play after that. But more importantly, let's go back to being the team we are and let's just play basketball. Stop this worrying about everything else. You haven't worried for most of the year. All of a sudden I see, at the close of the Notre Dame game, no one on this team is going to quit. As a matter of fact, we're going to be even better. We're going to be a better basketball team by the time we get to play in New York on Tuesday. DAVE WORLOCK: Thank you, Coach Calhoun. We appreciate your time today. Best of luck and safe travels to Houston. COACH CALHOUN: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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