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76 CLASSIC MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 31, 2011

Steve Donahue

TIM SIMMONS: We're joined by Steve Donahue from Boston College. Just a thought, coach. How is your team progressing during the pre-season?
COACH DONAHUE: First of all, thanks for having me on, guys. Really looking forward to being in the tournament. Obviously it's been a great tournament the last few years. I just will say it's going to be a terrific one this year as well.
Just have an extremely young group of guys, nine freshmen. We only have two guys returning that played. They were partial players. It's been a real fun couple weeks of practice just watching these guys mature. Been very happy. Tremendous work ethic. Very skilled basketball players.
We just got to get them bigger, stronger and experienced as quickly as we can.
TIM SIMMONS: Coach, you open up against Saint Louis. Have you been studying a lot of film on them?
COACH DONAHUE: I have not (laughter). I think I worry about our team right now, and that's it. I think Coach Majerus is a terrific basketball coach. I obviously followed him for years and understand he's a terrific all-around coach but a terrific defensive coach. That is going to be a huge test for our young kids to go against an experienced defensive team as physical as Saint Louis is.
TIM SIMMONS: Last year you played in the Old Spice tournament down in Orlando. Same format. Do you find this format unique where you play two days, off a day, then play the fourth?
COACH DONAHUE: Well, there's a couple things I really like about it. One, even for these exhibitions, there's not a legitimate tournament format anymore. Typically you play two somewhere else, then you try to advance to four teams that should advance even if they win or lose.
The beauty of this is you play the championship format, then you play two days in a row, which is very challenging. The great thing is to have a day off, catch your breath, look at what you did, then the games on the third day are much better because of it.
I think last year's tournament was a huge part of our success. We played all the teams on a neutral site. It was great for us.
TIM SIMMONS: You mentioned you had a young team. Have you ever had a team this young that you ever coached?
COACH DONAHUE: I don't think anybody in the country has ever had a team this young, let alone me. When you talk guys never playing college basketball before, we only had a couple guys start, the upperclassmen. Only seniors. One junior and two sophomores who were marginal players.
My one year when we did eventually advance to the Sweet 16 was a group that started four freshmen. I think there's some huge advantages to it if you have kids that are willing to understand there's going to be a lot of failure. You're going to go through some hard times and learn from each of those. If you're willing to do that, I think you have a chance. You can really make great progress over the next 20, 30, 50 games of your career, then you have a great group of guys who played a lot of time together.
TIM SIMMONS: You're traveling from Boston to California. Anything planned before playing in a different time zone?
COACH DONAHUE: If you talk to my wife, she has a ton of things planned for my four kids. Lego Land down in San Diego, all the other things, obviously Disneyland.
We have four Southern California kids on our team. We couldn't be more excited to be there. A great time of the year and a national TV audience. It's just a great opportunity for these young kids to see where we're at and represent our school as best we can.
TIM SIMMONS: Open the floor to questions.

Q. Steve, like you mentioned, I know you have four Southern Californians on your roster, also Boston College has had a lot of success in Southern California recruiting. How much do you expect to continue to target this area recruiting-wise?
COACH DONAHUE: I think it's coincidental, but in the same sense in my 20 years in the Iveys, we recruited California because we could. We had national worldwide recognized universities in Penn and Cornell. Boston College also does that. I think us being a top 30 school in the country gives us the opportunity to attract kids from across the country.
The other part of that there's a lot of good basketball players out west, not a whole lot of schools for them. The population and the amount of basketball players has a lot to dictate that you can go get kids maybe that are going overlooked by a PAC-10 school because of the amount of really good players in that area.
Then my part is to sell the university and also the league. I think the ACC resonates with kids out in California. They like the idea of coming and playing in an East Coast city, play against teams like Duke and North Carolina. It's part of the strategy. I think we have to be intelligent about where we go to recruit and the type of players we recruit to be successful. I don't know if we can get in big head wars with teams in our conference and other teams outside of our conference.

Q. Does it help you to play games in California? Does it expose the school to kids you might recruit in the future?
COACH DONAHUE: No question. We'll continue to do that as well. I think it's a good spot for us to every couple years get back to California, in particular Southern California, making sure that people even though the basketball community realizes that we're out there. Especially when you have kids from that area, it helps you obviously grow and get involved with other kids in that area as well.
TIM SIMMONS: Coach, just one final question. You have three or four games prior to the tournament. How important are all of those?
COACH DONAHUE: I think every coach will tell you that they're all very important. If you want to get into the NCAA tournament, you're being judged every single opportunity you go out there with the competition to be selected. You want to try to make as much noise as you can and do that.
With that being said, I think this is a critical year for us. I don't mean to disqualify wins and losses, but I want to look at things qualitatively rather than quantitatively. I want to see how my team is playing, making sure we're improving every day. Win or lose, I think it's critical if we're going to build this the right way.
TIM SIMMONS: Coach, thank you very much. We look forward to seeing you in California in a couple weeks.
COACH DONAHUE: Looking forward to it, too, Tim. Thanks a lot.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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