|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 27, 2012Jim LarranagaCOACH LARRANAGA: (No Audio) under two minutes to play, we're not able to hold on. I think a lot of credit goes to the Maryland players. They had 61 points with 1:40 seconds to go, and they scored 14 points in the last 1:40. So tough loss for us. We came back home, bounced back by getting a nice win over Florida State. Two things that I became aware of afterwards. It was only the second sellout in school history, and it's the first time the students ever stormed the floor after a victory at home here at the Bank United Center. So ended up being a great game, great game for us to win, great crowd, and lots of excitement. Q. I wanted to find out if there was any updates in Reggie Johnson's status? COACH LARRANAGA: No, I haven't heard anything. Q. How will you go about practicing leading up to the N.C. State game on Wednesday? How does that impact your practices? COACH LARRANAGA: We won't change anything. Reggie will practice. He practiced great on Friday and Saturday. He's been very upbeat, working hard, preparing himself for the time when he be available to us again. The other guys did a great job of practicing. We're healthier than we've been all season long. Even Julian Gamble who has a torn ACL has started to work out. Garrius Adams who had knee surgery back in January, he's not only practicing, but he got into the last few games. So we're getting healthy at the right time. Hopefully we'll get Reggie back soon. Q. If you don't hear from the NCAA before you get on the plane to NorthCarolina, will Reggie travel with you? COACH LARRANAGA: I don't know. That will be up to the rules, whatever the rules say. The university and athletic department will let me know whether or not he's able to travel. I would say, if nothing changes, an ineligible player cannot travel with the team. So he would have to remain behind. Q. I want to ask you about Raphael's start yesterday. He played for Reggie and ended up only playing 7 minutes. I just want to get your thoughts on what you thought of him, and if Reggie doesn't play Wednesday, what your plans are with the starting lineup and how you'll run your front court? COACH LARRANAGA: Well, of course Raphael started so we could keep the natural rotation that we've had with Raph being a five‑man and just taking Reggie's spot at the five. But as the game progressed, the group that we had out there was doing such a good job DeQuan Jones played very, very well. We just decided to stick with him, and at one point decided to go small. We'll continue to explore every option. My staff and I meet every day. Just finished meeting and discussing all the possibilities, and we'll make a decision when we basically know what Reggie's situation is. Q. I want to get your thoughts on Erik Swoope where you feel he is in terms of his development and maybe what he needs to do to be able to fit in the rotation? COACH LARRANAGA: Erik was in the rotation early in the season, but he's an undersized power forward, and we're trying to convert him more to a three‑man. So he's moved positions. We want him to develop his perimeter game more, so he's kind of going through a transition right now in practice instead of matching up with the four‑man, he's matching up with the three, learning to play perimeter defense better. He's a great kid, great student, great worker, and we feel like in the off‑season if he can develop a consistent three‑point shot, he'll be able to help us next year. Q. Coach, just speaking in more general terms, I'm wondering, you're almost a year now into your first year in the ACC, what are some of the thoughts you've learned about coaching in this league? COACH LARRANAGA: Well, the first thing you know is every game is a huge battle. Every team is very, very well coached, and very, very well prepared. Everybody is very good on their home court, and many of the teams are very, very tough on the road. I would say the other thing is we're learning about the University of Miami. One of the things that people said, there was not a lot of student support or fan appreciation. But looking at the last couple of home games against Carolina, we had the largest student turnout in the school's history, 1500 students, which is the maximum number of tickets that we sell to students‑‑ or not sold, they come in for free. But 1500 seats are reserved. That was a sellout. And yesterday, we had the second sellout in school history. So it's great to see the enthusiasm and the growth in our program in a very short period of time. Q. Coach, last week on this teleconference you said at least this year the mid‑major at‑large deal isn't as good as past years. Has your perspective, do you think, changed concerning the bubble NCAA Tournament now that you're in the ACC compared to your years at George Mason, or would you say you've the same perspective but in a different league? COACH LARRANAGA: I've always looked at it the same way, and it's in regard to numbers. If you look at the non‑conference performance, the non‑conference strength of schedules, the high majors have done extremely well this year. Whereas the mid‑majors have fallen off a little bit with their performance in the non‑conference schedule. You can look at conferences who were maybe in the Top 10 who have fallen out. They're now in the middle teams. So when you do that, your chances for an at large bid will be impacted by your league's RPI. Because if your league is in the Top 10 in the country, that means some of the teams in your league are in the Top 100. If you play against them, if you win, you get a Top 100 win. However, if your league falls off and you don't have anybody else in your league in the top 10, when you get into your league, your record is not as impressive, even if you've won 10, 12, 15 games, 10 games in a row, 15 games in a row, because they're against teams whose RPIs are not very good. You've got to win. Winning is very important, but it's also about your strength of schedule as to who you're beating and when you're beating them. Q. Do you think you'd be more hesitant to say something like that say last year when you weren't in a major conference? COACH LARRANAGA: No, I think over the years when I was at George Mason, my staff and I, when we would look at the numbers and anybody asked us, we would say our RPI right now is not high enough to get an at‑large bid. So we weren't even in consideration. Nobody was talking about us being on the bubble. But if you look at last year, there were four CAA teams, not only in the top 100, but like in the top 70, and our RPI was 24. I think the highest RPI of a CAA team this year is from what I've seen 60. So if the highest RPI is 24, and the following year it's in the 60's that's a considerable drop off. I don't remember, but I think there's only been one team to ever get an at large bid in the 60's, and I think that was Air Force five years ago. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|