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UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN BASKETBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEMarch 24, 2014Ben BrustSam DekkerFrank KaminskyTHE MODERATOR: We'll get started with Ben, Frank, and Sam. If you have questions, we have microphones. Right here. Q. I know you guys are looking ahead to the next game. I was just wondering, when you see Duke and Kansas and Syracuse and those types of teams that are out, does it make you realize truly how difficult it is to get to this stage? BEN BRUST: Yeah, this is March, and a lot of different things can happen. Everyone got here for a reason, whether they won the conference tournament or the product of work they put in throughout the year. If you're peaking at the right time, you never know who you'll run into. That's why you just kind of bring it out there for the 40 minutes you have, and right now that's Baylor. Looking forward to that. SAM DEKKER: I know like you kind of throw around the term Sweet 16 as just a cliche term, a term that's used all over the place. When you really think about it, only 16 teams are actually left. That's not a big number in comparison to the 68 and then however many hundred are in regular D‑I basketball. To think that only 16 teams made it this far, it kind of puts it in perspective how tough it was to get here and how special it's been. We're not content yet where we're at, and we want to keep going and get more. Q. For all three of you guys starting with Frank, since you like to talk so much. I'm just curious. Did you guys get together and watch the game last night? Creighton‑Baylor game. If you did, did you watch it as fans? Did you watch it with a keen eye, like, okay, this is what they do. How were you watching it? FRANK KAMINSKY: Personally, I watched it in the locker room kind of by myself. I wanted to sit there and watch the game, no distractions. I'm sure everyone else back at the apartment was watching it together. But, yeah, I was just looking at tendencies they have of their players, who I could possibly be matched up with or what they like to do on offense. There are things they're doing on defense, you know, just trying to take in everything. I'm sure the coaches will give us the minute details from all their games. We'll be able to watch some more games and pick up some more stuff. SAM DEKKER: I watched it with the guys back in my room. We kind of just sat back and watched a little bit. Wanted to pick up on key things that both Creighton and Baylor does. We figured out some of their play calls and stuff like that. We didn't get into it too much, just watched what they like to do. Who are their go‑to guys, what they run against this and that. Didn't dive too deep into it, but kind of enjoyed the game, sat back and watched. Baylor played a great game. We're excited for the test. BEN BRUST: Being March, anything can happen during all the games. But it was nice to kind of see Baylor up a little bit the whole time because I was able to kind of zone in on them almost and kind of just watch their tendencies a little bit more than Creighton's. Fortunately, we played Creighton last year, so kind of had a knowledge with that. But just watch defensively what they were doing, what tendencies they're looking to do offensively. They're a solid team. Q. This is for all three of you. You basically had home court advantage, it seemed, this past weekend in Milwaukee for the first two rounds. What kind of Badger crowd are you expecting in Anaheim? How is that maybe going to change or not change the way you guys get out there and your energy? BEN BRUST: We travel pretty well as a university, which is very special to be a part of. We get people coming everywhere. So that will be very cool to see what we can get up there. No matter what's there at the end of the day, it's 40 minutes of basketball that we have to go perform. This is March, and if you're not ready to play, something's wrong with you at this point in the game. So just got to bring it and get ready to go. SAM DEKKER: Wisconsin fans are pretty passionate about what they do. Football, our fans follow them everywhere. Packers fans follow them everywhere, even Brewers. When you have traditions like that and fans like that, so loyal to their teams, you can expect a good drawing. I fully expect a pretty good crowd out there in Anaheim and excited to play in front of them. It's cool to have that many fans, but come this time, it's still a neutral court. Hoop is 10 feet tall. Still basketball being played. So we've just got to focus on playing our style of basketball and getting it done. FRANK KAMINSKY: I agree with both of them. Q. Frank, when you watched Baylor, what stood out about Austin? FRANK KAMINSKY: He's one of the longest players that we'll play against. His arms are probably an eight‑foot wingspan, something like that. I don't know. But, yeah, he's a good player. He's a good defensive player. He's got those long arms, and he moves well. On offense, he's able to get a bunch of stuff because of his height. Hopefully, we can neutralize that. Q. For any of you, I wanted to ask you, Bo seems really loose and relaxed, at least to us in the media. He just seems like he's giving off just a real relaxed kind of a vibe right now, and I'm wondering if you can comment on that. Is that an accurate description? If so, do you find of feed off the way your coach is, and do you feel pretty loose going into this? SAM DEKKER: Well, whenever he's loose, makes us a little looser, a little happier. Nigel probably gave him a massage or something. So that always helps with his mood. Yeah, when he's loose, we're loose. We like going out and playing, you know, not so uptight. I don't think he's too nervous right now, which is good. He's just enjoying the ride right now and pretty confident in us. BEN BRUST: I don't know if he's that loose. Q. Anybody else want to comment on that or not? BEN BRUST: He covered it. Q. I do have another question. You guys have been to the Sweet 16 three out of the last four years, but the Elite Eight has been a little bit of a different story. It's been a while. I'm just wondering if that's something that's talked about, getting to that next level, taking that next step. BEN BRUST: I think any time you start looking ahead, you get yourself in trouble. Right now the focus is Baylor, just the next game in hand. If you take care of business, the rest of the stuff just comes with it. So staying at the task at hand is important to us. SAM DEKKER: If you keep winning, you're going to get there. We've just got to focus on winning and taking on Baylor. If all things fall into place and we do the things we do, then we'll get there. So our main focus is getting the win. Q. You said you had a chance to kind of focus in on Baylor when they were at the post. Want to get your impressions of Brady Heslip from one three‑point shooter to another. What do you think of his game, and what makes him stand out like that? BEN BRUST: Looking at just a little bit, see what the coaches bring out there‑‑ I think he's got 117 threes on the year. I've got 228 in three years. That's a lot of numbers out there. He's got me beat in two years. He can fill it up. Just got to make sure to make him take some tough ones and try to make him put it on the floor. Q.  Ben and Frank, you guys have some past Sweet 16 experience. What stands out to your memory from having gone to that, and what experience do you hope to take from it, either for yourselves or passing on to your teammates at what it's going to take to be successful at this stage? BEN BRUST: Well, I don't think it changes too much. You're in the next round. Obviously, there's a lot of attention, but I think with everything we've been through, the whole season, it's very helpful that we played on the road against top 25 teams. We played at neutral site games. We played home games. We played every team‑‑ team from a small conference, medium conference, and played in the Big Ten. I think that all the games we did throughout the year prepared us, and obviously the past two games, getting to where we are now, just got to keep learning from that and get after it on Thursday. FRANK KAMINSKY: Throughout the course of the season, with the exhibition games to now, we've been able to see so many different types of situations that can prepare us for what we're about to see in this game with different teams, different styles of play. So we'll be ready for whatever they throw at us, and hopefully we'll come out on top. Q. For Frank and Sam, you guys talked about Austin. I watched that game yesterday. He likes to block shots, but I don't remember seeing Creighton using a lot of shot fakes or ball fakes. Is that going to be a critical element? I know you guys use it a lot, but especially against him and the way they like to defend the rim. SAM DEKKER: Yeah, Isaiah Austin has been blocking shots his whole life. He's always been the tallest kid on the court with the longest arms. So he's a good shot blocker. He's going to go after it. Frank is one of the best pump faking, footwork, finesse players I think I've ever played with easily. When you can use those moves in there and just kind of confuse some guys with some moves that are pretty unorthodox, I think Frank can use that to his advantage. For myself, I've got to still work on pump faking and taking my time in the post. If we can do that and we can maybe try to get them in foul trouble or something, that will definitely work in our favor. FRANK KAMINSKY: Yeah, if we can get him to pick up a couple of cheap fouls early on in the game, that's always an advantage to us. If you saw in the Oregon game, we were able to get a couple of fouls on Moser pretty quick. I kind of took him out of the game after he scored 7 of their first 9 points or something like that. So if we're able to get him on the bench out of the game, I think that's an advantage to us. Q. Ben, similar question, did you use ball fakes and pump fakes a lot before you got here? It just seems like something Bo is constantly talking about with you guys. How important would that be, especially against the zone, just to kind of keep it moving? BEN BRUST: Yeah, I think Coach does a good job preparing us. We do some drillswhere ‑‑ and even in every possession we do is a chance to learn from what the defense is doing and reacting to. You get to work on, when people close out, just making the right reads every single day. So he does a great job of helping us get prepared for all different type of scenarios that defenses throw at you. That's why I feel confident coming into the game that we prepared for. Q. This is for all you guys. What are your thoughts about going up against their zone defense? Creighton couldn't shoot them out of them, but you guys have more scorers than they do. BEN BRUST: They extend it pretty high. Just got to try and find some weak spots. You've got to be patient. You've got to work it around and try and get movement. Use shot fakes, ball fakes, pass it around. Just keep working it until you get the good one, and then when you get the good one, you've got to knock it down. SAM DEKKER: The thing about playing with zone, you've always got to try to find a soft spot. That's what we're going to work on here and try to find different places that we can try to attack and use some of our shooters we have and some of the guys that we can get inside and stuff. So we've played against zones before, and I feel like we have some of the guys that can do it. Creighton just didn't shoot well. They ran into a little bit of a buzz saw there. They just didn't shoot well. If Creighton shoots the ball well, that game might be a completely different story. We've just got to focus on trying to find some gaps in that zone and hopefully shoot all right. FRANK KAMINSKY: Yeah, obviously, it didn't look like they had any weaknesses in their zone last night, but maybe we'll look at some past games and see if we can find something, hammer those weak spots and see if we can get something easy out of it. Q. Frank, you mentioned that you guys have seen all different types of teams throughout the year. What team does Baylor kind of remind you of? Or what game maybe prepared you for Thursday? FRANK KAMINSKY: One that pops out right away is the Iowa game. They got long athletes. They sub in a bunch of different people. They've got all different types of players. They pressure you and make you play ‑‑ and play yourselves into bad decisions. Maybe we'll be able to take something away from that game because we won that game on the road, but, obviously, we haven't seen a team quite like Baylor. So we'll have to prepare for their personnel. Q. This is for Ben. Ben, in the way you guys have talked about attacking the zone, probing, passing the ball, being patient, do you think that plays into this team's strength? Because some teams can do that, others can't. I'm just curious do you think this is something you can do well? BEN BRUST: Yeah, I think we do a lot of things well. That's a product of coming here every day and practicing hard and preparing for all different types of teams and playing zones. Yeah, in order to be successful, you've got to be able to pass, dribble, and shoot, and I think we got five guys that are out there all the time that have a good opportunity to find good spots to be successful out there. Just got to work well with each other and hit the open shots when they're there. THE MODERATOR: Anything else for the players? Thanks, guys. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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