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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE OPERATION BASKETBALLOctober 29, 2014Rick PitinoCHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA Q.  Rick, what does it mean to you to be a part of this conference? I talked to you a couple years back with the Big East. Now that you're here, what can you say about this chapter for Louisville? RICK PITINO: You know, everybody knows that I grew up in the Big East and was close with Dave Gavitt at Providence College and then entered with Louisville. It's almost like when you change jobs, there's a certain curiosity. There's a certain intrigue that goes into it and an excitement level, and that's what happens when you change conferences to this type of conference. Because for me personally, there are about seven, eight places, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Duke and Florida State and Clemson, North Carolina State, that I've never coached at these places. So that's very exciting, stimulating, and I'm very enthusiastic about it. Q. Talk a little bit about your style of basketball and all and how it's going to be playing in the ACC with the way you play. RICK PITINO: Well, I think you've seen this style of play with other teams. Maybe not as much full‑court pressure, but you've seen it. We're an up‑tempo team, very similar to a North Carolina, and we pressure a great deal, full court, and I think it's exciting for the players. It's exciting for the fans because there's a lot of scoring involved. There's a lot of pressure involved in trying to beat the full‑court press, and it adds to it‑‑ when you do beat it, it adds a lot of dunks and exciting plays. I think it's a new dimension for the conference that's going to bring a level of excitement. Q. Certainly a lot of excitement building up to today, but did it get maybe even extra exciting, you walk into the room and there's Coach K and there's Williams? Did it become even more real that Louisville is a part of the ACC today for you? RICK PITINO: You know, the ACC is not necessarily great for men's basketball at Louisville because we had great competition in the Big East with outstanding coaches. But it's so awesome for the university to be recognized with those great academic universities. It's great for football. I mean, for us and football, tomorrow we're going to play Florida State, the No.1 ranked team in the nation, and the whole town is excited. It's great for all our other sports that have not been at the level of men's basketball with the Big East. It's been a Godsend for the University of Louisville. We're very excited about it academically, athletically, to be with the North Carolinas, the Dukes, the Virginias of the world, the Wake Forests that have achieved so much academically as well as athletically. There's no better than Mike and Roy and Jim Boeheim, and for some of you who don't know Buzz, I've coached against him at Marquette. He's one hell of a young basketball coach. He's terrific. I'm looking forward to coaching against Tony Bennett, who watching on television, is as good as it gets. Q. When you look at the fact that Montrezl decided to come back instead of going to the NBA and being a Cardinal again, what has it meant to you and the team as you see them move forward together? RICK PITINO: You know, we're playing three Big Ten schools. We open with Minnesota, we play Indiana in the Jimmy V Classic, we play Ohio State, we play Kentucky, plus Carolina twice, Pittsburgh twice. Our schedule is incredible. I was thinking the other day watching practice, without Montrezl Harrell, we may not win five games with this type of schedule. Looking back on it, I didn't realize it was as significant as it really is. As you look as our schedule and you look at how good a first team he is, consensus All‑American in the preseason, it's really, really important that we have him in our program. It's euphoric to have him suiting up again this year. Q. If you had to use one word to describe this team, what would it be, and how would you define a successful season? RICK PITINO: You know, we're not as good as we've been the last three years. The last three years we've won our conference, our conference tournament. We've gone to a Final Four, a National Championship, a Sweet 16. We don't have that type of team. And what I'd say is going into the last three years, I knew what type of team I had. Now, we may be as good as we were those past three years, but I just don't know. I know our starting five is very good, but then we have six freshmen, and just don't know what to expect from them. We've built a reputation of playing great defense, having a high‑octane offense, and I don't see it with this basketball team in terms of ‑‑ I'm just really unsure of what they bring to the table, and we won't know until we play Minnesota, a team that's won 25 games, an NIT champion with three players back, but one, how good we really are. Q. The international flavor on the roster, Norway, Australia, Egypt, both on and off the court, what type of presence do those young men bring to your program? RICK PITINO: We don't have them any longer, those players. I sent them back. Q. I apologize. RICK PITINO: No, I said to our young Egyptian basketball player who's studying engineering, I said, "You're a great student. What would it be like for you to go back to Egypt for not playing defense? How would that be publicly?" He said, "I don't think it would be pretty good." I said, "It's going to happen. It really is going to happen." He didn't see me laugh so he didn't know whether I was serious or not. The thing about foreign players that I've found out is they're a joy to coach because they're very humble and very hard‑working. At least the Africans were that way. To have a Norwegian is a lot different than the Africans because basketball is not prominent. It's more ice hockey, so it's different having a Norwegian and seeing him interact with basketball because there are no Kobe Bryants in Norway or there's nobody he can really look at. He's an unusual event coming out of that country. He's a work in progress as well as the big Egyptian player, Anas, but they're refreshing. They're sponges. They want to learn. They want to work. They're highly intelligent. But they're going to need a lot of time. Mangok is there now. He's had two years of it. He's ready to go. Q. If you could, just speak a little bit about Syracuse, a familiar foe for you. Talk about that battle for you. RICK PITINO: You know, I really don't know their team this year as well as past years. They've lost a lot. They're different. They're like us a little bit. We have Russ Smith gone, Luke Hancock gone, Gorgui Dieng and Peyton Siva from the year before. So we have new players. I know about of course their coaching staff and what they're going to do, but I don't know their parts real well. Q. I posed this question to the Commissioner and also other coaches: College athletes are in a state of flux right now. How do you feel about pay‑for‑play? Do you think that there should be a cost‑of‑attendance stipend for student‑athletes? RICK PITINO: Well, I definitely think there should be changes. How it's regulated, I'm not sure. I think players should be allowed to‑‑ at the end of our year when our players move on, they have autograph sessions and they get paid for it. Can that be done and regulated in the regular season? I'm not sure, because then probably somebody would have to make their schedule in terms of being agents, and you'd have to pay them. I don't know how it's all regulated. I do feel we're behind the times in certain areas, and one in particular is if we're making all this money in the NCAA Tournament and you are not allowed to fly their families in and pay for their hotel and give them a stipend for per diem for food is just, to me, really behind the times. I cannot fathom how we haven't done that yet. With the NCAA making so much money, how we can't fly our athletes' families in and put them up in hotels is just mind boggling to me. That's one area I definitely think we're behind the times in. Q. You mentioned Tony Bennett before, coaching against him. What is it about his style of coaching that got your attention? RICK PITINO: Well, it's very similar to Jamie Dixon at Pittsburgh. They guard every possession with their life on the line. They play excellent help defense, and they don't give you good shots. Sometimes the way to beat those teams, if you're not as good defensively as they are, you're not going to win that game, because they're not going to turn the ball over much. They're going to play excellent defense. They're going to be fundamentally sound in most areas, and if you're not as fundamentally sound, if you're not as good defensively, you're not going to win the game. So that's what you have to strive for with your basketball team, and then you'll go and play somebody polar opposite in North Carolina and the way you have to play transition defense to stop them. I think that's the great thing about a mega conference like this, that every night you may have‑‑ you may have Pittsburgh, Florida State and then Virginia, and then you'll have North Carolina, Duke and Syracuse. It's so exciting because you're going to be up to the wee hours of the morning trying to figure out your game plan to stop these great basketball teams. So I'm real fired up about that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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