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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: JACKSONVILLEMarch 18, 2015Andy KennedyStefan MoodyM.J. RhettJarvis SummersJACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA Q. Stefan, can you talk about the last 12 hours and what it was like for you guys in terms of your schedule from after you won in Dayton to coming here now? STEFAN MOODY: Right after the game, we went straight to the hotel and just showered real quick, back on the bus, get on the plane, get back, get here as soon as we can. Q. What are you guys like? What's your mindset and maybe your energy level because of that quick turnaround? STEFAN MOODY: Energy level has got to stay high. We're definitely here and we're ready to play. Q. For all three of you, is there still a little bit of a state of disbelief about what you accomplished, coming back from such a large margin, or do you feel like this is something that's within your capability at any time should you get that far behind? JARVIS SUMMERS: We knew we could make good things happen, even though we was down in the last game. We just stayed together and Coach gave us a speech at halftime and told us, go out with a fight, and we just came back. Q. Obviously Coach Kennedy has some ties to Cincinnati, playing at Cincinnati and seeing Xavier play, has he talked about the influence that maybe being in that area in terms of preparing for this Xavier team? STEFAN MOODY: I mean, you've got to prepare for every team the same way. You know, you've just got to go through the scouting report, see who does what, and make sure you prepare accordingly. Q. Jarvis, super quick turnaround. What are some of the positives that come from an emotionally charged one like that, obviously momentum coming off this one, but is it trying not to get too excited? Does that play a factor into this, as well? JARVIS SUMMERS: Yeah, we've just got to stay focused. Last night was a great game, and we came back, and it was real tough, and then we've got to get on the flight. We've just got to just -- can't use no excuses. Just man up to it, and, you know, that's our lead-in. We've just try to get a win. Q. Stefan, you talked about what you guys did last night, going back to the hotel and getting here as soon as possible. What was today like? Did you guys get in at 3:00 a.m., 3:30, and did you go to the hotel and sleep? STEFAN MOODY: Just the same thing as usual. We just kind of pushed everything back a little bit, slept, had a good little breakfast around 11:30, 12:00, and now we're here, ready for shoot-around. Q. How much work have you guys done on Xavier at this point? STEFAN MOODY: Probably just went over basic things, that they run, things they do. Q. You guys go from a team that was up-tempo to now a team that wants to slow it down and play a grind-it-out game. What do you guys have to do to dictate tempo and play at a speed that you guys are more comfortable with? M.J. RHETT: We've just going to stick to our principles and continue to do what we always do and prepare like we always prepare and then just come out and stick to our game plan. Q. M.J., when you guys came out in the second half, it seemed like you had a really strong sense that there's no such thing as a 17-point shot, and nobody sort of fired up initially, you made some things happen inside, the guys penetrated. Was that kind of the idea, that you guys wanted to establish something inside and then work it back out? M.J. RHETT: Yeah, that was our idea because our jump shots wasn't falling at first in the first half, and our defense wasn't on point in the first half. And we just had to turn up our urgency and everything in the second half, and we just pulled through. We got some stops, got momentum plays, and everything just worked out in our favor last night. Q. A lot of focus on this quick turnaround. After the win and in the fashion it was last night, coming back from 17 down, when you guys got back to the hotel, were you guys able to sleep or was it too much excitement? M.J. RHETT: Me, personally, it was hard for me to sleep. I was a little excited and just thinking about everything that happened, but I wound up going to sleep and getting some rest and woke up for breakfast this morning. Q. M.J., does Xavier remind you of any team that you have played thus far and what are your impressions of their front court? M.J. RHETT: We say they remind us of Georgia, similar team to Georgia, how they're set and what they run and how they play and their style of play, and we're just going to come out and execute and do the same thing we always do. Q. What do you think of the front court? M.J. RHETT: Man, those are big guys. We've got to come right tomorrow, come prepared. Q. Expectations for your offense, obviously a humongous second half Tuesday, but is that the kind of thing you want to showcase against Xavier? STEFAN MOODY: Well, just however the flow of the game starts. If it's knocking down a lot of threes, if it's attacking the paint, if it's getting fueled by our defensive stops, then we'll run off whichever that is. JARVIS SUMMERS: Basically we've just got to be aggressive and handle the game like Stefan Moody said. We've just got to just make shots, can't have a bad field goal percentage the first half like we did last game. But we're going to come out ready. Q. Jarvis, you had a strong second half on the glass. Andy joked after the game with some of the offensive struggles you had this season that he tried everything short of an exorcism to get you back on track. What are some of the things you did this year to try to get over some of those shooting struggles? JARVIS SUMMERS: Really can't say. You know, like I stay in the gym, get a lot of shots, but if my shot is not falling, I'm just trying to do whatever it takes to put my teammates in the right situation to be successful. As long as we're winning, that's all that matters. Q. Coming into the NCAA Tournament, losing four of your last five, how good is it to shake that streak and end the way you did it with the offensive struggles coming in, then scoring 62 points in the half? STEFAN MOODY: Well, it definitely feels great knowing that we can recover off of the losing streak that we were just on and keep our team rolling and keep positive vibes going through the team. M.J. RHETT: I feel like, even though we lost four out of the last five, we still was hungry, and we went to the SEC tournament, we had an upset, and we came to the NCAA Tournament. They selected us, and we just feel like we belong here, and we want to show people that we belong here, and we're hungry and we don't want to go home. Q. Stefan, a big offensive performance for you against BYU. Do you feel like you need to have that kind of game against Xavier? STEFAN MOODY: Well, yeah. I mean, the way I do that is it's fueled off my teammates. When we're all working together and playing hard on defense, getting defensive stops, it just turns up everything on our offense. Q. Can you just kind of talk about how much Todd has helped you this year and kind of what he's brought to the staff and kind of individual drills, that kind of stuff? STEFAN MOODY: Todd has been working us out since the summer. Todd is definitely a key piece in our organization. He's always helping us out, telling us what we're doing wrong and helping us get over some of the struggles that we've been through throughout the season because he's just a very positive person. Q. What's it like having a guy that played pretty recently and had a long career professionally in Europe, a guy that's done it, and not 35 years ago, being the guy that's kind of teaching you and guiding you along? STEFAN MOODY: Yeah, it's definitely easier being that he's been through it. The fact that he can still do it now, sometimes he gets on the court and plays with us a little bit, shows us some of the ropes and things. Todd is definitely a key piece. Q. Stefan, I know nobody wants to go down 17. You'd just as soon take the lead and hold it for good. But right now, emotionally draining or given the outcome, are you guys on an emotional high going into tomorrow? STEFAN MOODY: Well, it's definitely not emotionally draining. We're just going to roll off of how we played in the second half. Being that we can come back from a 17-point deficit, if we can just fix our first half performances and play better in the first half and keep our second half, because we're a second half team for the most part. So if we could just hold down our first half and come back in the second half and do what we do, we'll be fine. COACH ANDY KENNEDY: As we were talking off stage, it has been a whirlwind, not only from last night and walking out of UD arena at 12:30 and walking into our hotel around 4:30. But it's really even before that, seeing our name on the board as the last team that popped up on Sunday night, quick preparation for a very, very good BYU team, a team that was probably playing as well as anybody in the country coming into last night. Incredible game. We feel fortunate to have the opportunity to advance, and looking forward to our stay in Jacksonville. Q. What are the challenges of that short turnaround and the schedule being as messed up as it was? COACH ANDY KENNEDY: Well, for us, it's just about making sure that our guys are physically rested, not only the demands of the travel with such an emotional game, and we had to expend so much energy in order to come back. So we want to make sure our guys are rested physically because we know the challenge Xavier is going to present, rugged, not going to give you anything easy, a little bit different flow than what we faced last night. And we want to give them as much information as possible without bogging us down. We're going to be who we are; Xavier is going to be who they are. We've got to do a good job of imposing our will on the game like we were fortunate enough to do the second half last night. Q. Do you lighten up -- I know it's just a shoot-around out there, but do you go lighter than normal? COACH ANDY KENNEDY: Yeah, we'll just shoot the ball in the basket. We're not going to do a lot of -- literally, our guys probably laid their head down at 5:00, 6:00 a.m., so it's been a long day. We just want to get in the building, shoot the ball in. The disadvantage that we have per our opponent is obviously what we just described, the physical demands of what it's taken to get here. The advantage that we have is we have a win in this tournament. We just scored 62 points in a half. We just overcame a 17-point deficit, which is the biggest since 2007 in this tournament. We've got a lot of guys feeling pretty good about themselves. Q. You just touched on that. Prior to having the play-in system, the only teams coming off victories obviously, in the first round, were teams that won their conference tournament. Given that, what kind of effect is it going to be for your kids to have put that little losing streak behind them and go into this game coming off a victory? COACH ANDY KENNEDY: Well, it's a good point. We had not played our best down the stretch, specifically offensively. We had not been efficient whatsoever from a number of our key guys. Our All-League guy, the guy that scored 26 for us, Stefan Moody, last night, had been really struggling with his perimeter shot. So for him to play the way he did, for Jarvis, for Snoop, our big three, our front court to be as explosive as they were, I think it just gives us a renowned sense of possibility. We know, we've got five seniors, we understand that our next bad game will be our last game of the season. Our guys want to win. They want to play. Able to come back under the circumstances that we did last night gives this team a lot of hope. Q. Coach, your players have not played Xavier, but you know Xavier very well from your time at Cincinnati. Does that impact in any way your preparations just knowing their defense or the foundation of the program? COACH ANDY KENNEDY: What it does is it allows me to give our guys perspective, as you said. We didn't know a lot about BYU, either. I've got great respect for Chris Mack and the Xavier program. I have experienced that first hand, the tradition, the pride that goes into the building of that program. And I know from watching them, I'm a Basketball Jones, so I watch my friends, so I've seen them play casually throughout the course of the year and film study in the last 12 hours of trying to get up to speed. They're exactly what I thought they would be. They're not going to give you anything easy. They're very, very fundamentally sound on both sides of the ball. We've just got to do what we do, and that's be the aggressor, try to play downhill, try to be as disruptive as possible against a team that passes it as well as anybody in the country. They lead the Big East in assists, and they run a lot of things through the big guy inside, so we've got to do our work early because we have no one physically as large as him. And for us, it's just making sure that we do our best to take them out of their strengths. You never want to get beat with another team's strengths, and that's what our focus will be on in preparation for tomorrow afternoon's game. Q. This dreaded 5-12 game. You guys won as a 12 seed two years ago. I think 12 seeds are like 6 and 2. What is it about the 12 seed that they seem to have so much success against 5s? COACH ANDY KENNEDY: I think it's the nature of the bracket. Usually 12s are from a power conference, or 12s are from a league that has had excellent success, almost domination in their league. So a 12 is like we were two years ago, a team that has played against the big boys all year, or 12 is like Wofford who has dominated their league. They've had a lot of success. In order to get here, they've typically had to win games in the non-league against the Power Five. They're typically experienced, and I think that's what Arkansas will face tomorrow. Q. What kind of expectations do you have for Stefan Moody in this game? COACH ANDY KENNEDY: I hope he makes some shots. I know he's going to shoot a bunch. I'm going to do my best to make sure he shoots a bunch, and when he's making them -- he had some special moments last night where he truly carried us down the stretch when we needed to make baskets. We had no answer for them offensively. I don't know if I've ever seen a team as proficient as BYU in making threes. When I was watching it real-time, obviously I see things from a different perspective from my angle. When I watched the tape on the flight in here, man, they were making hard shots, and we allowed them to get into a rhythm, and we could just not get a stop. We could not get separation. So our only alternative if we wanted to keep playing was put pressure on them offensively, and I was glad we responded to that challenge. Q. Talk about that flight a little bit. Did people sleep? Were they too energized to sleep? Stefan said he watched a little tape on Xavier. Was that optional? What was that flight like? COACH ANDY KENNEDY: Dark, from our perspective. I had a chat with my daughter. Uneventful. You know, I know they need the plane, so we got in here and it is what it is. I think physically my guys are a little tired, but they're so excited about the opportunity. That's not going to be a factor tomorrow. We're going to just do the best that we can to give them the information that they need so that we can go into this thing not dead blind. Xavier obviously had to prepare, and I'm sure they're like everybody. I've got an assistant, Bill Armstrong, who did the BYU scout, did a great job. I've got an assistant, Todd Abernathy, that had Xavier. As soon as that game is over, Todd has been thinking about Xavier, so he's given it to me in portions that I can then weed out, and we're going to figure out what we're going to give our guys. Xavier had the same issue. They don't know who they're playing, either, so they've got one day prep for us, too. As I was saying earlier, the disadvantage is obviously the physical toll that it takes, but we put ourselves in that position by not playing as well down the stretch and having to play in the First Four, which I though -- I don't know about from y'all's perspective, I've never done that, but I thought was a very unique experience, exciting, very exciting as the kickoff to March Madness. And now we have the advantage of having won a game and having played awfully well, and quite frankly, catching the eye and the ear of the world of college basketball for one small segment. Q. Andy, you guys go from a team that loved to get up and down, BYU likes to play more in the half court, slow it down. Xavier, what do you have to do to dictate your tempo and play at the pace you're more comfortable with? COACH ANDY KENNEDY: You know, Xavier is second in the Big East in scoring. They score about the same rate we do. Transition D is honestly the first key on our board as it was last night. We've got to make sure that we get back in transition and not allow them to hurt us in the open floor because they're going to try to exploit that. We call it score early, score late. They advance the ball in transition even on makes, and then, if they don't have anything off the initial break, they're going to play through their big guy, and he's big. They list him seven-foot, 270. I've never seen him in person, but he looks big on tape. So they're going to play through him. We've go to do our work early, be able to score. You guys that have covered us, especially in that row, you know me, we change our looks. That was effective for us in the second half defensively, some of our trapping angles sped them up, we go 25-0 points off turnovers, which was the difference in the game. You can't change your defense if you can't score. First half we shot 30 some odd percent and we were giving BYU too much of a study diet, and they were just carving us up. We've got to be able to score early. Some of the guys that have struggled, made shots last night, feel pretty good about where we are moving forward, so I know they'll be excited about the challenge. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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