|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: PORTLANDMarch 21, 2015Larry KrystkowiakJakob PoeltlBrandon TaylorDelon WrightPORTLAND, OREGON UTAH - 75 COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Just a little bit surreal at this point. I thought our guys, it's tremendous, we got down 10 or 12 points early in the game and it wasn't looking good. They hit a bunch of threes. We came out of the locker room a little bit sluggish. A little perseverance and managed to tie it up at halftime. We had a couple of goals in the game which we managed to gain, which were less than 10 turnovers, as we turned it over against Stephen F. Austin so much last night. Our goal was less than 10. I wrote it on the board. For us to get nine turnovers I thought was huge. We also out-rebounded them by a couple of rebounds. Key points to the game that I thought really kept us in it. So pleased to be here and ready to rock'n roll with some questions. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Brandon, to get to this point, what it's like for the program? BRANDON TAYLOR: Like coach said, it's surreal. It's a feeling I've never felt before. I'm just super proud and I'm happy for our team. You know, we worked so hard in the summertime. We've worked so hard. To be rewarded like how we are right now, going on to the Sweet 16, it's just amazing. It's an amazing feeling. It feels good. Q. Brandon, at the beginning of the season, did you imagine that something like this would happen to you guys? BRANDON TAYLOR: I knew we were due at the beginning of the season. I just didn't know how the feeling would be. But I definitely envisioned it. I seen it. I seen it 'cause I think we have the right personnel. We put the work in. You know, we put the work in. I just couldn't imagine the feeling. If you never experienced something, you couldn't really imagine it until you really be a part of it. So to experience it now, just I'm lost for words honestly. Q. Delon, what was it like for you to know this could potentially be your last game, but now have the opportunity to go to the Sweet 16 and continue to prove how talented you guys are? DELON WRIGHT: I just try not to think about it not being my last game. I did think about it sometimes, this could be my last half. But I had faith that we were going to come together and, you know, play better in the second half, which we did. We were able to get the win. Q. Brandon, you shot incredibly well throughout the night. How were you able to do that? What were the keys there? BRANDON TAYLOR: Taking great shots. Taking good shots. With this team, we take pride in taking good shots. When we take good shots, they tend to fall in. Sometimes they don't. You know, but our motto is really the next play, moving on to the next play. If shots aren't falling, we have to lock down defensively and we know that the rim will open up sooner or later. Q. Jakob, how difficult was it to matchup with Joshua Smith and some of the other bigs that they had? JAKOB POELTL: Well, it is obviously pretty hard. He's a really big dude. It's hard to move around in the paint. But I tried my best. I tried to use my advantages against him, like my quickness, try to be tall and do my best. Q. Delon, what are your thoughts on the PAC-12 being so successful this tournament? DELON WRIGHT: You know, it's good to see that everyone's doing well. I don't think that people across the country respect the PAC-12 like they should be. But I hope that everybody does well, you know, and continues to do well. Q. Delon, I was wondering, obviously you thought about going to the NBA. What does it mean to you to come back and get far in this tournament, do something memorable? DELON WRIGHT: It means a lot. You know, if I would have left, I wouldn't have gotten this opportunity to come back and play in the NCAA tournament. Now that I'm here, we're going to the Sweet 16, it makes me more happy with my decision. And I just couldn't be more happy with the team's success. Q. Delon, Dallin told us a few years ago when he was being recruited, you were going to the Sweet 16, he would have laughed in your face. Did you have a similar reaction when you were being recruited and coach was talking about the future? DELON WRIGHT: No, I wouldn't have laughed. I think I had a lot of trust in our coaching staff doing a good job recruiting, just trusting our team. I think that we're doing really well and we want to continue to do well. So that's pretty much it. Q. Delon, can you explain your mindset for how you decide when to look for your own shot and when to set up stuff for your teammates. DELON WRIGHT: I don't know. I never really think about it. I kind of think about just attacking. I kind of read the defense. If they're coming to me, I try to, you know, bait them into coming to me so I can dish it off to a teammate. If they kind of stay to one of my teammates, I'll kind of take my shot. It's kind of playing a mind game with the defense. Q. Do you ever hear that you're too unselfish? DELON WRIGHT: Yeah, I hear that a lot. A lot of people tell me. The team is doing well with me being like that, so sometimes I just have to continue doing that. Q. Brandon, yesterday you said this tournament was business for you. What is your business plan moving forward? BRANDON TAYLOR: Our business plan? Uhm, getting back home and getting some rest first. Resting up and taking care of our bodies, jumping back into practice and preparing for either San Diego State or Duke. They're two great teams and well respected around the country. And we know we have to come dialed in and hopefully get a win and go to Houston and get a win in Houston. Q. Brandon, we saw you take some pretty deep threes today. How was your confidence in your shot, especially after SFA, a tough game there? BRANDON TAYLOR: Sometimes I kind of get in my head a little bit. If the first shot or the first two shots don't go in, I tend to psych myself out, start thinking about the next shots, probably going to miss that next shot, then start shooting myself out of the game. I don't think I did that this game. I think I passed up some looks. My coaches just told me, Shoot open shots and have confidence. My coaches have all the confidence in the world in me shooting. That's just something I'm going to have to continue to do. Q. If San Diego State were to beat Duke, would you desire that rematch or would you look at wanting to take down the number one seed? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Sounds like a locker room fodder question to me. You trying to set us up (smiling)? We want to play San Diego State so bad. How is that? (Smiling). It's a no win. It's impossible to answer. I will say this. Number one, you better be careful what you wish for. Both of those teams are tremendous. We talk a lot about rebounding. I wrote San Diego State on the board because we had a rebounding focus when we went into San Diego State, actually out-rebounded them, which not many teams do. I wanted our players to remember that kind of focus we had on the glass. I said it would be ironic, but if we took care of business here, we might get the chance. Honored to play either one. I'm not going to let any of the three answer that question, so... Q. Talk about what was going through your minds when you fell behind 21-10. Was there an emphasis to defend the three better? DELON WRIGHT: I think that's the way basketball goes. If you're hot the first half, chances are you're not going to be shooting that well in the second half. Coaches told us to continue the game plan on the guys making shots today or the guys we wanted to, pretty much. We wanted them to continue shooting the ball, because that's not really their game. It played out how it did. Q. Larry, is that your best, when you think Delon is being as unselfish as he often is, or are there times as a coach when you have to encourage him to look for his own shot a little bit more? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: I think he actually has the knack that's not very coachable in terms of his feel. We were at Kansas, for example, he kind of put us on his back, brought us back from a 20-point halftime deficit, 22-point halftime deficit. He attacked, he attacked, he attacked. I think in that game, Kansas was very aware of our shooters and there was an open lane. He does a very good job. I think there's times he gets fouled that we don't get some of those calls. That's the only thing that keeps it from being perfect. I love having the ball in his hands, pick'n roll specifically. Tonight, the five men, that was one of the attacks we wanted to use, have our five men set pick'n rolls. We set the floor and let him go and make some plays. The majority of the time I think he makes the right decision. Q. Jakob, obviously you had some foul trouble tonight. Any sort of satisfaction seeing Dallin have a comeback game after sitting out the last one? JAKOB POELTL: That's just the beauty of our team. It doesn't really matter who is out there playing. I'm just really glad we got the win tonight. With our team having three fives who can really play any NCAA Division I team, if I'm in foul trouble, I know that Dallin or Jeremy is going to come in and step up for us. That's just great to know, having in the back of your mind. THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you very much. We'll open it up for questions for coach. Q. You took 38 shots from the field in both of your wins here. Opponents took 30 more shots than you, yet you won both of them. Is it a plan to keep the game slow? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: No, to me it's not ever a plan that we're going to -- tonight we did talk about speeding the tempo up and getting up and down the floor. We're not a high offensive rebounding team, so we probably have less shots than most opponents just based on that fact. But we don't give up any defensive points either. We like to get our guys back to defend in transition. But I think the key is efficiency. Offensive points per possession is a stat that we look at. As Brandon said, we really stress taking good shots. We look at film after the game, do a defensive edit, an offensive edit and we grade every one of our shots. It's something that's tallied and kept in our locker room. As the year goes on, there's a five. We put a value on every shot from one to five. A five is a shot that we're seeking. We don't take many threes or twos or ones. We might take some fours, shot clock situations and stuff. It's not a pace thing for us. I think it's kind of trying to take what the defense gives you. You know, sometimes I think with our style of play, if our defense is good, there may be a few offensive rebounds to be had, so there's more of a shot volume that way, too. But never a plan as far as slowing the game down. I'd actually like to get our guys playing a little bit faster. Q. In the final few minutes of that game you were being praised on Twitter and TV for your quick turnaround. Did it feel quick to you over the last few years? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: No. The way I got it figured out, it's about 1500 days. 1300 days, 1500 days. It's nice to hear that. We were in the middle of something. I think you asked the question earlier would we ever imagined that we were in the Sweet 16. Q. Dallin said he would have laughed. COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: I probably would have done the same thing. To answer that question in my way would be from the very first day I was involved there, the questions were asked, How many games is going to be the goal? What's going to make it a successful year? That question is constantly asked. Part of our culture with our basketball team, and I just talked to our team about it, is the year that we won six games, we approached every practice, prepared as though we were going to win a championship. It's just a grind-it-out. I've always said you kind of take care of whatever list is on your desk that particular day. You try to fix what's broken. You wake up the next morning and you do it again and you do it again. Then after 1400 days you hope that the graph is trending upwards. I said that four years ago. I've always lived that way as a player in anything that I do. You never want to set lofty goals. I never dreamed of playing in the NBA. I never talked about it or thought about it until I was there. I got to figure out a way to get a little bit better each day. I think our kids have really latched on to that concept. Now we look around and it's like, Pinch me. Here we are. It's been a fun run with a lot of these guys that have been a part of it. Q. What enabled your guys to thrive down the stretch tonight in a tight game? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, I think it's multifaceted a little bit. Our defense was really good. Smith-Rivera is a kid that makes three threes a game all year long. Brandon and our guys, Isaiah, Delon, did a heck of a job. For him to go 0-7 from three is a key ingredient. In the scouting report, we weren't hoping they'd make 'em. That's how the game started, with the five threes. There were a couple guys that that was kind of what we were giving up. I told our guys, Let's just stay with the game plan. Don't panic. I've been in a lot of games. I actually mentioned it in the timeout, that start that way, where you're down 12 points. There gets a little bit of a complacency on an opponent's part. A lot of momentum that takes place. We managed to do that. It was all based on the fact that we got stops. That was the main thing I thought, that we managed to defend, get out. We were pretty efficient on the offensive end with our percentages. I think the other thing is you can't overlook, when threes start going in, it makes the darn game pretty easy. All of a sudden Jordan hits one, Brandon hits a couple. At the end of the day that's what it comes down to. That's when the score starts to separate a little bit or we caught up. I thought we were really efficient to not turn it over more than double-digit times and shooting the percentages, that combined with that defensive effort I thought was the key. Q. The portion of practice that we were in on Monday, it seemed like you were having a lot of positive feedback or communication with your team as they were going through the defensive drills. Was that a calculated message on your behalf to make sure their confidence was up coming into this tournament? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: I always think it's a fine line between confidence and work. I think the kids coming off the Oregon game, get a feel for it, how they respond. We could win, lose, doesn't make any difference. This team, I told them in the locker room after the game, there's not a team in America that responds this way. When we had a nice little run, we were ranked in the top 10 in the early part of the season, your fear as a coach is that you're going to show up at practice and everybody is playing grab-ass, it's hard to keep them focused. You wouldn't know at any point during this season what our record is. They've come to work start to finish. I sensed maybe Monday morning, we had some guys that were down a little bit. We had taken a couple days off. We needed a little pick-me-up. We didn't play the game against Oregon we wanted. But we still weren't that far away. A combination. You just have to sense that. Sometimes they need a kick in the butt, sometimes you need to pick them up and help them out. The portion of practice you were there, we were probably in the pick-'em-up mode. Q. Jakob spoke to this, but what kind of luxury is it to have such depth at the center position to overcome foul trouble there? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, it's huge. We've talked about that since day one with our team. There's a lot of guys that maybe don't play as many minutes as they could be elsewhere. You look at Thursday night's game with Stephen F. Austin. We didn't really need a five. Jakob had a tremendous game, but it was hard to match up against that team because they didn't have a post player. Everybody played on the perimeter. We had an opportunity to play a little bit smaller. You go into a game like tonight. I told Dallin about it on Friday. This is a different weight class, this Georgetown team. We're going to need some big bodies. I'm happy for Dallin. He sprained his ankle Monday, missed a couple days of practice, didn't play Thursday, and for him to come out, he was almost our sixth guy in double figures. To have six guys, if Dallin could make one more free throw, all of a sudden we've got six guys in double figures. To me that's kind of the essence of a team. We've talked about it all year. It's nice to see it come to fruition here at the right time. Q. The PAC-12 has been raked over the coals this year. A lot of people think it's a bad league, down year. Now they're 7-0 the first few days in the tournament. What can this do for you recruiting nationally? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: That's a great question. But what else is new? Before I was even a part of this league, I can remember when it was the PAC-10 and I was involved with that because I was a western guy. I knew there was quality opponents. There were years when the PAC-12, you know, was down and out, then all of a sudden you look up and there's three teams in the Elite 8, four teams in the Sweet 16. So we know the brand of basketball that we play. Oftentimes we're judged on how Arizona and UCLA do. This year Arizona's been tremendous. Maybe UCLA a little blip. But they've got some things worked out now. I looked at our league and say, Okay, other than Arizona this year, a lot of people took turns beating the crap out of each other. That seems to be acceptable in other leagues. The strength of schedule and everything just stays elevated. But it validates what we're doing. I don't think we play with a chip on our shoulder. A lot of it's matchups. You got to catch your break at the right time. It speaks volumes for how our league is, the fact that the last NCAA at this point, I think even our teams in the NIT are doing quite well. We know within it's a pretty darn good brand of basketball. Q. It has to be asked. How much sweet grass are you bringing to the Sweet 16? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, I almost got in trouble back there 'cause the smoke alarms got a little carried away tonight. It works in the Huntsman Center because I think all our smoke alarms are broken (laughter). You get into some of these venues, I probably need to leave it at home. I lit it up tonight before the game. It doesn't take much. It doesn't take much at all. Q. I know you were talking about how sort of that stretch where you struggled a little bit was road heavy, playing some good teams. Do you think these guys took some of these lessons from the late-season struggles and brought it into the tournament this week? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: I said that exact thing the last couple weeks in our press conferences. I know you heard it roll off my tongue. As a coach, you never want to say, I'm glad we lost. But the fact of the matter was there was a point in our season I think we were 23-4, something like that, give or take a game, don't quote me on it, then finished the season off 4-4. Maybe we were 21-4 or something. As a coach, you always want to keep your guys on edge and you want to be able to validate. We've been talking all year long about the little things. Then we go on the road, it was the Washington game that we lost, really sloppy, had a different set of errors that we made in that one. The Oregon game was the same kind of scenario. Our home game against Arizona, which we missed a free throw blockout, some pretty simple little things, then finished the game off against Oregon. I do know we had our guys' attention. You have to experience those losses and maybe feel some of that pain before you can really clamp down. I think the last week, even the week leading up to Vegas, was good. I mean, I noticed a different focus in our guys' eyes, and they realized because all of a sudden they'd experienced what it felt like when you miss a free throw blockout or they experienced what it was like when you screwed an out-of-bounds play up and it cost you a three at Oregon. It helps the coach validate those things. I mentioned it to our fellows after Vegas, that exact question. I posed it in a statement that, you know, there are no little things. We made a number of different mistakes over the course of the year. Let's put it together now and play more solid. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much. COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Thanks. 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
|