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NCAA MEN'S REGIONALS SEMIFINALS & FINALS: CLEVELAND

March 25, 2015

CLEVELAND, OHIO

MODERATOR: Coach Huggins joining us in the interview room.

Q. I know you've written several books about R basketball and they were hard come by immediately. One of them is actually called Press Breakers, as you know, so I guess if I had a copy of that book, what would it tell me about the secrets to breaking a press?
COACH HUGGINS: I don't remember. That was a long time ago, honestly, I don't remember what I wrote. I was bored, needed something to do. Honestly don't remember. I can't tell you.

Q. You and Coach Cal have known each other for a long time. I'm wondering what most do you respect about him?
COACH HUGGINS: That's a hard question. I think Cal has been able to -- he's more than a basketball coach. Somebody asked me what separates Cal from other coaches, and Cal and I have gone to Europe together and done a bunch of things. And I say, well, most other basketball coaches aren't getting on a plane and read U.S. News and World Report or Money Magazine or those kind of things. Cal is a very diverse guy and I think he's kept things, I think, in a very good perspective. He's a great family guy, just, and he's been a good friend.

Q. You've been coaching a long time, it's been a long journey. Talk about your year at Kansas State and anything that may stick out to you about anything professionally, personally in the year you were in Manhattan?
COACH HUGGINS: Well, I think the thing that sticks out the most is just how good of people there are there. It was amazing to me that virtually every day I was in the office, somebody came in and said, Coach, is there anything that we can do for you, is there any way we can help? I had never had that before. I mean, that's -- and just the people are so nice and it's such a great basketball state. Basketball means a lot in that state. I mean, I think at any given night they've got Wichita sold out. They've got K State sold out, and they've got Allen Fieldhouse sold out, and you can't say that about a lot of states, particularly a state where you don't have a lot of metropolitan areas. So I think the people, I think they're great people there. I've still got very dear friends there. I still stay in touch with the administration there, which is a change for me. I just said that for Doc's benefit. I think the people, I think the people are wonderful.

Q. Since you know Cal so well, Bob, can you share with us one Cal story that's suitable for print that might illustrate the kind of guy and coach that he is?
COACH HUGGINS: Wow. I mean, what comes to mind, and it's not great story, but Cal called me and said we're having this clinic and our numbers are down, can you come in and speak? And I think the great thing about Cal is every time I've asked him to do something for a charity cause or whatever, he's done it. And he had just come in, we had just done a roast and raised a bunch of money for the Cancer Center at West Virginia. He said will you come in, I said sure, I'll come in. What do you want me to do? He said just fly in, speak and fly out. So I get in there, what do you want me to talk about? He says 1-3-1, everybody wants to know how to beat the 1-3-1; they know I didn't figure it out so they want everybody to do it. And I didn't know very much about it, honestly. My players knew more about it than I did. So I told them what I knew about it. And Cal came out, he said now, tell them the story about my nephew. I said it was your cousin. He said no, it was my nephew. And that's the story when I had the heart attack. And how many people do that, though? You've got to have a lot of self-assurance to, you know, bring somebody in to talk about a 1-3-1. And the crazy thing about when they have a clinic in Kentucky, it's all their fans. There's more fans than there is coaches, you know. But that's Cal, he's been a very dear friend.

Q. Coach, can you recount that story about the heart attack for us?
COACH HUGGINS: Do I have to?

Q. I would love if you could.
COACH HUGGINS: I'm in Pittsburgh and I started sweating profusely. I'm walking to the terminal. I'm actually in the garage, I thought I left my GPS in the car. The lady in the rental car deal's having a very heated argument with someone on the other end of the line, so she's not paying much attention to me, and I'm sweating like crazy and I started getting short of breath, and so I thought I better get into the airport. And I made it as far as the sidewalk, and I passed out on the sidewalk. And to make a long story short, they scooped me up, put me in the ambulance and I'm in and out of consciousness, and they're pumping morphine into me, and there's a guy in the back with me obviously and I kind of came to and I said, how much further we got to go? You know how they do, they tap you on the leg, saying I've never lost a patient, you'll be fine. I said listen, I'm not some 90 year old lady, I know when I'm hurt, I've had quite a few things happen, of course, in my life, I'm not going to make it much longer. So he radios to the drivers and said what's the ETA. They said 22 minutes. I said man, I'm not making 22 minutes, so he said abort, abort, abort. And I'm passing out and coming back to. And the thing I noticed when I came back to, he was paying a lot better attention to me then. So I came to and I was fairly coherent at that time and he said, Coach, listen, I can't let you die, I'm John Calipari's cousin, and you can't die until we beat you at least once. So that's the story. Abbreviated version, but that's the story.

Q. Two questions. How did you and Cal come to be friends? And I know that the teams, both teams are obviously different but can you take any lessons from what you were able to do in 2010 for this game?
COACH HUGGINS: Yeah, if Cal promises to miss his first 20 3s like they did in 2010, that would help, if we could get him to do that. I've known John since he was in high school. I've played with one of John's high school teammates, a guy named Joe Frizz. Joe was a freshman when I was a senior, and I think John looked up to Joe as a player so he was around a little bit, so that's the first time I ever met him. I mean, we didn't know each other great then. But then over the years we've got to be very close. We kind of grew up kind of the same way in the same area and a lot of things in common that way.

Q. Can you just describe the risk/reward nature of your defense and how it matches up against this Kentucky team? I mean, do you feel like this defense really can create some tough problems for them?
COACH HUGGINS: I don't know. I hope so. It's going to be a long day for us if we can't. I guess the risk is sometimes we open up the floor, but any time you double team somebody, somebody's going to be open. I think the reward for us is we turn people over and sometimes at an alarming rate. And we've at times created live ball turnovers, which is really what we want, then we don't have to go play against a set defense, but I don't know. I mean, I have no idea whether we can turn them over or not.

Q. When you do try to press and turn them over like that, and they're five inches taller than you at every position, what challenges can that present in terms of their ability to maybe just simply play keepaway, throw it over top?
COACH HUGGINS: I don't know, I don't know what you do about that. I've thought about that, but I haven't really come up with an answer.

Q. When you look at the numbers, your field goal percentage are like .280, and defensively you're down, but you win, how much gratification do you get as a coach to have such a singular style that's so unusual?
COACH HUGGINS: Well, I did it because I like to win, I got tired of losing, and I just thought with the makeup of our team, that would be a way that we would have a chance to win. And I think everybody's heard by now, I ran into Kevin Mackey, and I think Kevin was the best teacher of the press maybe in the history of college basketball and Kevin and I have been friends for a long time and talked to Kevin and he came in to practice and talked before practice and after practice and we talked periodically on the phone, but he felt like we had the personnel we could do that. And my biggest concern was how much time is it going to take, that's one of the reasons I quit pressing in Cincinnati was just the time but we did it different at Cincinnati. He said, we have pretty much all the basic things that we need already in our half-court offense, we just need to extend it the length of the floor. Why do you want to give up real estate, basically. So it made -- I thought if he thought we could do it, then maybe we could do it.

Q. Bob, I wanted to ask you about Kevin. What is it about his system that works so well and why does it work with your group so well?
COACH HUGGINS: You know, I think it would work for a lot of groups, it's just a lot of guys I think have -- our field goal percentage defense is probably the highest that I've ever had. We pressed at Cincinnati, was more conservative so we could still keep the field goal percentage down. I mean, I'll give you an example. I think the Maryland game at halftime, they were shooting almost 55 percent and we were and he shooting like 33 and we're up by 1. So we give up some things. I think you have to, you have to be ready that once in a while, you know, there have been some games we've given up way too much, but that's I guess that's the risk and reward of it. But there are games we probably shouldn't have won, we won because we do that.

Q. Bob, I guess Tony Bennett won Coach of the Year from the basketball writers instead of John. Do you think John was deserving of that award or did it surprise you that John didn't win that award?
COACH HUGGINS: I mean, every year they have that award. There's a bunch of guys that really deserve to win it honestly. What Tony's done at Virginia is nothing short of remarkable. I have said I think with the job that John's done, it's not -- people think it's easy when you have all those players and it's hard because you have a whole bunch of guys that think they can take over a game and you have to get them to play together. What he's done with them defensively is terrific. I mean, they're really, really good defensively. But I thought John certainly could have won it but I can't say Tony shouldn't have, you know? There's a bunch of guys out there that have done a great job coaching.

Q. Can you explain what Juwan does for you guys as a leader? And you've had great leaders in the past, Bobby Brannan, guys like that. How much do you lean on that sort of player when you're fortunate enough to have someone like that?
COACH HUGGINS: I think there's a lot of things, Mike. I think Wanny has really tried to figure out what I want done and kind of when I want those things done. I mean, he studied film, he really has become a student of the game. I think guys that are athletic like him sometimes they rely on their athleticism, which probably he did early on but he's figured out that you can be a lot better when you can understand what's supposed to happen, so he's become a student of the game. I think he's really tried to think the way I do, and you know how hard that is, Mike. I mean, that's next to impossible. But he has tried to do that. And it works, you know, he puts time in. He's been such a great leader by example because he puts time in and he's a guy that loves being in a gym, who's in a gym all the time, and Gary's the same way. I've got two seniors that they're in the gym constantly, and when your senior leaders are in there, then I think everybody else has a tendency to follow. And probably another thing is his ball security. You know, when you look at his assist to turnover ratio, he doesn't turn the ball over, and I think we all saw how much we needed him at the end of games because of his ball security and Gary's the same way. And at the end of the day for the most part, they've made free throws down the stretch for us. So you've got a guy they can't take the ball from. You saw the Maryland game, they tried to trap him, you can't trap him. I mean, he's not trappable. So you've got a guy you can give the ball to that you feel really good that he's going to do something positive with it.

MODERATOR: We would like to thank Coach Huggins for joining us in the main interview room. We're joined by Juwan Staten, Gary Browne and Devin Williams. We're looking for questions for the student-athletes from West Virginia.

Q. For all three, can you talk about Jaysean Paige and what he brings to the team this year and kind of how he's been able to contribute to what you've been able to do?
JUWAN STATEN: The first thing he brings is toughness, he's a tough player, he plays extremely hard and he's a good scorer. He definitely brings scoring and a toughness to our team on the defensive end and that's something that we need with the way we play.

GARY BROWNE: Like Juwan said, he bring a lot of toughness, energy, athleticism, and he can score the ball. He's our best shooter so far.

DEVIN WILLIAMS: Yeah, he pretty much had it right, he's a big contributor to our defense and the way we play. He's a guy we know that's going to go all out with us.

Q. Juwan, press is what you guys do and what you do best. Are you confident that it's going to work against Kentucky?
JUWAN STATEN: Why wouldn't it? We've been playing this way all year, we've had success against everybody no matter what style or what type of players they have. That's the only way we play and it's just up to us to make it work.

Q. Juwan, with the way you guys press is there a point in some of these games where you can kind of see the other team is starting to lose steam and sort of run out of gas; is there a point where you kind of feel like "we got 'em"?
JUWAN STATEN: Definitely. I think it takes place in the second half. In the first half everybody is, you know, everybody's pumped up and they're thinking that they're breaking our press and having success, but they don't realize that they using more energy than they probably used all student-athletes. So in the second half when they have got to come out and try to do that same thing for 20 minutes and they don't have their legs or they're a little tired, then they start to have that effect on them and that's when we try to get even more aggressive on defense.

Q. For Gary, what is the confidence level that their guards might be vulnerable to your press?
GARY BROWNE: I mean, everybody that we play, their guards, they can break the press -- I mean at the beginning of the first half they might be making good decisions but then they don't realize they don't have enough depth on their bench and the second half is going to catch up. Sometime during the game we can see it. We get real excited when things like that happen. I feel like the whole bench, the whole team can realize that and that's when we know, we go harder and more aggressive.

Q. For all three of you, all three of you look pretty fresh. The other day coach was talking about the travel and playing late games and having a quick turnaround. How did you guys deal with that? Did you have to get extra sleep or did it really affect you? You're used to it.
JUWAN STATEN: Well, we haven't had this quick of a turn around probably since we played in Puerto Rico. So that took a little getting used to, but we haven't been going too hard in practice, just doing a lot of, you know, not too much strenuous work, a lot of mental work. So just about getting our rest and getting with the trainers and preparing our body.

GARY BROWNE: What he said, and also I mean, we young guys, we not that old, you know? We only need a little bit of a nap, a 30 minute nap and we be good to go. But at the same time we so focused on what we want that all we need is just a little bit of rest.

DEVIN WILLIAMS: I think playing in a conference we're playing in has really prepared us and like he says, it's what we want. We could be tired later, you know, when we done doing what we got to do. You know, it's what we want, so I at the end of the day it ain't no tired, it's go hard or go home.

Q. For the two seniors, you guys, you talked after the last game, you feel like the whole world except for West Virginia thinks that Kentucky's going to win this game. What has the support been like back home from the fans and as you get ready for this game and really all the momentum starts to come toward you and cheers you on?
JUWAN STATEN: First, let me correct myself, last time I said 1.2. I got a lot of tweets from the fans. It's 1.85 million in West Virginia. So my bad for leaving those guys out. It's just been great just to see their support, they're tweeting us, they're writing stuff to us, they're on our Instagram, and just telling us how much they appreciate us, win or lose, but they just behind us a hundred percent and we appreciate it.

GARY BROWNE: Definitely, just like he said, we've been getting support through the whole season. Not just this game, they've been there through thick and thin. And not only this season, the last two seasons they've been there with us as well. We just appreciate what they do for us, but at the same time, we know what we want and what they want so we trying to reach that.

Q. The other day somebody asked Bob Huggins if he was scared of this match-up, and I know that obviously he said no, I would believe that all of you would say no, too. But what is it about this team, Devin, if we could ask this to you, about this team that you go into a match-up like this and there is no fear, you are that confident that you can come away with a victory?
DEVIN WILLIAMS: I don't really know how to answer that question, but you know we've been doubted the whole season. We weren't supposed to be here two weeks ago, to be honest. That kind of goes out, everybody already had their bracket made as far as what was going to happen and how it was going to happen. You know, that's just a feeling in the boat right there as far as what we trying to do. You know, honestly, tomorrow, we need to go out and have fun and just be together. That's the most important part is going out there and having fun because at the end of the day, it's really just about us going out there and just competing as hard as we can and just going out and having fun and soaking up the moment.

Q. Do you guys believe that you're the best conditioned team on the floor no matter who you play, and how does that help with your confidence?
JUWAN STATEN: We have to be the best conditioned team, you know. We practice three hours every day, and the same way that you see us playing on the court is the way that we practice. So, you know, other teams get tired, and we keep going. I think that question answers itself.

GARY BROWNE: Just like I got people from back home asking me how good is the press. I tell them, yeah, it's good because we press every day, we press at practice, we press at shootaround, and that's the only way we get better at it. I feel like we don't get tired because we have 13 guys, we might not have the best five guys, like Coach said, but we have the best 13 guys, that's why it's hard for us to get tired.

DEVIN WILLIAMS: I just wanted to say Andy, you know, he's been preparing us all summer, definitely since I got there, you could see the progression from the first year I got here as far as my conditioning until now. You know, it's been a lot of days where it it's just like what's this for, but you know, now we see the reason the way we go and the reason the way our coaches and our conditioning coach pushing the way he do because I don't know if it's a lot of teams, you know, wake up the way we do and train the way we do. That's really part of what we doing now. Yeah, I want to give a shout-out to him.

Q. On the subject you're dealing with Kentucky's size but maybe a little bit more narrowly, I was wondering if you could discuss this a little, kicking jump balls. You're very good at it. Kentucky's the best at it. Is this something you practice, is this something you think about going up against Carl, and just one initial thing and then the possession era, but at the same time do you take pride and you're really competitive about winning jump balls?
DEVIN WILLIAMS: That's just our effort right there. They probably be the best at it, that just because they want it. So at the end of the day, from whatever we do to taking charge to diving on the floor to getting the jump ball, they're just all going to come down, you know, who want it. Yeah, just going to come down to who really wants it.

Q. Juwan, Coach was talking about your leadership, he said that you've tried to learn how to think like him and he said that's not an easy thing to do. How hard has it been to learn to think like Hugs?
JUWAN STATEN: It took me three years because just when you think you've got him figured out, he comes with something else. It just takes, like Devin says, how bad do you want it, how bad do you want to be a good player, how bad do you want to be a leader. If you want it bad enough, you never stop until you get that approval. Just watching film, listening to the things that he says the most, and trying to reiterate that to my teammates, and just trying to be more like him. And if that means just studying him when he's not watching, seeing how he reacts to certain plays or seeing how he reacts to things that happen on the court, and then mimicking it. Whatever it takes to be a replica of the coach.

Q. Juwan, five years ago there was a West Virginia team that beat a Kentucky team that had, I think, five first rounders in the lineup. Totally different cast, I understand, but is there any relevance to you, have people talked to you about the fact that it did happen?
JUWAN STATEN: Yeah, that's all we've been hearing all week, is the team that beat that team in 2010, but the reality is we play two different styles. That team had a lot of size and they played a slower down game. But we're going to be in your face and we're going to be pressing. Ultimately that doesn't mean anything but it gives us a loft of motivation and a lot of confidence.

MODERATOR: We would like to thank the student-athletes from West Virginia for joining us here in the main interview room.
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