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NCAA MEN'S REGIONALS SEMIFINALS & FINALS: LOS ANGELESMarch 25, 2015Sam DekkerNigel HayesFrank KaminskyBo RyanLOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA THE MODERATOR: Nigel, we'd like to know if you have anything you'd like to say to our stenographers just to start things off? NIGEL HAYES: Syzygy. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Frank, what makes Brice Johnson unique among the other big men that your team has faced? And what kind of problems does he Pose that other players in his position might not? FRANK KAMINSKY: Well, his combination of size and athleticism isn't very common in college basketball. You know, he does a great job of attacking the glass, getting things done inside. He's a match-up problem. We know that going into the game. They've got a lot of great players on their team. He's not going to be easy to stop, but hopefully we do well defensively and can take some things away from him that he doesn't like to do. Q. Frank, speaking of match-ups, you actually are a match-up problem as well with the versatility that you have in your game. How do you stay focused and not worry about who is going to defend who and just help your team? FRANK KAMINSKY: Our coaches do a great job of telling us what's going to happen with scouting reports and their tendencies and what they do defensively and offensively before the game. So just listening to what our coaches say and trying to use the template that they give us for the game. If something changes along the way, we'll make adjustments. But we have a pretty good idea of what to expect going into the game barring something crazy happens, I think we'll be ready for whatever. Q. Frank, during the tournament the timeouts are a little bit longer than they are during the regular season and then sometimes they're coming on the heels of a previous dead ball, so you guys are really on the bench for a while. I'm just wondering do you see a noticeable energy shift when you guys are in that kind of situation? Is the momentum harder to sustain than it is, you know, when you're just out there that long? Does coach kind of run out of material to talk about during those timeouts? FRANK KAMINSKY: Well, when you're playing well and you're on a run and those timeouts happen, you obviously don't like it because you want to keep that run going as long as possible. But sometimes it can be great because you do get a rest during the middle of the game. A couple minutes here and there is never a bad thing. Coach does sometimes run out of things to say. But when we have those double medias back-to-back, that's like five minutes of sitting there. So we try to talk amongst ourselves and try to figure out what we need to do on the court. But like I said, sometimes it's not fun, and sometimes it's good to get a rest. SAM DEKKER: Well, in this tournament those are really boring, like a minute is long enough. I feel like we can get a lot of stuff done in a minute. But these are like two minutes long. I don't understand why they're so long. But, yeah, sometimes coach just kind of sits there and looks at us and we don't really know what to say. Yeah, but sometimes they're back-to-back, which gets really long. But other than that, it's fine. Q. Does that give Nigel more time to come up with words? NIGEL HAYES: No. Q. Frank, before Wisconsin arrived on the scene and offered, who was recruiting you and how did you feel about your prospects at that point? FRANK KAMINSKY: There were a lot of mid-major schools in Illinois. I hadn't really had much contact with any big programs. Wisconsin was really the first one. I just wanted to go to a school where I knew I would fit in and play, and obviously Wisconsin was the right choice from the start. And it seems to be the best option when I look back at it, and it definitely has turned out to be more than I expected. Not very many schools had a lot of faith in me. When I was getting recruited, Wisconsin was the first one, and I can't be more grateful to the university for that. Q. I'm curious how Traevon looked in practice the past few days? And more to the point, how difficult is it to reincorporate a point guard who has been out for as long as he has? FRANK KAMINSKY: Trae's looking more and more comfortable. It's not easy missing seven or eight weeks in a row during the middle of the season, especially when he couldn't put much pressure on his foot. Jumpshot is a little different. He's the kind of guy that's been working hard to get back into the position where he can play again, and it's nice to see him back out on the court and enjoying it. Q. Reincorporating the point guard? NIGEL HAYES: No, I don't think it's difficult at all. Trae is mentally tough. He's been doing a great job keeping up with his cardio, and making sure that when he's able to play again, his wind will be where it's supposed to be at. He's a veteran guard, and I think that once he starts playing again, he'll segue into things extremely well. Q. I'd like Frank and Nigel to address this, please. There's been a lot of talk about compensation in college athletics these days, especially on the football side. But just wondering, do you guys feel that the scholarships you get that you're compensated accordingly? How tough is it for you to pay bills and buy books and just handle things with the scholarship money alone? NIGEL HAYES: I'm just happy that I'm able to participate in college sports. It's a privilege that not many students or not many people get the chance to do, and I'm very honored and humbled that I can. SAM DEKKER: It's kind of a lose-lose question, so I'll let it be. Q. Los Angeles has a very rich history of centers from Bill Walton to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Shaquille O'Neal. How awesome is it for you to be able to showcase your talents here at Staples Center? FRANK KAMINSKY: It's awesome being out in LA. I've never been here before. It's a cool place. It's got a lot of history with basketball players. So just walking through the arena, seeing all the players on the wall, Kobe, Kareem, Wilt, all those guys, it's cool to be in the same building that they played in. Q. Sam, could you tell us a little bit about your relationship with J.P., and what you're thinking on the eve of going against him? SAM DEKKER: Well, J.P.'s a good friend of mine. I played AAU with him for four years, so we built a pretty good relationship. And Bronson Koenig, our point guard, is also on that team. So we all know each other really well and our families get along great. Can't tell you the amount of time I've spent with them. So it's exciting to go up against him and be on the same court as him again. Obviously, one of the best athletes I've ever played with and still ever watch. The stuff he does is pretty ridiculous. So just excited to get out there with him. We've talked a little bit this week. We're excited to play, and I'm sure we'll be talking a little bit on the court and just some good banter. But, yeah, it's going to be fun to be out there with him again, but it will be different because we're opposing sides. Q. Frank, saw that you got to meet Will Ferrell yesterday, the old Frank the Tank. How was it getting to meet Will? FRANK KAMINSKY: It was cool. THE MODERATOR: Did he say anything to you? FRANK KAMINSKY: No, he said he's cheering for North Carolina because he's got family from there, which was obviously a little disappointing. But when you meet one of your idols, comedic idols, it's cool. I jumped at the opportunity to do it, and I'm really grateful that I was given the opportunity to do so. Q. Nigel, you took a pretty big leap from year one to year two. What's some of the stuff you've worked on in the off-season to really improve your game? NIGEL HAYES: I've just tried to improve my shooting ability, ball-handling ability, and overall ability as a player, free-throw ability, defensive prowess, pretty much everything. It's allowed me to do better things this year, and I'm just happy that I'm able to play with Player of the Year and two NBA draft picks. So when I'm out there on the court, I'm just happy I can pass those guys the ball. Q. Not getting too far ahead, but the fact that you like playing in Los Angeles, could you see at some point playing your professional career if possible here in LA? FRANK KAMINSKY: If I'm given the opportunity I obviously would not say no. This is a great place, like I said. There is a lot of rich history here, and to be a part of that culture would be a cool thing. THE MODERATOR: Coach Ryan, an opening statement, please? COACH RYAN: Well, feels like we're back home. The gentleman that escorted me around last year in Anaheim greeted me today and is escorting us today. Then who do I run into but Sean Miller. And I'm like, Wait a minute. Weren't we just doing this a year ago? So, anyhow, we feel at home. It was nice to get to LA Monday night and get settled in, try to get used to the time zone here. So what's on your minds? Q. Howard Moore was saying he thinks in some ways Frank Kaminsky represents what you guys try to do in recruiting and what you have done in recruiting? I wonder if you can address that and talk about your principles or philosophy regarding recruiting in general? COACH RYAN: Howard Moore like the Howard Moore that coached with me and played at Wisconsin? He gets it right one time in recruiting, and he thinks he's a guru now on recruiting, come on (smiling). No, I talked to Howard yesterday. You know, we're looking for guys who have more questions than answers, who can experience what Wisconsin has to offer academically, socially, athletically, and people who will be good in the locker room with teammates, people who will buy in to a philosophy of if we do things together, we could be really good. But if you improve yourself individually, you could make the team a lot better. So in recruiting we've gone after a lot of players who have kind of said no, and we've recruited players that have said yes. I think the ones that have said yes, there haven't been too many where I've received a letter that they said they didn't enjoy their experience. So we're just looking for guys who are willing to play on a good team, competitive team, that are disciplined, understand my philosophy of efficiency on offense and stinginess on defense, and are willing to buy in. Frank is one of those guys that we knew right away he was our kind of guy. He could pass. He was never satisfied with things. He would get down a little bit because he felt he was better, so therefore he did something about it. Instead of moping, he practiced harder, he worked harder, and he's very bright. The fact that the day he said he was coming back, I know that was a big relief to his teammates who helped set up what we've been doing this year. I think that was the catalyst, him coming back. Q. Coach, I'm curious what goes into your side of the decision whether Traevon plays, and how do you reincorporate a point guard into everything? Is it easy, just like that? COACH RYAN: Well, he was a starting point guard. His record was pretty good as a point guard. Patrick probably has the numbers memorized, so we know what he can do. He was on the floor last year with Bronson Koenig when Bronson played a little bit and a 1 and at times Trae would go to the 2. It's not rocket science on what a 1 does or a 2 does. Defensively Trae became one of the better defensive guards in the Big Ten. So we had to find that when he went out with the injury. But here we're talking about somebody who had a few possessions yesterday. We'll see what he gets in today, but you don't see me agonizing over it. But if he's physically capable of being on the court, he deserves some time because I'm going to reward him for working so hard in the rehab and getting back because he deserves it. Now how many possessions or how many trips up and down the court, that remains to be seen. But no one is agonizing about it over here. Q. Bo, during the tournament the timeouts are slightly longer than the regular season, and sometimes they come on the heels of like a media timeout, so then you're really on the bench for a while. Just wondering how you handle that in terms of do you have enough material to keep talking to your guys? Do you just sit back and let them catch their wind? Do you feel the timeouts are too long? COACH RYAN: No, I do not feel now, this year, that the timeouts are too long. You have to understand when I played, I played 40 minutes, and if I came out of the game, I was extremely upset. There were no media timeouts. So you just played. You know, your sitting pulse is like at 42, you're in great condition, you just run all day. So what I did was I had my video guy with some managers break down some games, three or four games. If I asked you during the course of the game, if it was a hundred-minute game, how many minutes of that hundred minutes were your guys actually moving on the court? And take into consideration it could be guarding the ball out of bounds, which means the clock is not running, so I even had them take that into account. How much of the time do you think players are actually moving? Q. 45 minutes? COACH RYAN: It's like 36% to 39% because of the timeouts. And what we didn't have also, because you can tell with the gray hair, I was in the '60s when I played, do you think they had any monitor checks in the '60s? They hadn't invented a monitor yet. So we have all these stoppages of play, and you have X-number of seconds to get a player that shows some blood. In the old days, if there was blood, you just played. So there are all these stoppages. I actually believe that I could play five guys for 40 minutes in this day and age. I really do. And when I said this year, because the bench has been a little short. So I wanted to find out for my own peace of mind, how much time my guys were actually working on the floor, and it's not as much as I thought, which is good. So it's worked out okay. Some teams are a lot deeper than we are, but the timeouts for us this year are very welcomed. Q. You guys are the fourth most efficient defensive rebounding team in the country. How important is that going to be against the big North Carolina front line? Is that something you guys really focus on in practice? COACH RYAN: Well, it's always important. We always talk about limiting teams to one shot for one simple reason. I was keeping points per possession when I coached in junior high school in the '70s. All of a sudden, it's become a big statistic now and we just chuckle, the guys that have known me for years. Hey, Bo, I think you were on to something there with those points per possession. No kidding. So what I'm getting at to answer is if you give up only one shot, you think your points per possession defensively are going to turn out to be pretty good? Absolutely. So, yes, we do work on that. We keep track. If we don't get ten or more points every ten possessions, we run. If another team gets more than ten points or same thing, if they give up and we don't make the scout team run though. We don't make the bench run. But it's under 10 that we're giving it up, and it's over 10 that we need to get. So, yes, it is emphasized in practice. Q. You've always taken great pride in the success of your players in the classroom and what they've done. I wonder what your reaction was to an article today in Boston that cited some NCAA numbers that said yours was the last of the 16 teams remaining in graduation rate? COACH RYAN: If it's Federal rate, I've got so many guys playing overseas and when the six years is up, it's over, but they'll get their degrees. So Federal always goes on six years from when you came in. So they can say last all they want, but I've got a lot of guys who weren't good enough for the NBA but are getting a great experience overseas, and I'm extremely proud of them. So check back in another -- on those guys that haven't, and you know all our players. But they're getting a nice paycheck and a great experience overseas with maybe eight credits left, 15 credits, something like that. Q. Some of your players touched a little bit about what it's like playing here specifically in this arena with some of the NBA players that played here. Is there anything special for you coaching in this arena or to have your team playing in this arena as opposed to some of the other venues in the tournament? COACH RYAN: Well, if you're setting me up, I'm not going to say that it isn't neat. Of course it's neat. I mean, everybody has seen teams in LA play in the NBA playoffs and have seen teams come in and out of this arena. This is pretty neat. It was neat being in Anaheim last year, too. Yeah, great experience. They pay more attention to that stuff than I do though. Q. Knowing that you've done so many things throughout your coaching career and success, that your love for music, could you have envisioned the day where Rolling Stone Magazine would want to make you the subject of some article in there knowing your love for music growing up? COACH RYAN: Yeah, I was kind of shocked. I was like Rolling Stone wants to talk to me? And they did, and it was fun. Yeah, it's not every day that you can be in Rolling Stone. How many here have ever been interviewed by Rolling Stone? (Laughing). Is that going to help their sales? Does that boost sales? THE MODERATOR: In Wisconsin, yeah. COACH RYAN: In Wisconsin. All right. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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