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NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOURApril 3, 2015Sam DekkerJosh GasserNigel HayesTraevon JacksonFrank KaminskyBo RyanINDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan. Bo, we'd ask you to make an opening statement and then go right to the questions. COACH RYAN: Well, we're excited about getting our last practice in here today, doing some shooting drills out here on the court. Then we're going to get another workout in at another facility. Our guys are anxious to play, get the ball tipped up. THE MODERATOR: Questions. Q. A lot of coaches burn out over years of coaching. Why have you been able to endure? Do you have any time for a hobby anymore? COACH RYAN: Medication (smiling). I mean meditation, excuse me (laughter). Yeah, golf is a hobby. That's about it. Been involved in raising a lot of money through golf outings. But that would be the one thing. We got a place in PGA West. What else do you do at PGA West? Yeah, golf is my hobby. Q. These four coaches this time, they've had so much success. This is your second Final Four, but with a Division III championships and the Final Fours, what is the comparison? What have you had to do differently? COACH RYAN: I loved the article today about Evansville going undefeated when they were classified as Division II back in the '60s when I was in college, '65 to '69. There were only two levels. Then also NAIA. So at Platteville, it was a nice article about another team that went undefeated, even though they weren't listed as Division I. Our two Platteville teams in Division III in '95 and '98, going undefeated. I get so many text messages and calls that played on those teams that said, Aren't those people smart enough to know there's been other undefeated teams in men's basketball? I don't text back, No, they're not smart enough. I text back and say, They don't feel it's relevant in this Division I environment. But if you're asking what it's like to go through a perfect season, I just always thought it was pretty neat because our practices were always great. We actually got better during the year. John and I talked about this, that it becomes so competitive because you don't have 19-0, then uh-oh, that 20th one. So each practice leading to each game was really pretty good. What I noticed was we were getting better as the season went along more so than maybe some other seasons. Q. I know when you came to Madison in 2001 you were confident you were ready, but could you have predicted this level of success? COACH RYAN: Well, you're talking about a program that's been successful, not the head coach necessarily. I guess if you're unsuccessful, you get that label, too, the other end of the stick. You know, good people can make good things happen. Boy, I've been surrounded by a lot, from the administration to the players, coaches, support staff. Wisconsin is a pretty neat place. I've had a chance to coach all different kinds of personalities, all different kinds of guys from different walks of life. I'm really lucky. I didn't say in 2001 when I came in. One thing I said in the press conference, when asked, What do you expect to do here as a head coach? Compete for the upper half of the Big Ten every year, finish towards the top, have a chance for a conference championship, and have a chance to play in the NCAA tournament every year. Okay, so I got lucky in that statement. But it's been a lot of fun and it's due to a lot of people. Q. Why do you think Kaminsky has been so successful at limiting fouls? How difficult do you expect it to be for him to stay clean tomorrow? COACH RYAN: Well, he plays with his feet more so than a lot of other seven-footers I've seen. He doesn't reach in. He doesn't try to block every shot. In the 30 years or whatever that I've been a head coach, I would guarantee you that my teams have had the fewest number of blocked shots than any other team in the country, if you take Platteville, Milwaukee and Wisconsin. We try to keep our feet on the ground, we try to chest up with our hands straight up. You mentioned Frank, that's why I'm talking about post defense. That's how we try to play and how we teach in our drills. Frank is an excellent student of the game. Q. Back to your preparation at every level. When were you the most nervous as a head coach in a semifinal or final setting? Was it in high school or Platteville or maybe last year? COACH RYAN: I'll tell you, in 1965, first game at the Palestra, Pennsylvania state tournament, we're like 20-something and zero. I always led the team out with the first basketball for warmups. What I would do is I would throw the ball off the backboard, the guy behind me would tip the ball, tip, tip, tip, tip until the last guy, who would either do a 360. You could dunk in 1965 in warmups. Then we would put on a little dunking show for the other teams. We would always know when we had the other team defeated when they watched our warmups at Chester because everybody was throwing them down in different ways. We'd always look to see if the other guys were looking. That was our pregame routine. I started to dribble the ball out of the tunnel, and there's 9,000 in the Palestra. I was there for games as a kid, watching Villanova, Saint Joe's, the noise level was so high, I almost had a turnover. You know how I am about turnovers. I thought I was going to miss the backboard when I tossed it up. I'm thinking, Hit the backboard. That is a true story. I was sweating missing the backboard. Want to know what's neat about it is, when I hit the backboard, it was over. Like, okay, then you go to the other line and you do your thing, you're doing your layups. So that is the most nervous in any contest. Coaching-wise I always go into the minds of the players. It doesn't affect me, whether it's a Division III crowd, a high school crowd, or now Division I on this stage. I couldn't tell you where anybody was sitting in Dallas last year once you get in there and you start going through your routine. But the most nervous was as a player hoping to hit the backboard. Nobody's ever asked me that before. Q. Which one of the other three coaches do you go furthest back with and what do you remember most about any of those first interactions? COACH RYAN: Let's see. I was an assistant at Wisconsin from '76 to '84. I think Tom had come in. I don't think Tom was in there. I think he came like the year after I had gone to Platteville. But I had seen him at some clinics. John I knew from watching him work at Five Star when he was younger and he was doing those camps, when I was recruiting for Wisconsin, through clinics and other things. And Mike, I think we played Army. First time I met him we played Army in Hawaii in the Rainbow Classic for the consolation championship when I was at Wisconsin. So that's the first time I ever met Mike. So actually it was within probably a five-year period with all of them. Then, of course, we've been on boards together. Tom and I were on the NABC board. Now Cal is on the NABC board that I'm on. Mike's been on these boards. Mike with USA Basketball. There's so many ways we cross paths, it's hard to say exactly when the first was or the furthest back. But that gives you an idea. Q. Having your season end the way it did last year, is there sort of an 'unfinished business' mentality with this year's team? What is different about this trip compared to last year? COACH RYAN: First of all, I've never used the term 'ended' that I can remember to refer to. There's always a process. Whether you're a senior or whatever, there's always something else in life coming. Hate to say, Oh, we ended with this. If we won the championship, this is how we ended. No, it's beginnings. Okay, there's other things coming in life. For a lot of our guys, there's another season coming. Like any other young man, they went to work and said, All right, let's see what we can do next year. I've never brought it up. I don't coach that way. I've never tried to use poster material or articles to get my guys fired up to play because I always figure this way. If you have to use that kind of motivation to get a team ready to play, how are you going to top it for the next game? What do you do next? What other story can you come up with? So I try to stick with what we have control over at the time. Our last game of the season was a loss in Dallas. Happened to be Kentucky. I'm sure when we played Arizona and Oregon, they might or might not have said whatever, this ended this way, that ended that way. But I try to stay away from talking that way. Q. I had a chance to meet with John Tharp today. Can you talk about that relationship. He spoke highly of you, how you haven't changed. Talk about your relationship with him. COACH RYAN: I don't have nearly as much hair as when I first met him. He can't say I haven't changed. John Tharp is one of the brightest minds in basketball out there, not because we're friends. And I've talked to him about basketball, because he always liked the way we did things. But I can't remember what number it was, maybe 200 or 300, 100, but we played his team. If our team won, they were going to do this ball for Coach Ryan's something win. Jokingly I think I had said something to him, and they almost beat us. So he didn't listen. Supposed to be an easier game. You can smile, he knows I'm joking (laughter). His teams always played well, played smart. I always enjoyed talking basketball with him because he always had some really good questions about angles, why do you do this. How come you don't do this. So I always liked guys like that. He's a very good coach. Q. Coaches, players, you talk to them all the time. They talk about facing a challenge. We all know what Kentucky has been doing this year. Talk about the challenge you face meeting this Kentucky team and trying to do what 36 teams have tried but have failed to do. COACH RYAN: Well, I think we've had a pretty good season also. Our guys believe in a 40-minute contest, when they step on the court, that we can get this. When we talk about challenges, we talked about challenges when we played Alabama Birmingham, UAB, down in Nassau, Battle 4 Atlantis, because we go over every scouting report the same way. We have a process we go through. Every team is treated the same way. Do you think I have to tell my players that this is a big game or that Kentucky's pretty good? They are. I think our guys are astute enough to figure that part out. What they know from us is they're going to get this, this, this and this. We're going to give them some ways we feel we can be more successful if we concentrate in this area, this area. The problem is with some teams the list is like this, and it's like this for Kentucky, so it is a challenge. Q. In the last couple years there's been a lot of public groundswell toward analytics, hardcore statistics. How much attention, if any, do you pay to analytics versus the eye test? COACH RYAN: Nobody's ever really defined the eye test. Analytics, you take this number, this means this, how many possessions. I think it's a pretty well-known fact that we've been using points per possession 99% before other people in the country have been using them. Points per possession has always been one of the greatest indicators of how good your team is or how poorly you're doing, based on the points per possession of the opposition and the points per possession of your team. Now, I had to adjust it when the three-point shot came in. That tells you how long we've been using it, well before the three-point shot, because it is a little higher. For a while it was in the 70s, 80s. If you were at one, you won 90% of your games. If you held your opponents to.9 or below, you would win 90% of your games. I use numbers. But some of these other numbers that are coming out, variations, that's fine. That's somebody doing what we were doing a long time ago. But the only one I really pay attention to and practice every day is points per possession. Q. In the second half against Arizona, you scored 55 points in 34 possessions against one of the best defenses in the country. Is that the best half of offense that you have been connected with at any level as a coach or player? If not, what team wins that title? COACH RYAN: So it's not true when you saw us do that, that you closed your eyes and said, Wait a minute, that's not Wisconsin? You didn't say that? Yeah, how about 10 of 12 from three? You know, I would really like to say that that was coaching. That was a couple guys being in the zone. We've had teams do it to us. It's always nice when you can do it to another team. Will that ever be done again that way with threes? I don't know exactly what Villanova shot. It was like 71% for the game maybe. Help me out here. But for a half, to do what we did, I think our guys are still pinching themselves. But they're enjoying it because Carolina was playing their best basketball. I told Roy this. I said, Roy, defensively your guys were forcing us into some really tough shots. Same thing with Arizona, how physical it was both ways. So for us to survive those two, we had to shoot it pretty well and we had to take care of the fundamentals in order to advance 'cause I thought both those teams were playing pretty good defense at the end of the year. Q. Cal said Notre Dame's offense was one of the better they faced. They called your offense probably better than that. What have you told your team to get past that Kentucky defense? COACH RYAN: I would hope you wouldn't tell my guys that he said that. Okay, we've been efficient. You know what? What you can't do is you can't lie with the numbers that our players have put on the board this year for points per possession and everything else. It still is quite amazing, and actually people help us when they ignore the fact that we can score points 'cause it tells us a lot about the other people who think that we don't. Again, who led the NCAA tournament last year in scoring? It seems like I'm the only one that ever says it. You know why? 'Cause one of my assistants told me. Does anyone know who led the tournament? Wisconsin did, so he was telling me the truth, okay. When you say he said that we run a pretty good offense, yeah. You know what, they play pretty good defense. You can tell his guys that they've got the best defense we've seen. Q. Along the lines of offense, any concerns with shooting or playing in a dome? Is there any way you try to negate the impact of that, if any? COACH RYAN: Last year and this year, especially in Dallas, the shooting background, when we first started our shooting drills, I saw more clangs, that's misses, than I have ever seen. A little bit of nerves. This one is not quite as deep, Lucas. You don't actually hear echoes in this one. That was a joke, too (smiling). When our guys walked out there last year, not our guys, I walked out there with my high school and college coach, and we're walking out there thinking of the high school days, thinking of our gym. It totally blew us away. So I know it took the guys a little bit of time to get focused. When we came in here, they've been there before so it wasn't quite as difficult. Actually our shooting this year was better than last year. Still wasn't as good as like when we're at home, but it was better. It is tough. Q. You've coached many teams throughout your coaching career. What do you think has been the biggest lesson of your coaching career to date that you've learned throughout your experience as a coach? COACH RYAN: Well, two things we always emphasize, is how to handle success and how to handle, you know, being on the short end of the score. So many things in their lives for the next 60, 70 years in business, at home, the community, everything else. There's going to be moments that you're going to have to check what you're going to say next. Through athletics, have you ever seen one of my guys trash talk? Have you ever seen my guys get technicals? So, you know, they're not bashful guys. But what we try to teach is life lessons of this is a game, this game is being judged by the guys in striped shirts. They're making the calls. We do our thing. If we don't like what's going on, if we take a bump, okay, how can we get better so we don't take another one. If we are having success, we always remember, success has a thousand parents, failure is an orphan. We try to teach them how to handle when things are going well. Those are the main things. Obviously there's a lot of other things, but you put me on the spot. Q. I know you've known John Calipari for a long time. Strictly from a coaching perspective, what do you respect most about him? COACH RYAN: Because he's like me, he tells it like it is. If he sees something... Yeah, he's real. I don't know how else to put it. You know, he's real. I don't know if John is trying to use any other agendas to get me. He just does his things the way he feels are right. He really doesn't care what other people say, if he feels he's doing the right thing. I'm the same way. (Presentation.) THE MODERATOR: We're joined by the Wisconsin student-athletes. We'll continue with questions. Q. Several of your key guys are state natives. More than a coincidence? COACH RYAN: No. When we recruit, we're looking for guys who want to be at Wisconsin, have the talent, the ability to handle me, some things that I might remind them of now and then. But Midwest, yeah. Wisconsin had some really good players. We've gone after a lot of guys from the Midwest. Parents, family can see the games. A lot of times young men want to stay close to home. Not everybody. So the idea is to find people who want to be at your place and want to be with your guys and play the game and have a chance to go to the NCAA tournament every year. You know, every one of these guys that we talk to, that was sort of in the works. To have a chance to be here at a press conference like this. Yeah, we've had a lot of players from Wisconsin. Q. I know you fill out on your MetroFit every morning, how much sleep you got. Can you tell me what you got for sleep last night and what you ate. Coach, what do you do with the information you get for them? SAM DEKKER: Well, Erik, our conditioning coach, usually gets mad at me because I'm not to judicious with filling in my information, so I'm not too good at that. I've got to get more consistent with it. Last night I got about seven and a half, eight hours, which is not too bad. My last meal, probably a burger. I think it was a burger, and guac. THE MODERATOR: He's big on guac. FRANK KAMINSKY: I don't really know exactly what time I fell asleep. Probably about seven, eight hours. I had some pretzels before we got on the bus. Had an omelette this morning with some ham, salt and pepper. Some syrup on top. I get a lot of flack for putting syrup on top. But Nigel does it, too. I had some fruit, too. I had some fruit. TRAEVON JACKSON: I had some pancakes, eggs and bacon. And I had a good sleep. THE MODERATOR: What do you do with that information? COACH RYAN: First of all, what did you say it was called? Q. MetroFit. COACH RYAN: We went out and hired the best strength coach in America two years ago, the best. They tell him the information. He doesn't tell me anything. He deals with it with the players because that's what he does. No, he fills me in on some things. Maybe this guy needs to be encouraged to do this, that type of thing. Don't you think this stuff has been working, guys? You're eating better. They took cooking classes to cook for themselves. I certainly know that in the last five minutes of games, I think our guys have looked pretty fresh. Trae is going to say he looked real fresh, because just got back in the lineup. He hasn't had that many minutes. Don't you think your teammates look fresh? What I do with it sometimes without them knowing, I'll maybe do a sidebar with them and say, Well, how did you sleep last night? How do you feel? I asked Trae the other day after one of his hardest workouts, How are you feeling are you getting rest? That's how I use it. Q. Josh, you're shooting much better in post-season play this year than last year. I'm curious if it's a typical cycle, or is it being another year removed from the knee injury that you're that much healthier? JOSH GASSER: As Zach Bohannon would have said, it's a random sequence of events. Can't really control it. You work hard, get in the gym a lot, try to make shots, help your team out. I don't know what it is. Obviously I'm a lot healthier this year. Last year I was running on nothing at the end of the year. Coming back from the injury was tough. But I definitely feel better this year. I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I'm just trying to help the team. Q. Coach and Sam, how much does Kentucky's length affects your offensive efficiency and the kind of shots you seek? SAM DEKKER: Well, obviously their length and size is something we have to scout for, be on the lookout for because that can alter a lot of shots, just get up and make uncontested shots. Obviously that's something we're going to have to work around. Coach preaches, you know, the pump fakes and that stuff all the time. We just got to play our game, do what we did all year, just attack this game like we've attacked every other game, not make it bigger than what it is. Usually if we do our things well, we do all right. COACH RYAN: I thought about the tennis racquet thing. But you know what, with these guys, they might have started whacking each other with them. The tennis racquets, to be a bigger, longer defender. But I thought, No, there's no way I'll do that. So you're trying to say to Riley Dearring is not? C'mon. We can't simulate what they have in practice, so that is difficult. Q. Frank and Sam, can you talk about how tough that loss was last year, your attitude going into the game, how that's different coming into this year? FRANK KAMINSKY: Last year's loss was obviously very difficult. To lose in the way we did on a last-second shot, left a sour taste. It was a motivating factor to get back to this stage. Just luck of the draw we get to play Kentucky again. Obviously, we're going to do whatever we can to come out on top. SAM DEKKER: Obviously, that was a tough loss to swallow. It was tough to get over because of how special a season it had been, how close we were to playing for a national title. We used that kind of as a steppingstone going into the off-season, what we wanted to, what we wanted to accomplish, not necessarily playing Kentucky, but just getting back in this position, having a chance in 40 minutes to get to a national title. So we're blessed to be back in this position. We're not going to use last year's game as what you guys like to call revenge or the rematch. We want to play whoever we got to play and get a win and good on for another game. Q. Frank, was that game against Kentucky a motivating factor for you to come back to play this season? Traevon, Ben Brust was saying it took him a long time to get over that game. Now he looks back and said what an outstanding season. FRANK KAMINSKY: Yes and no. I don't think I ever would have left. It's obviously motivating because you want to come back to this stage. This is what seasons are remembered for. You remember the national championship at the end of the season. I wanted that badly to be us. I thought we had an opportunity to do so. We're back at that stage. We fought hard to be here. We're going to do whatever we can to make sure we are the last team standing. TRAEVON JACKSON: Definitely it took a while to get over it. For me, it was like that first week, I kind of just took some time off to really reflect on the whole season, not necessarily that whole season, just that game. I didn't expect to lose. I knew we weren't supposed to lose. It's definitely fun to be back here. That had a lot to do with how hard we worked. Being in this position again this year I think is a lot easier. Looking at it all as a whole, just learning from it. Q. Frank, can you talk a little bit about the challenges facing a tandem such as Stein and Towns is for you guys, then the challenges of whenever they get tired, they bring in two other fresh players in Dakari and Marcus Lee? FRANK KAMINSKY: It's very difficult when you have so much depth and height, especially coming off the bench. It makes for a good team. It's not going to be easy. They're great shot-blockers. They know how to score on offense. They can run the floor. They can defend in multiple positions. It's kind of like a two-headed monster with their bench and their starters. It's not going to be easy. But I think we have a team that's willing to do whatever we can to make sure we win. COACH RYAN: Nigel, what is that little drill that I caught you doing at 3:00 in the morning at the Kohl Center when you didn't know I was in there with the tennis ball and the basketball ball? What were you working on? NIGEL HAYES: I was just trying to be like Frank honestly, and Josh, and Trae. They're great ball handlers. I aspire to be like those guys. They're great guys. I appreciate you letting me speak. I don't know why I show up to these things. No one ever talks to me. COACH RYAN: Nigel, they're afraid to ask you a question anymore. NIGEL HAYES: Sticking to tradition, prestidigitation and hello, Mr. Stenographer. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Wisconsin. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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