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PAC-12 MEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENTMarch 10, 2016Larry KrystkowiakKyle KuzmaJakob PoeltlLas Vegas, Nevada Utah - 80, USC - 72 THE MODERATOR: Coach, an opening statement about the game? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, I really don't have any opening comments, so fire away. Happy to get the win. Q. Larry, I think you were taking a drink of water when Brandon pulled up from about 25 feet. I was curious if you almost choked on it? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: No, I tell you what, the last month of the season Brandon has provided us with a little bit of that. I'm certainly not going to compare him to Steph Curry, but if there's one guy on our team that's got some of that deep range and has a lot of confidence. And he's shooting the ball real well right now. We were a little bit slow developing at the end of that play. It was a big three that he hit. Big three that Kyle hit in front of our bench, so that was big for our team. When we're making three-pointers, I think we had ten of them for the game, and then we get a little bit of a post presence as well. Between Jakob and Kuzma, I thought they took care of the rim. We can be pretty good. Q. Kyle, in general, what was different about you and your game tonight, and can you discuss the three-pointer? KYLE KUZMA: I just think this past week in practices I made an extra focus on trying to play hard and trying to do all the little things right. I think that was it. It was just good karma. The past few games I've been pretty nonchalant, casual, and it's rubbed off within practices and stuff. So I think that was it for me. COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Tell them about our meeting? KYLE KUZMA: Yeah, me and Coach had a meeting and we just discussed what I just said, just playing hard and getting back to the basics a little bit and trying to make we plays instead of me plays, and it just rubbed off. It's good karma. Q. What is the mood of this team right now with the kind of run you're having? What does it do to a team's psychology when you keep finding ways to win? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, it's a little bit uncharted as far as the territory goes. I've always personally felt a lot better being the underdog and a little bit more of an edge. But what I'm understanding, and I think our team is understanding, that if we guard, if we defend, which we made a commitment to for a portion of the game tonight, it still wasn't great, but there is a correlation when we focus on stopping the other team. When we can outrebound another team is important, and when we share the basketball. Those are three things that are pretty core elements of our program. That's, I think, the validation for the style of play. And I think our guys are starting to understand, man, if we do this, we get kills. Kills is five stops in a row. We ended that half with a couple of kills. Going into the first half and gives guys a little taste. Defense wins championships, and I think -- I don't think we think too much about where we are and what we've accomplished. I've always talked about it's the most important thing. You're only as good as your next game, especially this time of the year. I think we've got a mature group that doesn't put their guard down very often, and these guys want to taste some success, and they've figured out how to do that. Q. Larry, I was kind of wondering, the last two games each I think you've had ten assists and tonight you have 22. What was key to that ball movement and gaining a little more dynamic in that way? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, I mean, Colorado-Arizona are two really physical teams. I think that's one element of it that decreases some of the assists totals. Maybe we ended up a little more one-on-one minded against those teams. You get kind of in the end of clock, and thinking about those teams, there were a number of shots that we missed that were open. We didn't execute. If you could look at the Colorado tape, which we did, we learned a lesson that we were really sloppy in that game offensively. Not to discredit Colorado, but it was 13-9 with six to go in the first half. We set the game back a little bit. And there wasn't much of a sense of urgency for us to run our offense. I really thought we had -- the guys got the message this week, and we made sure we knew what we were running, got the positions. Screened if it called for screening, and did a nice job moving the ball. I think that's part of our -- that's part of what you need to do is figure out what's broken. Some of those assist totals were due to the fact that we were kind of cutting corners a little bit and we needed to get back to some of the basic ball movement that we've depended on. Q. You guys had a seven-game winning streak to ride into this. Tonight makes number eight. Tell me about the mood in the locker room? You guys are seeming to peak at the exact right time of the season. Jakob, you first? JAKOB POELTL: The mood in the locker room is obviously great right now. I feel like throughout the second half of the season we really came together as a team. We learned how to really play together on offense. But the winning streak is kind of behind us now. We're now in the postseason, and as soon as you lose a game, you're out. So it kind of carries over. You kind of get that momentum, but it really doesn't matter too much anymore because it's a do-or-die situation now and we've got to be ready for every single game. Doesn't really matter how many games you've won in the past. KYLE KUZMA: Yeah, same thing he said. This is another segment to our season, and the regular season's behind us and this is survive and advance right now. We're just focused on one game at a time. We're not really trying to celebrate off of this one because we have to play a pretty good team next game. Q. Coach, the difference between last year at this point and this year at this point seems like you have such maturity, the team is so composed. How much of that experience of getting to the Sweet 16 is preparing you or has prepared you for this moment in time? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, I mean, I don't want to knock last year's team. I thought we were pretty darn composed as well. It would be a year ago tomorrow night that Joseph Young hit the big shot, otherwise we're playing in a championship game. We accomplished some things. The makeup of our team is different. I think we've got four starters back from a year ago that played some minutes. I think it's a little bit like playing at home. If you take that for granted and assume there is some kind of magic because you're playing at home, a lot of times you don't come out with the right kind of effort. It's not something we often talk about. Just because you have experience, doesn't mean you have success. But I do think it's a mature group. These guys understand, again, the most important thing is that the game of basketball, you win games when you guard and when you commit to really defending. I think unlike the game of football where you have -- look at the Super Bowl. You've got the number one defense against the number one offense, well, who wins? And it's happened 90, 80, 90% of the time. Basketball's a little more fluid. I want our guys to hang their hat on the defensive mentality. You obviously don't have 11 guys that run out on the field and try to get consecutive stops. You've got to do it in a fluid, up-and-down mindset. But we've talked about defense winning championships, and I think that's the maturity, Brandon being on the All-Conference Defensive team, Jordan's gotten so much better, and these guys have improved so much as defenders. I think we're connected that way. That's probably what I'm most proud of is how we've grown defensively, and we continue to play together. Q. How much differently did they play you, Jakob, to cut the point totals in half from when you played them in the regular season? And, Coach, how much did you game plan for how they would come out and play against Jakob after what he did to them in the regular season? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, we didn't know exactly. We knew there wasn't going to be the same. It wasn't going to be the same look. There's been a number of different ways that teams have double teamed him off the feeder, when he dribbles it, from the other big, tonight they had an interesting little plan to come from the baseline guy and double team. So we didn't know what to expect. One thing that we've done, as I mentioned earlier in the last couple games, we've thrown the ball to Jakob and everybody kind of stands and watches. So we've tried to build what we call bailouts at the end of a possession. It's not just wishing him luck down there, but it's putting yourself in position, as Kuzma did getting to the rim, and our perimeter players are locked and loaded and ready to shoot it. And he didn't have to carry us tonight. I think we got -- as witnessed by assist totals and ball movement. That's the thing about our team. I don't think there is any secret that we want to start with establishing the post. But if it becomes too difficult, obviously somebody else is open, and tonight I think that's where we were able to take advantage of that. You got something to say, Jak? JAKOB POELTL: Sure, pretty much what Coach just said. COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: He says it with an accent: Where's the chopper? Head to the chopper. JAKOB POELTL: They played me really aggressively tonight. They tried to front a little bit in the post and they came and double teamed. As soon as I saw the double team coming, I just tried to find the open man. I wasn't trying to force up any shots. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, I was trying to go up strong, and that was pretty much it. Q. Coach, love the impression. Second of all, Jakob, heading into the next round of the tournament, you are arguably the best big man left. What do you expect from the next round and the rest of the tournament ahead? JAKOB POELTL: First we've got to wait for who we're going to play tomorrow. It's going to be tough. We knew it was going to be tough right from the start of the tournament. This year the league is so, so balanced, and whoever we're going to play, it's definitely going to be a physical match-up and you've got to grind through it. It's three games in a row, hopefully, if you go all the way. That's kind of the mentality that we have to get into. You've got to grind through it and go into every single game with 100% effort, and hopefully you're going to come out as a winner. Q. Obviously you had Jakob, Player of the Year, and Brandon and Jordan as all honorable mentions. What do you think it says that your starters who didn't get Pac-12 honors and Kyle and Lorenzo played so well today and were shooting so well? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, I mean, first, extremely proud of the guys that received the awards. That's not anything that can be -- this isn't the time of year, necessarily, to be singing anybody's praises. As we know, the game is very much a team game. We've talked about it amongst our team all year that not everybody's going to be clicking. We've had some ebb and flow throughout the course of the year. We didn't shoot the ball. I don't know where we would have been the first half of the season without Jordan Loveridge shooting threes because nobody else could make one. But he shot almost 50%. Then Jordan took a couple weeks off, and that's when Brandon and Dakari and some other people picked up. Jakob has been pretty steady, and Kuzma's been. It's normal for a sophomore finding his way. But I think he's gotten back to basics. We said it all along, we dodged some bullets early in the preseason where we only had a couple guys playing well at one time. I've always said if you can get three or four guys stepping up, the essence of the team, moving the basketball, I think that's the key. I really like the way we pass it and share it. And I think our guys are real willing -- we've talked a lot about the we, not me, mentality. That's a cornerstone of our basketball program, and I think this is kind of the result of that. Guys aren't afraid to move the ball on and trust teammates to make plays. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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