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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: DENVERMarch 18, 2016Larry KrystkowiakBrandon TaylorJordan LoveridgeJakob PoeltlDenver, Colorado THE MODERATOR: We're ready to begin with the student-athletes from Utah. We'll now take questions for our student-athletes. Q. Jakob, obviously everyone wants to know about this matchup with Domantas. What have you seen about him on film? You played a little bit over the summer. JAKOB POELTL: I think we can all agree on that he's a very talented player, especially in the post. I'm definitely going to look forward and take on the challenge. He's very aggressive. He looks to run the court. He can drive and shoot a little midrange. He's a very versatile player. Got to do my best and take away whatever I can. I know I'm going to get some help from my teammates. Q. The front court in general, Sabonis and Wiltjer, I believe they average around 38 points a game this season. They've been very productive. What are you doing to prepare for a matchup like that? JORDAN LOVERIDGE: The biggest thing, we're trying to figure out ways to limit their touches, then just making sure guys that aren't scoring as much, we can help off them, try to make them kind of beat us. Not let those guys just be comfortable and do the things they like to do. Q. Eric McClellan helped them lock up a talented player in Isaiah Whitehead. What do you have to do to deal with the perimeter pressure he's put on different opponents? BRANDON TAYLOR: Well, you just have to keep your composure as being a guard, the rest of our guards, Jordan, Lorenzo, and 'Karai. Isaiah, you just have to be tight with the ball. He was an excellent defender last night. It's really more so you look forward to a matchup. You know, you just know you have to be as poised as possible and you have to be tight with the ball at all times. Q. Jakob, Sabonis was saying earlier this week he's played you in international competitions. What do you remember about those matchups? In general, the two of you were raised in European basketball, how were you taught that's maybe different than what you see now in the States? JAKOB POELTL: First of all, yes, we played in the summer, in a national team competition. Well, I don't know about him. But me in Austria, I just like grown up, my coaches focused a lot on my footwork, like on the basics, stuff like that. I even got to play a little wing and guard in some games, to get used to handling the ball, working on my footwork, make reads out of the game. I don't know how centers get taught here, but that's just kind of how my basketball career started. Q. Jakob, did you ever watch Domas' dad either in Europe or in the NBA when he used to play? JAKOB POELTL: I've seen some highlight tapes, but I've never, like, really watched him. I don't think that it really has anything to do with Domantas because, well, he's going to go his own way, do his own thing. He's the player he is. He's a very talented player. So that's who I'm focusing on. Q. When you were talking about your footwork, why is that so important for a big guy? JAKOB POELTL: I feel it's just one of those basics. It's the same thing as passing, dribbling, shooting, the hook shot. I use my footwork to get myself into a position where I'm able to score and maybe get around a defender, out-quick him. Really for me it's just like one of the basics that if you want to be a good post player, it's something you got to have. Q. Brandon, obviously the last couple games turnovers have been a little bit of an issue. What do you have to do to make sure those things are under control against Gonzaga? BRANDON TAYLOR: Well, like our coaches always said, See the pass before you make the pass. At the end of the day, if we want to continue to move on in this tournament, we have to control our pace and we have to take care of the ball. That means being fundamentally sound and getting back to the basics of basketball. That's what we've been doing, like, these past days of basketball. Even before yesterday, it was getting back to the basics. Two-foot jump stops, seeing the pass before you make the pass and not being so loose and careless. If we can dial that in... It starts with the guards taking care of the ball. If we can dial that in, we'll be in good shape. Q. Have you seen anything specific on how Isaiah Whitehead played against Gonzaga yesterday, anything specific that made him uncomfortable shooting the ball? JORDAN LOVERIDGE: From what I saw, he's a great player, all-around great player. Sometimes, you know, I know they definitely defended him really well. I felt like there were some shots, he maybe had tired legs. I don't know what it was. Just some nights shots aren't falling. You got to give all the credit to Gonzaga. They defended him well. They did a good job on him. Q. Jordan, Gonzaga is one of the better programs in the west. During the course of the season, did you have any time to watch them play at all on TV? JORDAN LOVERIDGE: A little bit. You'll see highlights here and there. It's kind of hard to sit down and watch a game when you got school, basketball. We're focused on our season. It's tough to sit down and watch other teams play. Q. Brandon, I'm sure you've watched film. What do you see in your matchup with Josh and what can you utilize one-on-one with that? BRANDON TAYLOR: There's really not a lot of one-on-one in our system. You know, it's really more together basketball, a lot of play the game inside-out, you know, take what they give us, milk the post as much as possible. Once he's getting doubled, I have to be ready to shoot. I just have to be tight with it. I have to be tight with it. I also have to be aggressive. I think that's one of the main things in this tournament for me, is to be aggressive, you know, and be tight with the basketball. Q. Brandon, looking at the tournament, you are a strong front-court team. You see guards going off all the time. How do you look at that matchup? BRANDON TAYLOR: Well, I mean, really we play our game. We don't really focus too much on, We've got to go off this game or anything like that. I think if we go into every game with the mindset of being aggressive and doing what you do, not trying to get outside the box, because that's where I think you kind of mess up, where you try to think so much, you start to think offensively, you need to do this, you need to do that. I think for me personally, I'm going to continue to play my game how I play. However many points I end up with, steals or assists I end up with, that's how it's going to be. I can't really control any of that. But as far as being aggressive, that's what I will be. Q. Earlier in the week Larry said he'd watched a lot of Gonzaga games throughout the course of the year and feeling comfortable with scouting them. Do you feel there was a different approach to this game with what your coach has been telling you? Do you have a better idea than you did going into Fresno State? JAKOB POELTL: I think we have a pretty good idea of what's going to expect us before almost every game in our season. Our coaches do a tremendous job of scouting our opponents. We usually work a lot on it during practice before the game and then get the game planned out. If they know Gonzaga, well, even better than other teams, that's just good for us. They can prepare an even better game plan. It's hopefully going to be an advantage for us. But the important part is that we can dial it in and, well, actually play it out on the court and follow that game plan. THE MODERATOR: We'll dismiss the student-athletes at this time. Thank you, men. We now have Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak. Coach, just give us some of your thoughts on your matchup tomorrow. COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: How about if we tackle it in the form of questions? You guys can give specifics. THE MODERATOR: Questions for coach. Q. I don't know that I'm looking for the whole history, but your first year at Utah was not real pretty. How did you stay with your plan and believe that you could get to where you are now? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, you hit a couple of big words. To stay with is the persistence and consistency, I think. I said five years ago when we assembled the staff and put everybody together that that was a common question, is how long is it going to take to turn it around. We never put a timeframe on it. We talked about recruiting good guys. The two things we said when we started the program, and I had the staff together for the very first meeting, first thing is we're never going to cheat because I don't want to be held hostage by any kind of situation that's out of our control. The second thing is we're not going to recruit any turds. We've stayed pretty true to that, in trying to find some solid kids. One of the questions that I've been asked recently is how did you turn it around so fast. When you do the math on it, it's about 1800 days. It didn't seem real fast to me. It's been consistent in how we wake up every day and we try to get better. I do that myself, and our team. You figure out a way that you can enhance your players' development, your team functioning, off-the-court situations, whatever it is. You kind of clean the clutter off your desk at the end of the day, return the calls you're supposed to return, then you do it again. If you keep, we call it, chopping wood. You stay after it. There's going to be some ups and downs over the course of time. You hope when you put that pencil through the graph, it's consistently trending upwards. That's where we've been at the end of five years. Trying to stay true to some of those principles. Q. Obviously the big matchup tomorrow is Poeltl versus Sabonis. After watching the tape, after what you said about watching Gonzaga, how similar are they? What are your expectations with the two? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, I'm really curious. I'm as curious as you. The thing that we focus on is getting our guys prepared. That's where I've gained a great fondness for our team, is we prepare them. You try to have a game plan. They've done a tremendous job executing that game plan. It's really hard to predict, but that's certainly a storyline within the game that's going to have a lot to do with the outcome. How they guard him, how we guard Sabonis, collectively how it all plays out. I also don't want to be misconstrued. I don't have a really good idea what Gonzaga does. I think I was making a comparative statement between them and Seton Hall, of which Seton Hall I didn't really have much of a clue at all. At least I've managed to catch a few games throughout the course of the year and obviously know the staff at Gonzaga. From my time at Montana, we played them. It's a little bit more, I can grasp what they try to do, how they play. But certainly we're still breaking a bunch of things down and trying to get a better idea for what it is that we need to focus on. Q. Wiltjer is an inside-out guy. With Kuzma and Chapman, not asking you to give away any plans, do they have the agility to go outside and guard him and go inside? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: That's the million-dollar question. It's what makes him a difficult matchup. That's why he's been as successful as he's been. I used to say the same thing about Charles Barkley. When people would ask me who is the toughest person to guard, it's a guy like Charles because he's strong. If you put somebody as strong as him on him, he takes you out on the perimeter. Typically that person can't keep up. If you put somebody that can keep up on him, he'll find a way to post you. That's what we're seeing a lot with Wiltjer. The versatility has provided a lot of productivity for him. He's a tremendous passer. It's problematic. That's one of the things I'm curious to see how it plays out myself. I certainly hope those guys will be able to handle themselves whether he's inside or out. Q. Do you have any idea that the two seed Michigan State lost? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: I was told that, yeah. Probably be the last thing I would expect. That's the definition of this time of year. It's absolutely crazy. I know that Middle Tennessee State is a heck of a team, a heck of a coach. I wouldn't have wanted to play them. It's not all about Michigan State. I think that's a team that's good. They defend. We were talking about it this morning on the bus. You know, anything can happen. Obviously I'm stating the obvious. The numbers kind of go out the window. It's tough. There's been a few of 'em. Won't be the last. I had a gentleman last night tell me, a little side story, came up and said, You're the coach of Utah, right? I said, Yeah. He goes, I sure hope you win tomorrow. I said, Why is that? How are you tied into it? He said, Because I know if you win tomorrow, you'll be an easier team for us to beat to go to the Elite 8. I said, Well, I think we both have a little meat left on the bone. What makes you so sure you're going to get to the Sweet 16? He said, Well, haven't you been watching college basketball? I just kind of dismissed it. I said, Obviously you've been drinking, right? He said, Yeah. I said, Okay. Well, good luck. So I'd like to run into him today at the hotel and see how he's doing. Q. I was wondering if the issue of turnovers, is it almost like free throws? If you harp on it, maybe it gets into their head? How do you approach it? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: It's a great question. I think there's a number of different types of turnovers. Certain turnovers are palatable. We can handle them. Three-second call, maybe an illegal screen, something that you're trying to do something proactively that you get caught. Those are also ones that you can defend. The ball stops, they take it out, go back, get your defense. Last night, we had live-ball turnovers that led to baskets, 28 points for Fresno, that we can't defend. This is the time of year where teams are really good. You have to eliminate the easy ones in the form of transition baskets and in the form of rebounding, otherwise it's problematic and it's Russian roulette. You're going to put yourself in a tough way. Fortunately we were good enough in other areas last night. But, you know, it's true, if you talk about it all the time, we need to be more fundamental. We worked on it in our practice session just now. Seeing the pass, repetitions of doing that kind of stuff is important. Slowing down. But, you know, Fresno's a different style team, too. We couldn't simulate it in our practices. But we saw the number. One of our coaches brought to my attention that Fresno scored 104 points in their previous five games off of their opponents' turnovers. You do the math, that's 21 a game. That's a lot. One team had 27, one had 25. We as coaches were almost chuckling, like hearing those numbers. We looked amongst ourselves. We can't beat Fresno if we do that. We worked on it all week. You can't work on some of the athleticism and the style they play with stripping the ball, caving in on help, doing some things that maybe Gonzaga wouldn't do. A little more of a pack mentality, squaring, reaching, doing those types of things. Lo and behold, we gave them their highest output. So I don't think Gonzaga's that type of team. It's not that we're going to not talk about not turning it over, but I don't think it's the same mindset, say, if we were going in and playing West Virginia tomorrow. It would be something that we would probably have to address a little more completely than we are right now. Q. Do you find it odd that when we get like a legitimate matchup of legitimate big guys, that's almost seen now as a novelty, where 20 years ago it was Tuesday? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: It was the norm, yeah. I think the biggest thing that changed is the advent of the three-point shot. When that was added, I mean, when I played in college, we were one of the first conferences that experimented with the three-point line in the Big Sky. I forget which conference out east did it, too. When that was on, it was really hard to get the old-fashioned three-point play. But coaches still recruited the heck out of it, tried to pound the ball inside. It meant more foul trouble and that type of thing. What's happened now, the four men are almost a play away from the basket type of guys, stretching the floor. The threes add up a heck of a lot faster than the twos. The chances you run into teams that have dominant big men in their positions playing in the game against each other probably doesn't happen very often. The game has changed. I think even when you throw in the play that, you know, I would say overall people generally feel like the backcourt is what allows you to advance in an NCAA tournament. It's a guard-ladened deal. Typically the guards are the ones shining. We need some of that to happen as well. But this is unique, having a couple true throwback five men that are the heads of their respective snake. Q. Both teams yesterday had 20 turnovers. You both got a win. You talked a lot about fundamentals this season. How do you simulate that in practice to be able to just get better and not make those same mental mistakes in a game situation? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, what we've done, a couple of things. You break it down into some parts. We put some of our scout team, kind of turn them loose as far as some energy goes. We did it in practice this week where we asked guys to be jumping out in passing lanes and doing things that we don't do. It's not part of our identity. So it's hard to simulate, as I said. You know, you can always add an extra guy if you want to really rev it up, get guys sped up. It's like a press breaker six-on-five, where there's six defensive guys, and you basically put everything that has the ball in a situation that's got to get through a double-team. I think that's a productive way to do it as well. We did some drills with our guards where we had one guard with the ball and two defensive players trying to strip him. He had to get from one side of the court to the other. I just think it's skill development. Part of it's a mindset. Did some overplay passing drills, some backdoor drills, and different things. But it's hard to accomplish. The popcorn starts popping in the building, momentum changes. I've always thought that the turnovers are a little bit, you know, magnified, they're bigger. With that momentum, it's hard to kind of stop the bleeding. We've tried a number of different things. Q. How much have you seen out of Kyle Wiltjer and how difficult is he as a player to coach against? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: Well, he's really different and difficult. As we talked about, he's a solid post player. If you put somebody that can keep up with him. He's a tremendous three-point shooter with range that you don't find very often in college basketball. With that length, he can get a shot off over a lot of defenders on the perimeter. I've been watching him for a few years now. Does a lot of damage. Confident player. Has provided them with the great spark. It's not going to be on any one person. We've got to have a multitude of guys that are locked in and focused in on trying to stop him. I think it's a little bit like the game of baseball, where if you keep throwing the same pitch, you're probably going to get yourself in trouble. We'll try to switch some things up from time to time and give him some different looks. Q. You talk about Sabonis being a premiere interior player. He can step out and make the shot from 15 or 16, 17. Jakob doesn't do that as much defensively. How comfortable is Jakob going out if he has to, to be on the perimeter more than he's been used to? COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: A little bit like last night. It was the same thing. Edo, that was kind of his game, too, that midrange 15-, 18-foot shot. Every player in this tournament has weapons, strengths and weaknesses. That's one of a hundred situations that you talk about. It's part of the scouting report. You've got to be able to go out and close out and make sure he doesn't get off that shot. That's all part of our personnel. There's probably eight to ten little notes with these players. Our players are supposed to study it. Comes down to a little playground basketball. You can't overthink it. When it happens, you need to make the best play and know it's not always going to be perfect. If he hits it, that's how the points add up, that's why we play the game. THE MODERATOR: Thank you for your time, coach. COACH KRYSTKOWIAK: All right. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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