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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: BROOKLYNMarch 19, 2016Jarrod UthoffMike GesellBrooklyn, New York Q. I was just curious, your coach was a great player in Philly, went to Penn. Obviously, you guys are playing a couple Philly schools this week. He grew up with the coaches. How much do you guys know about his playing career? What is it like seeing him going up against a couple Philly schools like this? JARROD UTHOFF: I don't really know much about his playing career. I think it gives him a good idea of how they coach and what kind of people they are. That helps him when he's coaching against guys he knows. MIKE GESELL: Yeah, I've never seen him play. I just know that they called him the White Magic. I know he always tells me he didn't have a jump shot. He could just dribble around and find people. That's all I really know about it, from his word. But like he said, he knows the programs. He knows the history behind the programs. So I think he knows them pretty well in that regard. But it's just another game. Q. This is for both of you guys. Two years ago, you played Villanova in the Bahamas in really a back and forth game. I think there were eight lead changes, a lot of big runs. Some of you guys -- you guys obviously played in that game. A few of them played as well. What do you recall of that game, that tournament, and especially kind of the way the game unfolded? JARROD UTHOFF: It was a tough game. We got up to an early lead, I believe, and they had a bunch of threes. They made a big run. It was back and forth at the end, and they squeaked it out. MIKE GESELL: It was a fun game to play in. Villanova is a team that's going to battle you. It's going to be a physical game. They're a team that will never go away. We had a lead in that game, and they'd come back. They're never out of a game because of the way they shoot the three. So you've got to have a concerted effort defensively for the entire 40 minutes. Q. Jarrod, I know you guys are locked into your thing, but UNI won last night. I was just wondering, so many guys that you played against in high school and yourself are prominent in this NCAA Tournament. Just your feelings about that. Did it feel like you were playing among great talent back then? JARROD UTHOFF: Yeah, definitely at the time, I knew I was playing with great talent. That Cedar Rapids area in particular and the state of Iowa had a lot of talent when I was coming through there, and it still does today. People underestimate the value of how much talent is in Iowa, and I think it's fantastic that we're all showcasing it on the biggest stage in college basketball and March Madness. Q. Just for both of you guys, Villanova players were in here, and they got grilled about not advancing to the Sweet 16 and that they've been so close. Do you guys get anything like that from your fans and your media that you hear it's been so long since Iowa has made it to the second weekend? JARROD UTHOFF: Wow, I try not to pay attention when people discredit what we've done. Each year is a new year, so you can't really go based on -- it's new personnel. It's a new squad. It's new dynamics of the team. So you can't go based on last year. A couple of the guys from last year maybe have motivations from what happened the previous year, but it's a new team, new year. Each year is different. That's what I tell them. MIKE GESELL: Yeah, like Jarrod said, we don't listen to outside noise very much. Everyone has opinions, and obviously we haven't made the Sweet 16 in a while, and that's a difficult task. Once you get into March Madness, every single team is a good team. It's tough just to make it into this tournament. So you really have to value every single game. You just go out and battle every single day. Q. You guys both academically are second to none based upon grade point average and your accolades there. Going through your career, you both graduated a year early, what kind of -- how much commitment did you have to do on the academic side? And how difficult was it to juggle that with doing everything basketball-wise to get where you are? And what kind of advice would you give other athletes who are trying to achieve both in the classroom at your level and then on the court? JARROD UTHOFF: Well, first off, it's -- you make a concerted effort to do your work. As long as you do what's required, you're going to get good grades. And that's my advice to anybody out there going through it. Your first couple years are going to be tough. Those are obviously -- those are the toughest years for us because it's all new to us. Our eyes are open, and there's so much basketball going on, and maybe things aren't going your way, and there's so much stress in your life. You just do what needs to get done. You don't make any excuses about it. If you have to stay up till midnight writing a paper, you do it. Don't procrastinate. Just get it done. MIKE GESELL: Yeah, the biggest change for me from high school to college was time management. You obviously have a lot more work in college. So the biggest thing for me was always working ahead. With basketball, you never know what your schedule is going to be like, and it's tough to do homework on the road sometimes. So I always tried to work ahead and really just stay on top of assignments, and that's my advice. Q. For both of you guys, yesterday I heard Adam say that he doesn't engage in social media, doesn't read anything about the team. Jarrod, you've said similar things. Is this a team thing? And basically, what are your attitudes about, oh, just maybe tuning out the outside world? Why? JARROD UTHOFF: I wouldn't say necessarily it's a team thing. It's not like we got together as a team and said, we need to do this. It's an individual preference. Everybody's preference. Some people like to read. Some people don't. I personally -- as for most of us, we like to tune it out. You can't start listening to outside noise. It leads to bad things. It leads to either you overhyping yourself or thinking you're better than you are, then you start relaxing. You can never be content where you are. You're always striving to get better. Part of that is blocking out outside noise. MIKE GESELL: Personally, I think it's very important to block out outside noise. Like you said, people are going to start telling you how great you are when you're playing well, and people are going to tell you how bad you are when you're not playing well. It's too stressful to think about all the highs and lows and ride that roller coaster throughout the season. It's really going to wear on you. So as a team, I know we do a great job of just staying level headed throughout the entire season and just focusing on day to day and enjoying the process and just taking it one day at a time and not worrying about what everyone's saying. Q. Going back to the academic piece, does it bother you when student-athletes don't get the credit for the academic part of it? It really seems like you have two full-time jobs. Does that bother you when people make jokes about student-athletes not really being students? MIKE GESELL: Well, I've always taken a lot of pride in my academics. Like you said, it definitely is like two full-time jobs. You're practicing what's allowed, 20 hours a week, and then you have your full school schedule on top of that. Regular students don't go through that. They have all the time in the world to focus on their studies, and then as an athlete, you also need to maintain a social life too and have friends outside of that. So it's just a balancing act. Obviously, athletes do -- there's that -- a lot of people think that athletes don't do as well in school, but it's tough at times, and I know it's tough on a lot of athletes in the time management part, especially freshman, sophomore year can be very hard, and it does take a lot of work. Q. The time demands issue has been heavily scrutinized or looked at over the last couple of years facing student-athletes, the 20-hour rule, whatever that is, and then trying to get some time away in the off-season. But in a skill sport like basketball, they can say, okay, you don't have to go to practice, but you probably feel compelled to have to work every single day. How do you balance that by getting away, maybe clearing your head for a month or a week or whatever and still work on your craft? I'm sure, if you go a week or two without shooting, then your shot changes and doesn't come together quite the way you need to. JARROD UTHOFF: Are you talking to the 20 hour a week, or are you talking how I manage my time? Q. With regard to the sport. The NCAA is trying to manage time demands better for student-athletes so you don't feel compelled to work on the sport year round and give you guys a break. However, if you don't, do you feel compelled to work on your craft on the side? And if you abide by it, you're kind of stuck, aren't you? JARROD UTHOFF: You're compelled to work no matter where you're at. You want to be the best. If you're a competitor, you want to be the best. So it doesn't matter if they're going to have some kind of maximum, minimum, I'm going to do what I need to do. For me, time demands are a separate thing. If you want to be the best in basketball, you don't worry about that. There is no minimum for you. There's no maximum for you. You do what your body -- what you feel your body needs. If that's going in and working for one hour for three times a day, which adds up to three hours a day in the. Off-season, that's what you need to do. If you think that, listen, my body needs an off day, I take an off day. You trust your coaches. When you come to a school, you trust your coach that he's going to have the best interests of you, and a lot of times, the coaches know your body. They know when to push you, when to step back, listen, these guys are tired. It's all a balancing act between mainly the coaches, and it should be in the coach's hand to decide that kind of stuff. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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