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NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FINAL FOURApril 1, 2016Roy WilliamsBrice JohnsonMarcus PaigeHouston, Texas THE MODERATOR: We're joined now by Roy Williams, the head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels. Let's start with questions for Coach Williams. Q. A little off topic of the game. Transfers get talked about a lot at this time of the year. I'm wondering if you have any policies that you tend to follow on players leaving the program, any restrictions that you consider putting on players? Do you think it would be easier if there was just a standardization across all conferences, the NCAA in general? COACH WILLIAMS: Fairly complicated question. I'm going to try to make sure I can get all of them. I've been very, very, very fortunate. I think that I've had eight transfers in 28 years. All eight of those transfers, we gave them their complete release, period, the end. We have such a massive number of kids that transfer nowadays because of everybody wanting instant gratification. Coaches in some way have been blamed for that. We have absolutely nothing to do with it. It's the want and need of instant gratification. The culture we have, if things don't work out, just leave and go somewhere else. I don't believe coaches are responsible for 1/10th of them. It is a tremendous issue. Some people could say it's a tremendous problem, and I would probably lean a little bit in that direction. If a young man did not want to be in my program, you know, I'm going to try to help him. We've even had guys that have transferred from us before that come back and see games, come back to reunions and things like that. But I've been very, very fortunate. I think I've only had eight transfers in 28 years as a coach - yeah, 28 years. The different item now is the transfer for a fifth-year guy, a guy who has already graduated. That one really is a hard situation. I've got some friends, and I don't think they'll mind me using, that will be below the top 50 programs. They coach a guy for three years. He has a medical redshirt one year. All of a sudden you're getting ready to have him for his best year, and he leaves. That's hard on that guy. Yet everybody's doing it. I've had one. So it's hard. We try to make decisions, Can that player really help us? Is he going to fit in with our other players? Now can we get him in school? We try to answer all three of those questions. The tough thing is we have to answer them so quickly. A transfer issue is one of the biggest negatives we have going on in college basketball. Is that close to answering all of it? Thank you. Q. In your scouting in the first two games you played against Syracuse what you've seen from DaJuan Coleman and how he's done against your team? COACH WILLIAMS: He's been a good rebounder for them, a good inside scorer, he's blocked some shots. DaJuan is really gifted. I went up to see him play when he was a high school youngster. Jimmy came to the practice session, too. I said, I'm probably wasting my time. I really thought he was a big-time player. You're right, he's played well against us. We've got to understand that. See if we can hope that he doesn't play as well tomorrow. Q. I know the story has been told in North Carolina a lot. The Justin Campbell story, you giving him the scholarship, what he's gone through, seems to be a great human interest story. Could you talk about that a little bit. COACH WILLIAMS: Justin Coleman. You had me worried for a minute. I thought I didn't know all my players. You know, J. Cole had a tremendous accident when he was in high school, was told he'd never play basketball again, it was going to be a challenge to walk and do all those normal things. He was involved in a terrible car accident involving a motorcycle and someone was killed. He's been challenged about as much as I can ever imagine any individual being challenged. Came back and not only played, but played on our JV team for a couple years. Just a wonderful, wonderful kid. A wonderful smile. The only player I've ever coached that if you ask him a question, he talks 10 times more than I do. He's a unique individual. But it really is, you think as a youngster, you're told you're never going to play basketball again, it may be difficult for you to ever walk again. You come back from that, think about being involved in a car accident where someone is killed. I mean, it is truly one of those warm, fuzzy, good-feeling stories about it. Q. Why did you give him the scholarship at the beginning of the season after two walk-ons? COACH WILLIAMS: It was a unique deal. We ended up have a scholarship. Basketball at North Carolina, we make quite a bit of money. I love our athletic department, but I love kids more. J. Cole was with us last year, did a great job. So I pulled him out of the meeting that I was having with the team. I said, Son, I've got a scholarship and we're not going to keep it in our pocket. You've done such a great job for us, I want you to enjoy it. This will be a nice for you, but a heck of a lot nicer for your mom and dad. We're going to put you on full scholarship. I walked into the meeting and I said, Guys, I want everybody to say hello to J. Cole, our newest full scholarship player on our team. It was a great, great, warm, fuzzy feeling and reaction from all of his teammates. They really got excited. He's the kind of kid you like to do things for. I think I'm right on this, 28 years as a head coach, I've had at least one walk-on to our team and as many as five. Q. In 1968 the Final Four was also in Houston. It was a very historic set of games, really kind of changed the way basketball was covered. It was also in the Astrodome. How do you think college basketball and this tournament has evolved since that historic Final Four? COACH WILLIAMS: I'm pausing for a second. You realize I was a senior in high school? This was about 30 years before you were born. It's hard for me to figure out how my eggs evolved at breakfast this morning much less what happened in 1968. I think we stayed for quite a while in relatively large, but not massive arenas. I think the Astrodome was the first one really. I think the year before is when UCLA and Houston played. That was even a bigger change. I think they changed the arenas at that time probably 20, 30 years later where they wanted the massive arenas to let the massive crowds of people in. Everybody talks about the sight lines, how far away you are. The bottom line is you're in the crowd for a Final Four game and you should be excited about it. Dollar drives everything. If they can sell 50,000 or 60,000 seats as opposed to 21,000, that's what they'd like to do. I just got a note up here, some of you guys know this person. Tom Butters, great athlete in his own right, athletic director at Duke, just passed away last night. I don't know if I was supposed to be the person to announce that. I will say this. Tom Butters was awfully nice to young Coach Roy Williams when I first got to Kansas. He should be applauded and has been applauded for many years for sticking with Mike Krzyzewski when the first couple of years were really tough. Tom Butters was great to me. I think the athletic work and the NCAA committee lost one of their initial members and the whole bit. That's a sad day. Q. Jay Wright said earlier when he played you guys in '09, he could tell midway through the game, early in the game, his team wasn't ready to play. They went during the week, soaked it all in, tried to only focus in practice and in meetings. This time he's put on more of a lockdown, they're only together, not out with family and friends. What is your philosophy? Are you a soak-it-all-in guy or are you locking them down? COACH WILLIAMS: Well, we're not locking them down. I think every coach has got to do what they're comfortable with. I've been fortunate, I played -- this is our eighth time at this. That doesn't mean I'm smarter than anybody else, it means I've had really good players. But I've seen it work certain different directions, seen some others that didn't work. I try to mold into what I think would fit this particular team. In 2005, I thought my club was really focused 'cause everybody sort of talked about they had great talent, but they weren't a great team, that Illinois was a much better team. So we focused on that, but yet we tried to have some fun. In 2009, I had three guys that came basically back to school with the purpose of trying to win a national championship. It was a great, great year. 2009 we had eight seniors, eight guys graduated, three guys drafted in the first round, one in the second round. It was good. But that team was so focused. I didn't really worry much about that team at all. This team is sort of along those lines that we have right now. Went to the dinner last night. We let them do some things out. We have a meeting late at night with snack, which ends up being a 12-course meal, ice cream station, things like that. Try to give them a last second or two thought before we send them to bed. We're allowing them to do different things, do things with their families. But, you know, there's not a lot of time. I mean, you realize this morning we got up at 9:30, we had breakfast at 10:00, we taped between 10:30 and 11:30 to go to practice. We got to practice at 12, we finished, we came straight over here. We've been here 10 minutes. We're at the press conference. We're going to do this for an hour or so, whatever it is. Then we're going to shoot in front of the public, finish that at 4:00. I haven't had to lock them down, they've had to be here. But Jay is doing what he thinks is comfortable for him and his program. I like our guys to experience the Final Four. Coach Smith a hundred years ago, his whole philosophy was to keep everybody away. I remember 1981, we played in Philadelphia. We stayed on the other side of Villanova. We got beat by Indiana in the national championship game. In '82 we were fortunate enough to get back and playing in New Orleans. We're trying to discuss where we're going to stay. I said, Coach, let's stay in downtown New Orleans. Let them realize we're in the mix of the Final Four. It didn't work last year. He said, Yeah, you're right. Let's try that and see if it works. We won it. That's one of two or three things I ever gave Coach Smith in 10 year. He carried me for 10 years. I think I gave him two or three suggestions. Q. You see this a lot with the ACC, playing teams twice in the regular season, then a third time in the tournament. Beating a team a third time when you won the first two is very difficult. Why is that difficult, one of the biggest challenges you face as coaches? COACH WILLIAMS: I think the first premise is you got to agree with that statement. I'm not so sure it is. If you're better than me, you can probably beat me 20 times. The Syracuse games, the games went right down to the wire. Both games within the last three or four minutes, especially at our place, I think it was like two and a half minutes, we were up one, scored the ball, took it to three. At their place about five minutes to go, I think it was still a one- or two-possession game. Golden State this year has beaten a lot of people four, five, six times. I'm not trying to compare us to Golden State. I guarantee you in the locker room, that coach doesn't talk about, We've beaten them seven times, beating them eight is really hard. The best example I can give -- two of them, one Jimmy gave yesterday. In '84, before half you guys were born, Villanova played Georgetown twice in the regular season. Georgetown won both of 'em, all right? Then Villanova upset. What people don't realize is that Villanova was really close in those other games as well. Jimmy told that story yesterday. In '09, we played Michigan State in the ACC, Big Ten, in Detroit. We were great that day. We caught Tommy's club on not a good day and we beat them easily. Now we got to play them again for the national championship. That's when people said it was going to help the economy of Michigan and Detroit. That's my favorite statement. I said, Let's let the economy suffer for another day. I told our guys, We can beat 'em worse. So it depends on the different level. But I think with the close games that we've had, those things don't mean anything. In college basketball, it's different. I told Brad Brownell one time, maybe that was '09, we played Clemson three times that year. We had three close games. They could have won all three games. We won all three. If they had won one of those games or hadn't played us and they played some other team, they might have made the tournament without playing in the play-in game. That's the year they had to play in the play-in game, travel all night. It was difficult for them. I'm not telling my guys it's difficult. I'm telling them it had nothing to do with it. Sorry about a long answer. Q. I spoke with Brad Daugherty this week. If you could confirm that you coached him in peewee basketball, is that correct? COACH WILLIAMS: Started in the fourth grade. Let's confirm one thing, too. When I left, he was an eighth grader. He was 5'11", overweight kid, that didn't care very much. Five years later, he was one of the great prospects and great players there was. Q. He did tell me that one thing he would, if he had the opportunity to talk to these players, is to tell them to try not to live up to the success of the past teams, be in their shadow. How have you addressed sort of the legends and the games that have preceded them? COACH WILLIAMS: I really haven't addressed them yet. I told them what I told the 2005 team, for example, in the locker room after the game. We won the national championship. I was very lucky. Coach Smith came in the locker room, Michael Jordan came in the locker room. I said North Carolina basketball is Dean Smith, Phil Ford, Michael Jordan. But now for the rest of your lives, North Carolina Basketball is also going to be Sean May, Marvin Williams. It's going to be the 2005 team. I went back into the background except for the war stories. My guys can tell you I can tell more war stories than anybody in history. I tell them about past players, things we've done all the time. I think Brad is right. The fact this is our 19th Final Four doesn't give us any edge. The fact that we're playing Syracuse, we've already played them twice, doesn't give us any edge. Tomorrow's difference-maker is going to be who plays best on tomorrow's game. Then, if we play really, really well, get lucky, perhaps they'll let us stay around and play again the next day or two days later. Q. Last couple questions have ended up referencing the '05 and '09 teams. This team is constructed differently. It does seem like from the outside at least, it's similar to those teams in that they were all teams at the end of a journey they've gone on. Is there, in your mind, that similarity or is that something we see from the outside? COACH WILLIAMS: No, I think you're right. You can quote me on that. How many times have I said, You're right. That's pretty good. You think back to '05, we had Jackie, Jawad and Melvin, had gone 8-20. We were crushed at the Final Four in '08. I remember Bobby Frasor coming in the locker room at the Final Four and said, Let's remember how we felt last year. I think this team has a single-minded purpose to do everything they can possibly do. Now we have to get the other teams to cooperate, help us a little bit. I think they have pretty much a single-minded purpose. Perhaps that attitude that '05 and '09 had, similar to some of the thoughts these kids have had. Q. Any good Brad Daugherty stories from fourth grade that I could give him a hard time about? COACH WILLIAMS: I tell you this. When I went to Owen High School, this is a war story, but Brad will like it. Guy hired me right out of college as a head coach because my old elementary school principal told him to hire me. He said, Roy, we've gone five straight years of winning six or fewer games. I said, I promise you I'll change that. I did. We stretched that sucker to seven. My first year we went 2-19. The first kids I put out there as ninth graders, it was the first organized basketball game they ever played. We had to go through when you're shooting the free throw, the other team has the inside position. When there's a jump ball, you face your basket. We had to go through stuff like that. Everybody else that we played had programs that started in the fourth grade and some of them even a little lower. That was my challenge, was to try to start something for the elementary kids. So we did it every Saturday morning for nine straight weeks during the winter. We brought the fourth, fifth, sixth, 7th, 8th graders to the high school, did clinics using my players. I got the recreation department to give us some money. I paid my player $2 an hour and they would come in and help coach the little kids. Brad Daugherty came to our group as fourth graders and he kept coming back. Gosh, I'll have to add it up to tell you the year. Probably '82, five of those kids that started coming to my Saturday morning clinics were the starting lineup for the Owen High School War Horses in the state championship game. They lost, but all five of those kids started with us on the Saturday morning programs were the starters in the state championship game. Brad was the big sucker. Brad Daugherty never gets a lot of credit as the best player to ever play at North Carolina. He was one of the great ones. I would say he was probably the most efficient player I've ever seen. He led the entire nation in field goal percentage his last year when he was our leading scorer. The focus of everybody else's defense. Every coach before they left the locker room would say, We have to do a great job on Daugherty. We played UCLA that year. I think Brad was 13-13. The big fella, in addition to being one of the funniest guys I've ever known in my life, was really a big-time player. When he left Cleveland before some guy named LeBron came along, I think Brad was the leading scoring and rebounder in Cleveland Cavaliers history. I know you wanted a history lesson on Brad. Thank you. Q. I'm not sure there's anything left to ask about Marcus Paige at this point. Tell us something that we still don't know about him. COACH WILLIAMS: Wow. Been one of the most decorated, most discussed, most adorned with awards. He's covered everything from his freshman year to being one of the most criticized, to one of the most effective players ever in North Carolina history, to accomplish the most. But you got it right. He doesn't like to ride in full elevators. He doesn't like to ride in full elevators. He got eight teammates get on the elevator, he will wait for the next one to go up. My boy's a little claustrophobic. Who is leading the Houston Open after the first round? Good gracious sakes alive. Charley Hoffman? I do have a couple of those guys coming to the game tomorrow. That will be fun. Q. 10-under. COACH WILLIAMS: He started putting a lot better since he cut his hair. I'm sure he'll be thrilled to hear I said that. He wouldn't know me if I stepped in front of him. Q. Brice was talking about he never thought he would get to this level, coming from a small town. He played at Peach Jam, a lot of people started noticing him. What did you notice about him first? What about him saying he never thought he would play at this level? COACH WILLIAMS: I do remember the first time seeing Brice at the Peach Jam, the quick jump, the ability to block some shots around the basket. But the quick bounce, that's the first thing. We were looking for another inside player. He was very thin at that time. I guess I just saw a guy that I thought had tremendous potential. We recruited him, liked him, liked what he said. When he came to our place, his work ethic wasn't the strongest. Didn't really know how to work the hardest. I've said, gone on record, I pushed him harder than any player I've ever pushed over a four-year period. Strongly criticized him, maybe more than any player I've ever coached. At the same time it's because I thought I saw that there was so much more that he could do. I'm not surprised by him saying that he didn't expect this. But I've seen the guy grow leaps and bounds in front of me. I've seen the guy grow leaps and bounds mentally. I've seen him grow mentally, his work ethic, what he's able to produce. I think he's gotten more confidence as he's played. I say this all the time. Brice was not a McDonald's All-American. He was a guy that just looked like a prospect. I still want him to work harder. The day I die, I'll probably send a message to Brice, You can do more. But it's the kind of thing with me that I've been extremely proud of where he is now compared to where he was. I'll be even more proud if he gets to that point that I think he can get to. Other than that, he's really a weird dude. THE MODERATOR: We welcome the student-athletes from North Carolina. COACH WILLIAMS: Press conference has been very dull, so I'm glad you guys are here. THE MODERATOR: We'll continue with questions. Q. Roy, Isaiah has really come on. He played from the outside at Oxford. He's now a power forward. Just his evolution to become the power forward. COACH WILLIAMS: At Oxford, Leo played him everywhere on the court, did a nice job of helping him develop. He has tremendous leaping ability, he's more effective closer to the basket. He's never been the Kyle Korver three-point shooter. His shot is getting better and better each year. He's spent a lot of time in the weight room. He doesn't look like the same individual when he came. He is a power player. With that leaping ability, he's really done some good things. Q. Marcus, you mentioned after the ACC tournament title game, you torn down all the signs in the arena and took them with you into the locker room. Did you keep any of those? Which one is your favorite? MARCUS PAIGE: Yeah, we kept some of them. We didn't keep all of them. We took a little bit more than we needed, I think. A couple guys got them signed by the team, put them up where they live, which is pretty cool. I'm going to do that with the one I have. I haven't done that yet. I think Toby is the one that started that, one of our walk-ons. He got everybody to sign it because it said ACC tournament on it. That was pretty cool. Hopefully we can get a couple souvenirs from here. Q. Roy, a couple questions about Marcus. The evolution of him as a leader, because it didn't really happen right away. Also he's a confident guy, but when his confidence got down a little bit this year, what kind of things did you say to him? COACH WILLIAMS: I think Marcus has been a leader ever since I've known him. His junior year, his high school team won a state championship. It was with five seniors. MARCUS PAIGE: Yeah. COACH WILLIAMS: He was with five seniors, but I thought he was the leader of that team. It comes natural to him. He's a point guard. When he came to us, I handed him the ball because Kendall had left to go to the NBA with the 13th pick with Phoenix. I said, You're going to run this thing and I think you're going to be great. We'll live with the minuses, just keep being your best every day and we'll get better. As a freshman he tried to defer somewhat to some of the seniors, but the ball's in his hands during play, so he is the leader. I think he did a marvelous job then. Basically since the first day he stepped on the court, he's been a leader, as good a leader as I've ever had. This year when he lost his confidence kind of thing, I'm not so sure he ever lost his confidence. I think he got pretty mad. I'd say, Are you all right? He would say, Yeah. I'd say, Do you want me to leave you alone? He'd say, Yeah. That was pretty intelligent coaching on my part. I didn't say anything. He just took care of it. Q. Marcus, we heard about your experiences as a freshman. What do you recall about your comfort level being a leader on that team when there were older guys? MARCUS PAIGE: I remember being a little bit hesitant to really try to be a leader, especially vocally, because I was the only freshman in the lineup at that time. We had some older guys that had been around a while. I was a little bit intimidated to try to voice and be the voice of the team. But as they kind of accepted me as their point guard, it got a lot easier. By the end of the year, I was really confident. We started playing pretty good basketball. I felt like I could say things and not get any backlash or anything. From my sophomore year on, I felt like I had at least earned enough respect in the locker room to be able to say some things to some guys, get on some people, like coach, hopefully try to light a little fire under them. Everybody has been receptive of it. That's the biggest thing. I just try to be an extension of coach out there. My teammates let me do it, so... Q. Do you enjoy all this media stuff? You had two days in Philly, breakout room, media yesterday. What are your thoughts on all this media? BRICE JOHNSON: Well, I mean, honestly, no, I don't. I'm going to be honest with you. Coming from a small town, there's not a lot of media. There's probably one newspaper. There are not like multiple. It's different. I mean, it was a learning experience when I first got here. Hey, you're going to get hit with a lot of media here. With all the other junk that was going on, it doubled. It was kind of crazy. But, I mean, I don't really like it. But I know it's part of the job. I mean, I do it, so... MARCUS PAIGE: Yeah, I mean, I don't mind it. I talk a lot, so this gives me a chance to talk a lot (laughter). That's one thing. But, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of it. I gets kind of daunting and exhausting after a while. It's just part of it. Coach told us earlier, there are a lot of people that would easily trade spots with us right now to deal with all this to be in the Final Four. You got to be thankful for it. THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us here. Wish you guys the best of luck for tomorrow. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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