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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: ORLANDOMarch 15, 2017Mike WhiteDevin RobinsonCanyon BarryKasey HillOrlando, Florida Q. I'll start off with the two seniors and then maybe if Devin wants to chime in: As soon as the bracket was put up there, as you guys might know, right away the guy on CBS started calling it, "I'm calling this as my first upset of the bracket, East Tennessee over Florida." Did you guys hear about it later? Did you pay any attention to it? Did you put any credence to it? Put it out of your head? What's been the dynamic since then? KASEY HILL: We just focused on getting better and the game plan and what Coach has ready for us, and that's about it. CANYON BARRY: Yeah, we heard it. Kind of fuel, motivation. Like Kasey said, we're just locked in on controlling what we can control and listening to the coaches just to get better every game. THE MODERATOR: Devin, would you like to add anything? DEVIN ROBINSON: They said it all. We heard it. We can't focus on nothing like that. We've just got to focus on ourself and get better each day. Pay attention to the scouting report and just focus on what we have to do to make sure that doesn't happen. Q. Question for Kasey: Being the only player with NCAA Tournament experience, Coach mentioned earlier in the week he's counting on you to lead. What have you tried to do to kind of help get the guys prepared? KASEY HILL: Same thing we've been doing all year. Just having everybody stay together, listening to the coaches. They've played basketball before. They've been playing basketball all their life. They've just got to keep doing that, and we'll be fine. Q. Kasey, when you were a freshman and the seniors helped you in the NCAA Tournament, what did they pass on to you that you're trying to pass on now to these younger guys about how different it is playing in the Tournament? KASEY HILL: Just staying in the moment, always being ready to go. That was one thing that Scottie (Wilbekin) would always tell me, "Just stay ready, stay locked in." That was pretty much it. Q. Kasey, to that same point, what do you remember about your first NCAA Tourney game? KASEY HILL: I remember we were losing. We were the Number 1 overall seed, and we were losing going into halftime. Coach D was pretty mad at us, but we got it together at halftime, and we came out and won the game. Q. Devin, can you guys talk about trying to get your mojo back? I mean, losing three out of the last four games. DEVIN ROBINSON: We went back to the drawing board. We knew that right now we know coming in here, we have to pick everything back up. We know, and we understand it's win or go home. So we got our backs against the wall, and we can't worry about what happened in the past. Just move forward and get another winning streak going right now. Q. Kasey, how do you view the guard matchup and dealing with Cromer, who can be a high-powered scorer, and their big guard as well? KASEY HILL: They're both great players. Cromer can score, but we're a good defensive team but we'll be locked in and read ready to go. Q. Canyon, I think when your dad was playing, it was the NIT was the big tournament to make. Has he given you any advice on postseason play, what to look forward to, what to focus your mind on? CANYON BARRY: Not really. At the end of the day, we have to focus on the things we can control, stay together as a family and a team, like we've done all year. And I know we'll be playing our hardest. Just try to win games. Q. Kasey, having not been there the last couple of years, do you have a better sense of appreciation for this event, being part of it, that you had to kind of wait to get back? KASEY HILL: That was in the past. Honestly, I'm just focused on right now, and I'm glad we're here. Q. How much have you been longing to play in this tournament again? KASEY HILL: I've been trying to get in every year, and I'm happy we're here now. Q. For Canyon, this is your first NCAA Tournament. I know you're a fifth-year guy, played a lot of years. What have the emotions been like, and how are you taking it all in? CANYON BARRY: It's just exciting. Your goal, growing up as a kid when you're playing basketball and watching the Tournament, is to be there one day. Fortunate enough to get to play. Really happy that we could send the seniors out and get Florida back to the Tournament. I know they've had a couple seasons where they haven't made it, but like K said now, it just comes down to winning games. Excited here we are here, though. Q. For a couple of the guys, Coach White was involved in one of the more memorable 4-13 games, on the wrong end of it. Did he talk about that experience, the Valpo game? Has he brought it up to you guys or used it as an example? CANYON BARRY: I don't think so. He probably wants to forget it, honestly. Never said anything about that. Q. Canyon, what can you do or what can your teammates do to help you get to the line a little more frequently than you have been? Is in any way the offensive stagnation have anything to do with not having big John? CANYON BARRY: I don't think so. There's been games where I've gotten to the line a lot and games where I haven't. I just have to stay aggressive. My teammates keep telling me, "Keep looking to score and just play your game." Like you said, just follow the coaches' game plan and running our offense like we've been doing all year, and I think good things are going to happen. Q. When you guys were trying to make it closer toward the end of that Vanderbilt game, you guys went to that the press. How important was it to set the defensive tempo early? DEVIN ROBINSON: It's really important. When you start off playing intensive defense, that messes with the offense's head. Once you get the defense going and make it hard for them from the beginning, they tend to get frustrated throughout the game and it makes it harder to make shots later on the game. I feel like, if we get started earlier and play defense earlier, it will work out later on. KASEY HILL: I'm just happy we can get back to playing our normal defense. If I don't have to guard Vandy and switch 1 through 5, I think we'll do all right. THE MODERATOR: Canyon, anything else? CANYON BARRY: No, I think they got it all. Q. I just wanted to ask Canyon, do you think you could have taught Brockway to shoot better than 3-of-10 if you'd have taught him underhand? CANYON BARRY: I don't know. After seeing him shoot, I don't think there's any hope for him honestly. It was pretty bad. Q. Devin, what's this week been like coming off the early exit in the conference tournament? Did you guys have a meeting? How have you regrouped? DEVIN ROBINSON: We had a meeting as the team and the staff to basically get everything out, put everything on the table like we have when we lost two games in a row and just knew we had to recollect as a team and get to the root of what was going on and figure out that, if we're going to keep playing like this, we're going to end our season short. We got back into the gym, and practice has been really well. Regroup, and hopefully we got ourselves together and ready to play. Q. What was the main takeaway from that meeting, and how was it similar to the one you had a month and a half, two months ago? CANYON BARRY: It's been similar and different. I think the main thing for us is staying focused. When we played Vandy, we didn't play our best basketball. We didn't follow the scouting report, made too many defensive mistakes. Just simple things we've been working on all year, we just seemed to refuse to do against that team. Like Devin said, we've had a couple of great practices. We're getting our edge back, and I think we'll be ready to play. Q. Devin, I'm wondering whether Jason Williams had any words of wisdom for you earlier today? DEVIN ROBINSON: He just told us to enjoy the moment. He told us he wasn't able to play in an NCAA Tournament when he played. "Just enjoy every moment and play every game like it's your last and leave it out there on the court." We took that in, and we appreciated him coming out to our practice today. He was very humble about it, and he enjoyed it. We enjoyed his company, too. So I think it was good for us. Q. A couple of you guys, if you could answer this. You're in Central Florida, so you're fairly close to campus. But as you well know as players, this is Gator country. Can you talk about the hometown crowd? CANYON BARRY: All year we've had great fans in the O Dome and traveling earlier in the year when the construction on the O Dome was being done. We're really excited to see Gator Nation out in full force tomorrow. Can't thank them enough for all their support. Just tell them to get loud tomorrow. KASEY HILL: I'm excited they're coming, but I don't want it to be a thing where we're comfortable and think we can depend on them. We've got to go out there and execute and be ready to play. DEVIN ROBINSON: I'm glad we're in Orlando. It's two hours away. It's going to be nice to play in front of a home team, home crowd, but like Kasey said, we can't depend on the crowd to help us get it. We've got to come out here and get ready to win. THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Coach Mike White. MIKE WHITE: First off, it's very bright in here. Should have worn some sunscreen. Good to see some familiar faces. Excited about the opportunity, of course. It's been a long year. It's been a long year for us especially with all the travel, the unique situation, the unique hand that we were dealt. Our guys have handled it really well, of course. Proud of the fact that the Gators are back in the NCAA Tournament. It's really exciting. Proud of my guys. But at the same time, we're coming off two straight losses. So that's unique in and of itself. We've got to find a way to get off to a good start here against a really good East Tennessee State team who's had a terrific year, and we'll see where it goes from there. Q. Mike, you touched on this a little bit on Tuesday, but I wonder if you have any additional comments to your team or the issue of being declared an upset victim or a potential upset victim as soon as the name went up on the bracket? Seth was calling it for East Tennessee. Do you think the kids will embrace it? Do you think they'll forget about it? Is it all part of, I guess, the fun of this time of year? MIKE WHITE: Yeah, I think it's definitely a part of the fun. I think it's what -- one of the things that makes this tournament so special and March Madness such an exciting event is that every game is huge. You win or you go home. People love to see upsets, of course, and upsets happen a bunch. There are a lot of really, really good mid-major teams, East Tennessee State being one. Our guys won't forget it because our guys, we watched it as a unit, and we watched it on a big TV in our locker room, and the volume was turned up loud. So they saw it, and they heard it. That said, it can't be a big factor for us. If we're thinking too much about that, we're taking away from how we're defending T.J. Cromer and not allowing him to get 41, and keeping Bradford out of the paint and getting a touch versus Merriweather, who's an incredible defender. Blocking out those two high-major transfer bigs. Our focus needs to be on East Tennessee State and the game plan much more so than we're going to prove everyone wrong and not get upset. In fact, we were favored in our last game and didn't take care of business. Q. Coach, could you just talk about playing here in Central Florida, Gator Nation backyard, you're close to campus. The players said they were glad to be playing here but didn't want to get comfortable with the crowd, that they needed to do their own thing. MIKE WHITE: That's a good response from them. I'm glad. That's the maturity I would like to hear. And I hope that mindset is throughout the entire locker room and it's not just talk, but that's reality because it's -- we can't be comfortable. This isn't a home game. This is an NCAA Tournament game. Both teams will be juiced up. It's more about the game plan and execution than anything else. That said, I'd rather be playing in Orlando than anywhere else. The hour and a half bus trip was beautiful. It was great to get in a little bit earlier last night and not have to fly across the country somewhere. And our guys have earned that. Now we've got to do something with that. Q. Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, this is your first game as a coach in the Tourney, correct? MIKE WHITE: This is my 17th year coaching, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong. I've said 17th for a while, so I hope I'm not wrong. I said 16 for a while and 15 for a while to my players. So you get mixed up sometimes. But, yeah, it's really neat to be here. I haven't sat at one of these tables with this logo since I was a player. I talked about this a bunch, I worked for some really great coaches, and we accomplished some really neat things. Winning 20 games at Jacksonville State, winning SEC West championships and going to NIT Final Fours for Andy Kennedy at Ole Miss, and winning three straight championships at Louisiana Tech, but never did quite enough to get into this tournament. So it's really neat. Q. What do you think it's going to be like? What do you think is going to be different about it or anything? MIKE WHITE: Well, I hadn't thought about it, and I won't. This is about East Tennessee State on a neutral floor. That's all it is to me. This is neat. Today's neat. The festivities are over with here this afternoon, and we've got 24 hours to lock in on a big opportunity for us. Q. What are some of your memories as a player in the Tournament? I hate to be the one to bring up here. Do you bring up the 4-13 game, being on the wrong side of it? MIKE WHITE: No, not to our guys unless they read it or watch a clip here. We talked about it earlier in the week. I've been on the wrong side of it, of course. It's got to be about the scout. It's got to be about execution. It's got to be about a little bit more discipline than anything else. This is two games in a row where, if we did this, golly, if we didn't do this, if we didn't allow this to happen, if we did this a little bit better, you're coming in with some momentum. And we hope to regain some momentum by having a little bit more focus, having a bit more discipline, doing our jobs, being a bit more accountable. Q. How would you characterize the team meeting you guys had to regroup before the conference tournament? Was it similar to the one you had midseason? MIKE WHITE: In some ways. It wasn't quite as open with communication. There wasn't a lot of opportunity for our guys. It was more, let's watch the film. It was more me talking. I didn't -- we've talked a lot as a team, and, again, it's been a long year. I didn't think we needed Kasey to talk for five minutes and Chris to talk for five minutes, and so on and so forth. They got the message. They've embraced the fact that our -- I talked about it this week, that our margin for error has decreased, and now you lose, and you go home, and it's over. This group likes each other. They want to keep playing. They want to prolong the season as long as possible. And they also understand, in order to do that, we've got to tighten some things up. We've been pretty consistent offensively but not overpowering. Defensively, we can't make the four or five mistakes we made last week, which is better than making 20, but we're not good enough. We're not good enough to beat ETSU by making another four or five that lead to big baskets for these guys. Q. Mike, I'm curious if you ever had any interaction with Steve Forbes. Do you have a great anecdote about him? We're looking for leads here. MIKE WHITE: You know I'm the worst on that one, Pat. No, no anecdotes for you other than I thought they had Tennessee rolling. Tennessee was winning a lot of games. I'm his counterpart at Ole Miss, of course, and we'd run into each other a bunch on the road recruiting and scouted against each other, coached against each other. And then I recruited his program when he was at -- what do we call it now? Northwest Florida State. Used to be called Okaloosa Walton. Did a great job there. I've always been familiar with his teams, watched them play in the national tournament. Again, had a lot of success there. It's not surprising the success they're having. He's done a terrific job evaluating and recruiting. They've got a high-major caliber team, and I know they'll prove that tomorrow that they're very worthy of being in the NCAA Tournament. They've got an SEC staff. All these guys worked for Coach Pearl at Tennessee, and they've got elite players. This is going to be like an elite game for us. Q. NCAA Tournament, so much is about matchups. What is your biggest concern matching up with East Tennessee State? MIKE WHITE: Great question. We've had matchups, especially the last one that lasted two games, that on paper, going into the game, we thought was a very difficult matchup for us, both offensively and defensively, for a couple reasons. Honestly, with East Tennessee State, I think you've got two teams that are pretty similar in a lot of ways. There's probably nothing that intimidates them by us. I don't think that they're going to throw a ton of curveballs at us at the same time. I think we know what we're dealing with. They know what they're dealing with. Speed, quickness, athleticism, two teams that play really hard, very good length, good depth, two experienced teams. So this one is as much about us as it is about the opponent. I guess your biggest -- circling back, your biggest fear going into this one, especially because of us and because of the not-too-distant past is just a couple mental lapses defensively -- and, boy, Cromer goes on a 6-0 run by himself, "I forgot to call switch." "I lost him in the corner." Can't have it. Can't have it. Transition defense is huge in this one. They're phenomenal in transition offense. They really feed off of it. They feed off of live-ball turnovers to get them into transition offense. Bradford is terrific at getting in the paint. We overhelped a few time against Vanderbilt that led to open threes. We can't overhelp on Bradford, although he scores it in the paint. They've got guys that can fill it up from behind the arc. And lastly, we've got to defend the glass. We've got to do collectively. Glass and Perea are high-level athletes with high-level motors. Quick, strong, and relentless on the offensive glass. Q. Coach, obviously, everyone knows how competitive you are. How long did it take to you get over that Valpo? Even though you weren't in the game at the time? How long did it take you? MIKE WHITE: That one felt like it's felt this week honestly. That SEC tournament was rough. It's been a tough week. Really tough week. I remember -- you guys can't say I've been bad with you yet because I hadn't missed an opportunity. Denver hadn't had to drag me to a press conference after an L but after the Valpo, after the Bryce Drew shot -- and I can't even talk about Bryce right now. I'm so mad at Bryce. We did text back and forth yesterday. What a great job he's done this year. But he hit that shot on us, and I remember sitting in that locker room it seems like for hours. For hours. I remember telling -- you know, I was a kid. I was, whatever, 21, acting like I was about 14, and I remember our SID telling me, "You have to talk to the media," and I refused. So I apologize to them now. I can't even remember who they were. Q. Was that your last year? MIKE WHITE: That was my junior year. We were very good. NC State was terrific, All-American that year. Anthony Boone was a senior. Joezon Darby, Jason Smith. We had a really good team and really led the whole game. That was wild. Did that really just happen to us? The year before was our first -- Q. Did you start that year? MIKE WHITE: I did. I started four years, and that year I guarded Bryce actually probably about half that game, but we started getting better and better players. Thank goodness for the Ole Miss program. My minutes started decreasing. That's probably why we had the year we had. As a senior, I played even less. As a senior, we broke through and beat Villanova in the first round. That was huge for us. That would have been our first win, if I'm not mistaken, in NCAA Tournament history. It was our second at large. Q. If you'd have been in the game, would you have stopped DeSean? MIKE WHITE: Bryce knows. Bryce teases with me and say, "You wouldn't have let me catch the ball. You were older than the freshman guard." I quickly told Bryce, "You know I would have fouled you. It would have been a four-point play. I would fouled the heck out of you. I don't know whether they would have called it or not." He was a great player. It was a big moment in the Tournament's history. Obviously, I wish we weren't on that end of it. But it's all memories. We have an opportunity to make more memories, to make positive memories. Ryan, you asked me earlier about the 4-13 with Bryce. Did I dodge anything it? I went on another tangent. Q. You just covered it there. MIKE WHITE: Did I? You guys got each other's back. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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