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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: SALT LAKE CITYMarch 17, 2017Randy BennettJoe RahonEmmett NaarCalvin HermansonSalt Lake City, Utah Q. How do you guys prepare for someone so unfamiliar in such a short period of time, what's the process like? CALVIN HERMANSON: It's good to play somebody that's not in our league again. I'd say for a non-conference opponent we usually just kind of -- normal routine; watch film and kind of get to know the matchups and stuff like that. And just try and do a good job of when in transition and figure out what the team is good at and try to take that away. Q. You guys have scrimmaged Arizona in the past, but this will be the first time you've played each other in a regular season game for a couple of years. How much do you know about the Wildcats and what do you expect from Kadeem Allen and from the University of Arizona in general? How much do you know about them? JOE RAHON: Yeah, we didn't play them this year in the preseason scrimmage. But I think we played them three straight years before that. We're familiar with some of their personnel, familiar with their style a little bit, which helps. But they've got -- obviously they have freshmen -- two freshmen that start, I think one or two that come off the bench that are impact players for them. We haven't seen them. Playing in the scrimmage you kind of get familiar, you have a familiar sense of their style of play and their defensive principles, their offensive system. So that definitely helps, rather than preparing two days for a team you're completely blind to and have no idea what they're about. The familiarity will help a little bit. But they're a really good team and we're excited for the challenge. Q. Kind of on the same note, and I'm sorry for the -- just not knowing -- but when you're scrimmaging a team that's another team that's like Arizona, what's the kind of difference in the intensity level? Are you trying to prove something or just work on things? What's the deal? EMMETT NAAR: Obviously it's quite a lot different from the NCAA tournament, preseason scrimmage, with no fans there, no one watching. The intensity is obviously a bit down and as well at that stage in the season you're more focusing on yourself, less on them, you're trying to get through your own plays, things like that. So there's definitely a real different feel to it. And we'll be doing a lot of preparation, what we can today and tomorrow to get ready for this game. That's something you don't really get in the preseason game. So it will be obviously a lot different. But having those three years under our belt with playing them a few times, that definitely helps. Q. Having had a chance to look at the game last night, is there anything specific you guys want to clean up before tomorrow's game? JOE RAHON: Yeah, we didn't think we were great defensively yesterday. We let VCU get to the paint too much and get too many shots around the rim. That's something we know Arizona likes to do. All their guards are really good at getting to the basket. They're big and strong. They can finish in traffic. That's something we're going to have to clean up for sure. I think we turned it over like 15 times, which is high for us. And we try to keep it to ten or lower. So in that area we're going to try to pick it up a little bit, too. And those are probably two areas we need to get better at quickly in order to have a chance to win this game tomorrow. Q. You guys have obviously played Gonzaga three times now. Talk about how much you are prepared in preparation. CALVIN HERMANSON: We talked about how they're pretty similar size-wise. Both teams have pretty good inside attack. Gonzaga did a good job against us of scoring in the paint down low. And obviously Arizona has big size down low as well. We're going to try to limit their points in the paint. And I'd say that's where they're most similar, probably. Q. Calvin, I'm guessing you played in a couple of those, right? And from what I've heard they were pretty competitive both times? Do you remember? Is there a sense at all like who is playing better or you just don't care at that point? CALVIN HERMANSON: I mean like the scoreboard is still on, so, yeah, we're keeping score. But I've played in a few of them. Like Emmett said, it's before the preseason even starts. Again, we're more focused on how we're doing and preparing for the season going forward. Not a lot of scouting or anything like that. Both games were pretty competitive. It wasn't -- the intensity wasn't too far down, but it was competitive. And should be a good one tomorrow. Q. Did you find that gave you more confidence heading into the season, that you could play against the team, two years ago they were pretty highly rated, to know that you could do that? Did it make a difference, I guess? CALVIN HERMANSON: Yeah, I think both times we try -- every year we've scrimmaged teams before the season starts, it just helps after that six-week grind of practice where you're only playing against yourself. And to be able to do a preseason scrimmage where you finally get to play somebody else. And having success there really builds your confidence going into the season. Q. Obviously the game yesterday against VCU, very physical game. A lot of fouls, more than 50 fouls in the game yesterday. How do you think facing that full court pressure that VCU is known for, how do you think facing that for 40 minutes prepared you guys for what Arizona is going to throw at you? They play a pack line defense, a lot of pressure in the half course, at least. How do you see that first game really getting you guys ready for facing the Wildcats and facing Sean Miller? JOE RAHON: That's a good question. It was a good adjustment for us in terms of athleticism coming from our league. There's obviously some good athletes in our league, but VCU can run seven, eight, nine great athletes at you. Kind of seeing the athleticism, being able to deal with it is probably the biggest difference. VCU is more full court pressure. And Arizona will be more half court. They'll pressure you in the half court, but they'll let you bring the ball up the court without much problem. Seeing that athleticism and on the boards, too, especially where you're going up for rebounds, you really have to box out when the team is super athletic. VCU gave us a little taste of that, and Arizona is big, like Calvin and Emmett said, and we'll have to do a good job on the boards against them, too. I think the athleticism and the size kind of yesterday helped us prepare a little bit for what we're going to see tomorrow, for sure. Q. What's it like not to be Australian on this team? JOE RAHON: It's the best. We outnumber them 8 to 7. So we'll hold court. But it's cool just kind of being able to grow up -- you grow up obviously you don't know much about -- no Australians are in my hometown, I don't know about Calvin. And you get to meet all of them. They're from different parts of Australia. But they all talk the same and laugh at the same jokes. They kind of dive into their culture a little bit and learn about the second-best country in the world, I guess (laughter.) CALVIN HERMANSON: Yeah, very true. Coming in, like Joe said, didn't have much of a taste for the Australian culture. My freshman year I lived with Dane Pineau. Getting to know this guy is pretty fun as well. They're great. They're great in the locker room. But as Joe said, it's important that we hold down the majority in the locker room. We keep them in their place. Q. You guys talked a little bit about the size that Arizona has. I wonder what your sense is of Markkanen, who is only a freshman, who is a guy you haven't seen in person before, but obviously has a lot of attention so far this season. EMMETT NAAR: Yeah, just a few games we got to watch and saw the scout gone over, and obviously a guy playing on a great team like that and great player you hear a lot about him. It's hard not to be impressed with how he plays. A seven foot guy that can shoot so well, and what he's doing as a freshman is really impressive. But our coaching staff, we're going to have to go in with a game plan to try to limit him, because he's a big part of what they do, obviously. We do have some size and personnel that can match up with him. Just try and make it tough for him. Obviously great players like that, they can find a way to do it. But we'll try and make it as tough for him as possible and see what we can do. Q. Looking at Jock's efficiency, how is he so efficient? What do you see from him out on the court that he's so versatile in so many different ways and keeps efficiency as one of the best guys in the country? JOE RAHON: He's really skilled. Like if you throw it to him to the basket, left shoulder, right shoulder, I don't think he really cares. He can read and react to how his defender is playing him. He has great hands, you kind of throw it in the vicinity. If he gets a hand on it he's probably going to catch it. He's just really gifted in terms of his touch. When we came in, my red shirt year, his freshman year, he was a little bigger and slower back then. But he was naturally -- his touch around the basket was always really impressive. He has a knack for scoring. He's an unselfish guy. If they send doubles at him he's not going to force up a bad shot just to get a shot up. He's a very willing passer. Teams can't really send doubles at him because he'll kick it out. We have some shooting around him that helps. He takes good shots and he's got great hands and he's really skilled. That combination in a big guy is pretty dangerous, that's why you see his efficiency is kind of through the roof. Q. I was wondering with all the success Saint Mary's has had with players from Australian. Do you grow up thinking that Saint Mary's is a place to go, is it automatically in your mind as a young player? What's the knowledge of Saint Mary's? EMMETT NAAR: Yeah, I think as I was sort of coming up through the ranks Saint Mary's was pretty big on my radar. Because when Delly was here and Patty was here, they were getting a lot of TV time. And they were having a lot of success. So a lot of their games were on TV. And with the time difference it's on usually during the middle of the day, so it's a pretty good time to be able to watch. So I think always Saint Mary's was on my radar and quite a few guys you sort of see that as a place they'd want to go. You want to go somewhere that's comfortable and with all the Australians here it's easy to fit in. When they started recruiting me was probably immediately then the No. 1 school I wanted to go to. I came in the same time as Dane, who was a good friend of mine back home, so it made it even more appealing. Q. Are you able to keep track of the Australian players who are in there right now playing as high schoolers, is there a way you communicate and keep in touch with one another? And if you have, have you heard anything about Isaac White? EMMETT NAAR: No, to be honest, just like the people I would sort of know that I was already friends with. I've been in college a while. The guys that are coming up now in high school are quite a bit younger than me, so I don't have too much to do with them, to be honest. COACH RANDY BENNETT: I'm just excited. We're excited to still be playing. We had a tough game last night against VCU. And now we have a tough game against Arizona coming up. That's how it is in the tournament. There's no easy ones. We know that. We're just excited to be playing the second round. Q. How confident were you that Jock, with the weight loss, would actually become the kind of player, did you think that was the key for him or were there other things he had to work on? COACH RANDY BENNETT: We thought that Jock would be a really good offensive player if he would get his body in shape and get a little more athletic so he could defend better and stay on the court longer, we thought his offense would play out. And so that's pretty much what happened. Last year, he was our leading scorer per minute. All right, this guy can score. He helps us there. We have to get him better defensively so we can keep him on the court. And that's what happened. Q. What's the biggest challenge that Arizona presents to you? COACH RANDY BENNETT: There's a few of them. But they can be really dangerous in transition. And they're big on the boards, very similar to VCU that way. They have a few more ways to score. I think they have a lot of guys -- they're pretty balanced. They have a lot of guys that can make a basket on that team. They get in transition. Some guys get baskets in transition. I think it gets back to those two things. Q. It seems like you have a pretty good relationship or friendship with Sean Miller. How did that come about? How would you describe it? COACH RANDY BENNETT: I had a respect for him just watching him from afar and watching his teams. It's really well coached. And defensively they're really good. So I'd kind of watch him from afar. And we were sitting there in Vegas recruiting and we struck up a conversation. And he had studied what we do, which caught me off guard a little bit. He'd studied McConnell and Dellavedova and that group. We talked about that. And we talked about how we got to where we were offensively. And so we decided we'd scrimmage each other. He was doing us a favor that way. That's kind of where it started. And I think it was a mutual respect there. It was good for us to scrimmage them early. We did it I think three years in a row. We didn't this year. We were going to, but they needed to play an exhibition game instead. We got to know each other through those scrimmages and going against each others' team and sharing information. He's a class act. He's a really good, really good coach. And I have -- he's a friend. So it's -- you don't get in a situation often where you're playing one of those guys that you're friends with, you have a good relationship with in the NCAA tournament. Q. What do you expect with Arizona from guys like Kadeem Allen, and the fact that Arizona has a mixture of older guys and also a lot of talented freshmen? What do you expect from the older guys like Allen and the younger guys like Markkanen and Simmons and Alkins and all the younger underclassmen Arizona has? COACH RANDY BENNETT: I don't know if I separate them that way when I watch them. We've seen Kadeem. He's really improved as a player. I saw him when he come in as a sophomore, JC transfer. But all those guys we've seen, we've scrimmaged them for three years. Saw Cartwright come through, all those guys. So I don't know, we haven't gone against their freshmen, and they're good, talented. I think that's how a lot of those top five, top ten programs in the country are. They get those freshmen that are probably one and done or two and done, and Sean has, Arizona has, they've had them. He knows how to mix that in. For me, at this point in the year, they're just -- they're all players. Obviously their freshmen have been exceptional. They play off of them. But when they're that good that's what you do with them. Q. Looking at the front court, just size and length of Arizona, how do you get Jock opportunities and how do you keep him out of foul trouble when he has to defend guys like Ristic, Comanche, and Markkanen? COACH RANDY BENNETT: We'll need our depth on that. We'll need our depth inside. Jordan Hunter will be a factor, and Dane Pineau, Fitzner, Kyle Clark. We'll need our depth inside. They have depth inside and they're big inside. I'm sure they have a plan on how they're going to defend Jock and our bigs. But we'll adjust to it, wherever they go with it. We've seen teams with this size before. We have two in our league. BYU is big and Gonzaga is big. Gonzaga is real big. It will be like that. It's not like it's something we haven't seen. We know they're good. We know they're big. And they're more than that, their guards are good. Q. What is your observation so far of Markkanen as a freshman and what do you feel like some of the keys are to slowing him down? COACH RANDY BENNETT: It's been fun to watch them. I really haven't watched them much this year. And so now to watch them against PAC 12 teams as you're scouting them. He's a really talented offensive player. He's a good player, not to say he's not a good defender, but for a freshman he's a really good offensive player. He can really shoot the ball. He can put it on the floor. He can score in the post. Doesn't take bad shots. He's a fun player to watch, really. Hopefully we're not watching him. Hopefully we're guarding him tomorrow. Q. We talked a lot about the scrimmages. How helpful are they when you're preparing one day for a team you don't play twice a year in the non-conference, how do you prepare in such a short time for a game like this? COACH RANDY BENNETT: I don't think the scrimmages are a factor. Because we didn't scrimmage them this year. We didn't scrimmage them -- if we had, it would be a little bit of a factor for us. It's not a big deal, Thursday to Saturday. You get 48-hour turnaround. We do that. Conference tournament we do it in 24 hours, those are the tough ones. 48 is not bad. We're not going to do much with our guys today, we're going to rest them. They've seen so many scouts, there's nothing new here. It's new guys, but the concepts of what you're defending and how they're going to defend you, we've seen it all by this time. Q. You're originally from Mesa, and when you were playing at Mesa Community College is right before Lute Olson came to Arizona. Can you talk about the culture of Arizona basketball, what it was like before he came and the rise of the program? COACH RANDY BENNETT: You know, it was funny. I was thinking about that today. I wasn't around for Snowden's days, that's when I was growing up. They were actually pretty good then. And then they declined. And then Lute came in and I was friends with Brock, he was one of their first recruits. And I saw it go. Lute's first year they struggled and then they started putting it together. As a coach, as a young coach, when I was coming up, you start studying those, how did they get good? How did Arizona happen? Because when I was in high school Arizona State was ahead of Arizona. And then it changed and it's never really changed back. So Tucson, Arizona basketball was a big deal. But you didn't know. And then once it happened everybody is like, oh, yeah, Arizona basketball, they're the top ten in the country. They weren't back then. But to see that evolve, pretty cool, for one, that they sustained it and kept it rolling, Sean has done an awesome job there. It's hard to sustain what they already had and he's done that. But to see that happen, you learn from it, you study it and it's cool for a community like Tucson. It's become such a huge part of that city. Q. Those first two of the three scrimmages that Arizona went on they had really good years. The buzz was that the first year you beat them or whatever, then the second year also very competitive. Do you remember that and did that surprise you or give you anymore sense of confidence with what you have? COACH RANDY BENNETT: We definitely keep score. And you tend to forget when you didn't do well. But when you win, if you're Saint Mary's scrimmaging Arizona, you definitely remember. But the deal on those scrimmages is -- it's so early in the season, you're trying to -- you don't really care if you win on those things. Sean didn't really care if he won. We didn't -- I didn't. The players do, because they're playing, they're competing for playing time and they're competitors, so they do. So it's not a real game. You clear the score at half, things like that. Our teams when we played them were pretty good and they were pretty good. Yes, we felt like we benefited from it. I think that's the best way I could put it. We felt we played one of the top two or three teams in the west and played pretty well against them. And I think it helped us. It gave us confidence for those seasons. Q. Arizona struggled in transition the last couple of games. It was something that Coach Miller commented on. How are you going to exploit that, given the pace you like to play on offense? COACH RANDY BENNETT: We'll play the same. We'll play the same. If there's transition opportunities we'll take them. If there's not, we're very comfortable playing the half court. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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