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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: SAN JOSE

March 21, 2019

Greg Gard

San Jose, California

THE MODERATOR: We welcome Wisconsin coach Greg Gard to the dais.

GREG GARD: Obviously excited to be here. For us to have a chance to continue to play in this tournament, and we've been in it for a long time, I think 20 in the last 21 years as a program, so we take a lot of pride in being in this tournament.

And I'm proud of our guys for how they've worked this year. They've overcome some adversity and scrutiny and put themselves in a position to play in the postseason and they've had a really good regular season.

Looking forward to tomorrow's game against a really good Oregon opponent. At this time of year all the teams are really good, so you're going to have to play very well and minimize lapses and be as consistent as possible.

Q. Greg, obviously you were on the bench when you guys played Oregon a couple of years ago. I'm sure you've seen them in some tournament runs. Is it a different style than the Oregon you've been used to seeing?
GREG GARD: Yeah. I watched the 2015 game just seeing if I could pull anything from it, and I could pull nothing from it. They're different. We're totally different, just in experience and those type of things.

So I would say good coaches find a way to maximize the people that they have and the talent they have. I think Dana has been able to take this group and put them in the best position to be the best forms of themselves.

We've tried to do the same thing with our group. They were really talented then. Obviously that group we had at that point in time with Decker and Kaminsky and all those guys was exceptionally talented and they had a great run with them for two years.

This is a different group. I don't want to take away from our current group or Dana's current group and talk too much about the past because it's really about these guys and these teams and what they've accomplished. And he's obviously got his team playing exceptionally well to have won eight in a row and win their way into this tournament. And we've been fairly consistent through the year to get the at-large bid.

So two really good teams and two programs that have consistently been very competitive.

Q. Dana was talking about how out of necessity they've become a little more grind-it-out style offensively. You guys have always sort of been that way. When you have two teams playing that style, what does that do in a game?
GREG GARD: I think it maximizes or it puts an emphasis on every possession. You have to maximize your opportunities each time. I know pace of play, like it's made of that, but it's more how efficient you are, and they've obviously found their identity, what makes them good. They've done some really good things defensively here in the last four to six weeks and, again, put themselves in position to play.

So I think for us, when you get to this time of year, the biggest thing is don't change what's made you good, and sometimes teams can get out of character and maybe get off track a little bit, and you really have to guard against that to make sure you do the things that made you good, take advantage of your opportunities, whatever that may be.

And in terms of pace of play, what's allowed, you try to be as opportunistic as possible. We know if you expose the lane against them, they're going to take advantage of it. Payton Pritchard is a heck of a guard. Louis King is a really good player. They'll take advantage of transition opportunities, just like we will. If there's a position where we have to try to grind it out or they try to grind it out, we both have been in those situations a lot this year, and playing different styles have prepared you for this, and you have to take advantage of each possession the best possible way.

Q. Coach, since they switched to the lineup with four six-foot-nine guys starting, is defense where that's most felt? Is that how they've improved themselves there?
GREG GARD: Well, the numbers would tell you that defensively they've improved. But I think the biggest thing, sometimes lineup changes, you look at numbers, but you look at a synergy of a group and how they've come together, and that's the one thing I've probably noticed. I saw them early in the year against Iowa. Obviously Bol Bol was still playing before he got hurt. But how that group has come together, and I think Dana has even talked about it, how they've figured some things out.

And teams take to their identity and grow in different ways. Sometimes it happens early, sometimes it happens in the middle of the year. Sometimes teams don't figure it out until late. Sometimes they don't figure it out at all. I think his group has done a good job of understanding what their strengths are and how important the defensive end is. I think that's an important piece. But I think the togetherness and the synergy of the group probably jumps out more than anything else versus a specific stat category.

Q. It's a perception at Wisconsin that people know what you're going to get, your style doesn't change a lot. But you said you guys are different from '15. Are you talking personnel-wise or things you brought in as a head coach?
GREG GARD: Well, personnel dictates what you do. We had two lottery picks on that team. That implicated a lot. We played a lot through Frank and Sam and obviously two or three other seniors with them. It was really a combination of a very experienced group that had a lot of talent, that had a lot of tournament experience.

So you try to put your current team in the best position possible and play to their strengths, and that group really, because they had had so much experience together, I've always said the best coached teams are player-coached teams, and I know that group really took ownership in coaching themselves and holding each other accountable, and obviously had a lot of fun with it and a lot of success.

So each group comes through the year and goes through really their career. By and large, other than Iverson and Happ, our group is relatively younger, one junior and the rest are sophomores and freshmen. So they'll develop their own identity as they go through time, through their careers at Wisconsin, just like that group, you know, evolved through. Nobody would have predicted probably that group was going to do what they did when they walked on campus as freshmen, but that bonding and that improvement and that development grew as time went on.

Q. Earlier Ethan said that Oregon shares a lot of similarities to Illinois in their offensive length and defensive tenacity. Would you agree with that statement?
GREG GARD: Yeah, I think in some regards there are some offensive similarities because of what they do with the spread. Both teams -- both programs run offensively.

But I think Oregon brings more experience to the table in terms of having that success through a longer period of time. Obviously Dana has been at Oregon a little longer implementing that than what Brad has been at Illinois.

And the length, that creates a problem a little different ways. And they're different defensively. They put some pressure on at certain times, but there's some unique differences there, too. I think the biggest correlation you draw is just what offensively in the half court when they're running some things in the half court, there are some similarities and some common denominators there.

Q. Seems like even such a rarity in college as a fifth-year guy who's already had two All-Conference, not even a late bloomer, and then creates so many different matchup problems for opponents. Is that just, in terms of the experience he has and the talent, a combination you just don't see much anymore?
GREG GARD: Yeah, I think it's a combination of all those things. In high school he was six-two, six-three. He hit a growth spurt, had played in the back court as a guard through junior high and early in high school and then hits a growth spurt.

And now here he is at six-seven, six-eight, and these ball-handling abilities, and you get to college, he grew a little more. And he really benefited from the redshirt year. He was redshirting when that 2015 group was coming in. So he played against Frank Kaminsky every day in practice and learned a lot from him.

And then he applied his own skill set to his career. And he's developed and worked. Nobody's worked harder than him. Puts in more time in the gym, is more dedicated to improving his game than what Ethan has been. But at the same time he's been his own person and his own -- developed his own identity, so to speak, as a player. I know that's probably been hard because he followed the National Player of the Year, as Frank graduated, and then here's Ethan, the next big guy on center stage.

He stayed true to what he's good at, and obviously he is. He's very -- his footwork is really good. He's good with either hand. Everybody talks about ambidexterity with right and left hand, but his footwork, to be able to play off either foot, the passing ability, the vision, the comfort level with the ball in his hands is something that's really rare for his size.

And I really attribute it back to he had a lot of good mentors and teaches and coaches when he was younger but also that transformation from being a guard, so to speak, to a post player as he grew and started college.

Q. To follow up when you started recruiting him, was he the 6-3 guard in high school?
GREG GARD: No. He was 6-7. He had already started to hit that growth spurt, and he's added an inch or two since then.

Q. And then with Kaminsky, you've had almost ten years of fifth-year senior guys who went redshirt and played five, and Kaminsky is the NBA and Happ made two again. Really unusual to have two guys who have developed and stuck around to get better by their senior year?
GREG GARD: Yeah, I think that's a credit -- we live in such a world of instant gratification. Everybody wants it now, and I tell my team all the time they live on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter. They get instantaneous response or an answer right away. The real world doesn't work like that. They have to have the patience to persist and develop and work and grow, and those two guys are great examples of -- Frank Kaminsky is a poster child of player development, and we really tried to -- a big part of our program is the development of players. But the patience that it takes to understand when you're a freshman, you know what, I'm not good enough; and as a sophomore Frank didn't play a whole lot. Now, Ethan walked into a little different scenario after he redshirted. A lot of that group of '15 had graduated, 2015, had graduated and moved on. So there was opportunities there to play right away and a lot as a freshmen. So both have understood the importance of staying the course, trusting the process, whatever cliche you want to throw on it. But like I said, it's a credit to those guys and anybody else that goes through that.

Like I said, we live in such a world of I want it right now, and instant gratification, that the patience and the dedication and the commitment to persevere through a growing process is rare and that you find players that want to be patient and want to work through that. So it's a credit to those two guys in particular. And we've had others that have been very astute in terms of their growth through their career and their development, and it's helped make our program pretty consistent.

I think that's one of the things we saw last year was it's a first time in a long time we didn't have upperclassmen, and we usually kind of live by the motto of get old and stay old and rely on experience and development, like we talked about. And it was a first time in a long time we hadn't had that. We were relying on a lot of young guys through some injuries and just graduation of the groups in front of them. But this group's been able to use those experiences and get back to doing some more Wisconsin-like things of how we play.

Q. Sounds like we're good. Thanks, Coach.
GREG GARD: All right, thank you.

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