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NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FINAL FOURApril 1, 2019Bruce PearlMinneapolis, Minnesota THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this year's Final Four coaches media teleconference. We have on the line waiting Coach Bruce Pearl of the Auburn Tigers, champions of the Midwest Regional. Without further ado, we'll turn it over to question and answers. Q. Good afternoon, Coach. I'm curious, as you've had a chance to maybe look at Virginia a little bit, you guys with your three-point shooting propensity, then with the pack-line defense, how do you see that matchup playing out? BRUCE PEARL: Yeah, Mike, thanks. Honestly, we got back last night, and we've just had a little bit of time this morning to begin to look at Virginia. So I know that just from a standpoint of defensively they allow just 29 percent shooting from three, they've got big guards and so they're able to extend enough defensively to challenge shots. You know, we don't see the pack line as much in the SEC as they do in the ACC. So I know it will be a real challenge for us. Sometimes we play against teams that do a lot of switching, take away the three ball, and you've just got to find other ways to be able to score. Q. Yeah, hi, Bruce. Kind of like flipping that previous question around, obviously, Virginia, known for its defense, but offensively their efficiency numbers are up across the board this year. I think they're second in the country in offensive efficiency. Any thoughts on what kind of makes them a better offensive team this season than maybe in years past? BRUCE PEARL: Well, I think they've got some great balance, and they do have a number of guys that can and will shoot the three ball with great percentages. I mean, Guy and Hunter and Jerome, those guys will all shoot it and shoot it with pretty good percentages. They do a really good job of getting to the free-throw line, and they convert at 74 percent. They're an excellent free-throw shooting team. They value possessions. And probably the most important thing, they only turn the ball over nine times a game, and we are a defense that kind of -- or a team that relies on being able to turn our opponents over to get some offense out of our defense. Q. Hi, Bruce. I was actually just wondering, on Twitter last night, you kind of caused a bit of a social media stir with all the GIFs of you and your reactions on the sideline. People thought that was really interesting. I'm curious, number one, if you've seen that, and number two, how much that personality or high energy plays into your coaching. BRUCE PEARL: Yeah, I haven't seen it, but you talk about my facial expressions or my mannerisms or things like that? Q. Exactly. Just like the kind of high-energy reaction you have. BRUCE PEARL: Yeah, come to practice, and that's exactly what it is, or come watch me before a Division II exhibition game. When the clock starts and the game is on and we're practicing or playing, that's who I am. The buzzer sounds, and I'm -- it shuts down. But for 40 minutes or however long we're going to go, it's going to be intense. It's going to be the same. My guys don't see any difference in a big game or small game or game in March -- or in this case it's going to be April. My son often tells the players: Listen, try not to pay too much attention to how he's saying it but listen to what he's saying. So, yeah, I guess I kind of let it all hang out. Q. Obviously, a breakthrough season for both the Auburn program and for you. I'm just curious if there's anyone you've leaned on maybe for advice on how to handle the atmosphere of the Final Four -- the logistics, the planning, everything going into it -- and how to approach it with your team. BRUCE PEARL: You know, Kevin, I haven't talked to anybody that's been to a Final Four yet, specifically about that. My approach is going to try to be to just do what we do, keep it the same. We've been to the SEC Tournament in Nashville, and that had a real atmosphere to it, and the first and second round in Utah, in the regional finals in Kansas City, and I just think the routine that we try to keep, the pace we try to keep from when we practice, the media, the hotels -- you know, you're busy, and the kids are busy. You just kind of grind like you do all season long. So my thought would be, again, as far as our best way to prepare is to not do anything different. Now, today, because we traveled in last night, today we're going to have a 3:00 meeting, kind of set the tone for the rest of the week. The guys will do some rehab, but it will be a day off today. We won't practice at all. I probably won't talk to them at all about Virginia or the teams in this tournament. Just because I'd like to let their minds kind of relax a little bit. We don't play until Saturday. When you're in tournament play, these turnarounds are quick. So they're really used to processing information in a short period of time. I'm afraid, if I told them anything about Virginia today, it would be lost by Saturday. So, yeah, just try to do what we always do, and I'd say that's the best way for the players to handle it. Q. Congratulations on being a first timer -- to helping Auburn be a first timer to the Final Four. BRUCE PEARL: Thank you. Q. There have been several teams in recent years, first timers. What do you think is behind that? And do you think it has anything to do with the one-and-done phenomenon creating a little more parity in college hoops at the highest level? BRUCE PEARL: I got asked this question a little bit when I was in Kansas City, and I think the best way for me to explain it is that on every McDonald All-American's AAU team, and sometimes on several of the high school teams, there are more good players on their teams than just those kids. There are more players that are taking it seriously, that are getting their body developed, that understand the value of a personal trainer or a skill coach. So, yes, there is more parity because there are more good players, and so you're able to see, for example, my team. When we play against Kentucky and we play against P.J. Washington, for example, our kids have played against him before at lots of different levels, and he's -- you know, like he did yesterday, has gotten the better of his matchup. But our guys aren't intimidated in the sense that, take it the other way, Jared Harper or Bryce Brown, my two guards -- more so in Jared's case because he played at a little higher level in the AAU circuit. He's played against all those great guards in the different levels of competition. So therefore, his experience yesterday, my backcourt's experience yesterday -- Bryce Brown, a senior; Jared Harper, a junior -- I think we may not have had the advantage in some ways because Kentucky's got a great backcourt, but that experience definitely was able to play itself out. Q. Coach, I'm looking back through some old records here and trying to determine if you coached against Tony as a head coach or an assistant and if you had any other kind of relationship with him, maybe recruiting-wise, et cetera. BRUCE PEARL: No, I don't think I've played against him. When I say "think," that's just because I'm 59 and I forget things, but I don't think we've coached against each other. I was a head coach at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and, of course, Dick is a legend in Wisconsin basketball for sure, all those years, I believe at Stevens Point, and one of the very first videotapes I ever bought was Dick Bennett's man-to-man defense. And believe it or not, it was about pressuring the ball at the nine or putting in the box, keeping it in the box, sending everything to the baseline. And then many years later, he completely turned that around and created the pack-line defense -- sending at middle, getting into gaps, not extending catches quite as much. It was a complete and total reversal. I adopted his first tape, and in many ways still keep some of those same principles. I would say Dick Bennett taught me, through clinics and tapes, a lot of how we try to guard even still to this day. The other thing is Dick's daughter Kathi was a head basketball coach in Evansville, at the University of Evansville. I had been at Southern Indiana for a few years prior to her getting there. For one reason or another, we bumped into each other in town early on, and I just -- recognizing the family and some of the connection there, we became friends. I hope in some ways I tried to make her transition to Evansville a smoother one even though we were at different schools and still stayed in touch a bit over the years. So I would say some combinations of Evansville and Milwaukee, there are some distant connections between the Bennetts and the Pearls, and tremendous respect going this way. Q. Bruce, it might be hard to address in a conference call setting, but can you describe when Jared and Bryce kind of separately came on your radar, to the point now -- I think you saw that Jared said we're the best backcourt in the country last night. BRUCE PEARL: Well, starting with Bryce, Bryce was ranked someplace in the mid-300s as far as a high school prospect was concerned. My assistant, Harris Adler, at the time, had seen Bryce sort of off the beaten path on a very lower level AAU team, and he said to me, I think this kid is a lot better than what he's rated. So we invited him to come to our elite camp, which was going to be -- and, of course, that invitation goes to everybody, but he took us up on it. I didn't like him when he first saw him, I loved him, and I had already offered the scholarship at his position to a young man named Jacob Evans, who was down in Louisiana, and we were competing with LSU and Cincinnati and a few other schools for Jacob, but I couldn't offer Bryce a scholarship that I'd promised to somebody else. But I told Bryce and his family in August, I said, I don't think we're going to get Jacob, but I'm not going to pull the offer. Would you consider waiting a little while and see how that thing plays out? Because I promise you, if he doesn't take it, I want you to take it. Bryce had agreed to not sign with anybody else until we were able to let him know what we were going to do, and a few weeks later I offered him that scholarship because Jacob Evans went to Cincinnati and was a great player and had a great career. So, yes, I'd like to give Harris Adler credit for seeing him, liking him, and I'll take some credit for loving him. And then Jared Harper, my assistant, Tony Jones, at the time, had seen Jared first, and Tony -- Tony's brother Bill had played for me at Iowa, and we had smaller guards at Iowa -- B.J. Armstrong, they were familiar in my days at Boston College, John Bagley, Michael Adams, smaller guards, and he said, I think you're going to like this kid. So I went to see him play late in his junior year in high school, and I loved him. He was great. And I told Tony that, If we don't get him now, he won't make it through the summer. Others will see it. Let's try to get this done. So we brought Jared into Auburn and had a visit, and I just asked him point blank, I said, Do you think Kentucky, Florida, or Georgia -- three other schools he probably would have loved to have gone as a kid from Atlanta, or even probably Georgia Tech -- are going to offer you a scholarship? And he said, No, probably not. And I said, Well, I am, and I want you to be my point guard of the future. I think because he realized he may not get offered by those other schools, who were bigger and better than us at the time, and he said, All right. I'm going to take this. I'll take you at your word. And I promised him, if he came, we probably could be competitive. Thanks to him and Bryce and several others, we've become competitive. Q. Coach, I'm curious with the veteran makeup of your roster, obviously, that's a big help. How has it been an impact for you in this tournament? BRUCE PEARL: Mike, I think the biggest impact, as far as our roster is concerned, before Chuma went down, we were playing ten guys double-digit minutes. Now, Chuma was probably playing 32, 33 minutes. He was our and still is our most valuable player. But then when he went down in the game against North Carolina, we got down to nine -- and when I say "got down to nine," some people think nine's a lot, but it isn't for me. I've always played nine, ten guys double-digit minutes. I think it makes for a healthy locker room. And when your guys begin to trust and rely on each other, it makes you, I think, a little bit more of a dangerous team. That said, if Bryce Brown and Jared Harper as experienced guards don't step up and really have two great games, we don't have a chance to get by a really good Kentucky team. So their experience -- and the last thing I'll say about experience is this: Last year, when we got down to seven scholarship players and we had a number of key injuries, we got destroyed by Clemson in the second round, and we just were absolutely unable to be competitive, and our guys, from that moment forward, our goal this year was unfinished business. When Auburn goes to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2003 a year ago and wins a regular season championship, which only happened for the third time in school history, you wouldn't think the kids would be talking about unfinished business. You'd think they'd be slapping themselves on the back and pretty proud of what they had accomplished. It was historic a year ago. Not this group. And so the reason sometimes some of the kids that are coming in at freshmen haven't been able to advance past a certain round and not get to the Final Four, win a National Championship, is because they don't have the experience of having not gotten there. Virginia had the experience of not getting there a year ago. That experience has helped them grind through this tremendous run they've had. That experience we had a year ago of not being able to advance through the tournament helped us as well. THE MODERATOR: Coach Pearl, thank you for your time. Safe travels to Minneapolis. We'll see you in a few days. BRUCE PEARL: We're very excited about being able to represent the SEC in the Midwest region. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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