NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 30, 1998

Heshimu Evans

Scott Padgett

Jeff Sheppard

Tubby Smith

COACH SMITH: Thank you. It has been a wonderful, wonderful experience for me and for the team to make it to this point and to achieve this, the ultimate goal, to win the national championship. Certainly we want to -- I want to thank God for this privilege and this honor, to lead such an outstanding program. I thank my parents. We will get to that later. Just to say, it was a great college game and to come back the way we did took an unbelievable effort on these gentlemen, our team's part, and I couldn't ask any more from these kids, what they gave me all year long. The Utah Utes, I have to compliment them because they are a hard working team, one of the most fundamentally sound teams, physical, and dominated the boards on us in the first half, nothing that happened to us this year.

HESHIMU EVANS: I was fortunate to get a good look at the basket. I knew when I came out there, rebound and score, I gave my team a lift. So I was hoping we would get a spark, and we did.

SCOTT PADGETT: Coach did a great job keeping us focused. We were down and he did a great job of keeping us positive, staying positive with us, letting us know we were still in the game. He just told us, we got to hit the boards and play our defense. That's the only way we will get back in the game. The offense would come. He did a good job of finding plays that we had to score, and this definitely -- this win was -- you got to attribute a lot to him.

JEFF SHEPPARD: I haven't thought about last year at all. I've been taught by two coaches to live in the precious present. I don't know if it gets any better than this. You know, we have had an awesome year. We have had some really good times and some really bad times on and off the floor. Some things happened to this team that we couldn't do anything about. And there is something about going through those times that make you pull together as a team and as coaches and teammates pull together as one team. It's really hard to describe how we feel right now.

HESHIMU EVANS: I think we all played poised, worked really hard, and we know not to give up. We have been in situations where we had to come back a game, and we just stuck hard, stayed positive, and we just came back. We are a fighting team, "Comeback Cats."

JEFF SHEPPARD: I think there are three reasons -- Coach Smith stresses this all the time -- positive attitude, hard work, and teamwork. And that's about as fundamental and about as simple as it gets. But it won us the national championship, and you don't have to be flashy. You have to be fundamental. And that's what Coach Smith taught us this year. Look where it got us.

SCOTT PADGETT: Aside from what these guys said, I think everybody on this team is so competitive. Situations and competitive spirit takes over, and this team played with a tremendous amount of heart.

HESHIMU EVANS: I wasn't necessarily looking for the points. I had some great looks at the basket. I felt the open shot and my feet said I can put it in the hoop and, fortunately, it went in.

SCOTT PADGETT: You know, we think with our defense, that we can wear teams down. We felt like in the pre-season we had one of the toughest, if not the toughest, pre-season conditioning, and we do a good job of staying in shape throughout the year. We definitely use our defense to wear teams down. It might have shown a little towards the end of the game.

CHRIS PLONSKY: Any of you fellows care to respond to that?

JEFF SHEPPARD: We weren't fresh and hopping around. It was a tough game and we were tired, too. You know, we practiced real hard and at the end of practice, especially these last couple of months, we really have been taking pride in the drills that we do at the end of practice. We do some shooting drills at the end of practice when we are real tired, and that's when we pull together. That's when we stay positive with each other. I think that helped us toward the end of the season.

HESHIMU EVANS: I'll make it short. I left St. John's and I came down to Kentucky in the last two summers and being part of a great program and being with these guys. I wanted to be in that situation I transferred here, and I had a new coach, great coach, great family, great system, great players. I will never forget this. I'm happy that I'm here.

SCOTT PADGETT: Well, you know, we came so close last year. There are not too many teams that you get a chance too go back to the championship game three years in a row. When we missed out on it last year, I thought I might have missed my opportunity even though you always at Kentucky feel like you have a chance of winning the championship but you never know what could happen. There was times when I thought I might have missed out out, but during the this tournament, I felt we would get it the whole time.

JEFF SHEPPARD: Individual teams and success comes at Kentucky. The only reason it shines at Kentucky is because we pull together as a team. We sacrificed all year for each other, and now we get to celebrate a national championship together. For the people that play on teams and have participated and pulled for one another, it's special. It doesn't get any better than this. It's just an awesome feeling.

SCOTT PADGETT: In the first half we were allowing him to get the burn on a turn baseline. We didn't have a L-baseline for the big guys. In the second half we stressed for him to make him go middle to where we had help. And the guys did a good job on that. Did a good job of making him get rid of the ball.

JEFF SHEPPARD: It turned the game around for us. We had a time-out. The coach called a play. Cameron ignored the play, hit a three. I think the Coach was saying, no, no, yes, good shot. Then he came back and did another one. That got us going. He hit a big three in the Duke game. We got a lot of confidence in Cameron. He has been hitting big shots his whole career. We are glad those things went in.

COACH SMITH: He is so talenteded and athletic in so many ways. We can use him as a foreman and the oppositions big guy to run and work. We use him in that capacity. We also use him for his offensive ability, too, because he's so quick off the dribble. I thought tonight we utilized him basically because we needed energy, because he gives us a big lift. He's very energized and very enthusiastic and gives us a lot of emotion when he goes in the game tonight. I thought the first half we weren't getting that from -- I don't know why but they were doing a good job. But the second half, I told him, we needed him to be more active on the boards and do a better job defensively. His job whereas to run down those loose balls. They left him open and he hit a couple of big threes for us. He is very capable for scoring for us and will mean a lot for us next year as well.

COACH SMITH: They were doing an excellent job. I have to give Utah credit. Their excellent defense in the first half of denying him the ball, forcing us away from the basket was very effective. We made some adjustments. I think they put him at the point guard helped some because he could take people off the dribble and do some shots rather than have to fight through so many arms and trying to come off the screens. So he made the adjustment. I think he got some good looks at the basket because he had the ball in his hands. That was an adjustment I thought we made. And then we were scoring inside and they had to give some more help inside so it opened up some. I just thought our pressure, defense allowed us to get going more and get some easy transition baskets was a big help as well.

COACH SMITH: That never crossed my mind. I was happy for our players, happy for my staff, happy for the fans, because this program is more than just a basketball program. It is really a way of life, and people to live and breathe, Kentucky basketball. I'm just happy to be a small part of it.

COACH SMITH: We focused more on just limiting -- Scott that we mentioned that we wanted to force the post players, especially Mike Doleac to come back to the middle because he was really hurting us going baseline. We wanted to wear Andre Miller down because he was a key. They really put the ball in his hands a lot. I knew if we continued to pressure him, we would get some turnovers, and very big in the 18 turnovers that they had. Basically we backed off our trapping in the second half because they were hurting us. Andre is a tough guy to trap and he was beating us on the dribble and 2s in the back, and transition and getting some easy baskets, or we were out of position and getting second shots.

COACH SMITH: We changed our entry in a screen, and we set the screens more of an angle toward the baseline and side line. In the past we have been screening toward downs down toward the basket. They did a job of hedging up toward the screen and deny access. When we did that, we would slip back door them or back cut. Now we get them out of position so we can get the ball inside to Scott or to Nazr or Jamaal close to the basket. We made that adjustment at half time. That was a big key adjustment, to spread them out more and try to get more cuts towards the goal.

COACH SMITH: Number one, you have to have good players, intelligent players, players that can play with poise. One of the things we talk about is last, we talk about you have to have longevity, patience, never getting too emotionally high or getting low. We talk about that all the time. I tell them all the time, if you are up by 10, 20, you are not as good as you think you are, and you are not as bad as you look sometimes. I think it is a mental approach to the game, the way we work in practice. We do a lot of time in score situations, do a lot of late game situations where we practice coming back. I think that's a big key. We teach them how to come back.

COACH SMITH: Personally, you know, it's always a team thing with me. I never look at it as if it's me because it's not. It's the program, it's the players, it's the whole atmosphere of the program that wins. It succeeds. I tell the players all the time, it's amazing what you can achieve when you don't care who gets the credit. Really, the credit belongs and deservedly with these players and the effort and sacrifices they made, the dedication and the commitment that they have made, the trust and the respect that they've given to me and my staff has been unbelievable. You talk about the things we went through this year with Allen being with his mom passing, and certainly there were concerns about whether when you follow in the foot steps of such an outstanding coach as Rick Pitino, or any excellent or outstanding person, it's tough. But personally it's great and gives me great satisfaction. It is hard to tell later what we have accomplished. I asked Coach Newton, did we really win the national championship? Someone pinch me. I'm not sure how I would react. It is funny, a great feeling. I called my mom and dad just a moment ago to thank them and ask them if they had seen the game. Certainly, it was good to hear. I got a great call from Vice President Al Gore. So those things really, there are so many wonderful people that have been supportive of me over the years and helped me get to this point. I wanted to thank everybody that's been a part of my life.