NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

April 4, 2003

Carmelo Anthony

Jim Boeheim

Kueth Duany

COACH BOEHEIM: Obviously, we're happy to be back in New Orleans. I've tried to block out everything that ever happened here (laughter). We have the same host that we had in '87. Hope we don't have the same result. But it's a great city. I told the players when we won up in Albany that they're fortunate to be coming here. This is a great place to have this tournament. They're lucky to be here and to enjoy it. They're young enough to think that they can do anything, and I'm not going to tell them any differently.

COACH BOEHEIM: Well, first of all, I don't think there's an advantage. I mean, teams come into our building, some come in and shoot great, some struggle. I really don't think that's an advantage. I think people will shoot the way they shoot. As far as Roy, I know he's going to concentrate on what's going on right here, then after this Tuesday, everything else will work its way out. But I've been lucky to having not only been able to coach at my alma mater, but to be able to stay there and never leave, to be able to get into coaching. Coached the golf team for five years when I was an assistant on the basketball team. That was a lot more fun because no media covered us. I phoned in the scores. I just phoned them in when we won. Everybody thought we were undefeated.

COACH BOEHEIM: We have, one, too. Nobody wants to vote for freshmen (laughter).

COACH BOEHEIM: You've got to have good players. I think Maryland won last year with a lot of good players. A lot of teams have won with a lot of good players. I think that's what you have to have. Certainly Carmelo is very important to us. The first half against Auburn, we were up 10 at halftime and he didn't score in the first half. So we're capable of playing, doing some things when he's not playing well. But obviously in the majority of games, he's been the key guy for us all year. For a freshman, I've said this a few times, he's just really had an amazingly consistent year. From his very first game in the Garden, right through the tournament, you know, right through Albany, I mean, he's surprised -- surpassed any expectations that I had for him. I think mine were probably higher than anybody else's.

COACH BOEHEIM: Well, the first time I thought about it was when I was a junior or a sophomore and we went to Penn State, played against a 2-3 zone, couldn't get any shots up. That's the first time I really thought about a zone defense. "This is pretty hard to play against." We had a guy named Dave Bing and a couple other guys, got beat by 20, 25. A guy named Bobby Donato was on that Penn State team, he ends up being a referee in the Big East. He's been killing me about that. We played some zone when I was in school, 2-3. When I was with the freshman team my first year out, then I moved up and worked with the varsity, Coach (Roy) Danforth, even when I was a grad assistant, let me talk to him about zone defense. He was a man-to-man coach. We put the zone in after having a disappointing 13-13 season. We went to the NIT with the zone that year. So we used it quite a bit then. When I first took the head coaching job, we had Roosevelt (Bouie), Louis Orr, had a lot of guys that could guard, we made a lot of man-to-man in the beginning. We started to use the zone also. We've always used it. Some years we've used it 80 or 90% of the time, other years we've used it 20, 30% of the time. I'd like to balance it. But the last three or four years, we have used the zone the majority of the time, really from '96, although we have played man-to-man a couple years in between there. But ideally we'd like to mix it up and use a little bit of both. This year, even though we have been effective in some situations with our man-to-man, we primarily have played zone in the tournament. I guess that's the shortened version.

COACH BOEHEIM: Well, I think any defense that you work at and you have good players can be effective, whether it's a man-to-man or a zone. There are fewer teams playing zone today, which I think probably makes your zone defense a little bit more effective because teams -- a team plays 10 games in a row against man-to-man, then sees a zone, it's going to be a little bit more difficult for it. We try to do some different things than normal people would do in a 2-3 zone, try to play it different ways at different times. I mean, we work at it, we have good players, so we can have a good defense. The only problem with being a zone coach, when you lose playing man-to-man, nobody says, "Why didn't you play zone?"

COACH BOEHEIM: The main thing in college basketball, and those guys are good players that you mentioned, we don't need that. We need marquee teams. College basketball is about the teams. I mean, smarter people than I have said that, but it really is true. A few years ago, some real smart basketball people said, when guys started leaving early, that this would be the end of college basketball, this would ruin college basketball, it would be like baseball or something, be on cable. The opposite I think has happened. I think our game is more popular now than ever because there are more teams now that can win, have a legitimate chance to go to the Final Four. Gonzaga was this close to beating Arizona. Butler, Southern Illinois are getting better and better. They're going to keep getting better. They're still very good players, as you mentioned, in college, and there will be guys that stay and develop and become marquee type players. There is a little difference. We probably don't have, you know, teams that have three or four pros anymore. That probably won't happen. But it really doesn't make any difference. It's still great basketball. The competitiveness of it. In reality I think we have a better game now than we had because there's more balance. There's not quite as many great players on a team, but I don't think that really makes a difference.

COACH BOEHEIM: No, that has nothing to do with me. I wish I could influence Dr. Brand (laughter). That was the best thing I've heard, and I don't want to spend 30 minutes on this, but that was the best thing I've heard from the president of the NCAA in many, many years. I'll give you a quick example. We've graduated seven out of our last eight players at Syracuse. What we've done is put guys in summer school to get them ahead, we make them go to summer school to try to push them through. In reality, our guys are there three and a half years. At the end of three and a half years, if they're not done, they're going to the pro trials, all the camps, they're going to the NBA or Europe. We have three and a half years. So we try to push our guys to get done in three and a half years. But the reality, our seven out of eight that have graduated, two transferred in. So we have five out of six, which sounds all right, but we had five guys transfer. We have a 45% graduation rate according to the way it's figured right now. That's not very good. I wouldn't be proud of that. You know, the five guys that transferred are going to graduate, where they are, but they count against us. We're going to have to try to change that, especially if we're going to use that as a punishment factor, graduation rates. We have to do it. As soon as that's done, there's going to be somebody from the Knight Commission, a president someplace or a media guy who is going to say, "They're changing the way they figure it so they can look better." The reality is we work on a small number. Over four years, it's 12 players. If three or four or five guys transfer, because they want to play more, you know, you can't -- it just skews the rate unbelievably. The problem is, the presidents have to have a better graduation rate. Even if I point out my reality, they can't live with the fact that Syracuse is going to have a 45% graduation rate for this group of kids. In reality, the one guy that didn't graduate is making the most money of the eight guys. He's making $350, $400,000 playing basketball. He has 109 hours, so he needs 11 hours. I mean, he hurts us, but I'm glad he didn't stay and try to finish those 11 hours and give up the $400,000 job playing basketball. But he does hurt us. And we've had that in other cases, in other years. One year we had four guys didn't graduate in two years, they all played in the NBA. They averaged $5 million a year. But they all counted -- zero for four counted against us. I didn't tell them, "Wait a minute, you're making a big mistake here." Big, high-level programs are going to have guys. People think it's the NBA. It's not just the NBA. All of the guys that have played for me have gone on to play basketball, every guy. They play in Europe, they play in the CBA, they want to play basketball. I've had five guys come back and graduate who didn't graduate, five. None of them ever counted in our graduation numbers because they played between four and eight years in the NBA. So they all count against us. I could go on with some other examples. But it's patently unfair when you say this graduation rate's based on six years. None of our players stay six years. All of our players stay four years, then they go play. And they could finish -- we try to get them ahead to finish, but some of them need three courses, two courses. We have one guy that needs one course, but he's still playing basketball. My feeling is we didn't do a bad job with that guy. He counts as an 0 for 1, but he has one course to get, he's still playing pro basketball, he'll come back and get it. He doesn't need it to play pro basketball. When he needs it, he'll come back and get it. There's a lot more to this whole thing on graduation rates. There's a huge number of things. But the bottom line is with the people that we have and what they want to do with their lives, under the way they do the graduation rates, we're always going to have bad rates. We have four people that work full-time in academic support. We spend $700,000 to $1 million on academic support. If a guy in three and a half years who has 108 hours can go make money playing basketball, they're going to go, and they should. But it still is an 0 for 1 for us when he comes to graduation rates.

COACH BOEHEIM: He's had a great year, obviously. Texas is a great defensive team. They're going to guard him. We're prepared. We've seen just people play us straight up man-to-man. We've seen people double-team him. We've seen zones, matchups, triangles and twos, boxes and ones. At this stage of the season, we've seen everything. Texas is a great defensive team. Rick is a great defensive coach. I've coached against him many times. They'll come at him real hard, real physical. You know, he's seen all that. He'll go out and play his game. Some games he makes shots, some games he doesn't. He's a young guy, has no fear, just goes out and tries to play the best he can. Some games, you know, it doesn't work for him. Over the course of the year, he's been, as I said, very consistent in what he's brought to the table. He's always going to be a factor, even when he's not necessarily making shots in some way during the course of the game, he's going to be a factor. I mean, he's been the most fun kid that I've ever really coached. You know, I never said he's the best kid. Derrick Coleman would probably beat me up if I said that. But he's a great kid to coach. He's a great teammate for his teammates. When a freshman takes 200 or more shots than anybody else on the team, he better be well-liked or he's not going to be able to get away with that.

CARMELO ANTHONY: Well, I feel as though I'm living in a dream right now. To come to the Final Four my first year, I never thought I would be in the Final Four my first year at college basketball. That's a dream come true for me.

CARMELO ANTHONY: Yeah, I know that Ivey's going to come out and try to play me tough. Even though I got the height advantage, it's just a matter of who else they going to send at me when I got the ball.

CARMELO ANTHONY: Well, I haven't really thought about my decision about next year. I mean, I'm just focusing on this game I have tomorrow and hopefully winning that and winning the national championship.

KUETH DUANY: I just know being from Sudan and dealing with war most of my life, you know, war is a devastating thing, and the aftereffects of war. It's just a tough time to go through. It's tough watching it on TV, seeing all the soldiers losing their lives. All you can try to do is support the soldiers and hope there's not many lives being lost. Hopefully everything works out as soon as possible and the war can be over soon.

CARMELO ANTHONY: Like you said, I've seen every defense there is that a team can actually throw at one person. I mean, for Texas to put Royal Ivey on me, even though he is a smarter defender, I have a couple inches on him, I still have to get my teammates involved early and see what they give me, just take the open.

KUETH DUANY: Coming to the Final Four (smiling). This is my last opportunity. When I first stepped on campus, I had an opportunity to see Carmelo, Jerry, Billy, all those guys play, you know, I knew we had a team that could compete if guys were willing to do whatever it takes to get here. All the hard work paid off. Things worked out. We're here now.

CARMELO ANTHONY: When we lost our first game of the season, everybody was saying Syracuse was too young of a team to do anything this year, we would be inexperienced, we probably one year away. Everybody was saying that. For us to come out and make it to the Final Four, although we lost our first game of the season, to make that adjustment, to be able to go on an 11-game winning stretch after that, it's big for us. It shows how we matured over the time.

CARMELO ANTHONY: I don't put any pressure on myself. When I put pressure on myself, then I just play bad. When I play bad, my team plays bad. So for in order for us to be successful, I have to come out and give my teammates (inaudible). I know all the defense is keying on me. I have to get Kueth involved, get Jerry involved, Hakim and Craig involved before I can get my shots.

KUETH DUANY: I don't think it's anything that they say. It's just a look in their eyes that you can see. You know, we call it like sometimes they have the bug-eye look. Their eyes are real big, they're looking around. They don't know when to penetrate, when to go. They're just looking at each other like they're lost and confused. That's the look, when we see that look, we know teams don't know what to do against our zone. I think our zone has been successful this year because we've had active guys, long guys like myself on the top of the zone, Carmelo and Hakim on the wings. It's tough to get shots off. That's 6'8", 6'9", with very long wingspan. I think that's one of the keys for our zone this year.

CARMELO ANTHONY: No. Looks can be deceiving, man (laughter). This game is not easy. To try to beat one defender, then I got another defender coming up to me, every time I go to the hole, somebody foul me real hard. I don't want to say try to hurt me, but just trying to play physical, test my manhood. Man, it's just crazy the way I got to go up against all these defenses. How I keep my composure, I'm just happy about myself the way I compose myself.

KUETH DUANY: I think this team is special. I think this team has what it takes to win the entire thing. It would be nice to see Coach get a championship. You know, he's been at Syracuse almost forever. You know, he's been there a couple times. But like he said last week, there's four seconds that he has to clean up, and that's the four seconds we are trying to get for them. It's Kueth, by the way (laughter).

KUETH DUANY: I think we've played teams like this that this year. Pittsburgh is a team that, you know, any one of their guys can score 20-plus points on you. So there's not one particular guy you can key on. I think Texas is the same way. You know, TJ Ford, he's the engine that makes them go. They got a lot of guys that can kill you. We're just going to try to play our solid defense. Our defensive scheme don't focus on one guy. We just going to try to rotate, guard everybody the best we possibly can.

CARMELO ANTHONY: No. He answered it all.

KUETH DUANY: Hopefully it's the right way to stop him. He's a great penetrator. When you have guys that can penetrate a zone, it kind of breaks down the zone. That's something we try to prevent from happening. That's why we're in a zone defense. It's easier to get into the middle against a man-to-man than it is against a zone defense. That's one thing we're going to try to do. And it's Kueth (laughter).

CARMELO ANTHONY: Well, I wanted to have some experience under my belt, regardless of what I do after this year. I want to have some experience. I wanted to mature. I mean, just experience how to travel, how to do other things off the court.

KUETH DUANY: That's right (smiling).

KUETH DUANY: That's the key to the game, we think. TJ Ford pushes the ball up so quick, you know, quicker than any team we've seen all year long. You know, that's something we just can't let happen. We can't get beat on transition. That's one of the keys to the game, is getting back on transition defense.

CARMELO ANTHONY: When I was watching the game, I thought I was part of the game. I was just so into it. For him to actually be playing in the game, I knew it was a funny feeling just being there. And they won it. So hopefully I can get that feeling after Monday.