BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 9, 2002

Taliek Brown

Caron Butler

Jim Calhoun

Ben Gordon

COACH JIM CALHOUN: Well, first thing, I want to congratulate my kids. And I think this has to be one of the most physical basketball games that we've ever been involved with. Obviously, the reason why is because Pittsburgh is -- we think we're a pretty tough basketball team. We might have met our equal tonight toughness-wise. Their defense, unwillingness to yield even when Brandin Knight went out, Ben's done a remarkable job coaching them. They have remarkable kids. They play together so well. They gave us everything that we could possibly handle. But, you know, because I'm so proud of what these guys have done, our kids, given their youth and other things, I just thought we stepped up and made some big plays defensively, offensively and got ourselves a championship. I'm really proud to coach them. They've been terrific kids. I won't tell them that on Monday because we're getting ready for the tournament. But I am really proud of them. They did a terrific job. That was a game in which every pass, every dribble, every cut, after you get ten minutes into the game, was being contested. Some games you get where nobody can shoot the ball. Here you had a tough time getting an open look, putting the ball on the floor with some awfully good basketball players. We won a war. We're tremendously proud of our kids. Once again, have great, great admiration for the way Pittsburgh played.

TALIEK BROWN: I knew the shot was going in (laughter). I just squared up, stood in. I think God just helped me out with that shot, you know. He was just with me on that shot.

TALIEK BROWN: It means a lot. My family, friends, you know, through the past year everybody been doubting me and stuff but coach. He stuck with me, my players stuck with me. They had a lot of faith in me. Feels real good to be in the situation I am in right now.

TALIEK BROWN: Coach Moore had told me it was two seconds on the clock anyway. I looked up, Tony took it out of bounds. I wanted the ball in my hands, just try to get a good shot off.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: There's something about Taliek that made me know he'd take that shot. There's nothing he fears basketball-wise. Sometimes that's really great. Sometimes not so great. The long run wise, is one of the reasons, primary reasons, that we're in the position we're in, is because he believes we're always going to win, he believes he can always do things. That obviously makes him very special. It was a remarkable shot. He now is complaining that I make him shoot too close, 20 feet, 21. I have to move his range out. He's comfortable at 32 or in the Queens. Possibly in the Queens I think.

CARON BUTLER: It was a battle. It was a fight till the end. Pittsburgh are a great basketball team. They put up a lot of effort but we did also. We came out with the W. But Brandin Knight represented his ballclub very well. It was just hard, it was hard to beat them but we overcame it and we did a great job staying together.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: It was because both Taliek and Ben, who are two point guards, both had three fouls. Ben gets his fourth. We didn't want to end up in the game, still had plenty of time to go, without having a point guard. I don't want either one of those out of the game coming down the stretch. You make a great observation. Tony was put in really to make sure the foul situation - plus he's a great offensive player. But his defense became magnificent. I thought he did a wonderful job on Brandin. Brandin's a terrific player. Another guy who I thought -- I said Chris Thomas was really good last night. Another terrific point guard we just played against.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: Well, I mean, as far as our perspective, we were trying to make a decision, "Should we press them?" That's the only decision I was trying to get going. We gave up early hoops with Brandin in the game. They were schooled on breaking the press (inaudible). I was a little concerned about that. I mean, we were debating it on the sidelines, "Should we press them without Brandin in the game?" But the thing that Ben's done a great job with this team, they run their stuff. They run their stuff, as you notice, most of all their sets come, he gets rid of the ball, cuts to the corner. It comes back off the screen. An awful lot of things they do, Zavackas handles the ball, Page handles the ball. They almost run a five-man offense with their big guys handling the ball more than most teams. Clearly it gave us an advantage. Brandin's a big player. Without Ben being able to play as much or that type of situation, that's part of basketball. We just feel very fortunate to beat a terrific Pittsburgh team.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: I think the most difficult thing, first thing, I think is four or five of their kids had played in this game last year against Boston College even though they get hit pretty good, they had been here before. My second concern, sometimes when a team defends us exceptionally well, it frustrates us offensively which means, and you saw it early, we did not play great defense. Once we got our defensive legs, we're fine. But that was my two major concerns, A, they had veteran players that played in the championship game against Boston College last year, who had been here before and thought they could get this one. Secondly, I thought on tape they were magnificent defensively. By the way, in person they're probably better. They're so physical, smart. Get in front of you. Ben's done a great job with that team.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: It's like Dave Gavitt said to me, if you don't like shutouts in baseball, sometimes they say it's not great basketball. It depends what eyes you're looking upon. It was difficult to make a pass, a cut, set a screen, because someone was there all the time. I don't think the game flowed maybe the way everybody else would think it. From a defensive standpoint, I mean, guys were hedging, helping, recovering, getting to the middle. I just thought that both teams played magnificent defense and thanked God our kids played better at the end and we were able to win a basketball game.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: Well, I didn't know. I saw him sprint up the court. Tony let him get in front of him. That shot came a little too close for all of us. We're all doing this. Then, I fear what could have happened on one leg. Then he clearly looked injured. I hope he's back in the tournament. They'll be really, really tough in the tournament. They run discipline offense and they can really defend.

CARON BUTLER: I mean, we on a nine-game winning streak. So it really helped us. Momentum-wise, we're just rolling right now. The tournament is coming. Hopefully we can just keep rolling. It's a big confidence-booster as well, though.

BEN GORDON: Like Coach said before, they were just a real physical team. Every time I came up for a screen, there was somebody there helping or something like that. I was struggling in the beginning a little bit but my teammates were able to help us down the stretch and pull it through. I'm happy with that.

TALIEK BROWN: Not really, 'cause, you know, I really didn't have nothing to lose (laughing). I really didn't have nothing to lose. I just threw it up and it just went in.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: With him, as I said before, it's a play to make. Number one, I can guarantee you he wasn't nervous. After two years, I can guarantee he wasn't nervous. He doesn't know nervous. But I think you make the great point. He had the presence of mind to make it a good shot, get it up in the rim. Even if he misses, we got guys get a chance to get a rebound. If we don't get it up there, it's a violation.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: Well, in this day and age, I think courage and in athletics is overused. But athletically speaking, Ben Howland has those guys committed to something that's very near and dear to me - that's that they truly believe they're going to win, they play -- as you know, this year they played an awful lot from behind. They've fallen down a lot of holes this year and come back and win games. I think I saw ten different tapes of them. They really are probably one of the toughest, guttiest teams we've competed against. Technically, he does a great job. Just the fact without Brandin they still can run their offense. You can't take one man out because all five kids handle the basketball.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: Well, you know, I think I've said it since the first day I walked into a Big East meeting, as I said last night, with Rick Pitino, John Thompson, all the guys who made this league special. I said, you know, we want to be part of this in Connecticut. We want to be part of this. I stayed the first two years, played the eight nine game. Lost our first year, won our second. I stayed to see what nights like this would be about. In our fourth year we were fortunate enough to get here and win it. I tell you what, from a guy from New England, from the east, playing in Madison square Garden against coaches you have great respect for, against programs you have great respect for, it's a special night. I hear all the bubble talk, the seedings, we wanted to win. We wanted to be the best and biggest and baddest and best in our neighborhood. That's what we wanted to be. We really had a goal to do that. It was tough. We met someone really tough tonight, and we won that battle. We left here with a great admiration for the teams we played. Obviously, some great deal of comments among ourselves. To win the neighborhood battles amongst guys you know, care about, and respect is very, very special.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: "Don't foul. Find someone like Ben to yell at" (laughter). Right, Ben?

BEN GORDON: Yeah.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: Yeah. And then I realized I didn't want to take the great joy out of him of what he had accomplished and how he got us here. I just think that, as I said, I think when we first came in, you asked last night, this conference has always been very special to me. Winning in Madison square Garden, in the neighborhood that I've coached in and lived in for my entire career, is really very special. It's hard to put it in words. Those last 30 seconds for me, when (inaudible) Dave said, "It's eight, we're okay." Yeah, they were very special for me. I just think that this young group, to do it, it didn't come out of a whim. I could see some of it possibly coming during the season. But certainly doesn't make it any less special. It's a special win for us. How we did it was even more so.

COACH JIM CALHOUN: When Dave told me we were up eight. I don't -- I never know scores. Someone asked me, "What was the score yesterday?" "Plus four." You know? So when you say plus eight and I see 30 seconds, I know we're in pretty good shape and we have the ball with two timeouts. I started to do that then. I'm not exactly one of those guys with a lot of (inaudible) on the sideline. I don't know if you noticed that. I'm a guy who tries to coach until the end. Maybe it's because I've seen too many things happen, I've had daggers thrown at me late. I wanted to make sure we ended it late. In regulation, I think you guys felt the same way. So close. First overtime, so close. Going to the rim on both those occasions. We wanted to finish the damn thing off. We did. We're really happy. Go happy back to Connecticut. Celebrate for a day and get ourselves ready for the NCAA tournament.