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NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR


April 1, 2005


Sean May

Roy Williams

Jawad Williams


ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

JOHN GERDES: We're joined by Sean May and Jawad Williams. We'll open it up to questions.

Q. For those of us who haven't watched you game in and game out, how many teams this year have really tried to run against you? What have you seen from Michigan State on film? What do you expect from them as far as the running game?

JAWAD WILLIAMS: Not many teams have tried to run with us all year. Some teams have. We were able to handle it. Michigan State is a very talented team, they have a lot of players like ourselves who can go anywhere and be stars. They're a great team in the transition. Sprinting back both ways is going to be very key.

Q. Sean, I understand since the tournament started, you've had the 1976 championship game tape in your bag. You vow to watch it if you made it to the Final Four. Have you watched it yet?

SEAN MAY: No. It's in my bag, it's in my backpack in the locker room right now. I've had some mixed feelings about it. Granted, if we play well tomorrow, I'm not sure if I'll show it because sometimes we go through a routine. You don't want to break that routine. If I feel guys want to watch it, that's why I brought it. I'm definitely going to watch it just because it brings inspiration to me. The game of basketball has changed so much since that time, you know, I don't know if the guys will really respect what they see. Really I just want to show them that last five minutes and the celebration that my dad's team had at the end. We have a chance to do that this weekend.

Q. If you could talk about what you've seen in terms of Roy's mood these last couple of days? Has he seemed relaxed, uptight, anxious to get this thing going?

JAWAD WILLIAMS: It's been the same Coach Williams, if you ask me. Not much has changed. We're still doing the same things we were doing at the beginning of the year: focusing on little things. There's no pressure or anything like that. He's just same old Coach Williams.

SEAN MAY: I agree. I think more than now, more than ever, he's preaching, you know, things that we've done in the past, you know, the mistakes that we made. We can't have that. I think he's the same. To tell you the truth, he's not happy or just satisfied with being at another Final Four. You know, he wants us to win this. He feels that we have an opportunity to do that if we play well. But for us, we're going to take it one game at a time. We have a huge obstacle ahead of us in facing Michigan State.

Q. What would it mean to each of you to win a championship for Coach Williams, who has been here obviously before, has had a lot of close calls, but never won one as a head coach?

JAWAD WILLIAMS: Well, for me personally, I don't think we're trying to win a championship for Coach Williams, we're trying to win a championship for ourselves. It's something we haven't done either. Hopefully we can meet halfway and get this thing done together.

SEAN MAY: For me it's something I think about at night. You know, coach has been through a lot. I respect everything that he's done. You know, I want to be on that team when he says 20 years from now, talking to, you know, everybody when he's getting ready to retire, you know, thinking about the things he's done in his career, I want to be on that 2005 team that he thanks for finally getting him that first championship.

Q. Talk about the importance of being experienced, juniors and seniors, and if Jawad could give us a feeling on how you're feeling?

JAWAD WILLIAMS: As far as us being an older team, it's very important because we've been through tough situations and we know how to handle it. Our young guys will rely on us during the game. I'm fine. I'm just about a hundred percent right now.

SEAN MAY: I agree. I think being through this process this year, going to the NCAA tournament, we were satisfied with just being here, being a part of the tournament, and now this year, we've had some ups and downs. We played well; we didn't play well in the ACC tournament. But we've done enough to get us here. For us we need to peak at the right time, which is now, and put everything together and really show people that talent is not all that we have, that we are one of the best teams in the country.

Q. A lot of attention this week has been paid to the outstanding three-point shooters that have performed so well throughout the tournament. This week as a post player, is there anything you can do or plan to do to sort of put the emphasis back on the paint?

SEAN MAY: I just plan on playing the way I've played all year, feeding off my teammates. I think you have to have both to be a really good team. I think the team that's going to win this thing is going to have shooters who shoot well and have great inside play, whether that be, you know, from guards getting to the paint, scoring inside. You got to have some paint work at some point. I think, you know, for me playing the way I've been playing all year is all I'm going to do. I'm not going to try to out do [] myself and demand the ball more than what I have.

Q. Sean, is it going to be strange to play against Doug Wojcik?

SEAN MAY: Coach Wojcik is a great friend. He's taught me a lot about life, a lot about the game of basketball. He was really that person I went to when I struggled my freshman year in terms of breaking my foot and just dealing with issues on and off the court. It will be tough at first, right before tip-off, you look over there, you're going to see him. Throughout the game, he's not the head coach, so you're not going to see him up on the sidelines. You know, hopefully for all of us, we won't pay too much attention to it. Regardless of the outcome, I'll go over and give him a hug, I'm going to wish him the best of luck in his new job.

Q. Sean, over the years, how many stories have you heard from your dad and brother about getting to the Final Four? What advice, if any, have both of them given to you now?

SEAN MAY: I've heard a lot. My brother just tells me, and my dad, you know, back then when they were playing, there weren't fans allowed to come watch practice before. He said you're going to be nervous. There's a lot more going on now than when I played. But at the same time it's just another game. You know, especially that first game of the Final Four. Now, when you get to the national championship, if you're able to get there, we'll sit down and talk about that after that first game. They both just tell me, hey, you just got to go out and play and treat it like it's another game, block out all the outside distractions. This is a great show that the NCAA puts on. There are a lot of distractions out there.

Q. You mentioned that the game of basketball has changed quite a bit since that film that you have in your back. It looks like tomorrow night is a little bit of a throw back situation in the low post, two big guys going at each other. Have you studied some of these big-man match-ups of the past, watched them? How do you see tomorrow night's match-up?

SEAN MAY: I think I have a fairly good grasp on the history of basketball. Back then, the game was played through the post. I think now, as basketball has -- the evolution, it's gotten more with guard play. Tomorrow night I think it will be a battle of the bigs. Paul Davis is a tremendous player. I think we both have an old-school type game. We're not really high-risers, both kind of a laid-back attitude. We just approach the game in probably the same type of way. I played with Paul, seen him play a lot. He's very talented. I think tomorrow the game will be played through the post. So it will be kind of like a throwback situation.

Q. Sean, it seems like you developed quite an affinity for Coach Williams over your time there. What word would you use to describe when you've heard the number of questions he's gotten about never having won a national championship, how does it feel not to win a national championship? What word or words go through your mind when you hear those questions?

SEAN MAY: It's unfair to put a stamp on somebody's career just because they didn't win a national championship. You know, just like Eddie Sutton, he's a great coach. Coach Williams is a great coach. He's even said that winning the national championship will not put a stamp on his career. He told us a story about when Coach Smith won his first one. He said he went up to coach and said congratulations. Coach Smith said to him, "I don't think I was a better coach four hours ago than I am now." Just because he gets a national championship isn't going to, you know, put a definition on his career, a stamp or closing to his career. As long as he sees his players succeed, he sees them grow into men, grow in terms of on the court and off the court, that's what his job is about, is seeing us develop as young men.

Q. You mentioned your knowledge of the history of college basketball, especially big men. Is there someone you like to pattern your game after? Your double-doubles, is it your size and strength that has allowed you to do that?

SEAN MAY: I think getting the double-doubles, it's all about pride. For me to play this game, you have to be good at certain things. I try to be good at a lot of things. Coach Williams, you know, told me when I first -- when he first got here that I'm a jack of all trades but master of none. I needed to try to make my niche rebounding the basketball. That's what I've tried to do. I pride myself going out and trying to get 10 rebounds a game. In terms of who I try to pattern my game after, probable an Adrian Dantley, undersized power forward at played at Notre Dame. The old Charles Barkley back in the day when all he could do was shoot jump shots off the glass.

Q. Can you talk about Paul Davis, the way he's brought his game up the last couple weeks, what challenge you have against him.

SEAN MAY: He's playing well right now. That's the hardest part, is playing somebody who has been criticized. He got criticized all year for not being intense and not playing the way that people thought he should. Now he's doing that. Now I have to face him. For me it will be an extremely hard challenge to be productive on the offensive end and try to make him not productive on the defensive end. You know, he's good. He's got range, can step out. He has so many skills. He can run the floor, can finish with both hands, tall, athletic. So for me it's approach the game as I always do and just try to play to the best of my ability.

Q. Now that North Carolina is back in the Final Four for the first time in a couple years, how much pressure are you feeling to finish the job?

JAWAD WILLIAMS: There's no pressure on us at all. We haven't been here before. In the past, past teams have been here, we haven't. We just need to go out there and play basketball, worry about ourselves, and then hopefully everything will take care of itself.

SEAN MAY: Yeah, I feel that there's not any pressure. I think if we approach the game the way we have been, sharing the basketball, playing with each other, I think our talent and the coaches that we have and the way we work, everything will take care of itself.

Q. Jawad, how do you see this game? What do you think are the most important elements of it?

JAWAD WILLIAMS: Guys being willing to play defense. We need to sprint back both ways. We going to sprint to the offensive courts, but we need to be able to sprint on defense, get our match-ups. I think we have a lot of weapons, but so do they. It's all going to come down to who plays the hardest and who plays the smartest out there.

JOHN GERDES: Gentlemen, good luck. Joined by Coach Williams. We'll ask the coach to make an opening statement and then we'll open it up to questions.

COACH WILLIAMS: It's a fantastic time to be a college basketball player and a college basketball coach. The excitement of being at the Final Four with your team, it's what you work for year-round, not just during the season, but it's what you work towards in the off-season as well.

Q. Roy, Tom Izzo said he learned a lot about pushing the team up the floor from your days at Kansas. How much did you actually help him? What do you see from this team as far as that for tomorrow night?

COACH WILLIAMS: They may do it better than we do at times. That's what I've learned. Tommy is a great coach, a great friend, a guy that I respect immensely. I love the way they've defended - from his team several years ago to right now. I love the way they emphasize the rebounding part of the game, which I think is the most important. They all say if you rebound and defend, you always have a chance. You can add a third thing. If you rebound, defend and you play for Tom Izzo, you always have a chance. I'm not trying to color it up, that's exactly the way I think. His club is maybe the fastest, most athletic that we faced all year long. It's going to present a challenge to us. We've been pretty good running the ball up and down the court. We've led the nation in scoring and assists. In half the games, people have tried to control the tempo on us. Tomorrow we're going to find out how well we run back. I think that's a big challenge for us.

Q. Have you changed your approach or routine for the team in this trip to the Final Four than some of your previous trips with your Kansas teams?

COACH WILLIAMS: Not really. I think what I try to do is have a sense of what the team can handle, what the team wants to do. I've had teams that were very focused and very tight, close-lipped. I've had some teams that came in with the video camera going into practice this afternoon in front of the public, trying to show how many people were there. I think to me, you need to try to set a mood that your team feels comfortable in and not put them in a scenario where they're not comfortable.

Q. You had a couple of narrow escapes last week. Has that been official or did you see stuff that you were concerned with going into this weekend?

COACH WILLIAMS: I think it was helpful to us, but, you know, when you get to 16 and 8, I think all the games are fairly close. Teams are really good at that point. Our first two games, first round and second round, we had a pretty big working margin. People asked me if I was worried about that going into the next round. I really wasn't because we had played a lot of close games in a very competitive league. So we had been there before. If it helps us play better tomorrow night, I think that's fantastic.

Q. Do you have a set philosophy if you've got the ball at the end of a game, if the clock is running down, to call timeout or let things go? When there is a timeout, it's a last possession, either offense or defense, how much of it is kind of a guessing game, chess match?

COACH WILLIAMS: We try to practice late-game scenarios that if I don't have a timeout, which most of the time I am going to have one, I'll probably retire from coaching with the most timeouts in my pocket of any coach in history. But we're going to work on those situations where that if I stand up and call barnhouse, all right, we're going to know what the dickens we're doing, so we can do it without having the timeout. If you have a timeout, then we just review everything and put it down on the chart and make sure everything knows what we're talking about. I do have certain principles that we coach because I don't want the kids, something to happen, them look over to me and try to decide what they're supposed to do. That's the reason -- that's what we practice for. Certain time on the clock, we're going to call a timeout. Certain time on the clock, we're going to try to foul. Certain time on the clock, we're not going to call a timeout.

Q. Rick Pitino and Tom Izzo have talked about savoring this Final Four more than they did the other ones. I'm wondering how you are approaching this compared to the other ones?

COACH WILLIAMS: Well, the big thing is they've already gotten one of those big trophies on Monday night, so they savor it perhaps in a different way. But I'm not positive that they do that because I think I'm trying to savor the moments myself. Each morning I've been out for a little walk with my wife, nice restaurant to eat last night. When we go into our team meeting, we're extremely focused. We're going to go out on the court today and we're going to work when we're out there. But I do believe, it's written, and you guys have to write it, and it is a story, I understand that. But 15 years from now, if I'm still sitting up here answering questions, and one of the questions is asked, "Well, Roy, you've never won one," if I'm still sitting up here, that means we've won a lot of games, and I'm going to enjoy that part of it and I'm going to enjoy the relationship with my players. Oh, yeah, there's no question, I've said it this way, I've got more desire in my little finger than any North Carolina person alive or dead, okay? But at the same time you can only do so much. I don't short change anybody. Anybody that's ever worked with me, that I've worked for, I don't short change 'em. I don't take days off, I don't try to take an easy way out. I'm hopeful that that will continue. And if we do happen to get lucky one year and win one, I'm not going to quit the next day. So it's not going to change my life either.

Q. Did your Athens experience help you as a coach?

COACH WILLIAMS: No question, Larry Brown, Greg Poppovich, Oliver Purnell, other coaches we competed with at the Olympics. Larry, Pop and Oliver. And seeing how different people handle very talented individuals, not just the stuff on the court, but away from the court was beneficial to me. The way I looked at it, it was 36 days this summer, 31 days last summer, or last summer and the summer before last, that was devoted strictly to basketball. I felt like I gained a great deal with that.

Q. When you got to North Carolina, some of the guys, can you talk a little bit about their mentality and also the steps, especially guys like Jawad, Melvin, Jackie have taken to get from 8-20 to now at the Final Four?

COACH WILLIAMS: Well, they've worked exceptionally hard. When I got there, I thought they were really good kids. But they had had some turmoil, during that turmoil I think it's human nature to try to grab onto something that you can be a little more successful with. A lot of times in basketball, that's an individual thing. So primary focus for us was to be focused on that name on the front of the jersey, not the name on the back, the name of our team. And the kids, again, they were not bad kids. It was just human nature that something had happened. We had to get them to focus on that team aspect of it. The kids that were 8-20, Jackie, Melvin and Jawad have been marvelous this year. I think it's something they learned from what we tried to do last year. They and the other teammates worked extremely hard in the off-season to be better players, to fit into our style of play even better. I couldn't be more proud of Jackie and Jawad and Melvin for sticking with it because I've always been a North Carolina fan, even when I was coaching at Kansas. I would get those scores, and it would make you feel great or it would make you feel awful. When Matt Doherty was coaching there, it was other guy that meant a great deal to me. I knew what was going on. Those kids that went through some tough times, I'm very proud of them.

Q. Following up on the Rick Pitino question, he looks more relaxed. Is it going to be fun for you this week or is there just too much pressure, too much involved?

COACH WILLIAMS: The pressure, I honestly don't feel the pressure from anybody except what I put on myself. I felt like that when we played Oakland in the first game. To me, the stress is going to be internal, what I'm going to put on myself. The atmosphere, the pageantry, what we go through with this, I'm not going to say it's fun to meet with you guys and have a chat every day and things like that. But what this is is just part of it. I don't let this part of it bother me. You know, we're going out there and practice. We really are, we're going to get after it for about 50 minutes. When we finish, we're going to talk to the guys, make sure they're going to have a nice dinner, tell them we'll meet them at 11:00 at night, then we'll talk some more basketball at that time. I am enjoying the experience. I hope that my kids are. Today I looked out the window, we're staying at the Adam's Mark, I looked out the window, I can see the Arch, I can see the river. I said, look out there, there's five or six of my players throwing the football in a grassy area out there. I love that. This is college athletics. I knew who it was because I could tell who were the bad passers and the bad catchers, that kind of thing. But I thought that was fantastic, a fantastic scenario. If the legitimate fans were the only ones around the hotel as opposed to people trying to collect autographs to sell, my players would hang out with them even more because they were enjoying the moment. Those people are just trying to sell things, they make it so bad for everybody.

Q. Perhaps because his father played on a national championship team, does Sean May seem motivated to you in different ways than other players you have?

COACH WILLIAMS: Yeah, it is a unique scenario. There's no question about that. But he's lived through that for his entire 20, 21 years. I think he might even be more excited about the possibilities at what could happen. But that's also been a scenario for him his entire life, that his dad is one of the most famous basketball players in the state of Indiana ever, and goes on to a successful pro career. Sean has just done a marvelous job with that. His dad is pretty doggone special, too. He's not just concerned about how Sean is doing; he's concerned about how Sean's teammates are doing. I think that's a very unique quality and one I admire a great deal.

Q. A lot of three-point shots in the regional finals last week. As the games get tighter, tougher, more meaningful, do we see three-point shots go up? What's going on with that? Do you expect to shoot more here?

COACH WILLIAMS: I would expect to see about the same amount we've been shooting, but yet I forget which game it was, maybe Villanova, I think we shot 16 in the first half. That's way more than we normally shoot. We addressed that at halftime and took fewer in the second half. I don't have a perfect number because it depends on how quick the tempo is. If there are a lot of possessions, you're going to shoot more threes. But I think we'll shoot about the normal amount. If we're making them, I'd like us to shoot a little bit more. If we're missing them, I'd like to shoot less.

Q. Have you spit in the river yet? If not, anything else superstitious you'll do?

COACH WILLIAMS: I've made it down to the river. Haven't taken my team yet. Haven't made the final decision if they're going to expectorate, is that the right word? I don't know if we're going to spit or not (smiling). You never can tell. We try to do some things to have a little more fun.

Q. Considering Marvin's chances for the NBA and stuff, do you look at him as whatever time you guys have with him is a bonus almost because of what he does have ahead of him?

COACH WILLIAMS: Yes. But I do that with all of our guys. I enjoy my relationship and treasure that part of it all the time. I think the experience of leaving Kansas a couple years ago has made it even more so, that you don't know what's down the line. I know I'm not leaving. I know that much (smiling).

Q. Can you put a value on having a junior/senior team at that stage?

COACH WILLIAMS: I think you look around, and that the basically what you have, is almost four of those here. That almost answers your question. Fab Five did a good job. Carmelo Anthony led Syracuse, but they had more experienced players there, not just him. I think guard play and experienced play, especially if it's talented, is by far the common denominator. If you have guard play and experience, but they're not very doggone good, you're not going to be here.

Q. Basically you went home two years ago. After two years with this team, back in the program, do you feel more comfortable now? Do you feel more at home?

COACH WILLIAMS: You know, I think -- I felt at home the entire time, but it was just how emotional it was for me to leave a place that I loved and still love and leaving players that I loved and had recruited, had been with for a long time, to go to a school or home with players that I did not know. That was the emotional part of it. It was and will be difficult for me to handle for quite a while. But, no, I went to school there. My wife went to school there. Our son went to school there. Our daughter went to school there. You know, it is home. I love Lawrence, Kansas and will till the day I die. Lawrence, Kansas was special to me because of the basketball and the people. I didn't feel that much attachment to the dirt or to the bricks or anything like that, but the people were just fantastic, then the players. And the people's passion for the game of basketball was something that I grew -- or it grew to a point where it was extremely special to me.

JOHN GERDES: Thanks, coach. Good luck.

COACH WILLIAMS: Thanks, guys.

End of FastScripts...

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