NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 31, 1997

Ron Mercer

Scott Padgett

Rick Pitino

COACH PITINO: Well, first, I want to congratulate Arizona for playing a great game. And I really want to congratulate Lute Olson. I know what it is to win a championship, it's a lifelong dream. And as a man who worked so hard and has earned this championship. And I'm really happy for him. And I have to tell you, I've been, in past years coming off the Marquette loss or the Carolina loss, I've been disappointed. But I'm not even a bit disappointed. I am so proud of our guys the way they battled this whole night and the whole season, that it's the same feeling as winning a championship. We don't have a first place trophy, but I'm just as proud of this team as I was last year's team, maybe even more. A lot of little things can go wrong in the course of the game. There's been one common denominator in our losses, and that's when we foul and put the other team to the line. But that's a credit to them drawing the fouls. So I really want to thank the players I've coached, because it was a terrific ride this year. I'm going to miss our seniors. I'm going to miss Ron Mercer. But I was a very, very lucky coach to have the seniors for as long as I did and to have Ron for two years. So I'm very, very proud for them. And I'm also very happy for Lute Olson and the Arizona Wildcats.

ALFRED WHITE: Questions for the players, first.

RON MERCER: You can't take any credit away from them. They went out and played outstanding defense. Every time I curled around, they had somebody waiting for me. They made it tough for me to score. As far as Simon, he's a great player. He went out and did the little things he needed to do to win. It's not too much. He just went out and just did every facet of the game.

RON MERCER: They slapped down on it and got the ball. They kind of had me trapped up on the goal, they slapped it in and got the loose ball.

RON MERCER: I'm very proud. I wish we could have won the game. We went out and played our hearts out, we battled along with them. I'm pretty proud of the team, because we went out and played hard. Not a lot of teams would have got an opportunity to travel the world like we did, to make it to the championship game. We had the opportunity to play in a championship game, and that's a big thrill. Just itself to be in the championship game, that's fine with us.

SCOTT PADGETT: I was really proud of this team. A lot of people doubted us all year long, and we just kept coming up with ways to win and ways to win, and we kept advancing. And I think that shows the true heart of this team. I don't think we have anything to hang our heads about. I know we all would have liked to have won the game, but I think we went out there and laid it all on the line, and Arizona was just a better team tonight.

SCOTT PADGETT: Well, I think they did a great job of penetrating. And we also have a lot of silly reach-in fouls that cost us really a lot of them getting to the line. But they were terrific guards and they did a great job of penetrating, and that's what caused a lot of the fouls.

SCOTT PADGETT: They did a great job of handling our pressure. Before the game they said they could do it. Obviously they really worked on handling our pressure, and they went out there and they kept their cool, and they didn't rush things, and that's why they handled our press so well.

RON MERCER: They went out and they had the game plan planned and they got it to the open guys. Everybody just kind of worked together on their team when it came to the press, and they never really got tired and they just kept it up.

SCOTT PADGETT: You know, I think that really stemmed from the Utah game. I had a serious slump in the Utah game, and Coach P, he basically told me to keep shooting, keep having confidence in my shot, and the shot would eventually go down. And I felt like at the beginning of this game I sort of started off like that, I wasn't really thinking about it. I just kept shooting and eventually the shots went down.

(Players excused.)

COACH PITINO: Well, I thought they did a wonderful job on him. They were very physical coming off screens. And I think the obvious thing that hurt us the most was the up-and-under moves of Miles Simon. When he drives you to the spot, you see it on film, but it's very difficult to go away. He had fakes. He's a wonderful, wonderful basketball player. If I had any druthers tonight, we didn't press the first five-and-a-half minutes of the game, I wouldn't have pressed at all, if we could get the pace a little higher. I did not want to press much tonight, not only because of their confidence in it, but I felt that pressing tonight wasn't the way, necessarily, to go. But we went to a black press, which is just if you can't get the early trap, sort of like a 2-2-1 matchup, then you can still play half-court defense. We were successful in making sure we didn't get beat, except for the one play we got the intentional. But, again, Miles Simon shoot 17 free throws, and that was a big number for us.

COACH PITINO: Every time we fouled, and a large number of times we've lost, we put the other team to the line. And tonight, there were other times I thought we made silly fouls. Tonight I just thought he was an extraordinary basketball player who has a lot of fakes and a lot of moves. This team, there's no fluke. Arizona, they're a great basketball team who got better and better. And the thing I love about players who can pass, catch, dribble and shoot, and they have a lot of those guys. I'm really proud of Nazr Mohammed. If you could have only seen him a year and a half ago. I went to watch him play in high school, I could never watch him cross half court to evaluate him, because the team shot the ball. I saw a gentleman 315 pounds turn into such a marvelous player as a sophomore, I'm really, really proud of him. And he'll get better and better, and so will all the other guys in his team. Having Wayne Turner in some foul trouble also was tough on us, because that gives us some easy penetration. So they did a great job. We did a great job. It was a whale of a ballgame. Normally finals are not very good ballgames at times, but this was a hell of a game.

COACH PITINO: We did a good job with that. Statistically, when you look at it, you understand one team goes to the line 41. And even with that, if we make a few free throws, we can still win the game. That's all a part of it. I think we're a team this year that the parts kept getting better and better. Last year we left the locker room a dominating presence. You have one young man who's probably going to be Rookie of The Year, a strong candidate. You have the MVP of the whole thing in Tony Delk, Pope with great leadership, and then Walter McCarty with great quickness. Now you substitute with them Jamaal and Nazr and Cameron Mills, and it's a wonderful, wonderful ride. I've never had this much fun coaching in my life. And I can sit back -- I'd like to win it every damn year I coach, and I hope John Chaney or Roy Williams win it in another year, because I'd like to see the peers that I have so much respect for, happy, and deserve that. And hopefully we're going to get to San Antonio next year, but I'm really happy to see my peers have that moment. And for the kids at Arizona who deserved it, they earned it. They had to battle awful hard as we did, but they earned it. So I'm real happy for them, as well.

COACH PITINO: It did, but so did Massachusetts last year. But we had an opportunity to win it. But it's supposed to take a lot out of you. If you're playing a great team like Minnesota it's supposed to take a lot out of you. It wasn't really fatigue on our part. I didn't really want to press. It was more their great defense and their great offense. Absolutely excuses are a sign of weakness. They could be tired. Look at how many games that they had to battle some great teams. So I can tell you honestly they were the better team in overtime, it had nothing to do with fatigue.

COACH PITINO: The --

COACH PITINO: It's strange, the Duke game, after the game I was really disappointed. When I woke up the next morning I was so proud. From the time I left the court to the time I was in the locker room I was a happy man, just trying to make the players feel good. I told them if you're down at all, you don't understand the game of life. Because you guys have gone so far, given me so much, made the school so proud, that to me you're the greatest team I've ever coached. So it's really not disappointment, because I think maybe 10, 15 years ago I would go home and stay up all night and think of what we're going to do tomorrow. But right now I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning, let the guys take some time off, get back to individual instruction, start working in getting back to San Antonio. So it was a wonderful, wonderful ride with a terrific group of young men. And I'll wake up tomorrow morning feeling very happy inside for a terrific coach and very happy that I was able to represent such a marvelous group of athletes.