home jobs contact us
Our Clients:
Browse by Sport
Find us on ASAP sports on Facebook ASAP sports on Twitter
ASAP Sports RSS Subscribe to RSS
Click to go to
Asaptext.com		 ASAPtext.com
ASAP Sports e-Brochure View our
e-Brochure

NCAA MEN'S 3RD & 4TH ROUND REGIONALS: OAKLAND


March 22, 2006


J.P. Batista

Mark Few

Erroll Knight

Adam Morrison


OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

THE MODERATOR: Now on stage we have head coach for the Gonzaga Bulldogs, Mark Few. We'll start off with brief opening statements from coach and then open it up for questions.
COACH MARK FEW: Well, we're absolutely fired up to be back down in the Bay Area again, just like a league road trip. It's great to be able to stay on the West Coast.
I'm happy with how our guys responded over the weekend in Salt Lake City. I thought we had a good edge about us, and we were fortunate to get through that Xavier game. Really did a great job, you know, spreading the wealth around, especially on the offensive end against Indiana. You got a lot of great efforts and contributions from a bunch of different guys that showed they can play. We've been seeing that all year. They stepped up and got it done.
I thought Adam did a great job of taking what they were giving him, which was they were shading towards him, so he was creating opportunities for everybody else.
This time of year, it's just about surviving and moving on. We've had a great year. Hopefully we can do that once or twice more.
Q. You've been through the Cinderella thing. Do you consider Gonzaga part of the basketball establishment, for lack of a better term?
COACH MARK FEW: Yeah. You know, I think we've kind of proven ourselves out in regards to that over a very long, long period of time here. This is the eighth straight time we've been to the tournament. We've won games every year in this tournament except once. Without a doubt.
Q. With that, does that come with higher expectations?
COACH MARK FEW: No question. I mean, our team felt those expectations last weekend. I think everybody was making a fairly big issue out of not advancing past the second round. I still think it's a great accomplishment just to get to the NCAA tournament. It's the greatest sporting event in the world. There's a lot of great programs that didn't make it this year, a lot of great coaches that didn't make it, a lot of great players that didn't make it.
I still think it's great just to make it in. When you start winning games inside the tournament, it becomes that much more special.
Q. Can you talk about Coach Howland, how well you know him, the job he's done, his minimal Gonzaga connection.
COACH MARK FEW: Ben is a good friend. I've known Ben, we were both assistants way back in the day when he was at Santa Barbara. When he was at Gonzaga, he was always one of the hardest working guys around. He's a great coach for a lot of reasons. He's a great recruiter, he's a hard worker, a great X and O guy. Everywhere he goes, his teams play tough. He's got that witty dry sense of humor. I like that.
I mean, I think everybody knew he was going to be a great success at UCLA because of all those things.
His connection to Gonzaga is weak at best. I mean, he likes to run around and brag that he coached John Stockton, which he didn't (laughter), that he recruited John Stockton, which he didn't. You know, that's neither here nor there.
The only thing I'd say about Ben as a negative, he's got the potential to become a good fisherman, but he's just not getting the reps in right now. Maybe he'll relax a little bit and realize his potential out there on the water (smiling).
Q. Your thoughts about what it says about college basketball today to show up here and have only one so-called power conference represented?
COACH MARK FEW: Well, I think there's a lot of really good teams out there in college basketball right now. I've always said that the poorest descriptor of a basketball team is whether their school has football or not. I don't think that has anything to do with how good that particular basketball team is. Basketball teams should be judged on how good their players are, how well they execute on offense, how well they play on defense, how they rebound, how they play together, irregardless (sic) of whether they have football or not.
I think the more people move away from that, the easier it will be to understand when you get situations like we have this year 'cause there's a lot of good teams that are in the tournament, there are a lot of good teams that have already been eliminated from the tournament, and there's a lot of good teams that didn't even make the tournament this year.
Q. This match-up tomorrow harkens back to when the regional had west teams in it all the time, you could decide who has the best team in the west is. Do you think this decides that tomorrow night? Does that mean anything to you? How come you don't play UCLA more often?
COACH MARK FEW: Has Ben been up here before me (laughter)?
No, the thing about the game tomorrow is whoever wins gets to move on in the tournament. That's far and away the biggest thing about this game tomorrow. Like I said, it's the greatest sporting event in the world and you just want to stay alive, stay alive, keep playing and playing and playing.
I think that's far and away the biggest motivation for anybody, player, staff, anybody. I think we've done a great job out west with our success. I think our numbers back that up. UCLA is definitely on the rise and coming on fast, really establishing themselves now back to the UCLA days of old of being a real powerhouse. That's certainly not going to change with Ben at the helm.
I certainly don't look at it -- I look at it as two really, really good teams trying to move on.
Q. How about playing 'em, scheduling them?
COACH MARK FEW: Somebody asked me that on a conference call yesterday. As I said, Ben is a great coach, great guy, funny guy, hard worker. One just needs to look at his schedules at Pittsburgh and Northern Arizona and you'll find he's the greatest scheduler in the history of mankind. Thank God for Dan or else they'd be playing Alabama, AT&T, four Division Is. If he ever gets that away from Dan, look out.
Q. Can you talk about his ability to get players to defend, and Morrison, how he has improved, how Ben gets kids to defend like that?
COACH MARK FEW: I think it's a reflection of his personality. He's always been a tough, hard-nosed recruiter and coach. You're going to do it his way. He's had unbelievable success doing it his way.
I think he brought that with him when he came out from Pittsburgh. He's got his guys in there now. They're really, really buying into how Ben does things. His team shows that. That's why they're winning games, plain and simple. They got a toughness about them that comes from him.
Q. Obviously Morrison has been a key all year, a lot of defense thrown at him. Can you talk about some of the stuff he's seen this year, any defenses that surprised you at all?
COACH MARK FEW: No. He's seen everything. We've been box and ones, triangles and twos, people face guarding him with not playing any help-side defense. We've seen a lot of guys grabbing his jersey, holding his jersey, wrestling him, coming up under him on his jump shot, playing him really, really physical. I mean, he's really taken a beating this year.
Maybe he's been underappreciated I think with just how he's dealt with that all year. Everybody has been geared into stopping him. There's a lot of stuff going on away from the ball that I think should be called but sometimes isn't in the course of a game.
Adam is a tough, tough, tough guy. He's handled it remarkably well all year.
Q. How is he?
COACH MARK FEW: We have the flu kind of raging through our team a little bit there. It seems like it's subsided. He got it basically kind of Saturday night on the way back from Salt Lake City, had it over the weekend. He'll be fine tomorrow.
Erroll seems to be healthy now. Larry had it in Salt Lake City, he seems to be healthy now, too. Hopefully between now and tomorrow night, nobody else will come down with it.
Q. Is Ben doing anything differently defensively this year than he's done in the past? How do you attack that defensive scheme that he's employing?
COACH MARK FEW: You know, I didn't really watch him in depth last year. Just saw him a little bit on TV. Again, I think he's got players in his system now that have been in his system for a while, ones that he wanted in his system, and they're buying in. That's probably the biggest thing.
We're not going to change anything what we do. We attack inside out, we play to our strengths. See if we move Adam around a little bit, give him a ball in a variety of different positions, see if we can't get JP going, who is a big key to who we are, create some opportunities for everybody else playing off those two. That seems to be what's worked best for us all year.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much.
COACH MARK FEW: Thanks.
THE MODERATOR: We have the student-athletes. We'll open it up for questions for the student-athletes.
Q. Adam, you said last week in Salt Lake City it had gone anti-Zag. Are there heightened expectations for you to go farther than you ever have now?
ADAM MORRISON: Pretty much what I meant is if you watch all the game night and all that stuff, they were not giving us much love for wins, I guess, I guess you could say. It's not like they hated us, but a lot of people were picking us to lose.
I guess it was anti-Zag.
Q. Why are they picking you to lose?
ADAM MORRISON: I think because, you know, our teams in the past have blown everybody out in our league. Our league has gotten a lot better. Just 'cause we won the conference tournament narrowly, you know, people were expecting us I guess to win by 30 every game. Real college basketball people know that doesn't happen. People just started looking down on us.
Q. Adam, there was that stretch where you had several close calls in the second half of the season. Was the level of play dipping at all? Was that a matter of teams getting up for you?
ADAM MORRISON: I don't think we just quite figured out how to put teams away. Obviously we're pretty good at end of game situations. We've survived a lot of close games, also won a lot of close games with how we perform late in the game. I think it's a little bit of both.
If we get in a situation tomorrow, I feel confident that we've been in that situations that we won't get flustered. If you've seen like the Xavier game, we get down 9 with nine minutes to go, a lot of teams will get nervous and start rushing. We just kept doing our thing and came back.
Q. Adam, can you talk about some of the defenses you faced here. Coach said they have thrown everything at you. Anything surprise you at all this year?
ADAM MORRISON: I've seen triangle two, box and one, face guard, beat the crap out of me. I've seen everything. You know, nothing really surprises me any more. I knew kind of coming in this year I was going to get a lot of that similar type of stuff.
When teams do that stuff, it opens is up for everybody else. That's the way I look at it. It's not just about me. Wins are the most important thing. Whatever, you know, I don't care how many points I score in this tournament, I just want to win. You know, they can faceguard me, do whatever. Against Indiana, they threw everybody at me. People were getting layups because of it, tip dunks, so it worked out.
Q. Considering the last couple years in the tournament, would you consider yourselves underachievers?
ADAM MORRISON: Maybe so in the sense that maybe my freshman year, you know, we were 2 seed, Nevada was kind of under the map. We felt confident going into that game. We kind of overlooked them.
I think last year wasn't an underachievement. That was a game, if you watch the tape, any team could have won that game against Texas Tech. Both teams played great. I don't look at that as underachieving. Nothing fell our way. That's the way it works out.
I like the show, too. Around the horn is pretty good (laughter).
Q. Being a diabetic, what is your take on being a role model?
ADAM MORRISON: I think it's cool. You know, I'm happy to be able to be that guy, I guess. When I was younger, I didn't have a role model, I guess you could say. It's tough on kids, you know, when you first get it, you really don't know what's going to happen. Maybe I can be that guy. Somebody can say, "He did it." It's cool.
Q. JP and Erroll, do you get angry when you see teams using the beat-the-crap defense on Adam?
ERROLL KNIGHT: It kind of helps us get in the bonus, more fouls going on. I think it actually opens things up for JP down low, especially when Adam is coming off down-screens. JP is getting a lot of open slips and layups.
JP BATISTA: I don't mind if they playing physical. If they beat the crap out of my teammates, then I'm going to get upset. If they play physical with me, they're playing my game, so I'm fine with it.
Q. Adam, can you talk about how valuable a guy like JP is to this team and what he does.
ADAM MORRISON: I mean, if you look at his numbers, he's got to be in the top three big men in the country. Not a lot has been said about him in that regard. When a guy is shooting 65%, 20 and 9, whatever he's averaging, that just opens up our game for me especially 'cause teams now got to double team him. If you look at the last game, he won that game for us. He took Killingsworth out of the game for us, set the tone. I played poorly. He won that game for us. He helped win that game for us. It was a team effort. Everybody knows that he's the heart and soul of this team. He's the guy that brings the lunch pail every day. That's very special to this team. Like I said, last game, he helped us tremendously to get through that.
Q. You're often described as the throw-back player. What does that mean to you? Do you agree with it?
ADAM MORRISON: To me it means, you know, maybe I -- I guess "throw-back" means I don't run down the lane and dunk over people I guess, maybe I have a midrange game.
As far as what it means to me, I think it's cool. You know, people have to realize I'm not trying to be Larry Byrd, and I'll never be Larry Byrd, because that always gets mentioned. I'm not Larry Byrd. He was a three-time NBA champion, three-time MVP. I'm a college player. People need to realize that. I'm just trying to win games for Gonzaga. Just because I like him doesn't mean I'm going to be the next Larry Byrd. The expectations are a little high.
I just try to model my game after him. Maybe that's why I play a little old school or throw-back.
Q. Some people look at you guys as Cinderella, mid-major. It seems like you all are way past that. Do you consider yourselves on equal footing with the UCLA program at this point?
ADAM MORRISON: Yeah. I mean, if you've looked at what we've done in the last seven or eight years, Elite 8, went to the tournament, what, seven years in a row. I think our program's got to be, you know, considered one of the top in the country, you know, top 15, top 10. If you look at the non-conference schedule we play, our rag is that our conference is weak. We go out and schedule a pretty darn good schedule every year to prepare ourselves for games just like this. I feel we've got to be considered one of the top-notch programs, not Cinderella any more, because look at the type of players we're getting now, too. We're up there.
Q. UCLA has now held their last nine opponents to 60 points or less. What do you think when you look at the tape of them? How do you attack that kind of defense?
ERROLL KNIGHT: We got to attack them I think starting off on the inside first, getting JP going. I think they're vulnerable going into the inside. They don't have really the strength down low to guard JP. Tomorrow we start off, go to the inside with JP, getting rebounds.
JP BATISTA: Same thing. I think we need to do a really good job attacking inside out, pinning fouls on those guys, take over the game.
ADAM MORRISON: Pretty much what he said. The games that we play successful, it starts with JP first, then it opens it up for everybody else. If we get him established down low, it's really going to help us.
Q. I know this is all about basketball, but I wondered what in your life is real important to you besides basketball?
ADAM MORRISON: Family, obviously. Family and friends. That's what keeps you going in life. If you don't have 'em, you struggle. I'm blessed with both.
Q. You were a little under the weather against Indiana. A health update for Adam and Erroll. I know the flu bug has been going around the team.
ADAM MORRISON: I feel a lot better energy-wise. I felt better today. It shouldn't be an issue. We're not going to make it an issue tomorrow night. This is the biggest game of our careers.
ERROLL KNIGHT: Yeah, I mean, I feel a hundred percent now. My energy could be a little bit better right now, but that's about it. Tomorrow I'll be ready to go.
THE MODERATOR: Guys, thank you very much. Good luck tomorrow.

End of FastScripts...

About ASAP Sports • FastScripts Archive • Recent Interviews • Captioning • Upcoming Events • Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297