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NCAA MEN'S 3RD & 4TH ROUND REGIONALS: WASHINGTONMarch 23, 2006Jim LarranagaWASHINGTON, D.C. JIM LARRANAGA: Well, first of all, it's very exciting to be here, just 20 miles from our campus in Fairfax, and we are very excited to represent the Colonial Athletic Association, George Mason University and our Fairfax community. We have a wonderful group of young men who are really enjoying this magical journey-in the NCAA Tournament, and we are looking forward to competing against the Missouri Valley Regular Season Champion, the Wichita State Shockers. I'm certain it's going to be an absolutely outstanding and entertaining college basketball game. Q. There's been a trend for some schools to say they do not want to be referred to as Cinderella, do you feel that way, and if you're looking back, when you played Wichita State, could you have imagined that you would be meeting them and be in the Sweet 16? JIM LARRANAGA: I asked the media that, too. If everybody knew that when we played Wichita State the first time that there would be a rematch here at the Verizon Center in the Sweet 16, and everybody just shook their head. It's almost like you couldn't foresee that. If you said it was going to be Tennessee versus Carolina everybody would have nodded their head and said, "Yeah, that would be a great match-up." I think we do have two great teams and it should be an outstanding game. Q. Is this the best team you've ever coached in your career? JIM LARRANAGA: Well, as a head coach, as a coach at Bowling Green and at George Mason for 20 years, I really felt like we've had some outstanding teams, and teams that were worthy of NCAA Tournament consideration. This is the first time one of those teams has been given the opportunity to prove itself. We had a great team in '99, and another one in 2001, and because we won our Conference tournament, we were able to compete in the NCAAs. Just two years ago, we had an outstanding team and won 23 games, and didn't get invited, even though we lost the buzzer to the great BCU team. Overall, I would say this is our best team, or the best team I've ever coached and probably more than anything, and I've told the players this; it's about our consistency. We really have not had many ups and downs. We learned some lessons in November and from then on, we have played very consistent basketball at both ends of the floor. We lost twice in the month of December, both at the buzzer, once at ODU and once at Mississippi State. We lost once in the month of January at North Carolina/Wilmington, a place that has been almost impossible for us to win at and we lost the ones at Hofstra. At that time they had the second longest winning streak in the country. Other than those setbacks, we have played great basketball and very consistent basketball and I think that's what has separated this team because we've been able to play consistently well even in the NCAA Tournament, even though it's been against a very high-caliber program and team. Q. Talk to us a little about what this week has been like on campus and all of the hoopla, and secondly, you can't buy this kind of exposure and you have to take advantage of it while it's here. How do you balance that in terms of getting you and your team ready to play? JIM LARRANAGA: Well, the amount of exposure that we've gotten, I don't even know how to describe it. It's overwhelming. It's been nonstop from Sunday evening till right now. I got a text message from one of my former assistant coaches, Bill Courtney, who is now at Providence college, he said, "Coach, how are you going to avoid all the distractions"? I said, "What distractions? You live for this." You've got to enjoy this. I told our players, it can't get any better than this. If you can't have fun and enjoy the excitement surrounding our program, you can't get excited about anything. We landed at Dulles Airport at 10:30 and had a police escort to the campus, that was fantastic with the sirens blaring and the lights flashing. We arrived and were greeted by 2,000 friends and fans, they were cheering, the bands was playing, the students were going crazy chanting, "George, Mason, George, Mason." It doesn't get any better than that. The articles in the newspaper, we're local here, the Washington Post, times, Potomac News, but to have the New York Times, the Daily News and the New York Post and the L.A. Times coming in and the Chicago Tribune and the Atlanta Constitution, all of these people from all over the country are coming to our campus to interview us. And then you talk about the TV exposure where you have CBS of course, and ESPN and NBC, Comcast who televises our games, our Conference games. The guys have been on ESPN Game day and last night I was on Quite Frankly, with Stephen A. Smith. It's like, this is ridiculous, PTI, Cold Pizza. Two weeks ago -- let me see, it might be three weeks ago -- there were questions to me about, boy, is Lamar Butler in a slump. I'm going to send a note to those people to pick up Sports Illustrated this week. He's on the cover of Sports Illustrated along with the great performers in the first two rounds, I think Sports Illustrated has done pictures for everybody. So each region is going to probably sell out those copies because everybody is following March Madness. It doesn't get any better than this. Q. How do you balance the Cinderella talk and all this with enjoying the moment but also taking advantage of the moment? JIM LARRANAGA: That's a question, I don't know if I avoided answering it or forgot to answer it, I told the guys if we're going to be Cinderella, you have to remember Cinderella was a beautiful young lady that turned eventually into a princess and I don't think our guys want to be referred to as princesses. (Laughter) But, you know, the idea of you kiss the frog and it turns into the Prince, you know, kind of that's like us. Before the tournament began, nobody ever heard of George Mason. I had some fun with the media out in Dayton. I asked them how many of you know if George Mason is a small private school or a state university. It was like a professor asking a class and nobody wanted to answer. When I told them that George Mason University is not only a state university, but the largest state university in the State of Virginia; that we are very proud to have had -- we have two Nobel Prize winners and we have a law school that's ranked in the top 40, the exposure for our university, as someone said, you can't buy this kind of publicity. It's not just good for our basketball program. It's great, I hope it will help us with our recruiting, but it will certainly help Andrew Flagel (ph) and his admission staff to go out and let people know what George Mason is all about. To me the exposure is tremendous and I just want our guys to really, really enjoy it. I don't want them to be afraid. I don't want them to be uptight. This is something to relax and enjoy. Q. Speaking of recruiting, looking at your lineup, you've had success in Maryland, what do you attribute that to and how and why did the state become a hotbed for you guys? JIM LARRANAGA: When I interviewed for the job at George Mason nine years ago, I was asked a question about our recruiting philosophy and I told them what we would try to do at George Mason University is build a family. And a family is a team, and everybody has their role. I told them, my team would function like a family and my family functions like a team and we're going to work together to accomplish all of our goals. And when you feel that way, you try to go out and recruit local talent because then their families will feel like they are a part of the program because they can get to all of the games. And so if we made northern Virginia, Washington, D.C. and the State of Maryland the bulls-eye and my staff went out to recruit the top players in the area hoping that we would get a few, over the last nine years, it's improved each and every year and that tradition then kind of continues. It almost snowballs. So a guy like Will Thomas who as a tremendous player in the City of Baltimore who is enjoying a tremendous college career at George Mason, Lewis Birdsong who is at Mount St. Joe and his team went 38-1 and set all kinds of records and he was named Baltimore Player of the Year, he signed with George Mason. There was history and tradition there and it was definitely planned. It was not something that just happened. It was a clear point of priority; these are the best kids, these are the kids we want in our program. And it's not to say we don't want kids outside the area, but those kids are going to be very, very specific and like a big guy. We need a big guy and there's none locally. Okay, we've got to go out of the area. Q. First of all, thanks for naming every show we air. Second of all, you just talked about being Cinderella; how do you define underdog what is the definition of that word for you? JIM LARRANAGA: Now, let me explain, I don't use that term in defining anybody in the NCAA Tournament because I look at it as you have to be seeded and there are going to be certain criterias of how you are seeded but once you get into the tournament, it's now how well does your team play. But the underdog is more the creation of the media, and I thought it was created to an unbelievable degree by Jim Nantz and Billy Packer on Selection Sunday because they created it. I don't think our team looked at ourselves as an underdog. We looked at ourselves as a very good team competing for an NCAA spot in the Big Dance. When the argument came as to whether or not we belonged, that created the underdog image and, quite frankly, I loved it. Because I think everybody loves the David and Goliath story, but most of the time, no one cheers for Goliath. You learn more and more about the underdog because Goliath, everybody knows already, they are the big powerhouse program. No matter who we faced it was going to be something that we were expected to lose because we were a mid-major program that didn't belong in the Big Dance. So when people asked me if I resent what had Billy and Jim said, I said absolutely not because I loved it. It was something that it motivated our guys, and it also created interest in the game; so much interest that now, by winning it, we've become a media darling, USA Today had Sammy Hernandez on the front major page. He's a freshman from Miami Florida. His girlfriend picked up the paper that morning and she says, "That's my Sammy." (Laughter) that's incredible. Q. Is it true, can you tell the scenario that during the North Carolina game, one son of yours in Italy was text messaging the other son to run down to the court and tell you how to define the high screen and roll; is that true? JIM LARRANAGA: No, it was how we were running our screen and roll. Q. What happened? JIM LARRANAGA: I have two sons and as everybody knows, we are very, very close and it's a wonderful relationship. Jay played for Bowling Green and he's been playing as a professional basketball player throughout Europe. He's in his ninth season. He's playing now in Naples, Italy. He is married, he and his wife have two children, Tia and James Joseph III named after me and his dad. So when we got selected to the tournament, Jay wanted to come but of course he's playing games, he couldn't get here. So we talk about -- we talked last week about 30 times on the phone, and he has his younger brother, John who played for us at George Mason University, an outstanding player would work for us in the Washington, D.C., so he got time off from work to go out in Dayton and be with us. Like any brothers, they communicate back and forth all the time. During the game, they are on their cell phones talking, and Jay is clicked into the CBS site on the web watching the game, and we have to run a screen and roll situation several times in a row and Jay doesn't like the way our post men are flashing. So sew gets John on the phone and says, "Tell dad not to flash the guy to the high post. Tell him to stay inside." John says, "How am I supposed to do that? I'm in the 10th row and watching the game. I'm not going to go down to the bench and tell dad what to do." He said, "Just do it! I don't care where you are, find your way down to the court and tell him, it's important." And John, of course, the younger brother said, "Shut up, Jack, and just go back and watch the game." He happens to call his older brother Jack because Jay refers to John as Junior, he's the younger one, smaller supposedly, and John refers to Jay as Jack, short for jackass (laughter).
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