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NCAA MEN'S 3RD & 4TH ROUND REGIONALS: WASHINGTONMarch 24, 2006Lorenzo RomarBrandon RoyJamaal WilliamsWASHINGTON, D.C. LORENZO ROMAR: I'm going to state the obvious but that was a great college basketball game that was played. UCONN is a great, great basketball team. They have been for many years. I am so proud of our guys and that they can't look back and say, if only I would have tried a little harder. They did. They gave it everything that they had. My only regret is that these two seniors and Bobby Jones and Mike Jensen and Zane Potter were not able to advance to experience how awesome it is to participate in a Final Four. When guys have character like this and they give you all they have on a consistent basis, you want to see the best for them and you want to see them be rewarded for trying to do the right thing. And we came close, and it will be something they will always think about the rest of their lives, how close the game was. But I just wish they could have experienced it because they deserved it. But we didn't, and we hold our heads high and we will move on, even though it will be difficult knowing that this was these guys' last game. Q. I'm kind of curious what you had to say to the referee there toward the end of the game. You seemed to have an extensive conversation with him. JAMAAL WILLIAMS: Nothing. You saw what happened. So, you know, we played a great game and we gave it our all and we're just sorry, too bad the result was a -- resulted in a loss. You saw the game. Q. Could you talk about the technical foul sequence? BRANDON ROY: Rudy came off a screen and I jumped to cut him off. The ref had called a foul on me and I was looking up to ask the ref where was the foul at and Rudy kind of kept trying to play on me and elbowed me in my stomach so I walked over to him and said, "Hey, man, watch those late elbows." He kind of got upset and he said "You need to get out of my face." Then, you know, I don't feel like I said anything to get a technical but I think you know when you have two guys staring at each other and one is kind of talking a little bit and the ref just says, you know, double technical. That was a mistake by me, me being a leader of this team, I have to avoid situations like that. Unfortunately, you know, it got called a technical and I had to sit out a little bit. Like I said I have to take it on the chin and try to grow from it. Q. Just watching those seven minutes, how hard was that for you to do? BRANDON ROY: It's tough. I fell out of rhythm. When I first got back in the game, I wasn't sweating. I didn't have a sweat, my back kind of got stiff and I haven't sat out that long in a long time the second half. But it was just had to find rhythm again and it was frustrating because the guys are out there playing hard and they are giving it their all and they are coming to the side like just be ready to go, be ready to go. And I'm just upset and disappointed in myself that I left them hanging like that for seven minutes, and it gave UCONN a chance to make a run and gave me confidence at the same time I think. I'm disappointed, I feel like I let the young guys down. We still kept fighting, we put a heck of a game against a great team. Q. You didn't win, but what did you achieve? BRANDON ROY: I said it in our team huddle after the game. If we didn't prove it to ourselves today that we can play with the best teams in the country on a neutral site, then, you know, you're just not a believer. I think we played them hard for 45 minutes, and I think, you know, they asked me a question the other day, can we win if UCONN plays great. And I think they played a really good game and we showed everybody that, you know, with three, four seconds left that we were beating a really good team by three points and they just hit a great shot and in overtime they made the plays. I just think we made a lot of people believers that, hey, we have some really good players up there in the northwest. Coach Romar has done a great job of recruiting guys from all over and motivating us to play at a high level. Everybody just needs to believe that they can be good in the future. I think we just showed the world that, hey, we're a good team and we're here to stay. JAMAAL WILLIAMS: I believe we showed them that you have to respect West Coast basketball, because they get a lot of love on the East Coast and they get a lot of attention. But here comes this team that nobody gave a chance to even win this game to be up by -- three points with seven seconds left and had a chance to win and pretty much dominated and controlled the game the whole way through and they made their runs while we maintained and fought back. You have to respect West Coast basketball and we should get some recognition over there because we do play a great brand of basketball. Q. Could you talk about your game, I think a career-high in points, and you hit a 3-pointer late and you had a lot of baskets, blocked shots that people maybe would not have expected you to be able in get. JAMAAL WILLIAMS: I told you I had something up my sleeve. But it doesn't even matter my career. What's that mean? We lost. I'd rather trade that in than score five points and win or no points and win. So career high doesn't matter. Q. I missed the first part of your remarks and if you already addressed this, I apologize. What did you say to your team the first few moments in the locker room? LORENZO ROMAR: We talked to our group about keeping their heads high because we had nothing to be ashamed of. We've talked from day one, when you walk off the floor, you need to be able to answer: Did I do everything in my power to do the best job that I can do? Whether you won the game or lost the game is irrelevant at that point. Today we lost the game but there's nothing that we could say because we laid it all out there. Yes, some mistakes were made and we had a great chance to win but it didn't work out in our favor. You know, if I could just say this. We got -- we've got a guy who was a first tie team All-American, Brandon Roy. He's a Player of the Year in the Pac 10. He's earned the respect of the entire basketball sports world and the country and he comes out today, scores 20 points and says, hey, I let my teammates down. You have so many athletes today that want to point the finger and say, well they didn't get me the ball down the stretch, that's why we lost. Or coach would not let me play my game. Here is a guy who has done it all and says, "I let me teammates down," because of the technical foul. When we talk about Brandon as an all-around great player, he's all-around period, great person, great character, a man of substance. He's just awesome. You can't replace guys like that. Q. With 34 seconds left, you were up, was there any plan to maybe foul Williams before he got in or before he was fouled by Jensen and make a basket? LORENZO ROMAR: No. We did not want to foul him. We wanted to try to keep him in front of us. He got to the rim and we put him on the line, he's 11-for-11 on the line. That was a big play. We were up four at that point and the game seemed like it was definitely going to go our way. You know, they cut it down to one. But even with that, we got it back up to three again. So we had our chances. Q. You dedicate yourself to coaching and to teaching, what did you learn today? LORENZO ROMAR: You know, I learned from Don Nelson who I played for in the NBA what team was about. I learned from three guys when I was an assistant at UCLA, Dell Batelin (ph), Tyus Edney, and George Cedic (ph) was great leadership was about. When you have leadership and you've got a team and you put it together, you can accomplish amazing things. John Wooden always says it's amazing what can happen when no one cares or gets the credit. What we have watched and I've been able to watch for the last three years is a group of guys, some of them were not with us tonight, they had already left; but a group of guys who repeatedly came out and then didn't really care who got the credit in terms of how they played. I'm sure they want the credit, but they were willing to sacrifice their personal glory for the sake of the team. I wouldn't say that I learned as much as have it confirmed that when you're really about team, you can raise a lot of eyebrows. You can accomplish a whole lot, lot of things that people would never think that you can accomplish. Q. You may have addressed this, but can you just talk about Connecticut's kind of refuse all to go away? You certainly had them on the ropes, they were on the ropes in their first two games, actually, and obviously they made some big plays. LORENZO ROMAR: If they did go away, it would surprise me. They are too good of a basketball team. They have experienced too much success over the last decade. They have won too many battles. And teams like that just don't go away. They come into the game believing that they can win. I believe our team was like that; that we don't go away. When you develop the type of tradition that UCONN has, they don't usually go away. Q. Could you talk about what did happen with Brandon and Rudy and how that affected the game? LORENZO ROMAR: Well, I thought overall there was a period where we kind of lost our composure as a group. And during time-outs, we were talking about that, trying to maintain our composure. That was a stretch, you know, where the game, the momentum kind of shifted. It wasn't just Brandon's technical. There was a lot of things. We started to get a little rattled as a group. It was an emotional game. It was a lot at stake. We were able to calm down, though. With Brandon and Bobby Jones on the bench, we were able to somehow rally together and keep the game close until those guys got back in and we still had a chance to win. Give our guys a lot of credit for when we lost our composure, regaining our composure and coming back and not going away. Q. Coach Calhoun even said on the double technical to let the guys play, it's an emotional game. You had one other instance where Justin does not get a call on a three-point and goes down and fouls out on a play that on the replay didn't show any contact. Your reaction, and also the goaltending non-call. LORENZO ROMAR: You didn't like that one? (Laughter). Q. I know that you're not supposed to talk about officiating but down the stretch you didn't get any breaks in that regard. LORENZO ROMAR: You know, it's interesting about officiating. When you go to league meeting, I've been in three different leagues, and that's usually the main source of contention amongst the coaches about the officiating needs to get better. You get another coach and he -- the calls that may have not gone our way, he didn't even notice them, but he notices the ones that did not go his way. If you want to create a lot of enemies you can become an official. They are always right and they are always wrong. Somebody agrees, someone disagrees. I said all that to say I don't get into officiating when they make their calls. Half the time when he go back and look at the film, I have to say, doggone, they were right on that. You're going to get calls, you're not going to get calls that's part of the game. We had our chances. Thank you all.
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