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

March 24, 2006

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

THE MODERATOR: We are joined by Villanova head coach, Jay Wright, student athletes, Randy Foye, Allan Ray and Will Sheridan. Coach, if you could just please make an opening statement.
JAY WRIGHT: Well, I know that wasn't a pretty game, but that was a great college basketball game. That was two teams playing with a lot of heart, great defense, very physical, and I am just -- I really give a lot of credit to the BC team, their ability to execute. We were in them. We played good defense.
We were in them and they continued to execute and get the ball where they wanted to, and we did create turnovers. When they got where they wanted to, they scored, but when we created some turnovers, that was really our only way of stopping them.
They were a great team. Dudley and Smith were incredible and we just give them a lot of credit. We are very, very fortunate and proud to beat that team.
THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student athletes.
Q. Will, can you talk about the last play.
WILL SHERIDAN: Just a play. We sometimes run, through it up. It worked. I mean, what can I say? It was a good read by our guard, Kyle. It was a good read by our rebounder and one of the biggest shots in my career and I didn't get to make it.
Q. Will, was that the same play that you guys ran against Carolina last year in the tournament and Cincinnati this year? It seems the same.
WILL SHERIDAN: I don't remember, to be honest. It was the same set-up probably. I mean, probably.
JAY WRIGHT: Yeah, it was. It was.
Q. Randy, you played 45 minutes. Can you just talk about the whole game you looked obviously very emotional. I can't imagine what you went through surviving this game, what it meant to you because you really carried it.
RANDY FOYE: It meant a lot, not just to me, but the whole team because we worked so hard to get to this point. So we just wanted to battle it out and try to get the win, but it meant a lot, not just to me but to the whole team.
Q. For Randy and Allan, do you have any idea what led to the poor outside shooting? What does it say about you guys to be able to win on a night when you only make four 3s?
RANDY FOYE: We didn't pay much attention to the game, you look at the stats and see we shot poor. These are the type of games we like. I know no one believes us, but these are the games we like, we like to battle it out and just grind it out into the end. Even we don't want the team to have the last shot, we play defense and rebound.
ALLAN RAY: Coach Wright stresses this to us, when shots are falling and, you know, you are playing good offensively, it is easy to win, but the real good team and the real great teams find a way to win when you are not making shots and your shot is not falling, and you are shooting bad from the offensive end.
So, as a team, that's something that we really take pride in, and in the locker room that's one of the things we were talking about, we shot the ball poorly, but we still was able to come up with a win. You know, like Coach said, that's what great teams do.
Q. Randy, with the 13 minutes left in the first half, you came down funny getting a rebound and were limping for a while there. How were you able to get through it and did you think you were going to struggle to keep playing?
RANDY FOYE: I banged knees with one of our own players. I banged knees with them. You know how it is when you are an athlete, it is like hit bone to bone, it hurts. Once I ran it off, it was fine.
Q. Randy, JJ Reddick and Adam Morrison bit the dust in the tournament. Do you get any measure of satisfaction from continuing to play on and maybe getting a little respect maybe now you didn't get during the Player of the Year?
RANDY FOYE: I am not worried about being the Player of the Year. I am not in it for myself. I am in it for the team. Those are two great players, but I am just in it for playing with my team, my teammates and coaches. I am not really in it for anyone else.
Q. Randy, when you looked up and saw you were down 16 in the first half, what were you thinking?
RANDY FOYE: Just keep battling. Keep a great attitude. Just keep playing the way we want to play. I never gave into arguing or fighting with each other on the courts. Keeping everyone together.
Q. Will, on that play you kind of laughed about it a little bit, but are you trying to come off a screen or something or just kind of take me through that a little bit. You were, obviously, wide open.
WILL SHERIDAN: Well, Allan set a screen for me, and I don't know, I think they both went -- that's what I would do if I was defending them. Kyle threw the ball and I went up for the lay-up.
Q. Will, the look on your face when Dudley hit that 3, it was like oh, my God. What was going through your head when it happened? You were right on him.
WILL SHERIDAN: I mean, I was trying to get the stop obviously, trying to play team defense. I got off of him for a second, and he got a good look, and I contested it as best I could. He made it and it was a big-time shot. I knew we wanted to come back and stop after that, try to bounce back after that. My team picked me up.
Q. For Will, were you shocked with that open and then when Williams came in to block it, did you know it was goal tending?
WILL SHERIDAN: I thought I made it, to be honest. I was under the basket. Then they blew the whistle and I saw goal tending. I thought the ball went in, to be honest. I guess I was surprised I was that open. I just finished.
Q. Randy, you had several just key runs in the first half, second half, overtime. Can you remember your career just times where you have had spurts like that, what it meant to do it where each game now is potentially your last?
RANDY FOYE: I really can't remember no games when I just had spurts and was scoring. The biggest thing to me is just that even if I scored, I just make the right reads.
If they cut me off, I try to find my teammates and vice versa, they try to find me. I was just worried about just playing defense and just told my teammates to keep fighting. I knew if we lost this game, it was going to be my last game. I wanted to keep playing. I just want to keep playing.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks, guys. You can take off.
Q. Jay, two-part questions, but without giving away the family secrets, what do you call the play, the inbounds play? How often do you sort of practice it? You didn't call the time-out but you guys went right into it. How do you sort of convey that, what you were going to run there?
JAY WRIGHT: We just did call it. We have a call for it. We just -- we didn't have any time-outs. We just called it. We have a word. I won't give it to you because then -- come on, Lenn. I want to help you, but -- geez. Only New York. Only the Post. Only the Post. He will get it. He will get it. He will find out.
Q. Is there something you can say that --
JAY WRIGHT: It is a call like every other play. They just called it. They looked at me. I called it. I told Kyle and he called it.
Q. How often do you guys go through it? Do you practice it every day in practice, the last thing you do every other day?
JAY WRIGHT: Probably every other day we do baseline out-of-bounds in the game situations, more towards the end of the season.
Q. You went with Cunningham very early, and I don't know, he played double the season average tonight. How crucial was he? It looked like you were trying to match up maybe some size.
JAY WRIGHT: We always try. We try to play our four guards. Sometimes we have games where we get off to a good start and we can speed people up and we stay with it, but we were having a tough time speeding them up.
Like Allan Ray got a few good looks. If he would have hit a few of those, we would have stayed with it. Dante has been doing it the second half of the season and Shane Clark has good minutes, too.
Q. Jay, do you think that part of that play's success is the fact that people are so mindful of where your guards are going?
JAY WRIGHT: Definitely. Like Bump said, they did as good a job on Allan Ray, and they did it as a team because they were switching onto him. It wasn't just one guy. It was great team defense.
Probably the best -- I don't know point output, but just in terms of going through a game and not being able to get Allan's shot, they did the best job of anybody we played. That was who set the screen.
So both guys went with Al. Kyle Lowry actually did a great job of offing to Allan and got bumped. It was a great play by all three of them.
Q. Jay, what do you think contributed to the shooting woes early? Was it their defense? Did your guys, were they not comfortable in the dome?
JAY WRIGHT: I will tell you what, I really think it was their defense. I think, as I said, they did a great job. I mean, I don't remember -- I can't remember Allan getting one uncontested shot. I mean, we played against some very good teams that have got into Al, tried to keep him from shooting the ball.
You know, I really just think it was defense. They had good size, good athleticism on them, and different positions, and I was more proud of Al, that he kept shooting the ball because that's what he has to do. Sometimes guys don't want to lose a game and say I shot 3-15. Al just kept shooting. That's his job. I am really proud of him.
Q. Jay, Smith had a couple big moments and really didn't go off on you. Just comment on what you did to slow him down a little bit and just not dominate.
JAY WRIGHT: I think it was a little bit when our press was effective at times, it kept them out of getting their sets at times. When they got in their sets, he hurt us, like you said, but Jason Fraser, I thought, did an outstanding job on him. When we could, we were trying to get Jason in there on the game situations. He had a tough time sometimes with Jason. I thought Jason was really a big key.
Q. Were there times, any time that you considered taking Randy out? Can you just talk about him playing that whole time?
JAY WRIGHT: Never. I never thought about taking him out. I said to myself, you know, "We are going down with him." It was one of those fun games as a coach, and everyone has heard -- everyone that covers Villanova basketball has heard all the Randy Foye stories. He had great lines in the huddle. He was exhausted. I said "Do you have one more?" There is 18 seconds. He said "It's my career. I have got it." He was the best. There was no time he was going to come out. If I probably took him out, I was never thinking of it.
Q. Jay, considering what you said about the job they did on Allan, why was Randy able to get his shots and succeed?
JAY WRIGHT: Because I think they -- on the plays where we got Randy some good driving opportunities, we were -- we gave Randy, you heard him say about making decisions. We gave Randy the decision get to Al off staggered screens. We just couldn't. They did such a good job on those screens, sometimes they had three guys playing Allan on those screens. They allowed Randy to get in a one-on-one situation.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

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