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NCAA MEN'S 3RD & 4TH ROUND REGIONALS: ATLANTAMarch 25, 2006John BradyGlen DavisDarrel MitchellTyrus ThomasATLANTA, GEORGIA GLEN DAVIS: Before they start asking the questions, I want to know what y'all think. I want to ask y'all a couple questions. Can I do that? MODERATOR: No. We got to stick with the format. We have Coach Brady, student-athletes Glen Davis, Tyrus Thomas, and Darrel Mitchell. And we'll start with Coach Brady. A brief overview. COACH JOHN BRADY: Well, I thought the game was going to come down to a rebounding game and a defending game. And I thought we held our own with that team on the board. I think they're the best rebounding team in the country from a statistical standpoint. We rebounded the ball with them quite well and we knew or we expected that they would play some zone, if we scored against them in our man offense, we thought they would play zone and they did. Particularly I think he went zone early when Tasmin got his second foul and we took him out, we put Darnell Lazare in with the three and that gave us some size, but certainly from a perimeter playing standpoint, a play making standpoint it hurt our team a little bit and they played zone. But we did enough things against the zone to play with them and I thought the first half score was fine. I thought 26-26 with a majority of the time that they played zone was good for our team to be able to do. Then they came out man and played us mostly man the second half. And they played us a couple of -- you know, a few possessions of zone, but and we had the game in hand at about in the five-minute mark and we had about four straight possessions where I thought we got some good looks or we kind of ran what we needed to but we didn't come away with anything. And Texas is well coached, they're a talented team and they were able to tie the score. And then the last shot at the end we were trying to throw it to Glen to make a play but he caught the ball a little too far off the lane line and we didn't get quite the shot we wanted. But the timeout before the overtime started was really positive for our team. We all thought that we were going to win the game. It didn't matter what had happened to that point, all we needed was five minutes and we were going to have an opportunity to play for a National Championship or keep playing for a National Championship. And I thought the overtime we just played outstanding. And I mean this and this isn't -- it's just what it is, you know, you can coach a long time and never have a group of people like I have. You got to have talented players, which they are, but they're also very good people. High-character guys that are fun to be around. I'm fortunate to be able to coach these guys. And I said it in the press conference the other day, they have helped me be a better coach. And hopefully we can play two more games. You got your hankys? (Laughter.) That's my overview. MODERATOR: Okay. Questions for the student-athletes. Q. For all three of you guy, two questions: 8-5 you're sitting in Hartford getting on the bus, did you have any clue that this was waiting for you down the road? And the second part is, what makes you guys so resilient to stand up when a team comes back on you, when a team forces overtime like that? GLEN DAVIS: Well, we can't predict the future. So we never knew we were going to be in this situation. But we believed. We always believed in ourselves and our team. It's just a will and determination to get back up again, after you get slugged by a tough team. You got to be willing to take some shots and bounce back up. And it shows a lot of character for our team being so young, we have went through a lot of trials and tribulations as far as Ohio State, Connecticut, and we learned from those things. Tight situations. So it's not new to us to get back up and fight. We just got to keep doing our thing and just keep doing this next week. TYRUS THOMAS: Coach sat us in the locker room before the season and we put our goals on the board. And it was to win the SEC west, to win the SEC, to win the SEC tournament, to win, to make it to the Final Four and win the National Championship. And he said we had to take it one step at a time. And it just feels good to win. And after we lost at Connecticut, it was a -- I think it was more of an eye-opener to show what we can do and it showed us what we needed to do to achieve our potential. And the resiliency, you know, Coach showed us a video of Buster Douglas and Mike Tyson the other day, and Texas gave us some hard punches and we had to be Buster Douglas and swing back and we swung back at them. We knocked out Mike Tyson. DARREL MITCHELL: The guys basically covered it all, but after the Connecticut loss I kind of was down on myself a little bit because I had a chance to pull us through that game with that last shot and that kind of hurt me deep down inside. But the guys, they came up to me and was like, you know, you'll get another chance to do it again and put it behind you. So I think that brought us together as a team and like Tyrus said, it was an eye-opening experience for us and our capabilities as a team. And as individuals what we could do, to go on the road early in the season with the team that we had and we weren't even established as good as we are now. We weren't that established at that time. And for us to go up there and do that, it showed us a lot. And as far as the second question, you know, we just wanted -- like he said, we set goals at the beginning of the season and for us to be successful and getting that goal, we were minus one goal, we didn't win the tournament. But other than that we achieved all the other goals and we have one left. And I think that us using things like people didn't expect us to be here, we used that as motivation. Each and every night we gathered ourselves together and pulled through for one another. But we were just happy to be here and happy to have the experience with this young team and we're looking forward to going to Indy. Q. Glen, can you talk about the three pointer and in overtime, I think that might have just been the sixth one you've had all year and that was, needless to say, a huge shot. GLEN DAVIS: It's called thinking without thinking. That's what I call it. The opportunity was there to make the shot. Most of the time when I'm shooting or when I'm shooting threes, I'm thinking about it too much. So I just was in rhythm and I felt that it was a great shot and I made it. Q. Glen, could you repeat what you said up on the stage there after the game? The acoustics were bad. Can you repeat what you said? GLEN DAVIS: Basically I was giving credit to God, because we couldn't do it without him. And then I wanted to also give a shout out to the people of Louisiana, the victims of Hurricane Katrina, just giving them some motivation. And just some uplifting to some -- a good feeling about their state. Because I know a lot of things are going on right now and people are just trying to recuperate from what happened and this is something to push them in the right direction of coming back home to New Orleans and basically just having a good feeling about their state. Q. Glen, everybody in the arena can see your intensity. Could you talk about where it comes from and possibly touch on the time you spent living in the Temple house for awhile when you were in high school? GLEN DAVIS: Well, basically, you have to want it. You have to want to win. You have to want to succeed. And basically I want the best for my team and I'm going to give 110 percent to make sure that happens. So the emotions that you are seeing out there were not just from me, it was all the guys around me. How much I cared about them and how much I wanted them to feel good, you know. So basically it's just something that you got to have inside of you. Something you can't teach. The will to win. You got to want to win. You can't make them go out there and win, you got to -- they got to do it themselves. But growing up also in -- and touching on the Temples, you know, they did some very, very -- they changed my life in different ways to the point that it made me the man that I am right now today. I give credit to Mr. Temple and his family because I don't know where I would have been without those guys and just being around those guys led me in the right direction, because I was going down the wrong path. So I love the Temples and what can I say, they kind of saved my life. Q. From half time on, Glen and Tyrus, y'all were in full court zone. I mean, both you took the team on your back. I think you scored most of the points, grabbed most of the rebounds. Can you say something, both of you, about when you end that kind of a zone, when you think you can make every point, grab every rebound? TYRUS THOMAS: As a lot of you guys know, Glen and myself live together and we have been knowing each other since we were small, 13 years old. And we just have a relationship to like we're blood brothers. And, you know, we battle for each other and sometimes we call each other soldiers, and soldiers never -- they never leave a man behind. And Glen just told me it's time to go to war. We both understood it was time to go to war and we just -- it was time to fight. And when he fights, I fight. And when I fight, he fights, as well as the rest of the members of our team. It wasn't just us. But we have a mentality that we're not going to lose. If you beat us, it's not because you -- you're outworking us or you outhustled us or you have more heart than us. So that's our mentality. And we didn't -- I don't think we played with that mentality all the way in the first half, but the second half we knew we had to give it our all if we wanted to win. GLEN DAVIS: Well, basically, you know, I'm closer, or close to the people, the teammates, my teammates on my team, we're all close, but there's a bond me and Tyrus have. We call each other brothers, brothers from another mother. That's what we call ourselves. And like he says, when one fights, the other fights. That's what brothers do. You go get the big brother. So we got each other's back and we realize the task at hand and we wanted to accomplish our goals because at the beginning of the season we set multiple goals. And we just want to leave it out there on the floor. We told each other we're going to leave it out on the floor every time we come out here, we're going to leave it out on the floor. And that's what we did. And we just have a chemistry and a camaraderie together that most people can't establish. MODERATOR: We'll excuse our student-athletes. Thank you, gentlemen. Questions for Coach. Q. Obviously you play in a league where if you win the league you got a chance to play for a National Championship in this tournament. Yet you have so many young guys coming in in October, how improbable is being here? COACH JOHN BRADY: Well, it's been surprising the way our team has developed and come together. You've heard testimony all the last two or three days about the relationship that these guys have. I think that may have something to do with the way our team has developed. I do agree with them that some of the difficult games that we had early that we had in hand, the Cincinnati game and the Ohio State game and the Connecticut game, on the road, we had those games and we lost them and then but we were able to win at West Virginia. But even in losing with a young team, our team gained some confidence out of that. I remember in the locker room after the Connecticut game we were 8-5 and I told them after the game, we're a Top-25 team, people just don't know it yet. And I really believed that because of the way we were playing with the youth that we had. But once you get into the season and you play in the SEC as we did, I think the key to our season though was the win on the road at Arkansas to open up SEC play. That's -- they draw 18,000 every game and we went into their arena and we were able to win that game and then we started out in the league 7-0. And our team just developed a lot of confidence about it. But our players never got down, they never got discouraged, we as a coaching staff were committed to being positive with this team because of their youth. And I think hopefully we made the right decisions that -- and they did what they were supposed to done now I think it's paying off with how we're playing now. Q. It's been about 20 years I think since LSU has been to a Final Four, what does this do, what does this mean to the program? COACH JOHN BRADY: I think it establishes us right now at this particular time one of the better teams in the country because of what we have gone through. When Dale Brown was a basketball coach almost 20 years to the day, he took an 11th seeded team and made it to the Final Four. And there's been a lot of similarities with our progression upsetting a number one as they did 20 years ago, we beat Duke, number one, and we were able to advance on. And but it means a great deal. It means a great deal to our fans that love to win and in Louisiana and in Baton Rouge. LSU, the culture of our fan base, LSU runs deep in our state. I said earlier that there are other students that go to other schools, but they're all LSU fans. And I think it's uplifting for our state, but it's great for our program, it puts us in a situation now where I don't think -- I don't know if you call it respect, but certainly the notoriety that we're going to receive from this is extremely important. It attracts other students to your university, it's going to help in our recruiting, it's just so many benefits that can be derived from putting yourself in a position to play for a National Championship going to a Final Four. And if we -- like Glen said, if we have helped our state in some way and uplifted some people there that have had a difficult time with what the state has been through, then we're humbled by that, but we're also appreciative -- if we're able to do that, we're certainly appreciative of the position that we're in. Q. At 9-2 you guys seemed a little static on offense and then Tyrus had that one-handed dunk that made it 9-4. How much did that kind of just get things going for you guys? COACH JOHN BRADY: Well I think when you have an athlete like Tyrus Thomas, he can make plays like that throughout a game. And you're exactly right, at the first of the game when he tip dunked the ball back in the goal, it kind of gave us a lift, got our fans involved in the game and teams feed off of that. Not only does it help your own team, it can somewhat demoralize the other team to a degree. Then we got ourselves back offensively against their man defense pretty good. But then they went zone and kind of slowed us down a little bit. But Tyrus Thomas can -- he did that early in the game, he blocked two or three shots, as the game went along he got another slam dunk. We ran a play off of their zone where we screened the back screen for him and threw him a lob off of that. All of those things kept our team going. And that's something that you don't coach, athletic ability. That's something you recruit. And you have to recruit well, and coach it decent to have a chance to keep playing. But that's something we recruited a long, athletic young man like him that's a pleasure to coach and he's energized our team throughout the season with plays like that throughout the course of a game and we're fortunate to have a player like that on our team. Q. I wonder if you could just talk about that huddle before overtime, it looked like -- I think you guys scored four seconds into overtime and like you had a little extra zip, more than Texas did really at the start. COACH JOHN BRADY: My goal in that timeout was to make sure our players didn't feel in any way that they could lose that game. I didn't want them to think -- because Garrett missed an open jump shot, I didn't want him to feel bad about anything that had gone on. We had some opportunities down the stretch to score the ball and we didn't do it. And it's not all of a sudden that the LSU team played poorly, you have to credit Texas for guarding us pretty well too. And they the resiliency to come back and tie the game. But I wanted to make sure our team was extremely positive coming out of that timeout, that they had a belief in them that if we did the things necessary we were going to win the game. And that's really all the timeout consisted of. I didn't draw a play, I didn't diagram one thing, I just wanted to make sure they came out of the timeout with a belief system or belief in themselves that that game was theirs to win. Q. LaMarcus I guess was 2 for 14, can you talk about the way you defended him and did you suspect that that could happen? I know you rely on Glen offensively, but defensively to do that to LaMarcus with Tyrus and Glen? COACH JOHN BRADY: Well, different than the last eight minutes of the or the 10 minutes of the Duke game, we went and double teamed Williams, I was afraid to really double team Aldridge because Texas has some other guy that can score the ball and we would leave people open in our rotation. But Glen and Tyrus gave him different looks. Glen was able to force him a little farther out than he wanted to score the ball. When he turned to shoot it, Glen gave him some resistance and probably kept him off balance a little bit and he couldn't turn in rhythm to shoot it because of Glen's presence. Tyrus on the other hand made him deal with a different kind of athlete that's long and lanky and could maybe get a piece of the ball when he shot it. Which made him probably think about it. But defensively that was a key for us because you saw the game he had the night before last, 26 and 13. And we knew if he did that against us we had no chance to win the game. So you got to compliment Glen specifically and Tyrus Thomas as an assist in the way we defended him today. Q. First of all, congratulations. Second of all, 14 seconds to go, you're up eight, you know you're going to win. I'm assuming that you're like every coach in the world that went to the Final Fours when you were an assistant and a high school guy and sat there and watched the workouts on Friday. Did it go through your mind that you're going to be the team now working out and everybody's going to be sitting there watching you guys? COACH JOHN BRADY: You know, that's a great question. And I was talking to Glen walking down the hall way, and our AD is out here, Skip, he's won five National Championships and I'm going to ask him how he felt when he knew he was -- I guess going to Omaha is a little bit different, but with two games to go he had a chance to win. I would like to see how he felt. But I'll be honest with you, you know, the celebration was great, I knew we were going to win the game, but there's something in my mind that says we're not finished yet. And I don't feel like this is over. I thought I would react differently, to be quite honest. Going to the Final Four, that's where it is. But when I was talking with Glen, walking down the hall and he agreed with me, for some reason this doesn't seem like the end to me or I'm not all overwhelmed by the moment. Because there's some more work to do. And maybe there's something more in store for this team. Who knows. But I like what Darrel and Tyrus and Glen both told me walking into this interview room, that this is nice, but we're through here now and we're ready to go home and get to work and try to prepare for two more games. And it's really a little strange that I would feel like this, but I think that's a good way to feel. And hopefully Glen and Tyrus and Darrel will carry that over to our other team members and we'll have two or three days of good practice and try to remove ourselves from the distractions that are going to come along and meet the obligations that we have to meet in the next four or five days, but at the same time reserve two hours of practice every day to not upset our routine too much in that particular time so we can play well when we go to Indianapolis. MODERATOR: Thank you, John, very much. COACH JOHN BRADY: Thank you.
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