NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 30, 1996

Erick Dampier

Russell Walters

Richard Williams

Darryl Wilson

COACH WILLIAMS: First thing I'd like to say is we need to get a Mississippi State engineer to work on the steps leading up to this podium, here. It's difficult to navigate. And we have some great engineers out there to get things straightened out. It was a great game from a fan standpoint. Why are you shaking your head? You didn't like that comment? It's a great game from a fan's standpoint. I think it was a situation where two teams really, really played hard. I think the credit belongs to Syracuse. They're an excellent basketball team. They're a tremendously well-coached basketball team. Their zone is the best we've seen. They play their zone with big athletic people and they run at you. They don't give you many open looks. And we made some shots early and I think we might have fallen into a trap as some teams do against zones, thinking that everything was going to be easy. And it just doesn't work that way. They took away for the most part our inside game. And then certainly I think all of us would agree that the turnovers were the key to the game. We just turned it over entirely too many times to give ourselves an opportunity to win the game. I would like to say and I'm very proud of our group of players. They've had a great run and it's been something I think all of the people in Mississippi will remember. I know that all the people in Starkville and our community and our University remember, and I think it's something they'll be very proud of.

DARRYL WILSON: Like Coach said, they didn't give us many open looks from the perimeter. And when we gave the ball to Erick and Russell, they closed out very aggressive, didn't get many open looks. And they reacted to the ball so fast, throwing to the post guys, they had 2 and 3 -- 3 and 4 guys there. And causes us to make a lot of turnovers.

ERICK DAMPIER: He's a great defender. I mean every time I got the ball I had two or three defenders around me, so I had to look to pass the ball out. He got a couple shots in the lane. He got great post position and he knocked down the big shots.

DARRYL WILSON: At the beginning of the game I think Dontae' hit at least 3's. I hit two 3's. Every time we hit a three they responded and made big shots and made big plays. And that's what great teams do. And they did tonight. We thought we could shoot it out of them, but as the score showed we didn't. And we are very happy to get an opportunity to play in the Final Four. And it was my last, and I'm going to miss all these guys.

ERICK DAMPIER: I don't know that much about it. I don't think Dontae' has thought about it that much. As far as I know now we'll be back at Mississippi State.

ERICK DAMPIER: We watched a couple of films on him. And they were getting the ball to him a lot. I really didn't look for him to get the ball that much. But I think they tried to take the ball inside as much as they could when the game first started, they got it to him, and he made big plays for them.

RUSSELL WALTERS: It meant a lot to me being from Mississippi and see the reaction from the people in Mississippi made me have a lot of pride for the state. We've come a long way and something that this University has never done. And I'm just happy to be a part of it. And again, I say I'm glad to be a part of a group of seniors that I've been around and people I've been around for three years, Darryl, it's good to play with people that have a lot of heart and a lot of pride. And you feel like you can go out every night and they're going to give their best effort and you're going to give your best effort. I feel real proud for playing for Mississippi State. And I think it's the best accomplishment in my life. That pretty well wraps it up.

COACH WILLIAMS: Russell got his fourth foul I think is when we went to it, is when Russell went to his fourth foul. And again, you need to understand how well coached the team is. I know sometimes Jim might not be given credit as some others are given credit, but as soon as Russell went out of the game and we had to put Dontae' and Wallace, which is not something we wanted to do, to be honest with you, as soon as we did that they went to Wallace on a post up situation and he made the shot. We decided to go zone because we were just small at that point in time and once they recognized the zone and got the time out I think it was Burgan who made the big three point shot. And we were confused on our coverage, because when we play zone most of the time, which we don't do a lot of, Dontae' normally doesn't play the side of the floor he was playing, normally Russell is over there. And Russell is such an aware defender that he can play that shot, which is kind of like a recovery for us in our zone. There was a little bit of confusion on our part and excellent coaching on their part.

COACH WILLIAMS: Everybody talks about how humorous I am. This guy up front must not understand subtle humor at all, maybe you've got to hit him over the head with humor. I don't know about the engineering majors. But I thought Russell said it very well. I'm very proud of this group of players. I'm very proud of what they accomplished. It was a great one and to see a group of Mississippi kids and two from Alabama and one from Tennessee, all from the Deep South to go out and do what they did, accomplish the things they accomplished this year and to have the wins that they had, but more to watch them grow as young people. They came from early in the year from a group of people with diverse backgrounds, not understanding each other, maybe, not understanding what some of them were all about and the backgrounds of each other to a group of young men who truly liked each other, maybe even loved each other and understood that different doesn't mean wrong. That different backgrounds need to be understood. You learn to live with people and you learn to accept that maybe they think differently than you do because of your background. And I think that's the most rewarding thing. Obviously the wins are great. Don't get me wrong, I love that. But to see this group of people grow together and become a team is a very rewarding experience, I think it's something our entire state can be proud of.

COACH WILLIAMS: I don't think they were tight. I think they were nervous maybe a little more than they had been. And I could see it at the pregame meal today. I could see it once we got to the arena and we were going over our last minute preparations as far as the scouting report one more time and the matchups and things like that. They were just so full of energy and just bouncing up and down and chattering. I think that was just they were so keyed up. It might have caused some nervousness. But why not be nervous? This is the ultimate for college basketball. And if they weren't a little bit nervous I'd worry about them a little bit. But I'm not sure that that had anything to do with the game because we got off to a pretty good start. We were rolling along pretty well and we stopped making some of those shots and Syracuse's zone got much better and they contested shots. And we just didn't play very well inside. And obviously had too many turnovers. And some of the turnovers were caused by Syracuse, but a lot of them were careless turnovers, bad decisions. And I know we were not in control, but we were playing well until we subbed at the end of the first half and Darryl had two fouls and we were trying to not let him pick up a third call with about three minutes to go in the half and they came and trapped us and we didn't handle it very well in the last two or three minutes of the first half. And I think that was a key point in the game.

COACH WILLIAMS: I don't know. That's what I thought I was just talking about. They just didn't handle the ball very well. I don't know if it was nervousness, I don't know if it was just -- I don't think it was a lack of concentration. I don't think you get this far and play this kind of game and not be focused is the word we all like to use on what we're doing. I think Syracuse caused some of the turnovers and we just made some bad decisions and some careless errors. What caused it had, I don't know. I'm not smart enough to figure that out. If I could we wouldn't make those errors.