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NCAA MEN'S 3RD & 4TH ROUND REGIONALS: SAN ANTONIOMarch 21, 2007Billy GillispieSAN ANTONIO, TEXAS THE COACH: Happy to be here, it's great to have an opportunity to play in your home state. It's very -- it's been a long season. It's been a great season so far, and every team is still playing, definitely wants to keep on going. A lot of excitement from fans, from University personnel and especially from the players. It's really great to see those guys react and have an opportunity as great as this. Q. I wonder if you can comment about any kind of home court advantage you feel you guys have? COACH GILLISPIE: I think we'll probably have more fans than anyone else. I don't know that for a fact, but that's really nice, and it may be able to help you get over a couple of tough spots in the games, but it won't be the ultimate determining factor. We learned that last weekend, I think, and everybody is coming here for a reason. Everyone is coming here to win. We're focusing all our attention on our opponent, Memphis. They're a 24 streak winning season. They have probably a better team this year, no disrespect to that great team they had last year. While we may have more fans here, it all comes down to what happens inside the court, and those guys are very, very difficult to play against. Q. Can you talk about, are you game planning as if Douglas-Roberts is going to play? COACH GILLISPIE: Sure. Q. Take us back when you first took over the program. What was the general attitude of Texas recruits towards Texas A&M program. Was there something you signed to open the gates to recruiting in the last couple of classes? COACH GILLISPIE: As far as I think we did some damage in that respect in the fall. I think that when you sign guys like we signed in the fall, especially a guy like DeAndre Jordan, I think that's been the biggest, most recognizable name. But I think it's the guys that someone else, other than us recruited. I think it's about the way Acie Law has played and Joseph Jones has played and matured and developed. And Marlon Pompey has developed, and those guys that have been here for an while that we did not recruit. And we're very fortunate to have inherited those guys. When you get a new job you don't normally have guys like that in the program. And others that I haven't mentioned. I think those guys have really opened the doors for us. If you're going to recruit good players, everyone wants to go where they're going to get great exposure, where they're going to win, they're going to have an opportunity to play and where they're going to be at a good academic institution. You could have two or three of those things, but if you don't win, people don't really want to go to a place where they haven't been winning. Everyone's memory these days is like one year, what did you do last year? And so I think you have to win. I think you have to continue winning to be able to continue to recruit better players. And again, the guys I've inherited, they have been the most recognizable names, for association with Texas A&M basketball. And that will determine what our legacy will be for many days to come. Q. Can you talk about how, is Memphis similar to Louisville on defense and the way they press? How would you compare the two sets of guards that Louisville and Memphis has. Memphis seems to be a little taller overall? COACH GILLISPIE: They are, and they're just as athletic or more. Both teams are great teams, I think. Great teams. And they are similar in some ways, they're different in others. I think that consistently shooting the basketball in Memphis is, no disrespect to Louisville, but I think they're more consistent perimeter shooting team, and they can get hot and make seven or 8 or 9 or 10, threes in a row. They have great attack to the basket. So does Louisville. They attack the basket well. They know when to pitch it to their partner and make three. They have as good a plan as I've ever seen as far as just like they really teach and coach and incorporate offensive rebounding as a major part of their offense. And I think that all of us talk about offensive rebounding and doing these things, but it's obviously -- it's obvious that they really do have a great feel about, hey, this is how you're going to get offensive rebounds, and this is going to be a major portion of our offense. Q. You just mentioned Memphis's 24 game winning streak. They get knocked a little bit because they don't play in the so-called power conference. Just your thoughts on putting together 24 in a row, no matter who you're playing, and also if you could just address dribble penetration, is that a concern for your guards, guarding their guards? COACH GILLISPIE: Absolutely. That's something we haven't done a great job of as far as those guys do a fantastic job of dribbling penetrating to getting to the basket. They know when to penetrate and score, they know when penetrate and pitch. And they have great offensive rebound. So it's a major concern for us. As far as their league or whatever, that may fool some people. It doesn't fool me. I've coached at two of the schools inner league and if you go to UTEP and win, you go to Tulsa and win, you beat those guys, you play at rise, nobody knows how hard it is to win over there. We played Houston, and those teams are extremely hard to guard and SMU. And the teams at Southern Miss, and all the teams they have to guard. I have a pretty good knowledge of how hard it is to win. So their league is a lot better than it gets credit for. It's probably an under exposed team, just like when I was head coach the UTEP, but it was probably an under exposed team. But whatever they have done not only this year, but since I guess it's a two or three-year old league, it's been fantastic, because those places are hard to win. Q. In breaking down tape, what do you see in Douglas-Roberts? COACH GILLISPIE: Another great player. He's a guy -- the thing they do such a good job of they know how to use the hesitation dribble, the cross over dribble, their skill development people are doing a fantastic job for getting those guys to understand when to go and how to get to the foul line. And they have a lot of really good players. But as their leading scorer, he really understands pace, he really understands momentum. He really understands when to shoot it and when to pass it and when to drive it. All their guys do. That's what makes them such a scary team offensively. They're a great defensive team, as well. They pressure all over the court, for 40 minutes most of the time, whether it's half court, full court, the pressure defense gives everybody fits. And we really haven't performed that well against pressure defense this year, as far as running our offense and doing what we want to do. That's another major concern for us. Q. If I could go back to your rebuilding programs. Is there a common theme or how much different was it at UTEP than it was at Texas A&M? COACH GILLISPIE: As far as the common team, the best way to rebuild something is to have good players. People get confused a lot of times into thinking, well, this, that and the other. If you're going to try to turn something around or make a change, you have to have good players, if you're going to win at this level of college basketball, you have to have good players. It's all about players. But at UTEP they have won for 40 years, so they just had a little small dry spell. They had a little bit longer dry spell at A&M, but you have to get good players and you have to get guys that have character qualities to do what it takes to win, think of others before themselves. And we've been really fortunate to have those kind of players at both stops. Q. I'm just guessing Calipari is probably going to have to say about the No. 3 seed having the extreme home court advantage. Can you talk about that, what you anticipate in the building tomorrow night? COACH GILLISPIE: What I anticipate him saying about it? Q. Well, both, what you anticipate -- COACH GILLISPIE: You have to talk to him about that. Q. And what you anticipate in the building tomorrow night? COACH GILLISPIE: I would think that -- we talked about this earlier, I think that we'll have a very, very large contingent of fans, and I hope they do, and I hope they create a home court advantage for us. But we'd be really dumb to think that we're going to have any kind of home court advantage as far as once the game is being played, because we just came from a situation where we were in the exact opposite situation and we know how we thought about that and we know how attacked it and those things. We may get beat tomorrow, it's not going to be because our mind isn't right or our focus isn't right. I hope that we have -- I hope they talk about it being the greatest home court advantage in the history of college basketball. But we have to play against a really talented, well coached team, and that's going to determine the outcome of the game, not the crowd. Q. Would you talk about Dominique Kirk's emergency, and stepping up the scoring in the NCAA Tournament. Did you see this happening as the season progressed? COACH GILLISPIE: He's been averaging like 7 points a game all year, but I thought every time you need a guy to step up he always does. You don't have to say anything to him, he just plays. He let's the game come to him. We needed him the most last weekend, and he was the best he's ever been, probably. He's always good. Coaches, on our team, and players on his team appreciate what he does and understand how valuable he is to a team. I know that the opposing coaches in our league understand that. But maybe fans just look at how many points a guy scores or whatever, and don't really give him the proper respect. He's been a good player for us all year. I would have thought that he would have been a double figure scorer for us all season, not 18 points a game. But I thought he'd be a 10 or 11 point scorer for us. As I stated last week, if you look back on every game that we've ever won that is a tough game, and we've had a lot of them, he always makes a big shot or he always makes big plays, whether win or lose. But he always usually hits a big 3 or 2, more than one three is what I was trying to say, for us to be able to win those kind of games. He's done that since he was a freshman. He's not surprising anybody in the locker room. Q. Could you speak to the contributions of Logan Lee, he almost signed for a small school, how special this must be for him to come home? COACH GILLISPIE: I hope it's special, he deserves it. He was a great player at Hawaii, starting as a sophomore, on the post season team. And he gave up his scholarship to come play with us and sat out a year. After he sits out a year he tears his ACL. It's special for me to have him on the team. He's one of the best young people I've been around. He's a great leader, and he's a very, very, very good basketball player. The bad part this year is he's played behind a guy that's had a phenomenal year, in Acie Law. We're lucky to have him. He's like another coach on the floor. He's been great for three years. He's awesome. Q. We all kind of refer to Acie as Mr. Clutch now, can you talk about when you saw that aspect of his game develop? What's your confidence level when he's got the ball at the end of the game? COACH GILLISPIE: My confidence level is sky high. I'm not a smart guy, but I have been at most of the games we played and I've seen what he's done (laughter.)what he's been able to do, in my opinion, has just been amazing, because I've said this several times, a great player is usually defined, if you play 20 games if a guy has four or five or six great games he's considered a great player in a 20 game period, and rightfully so. In the last 20 games we played Acie has had like 16 or 18 great games. And I've never seen a guy continue to top what he did the last time. He has so much responsibility for us. He has to start our defense as well as start our offense. He has to provide leadership, stability, security. He has to provide everything on and off the court. And he has major burdens off the court as well, because of all the attention he has rightfully received. What he's been able to do has been fantastic. As far as seeing, I think when you see confident players that have an enormous amount of talent, I think you know they have the capability to make big shots, but not everybody does. A lot of guys have talent, but don't have the confidence. A lot of guys have confidence but don't have the talent. And he has a great combination of both to allow him to be able to make those kind of plays. Q. When you took the job at A&M at your news conference you mentioned coming off of UTEP and those kids had a lot of heart and how you had hoped that the kids at A&M would have heart. You talked a lot about talent here today, which has been more for this team, talent or heart to get to this point? COACH GILLISPIE: I said Acie was a really talented player, and we have a lot of heart. Everybody still playing has to have an enormous amount of heart special all the intent, not all the in tanning I believe so, but a lot of them present, if you are still playing you have to have those things to be still playing. Our guys are really tough. Memphis is really tough, Tennessee is really tough, Ohio State is really tough, you go down the list, everybody is really tough. Everybody is playing really well together and those kind of things. But I think our team, because of the way they go about their business academically, on and off the court, preventing distractions, loving each other so much as a family and all those kind of things, it would be hard to have a more special group than these guys. I know every coach thinks that their group is the most special, and it seems like I've been on a magic carpet ride every year as a head coach, it seems like, because no matter what we're able to do one year, it seems like so far we're able to top it. The reason is because we have good players, and so many guys to think of others before they think of themselves. And that's not all that common these days, not only talking about athletes, but talking about our population in general. It's a very, very, very giving group that I've been lucky enough to be able to coach for this length of time. End of FastScripts |
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