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NCAA MEN'S 3RD & 4TH ROUND REGIONALS: NEW JERSEYMarch 22, 2007Derrick ByarsDan CageTed SkuchasKevin StallingsEAST RUTHERFORD, NEW JERSEY COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: Our basketball team is honored and privileged to be here. We're very excited about being in the Sweet 16 and very excited at what we have accomplished thus far this season. Having said that, we hope there is more to come. We obviously have a very, very tall challenge in front of us, playing a terrific Georgetown team, one that many have picked to win the National Championship. We have played them each of the last two seasons, earlier this year they, as most of you know, beat us fairly soundly at our place, in the opening game of the season. I think since that time both teams have gotten a lot better and we certainly look forward to a great matchup with them tomorrow night. This will be the third time we have played them in two seasons and we were fortunate to win at their place a year ago. They beat us at our place this year, and this being the third. We would happily trade our victory from a season ago if we can trade it in for one tomorrow night. Q. You said a few days ago that nobody was expecting you guys to win and that no one was giving you a chance. Will that play to your advantage maybe with your guys if they sense that, they don't have much to lose, kind of go out and play a little bit more loose and free than they might have otherwise? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: Well, we have been in that situation all season long. I don't think that we have been the kind of team that has commanded nor maybe deserved the same level of respect of the Georgetowns and some of the other people that we have played, but I know that John won't allow his players to overlook us. I hope that our players derive a motivational edge from someplace. I would think that just the mere fact that we're in the Sweet 16 with an opportunity to play into the next round would be motivation enough, but if we're in fact given very little chance to win this game, works to our player's advantage, then so be it. Q. From strictly like a coach's point of view, what was your reaction several years ago when they do away with the athletics department, and not that there are just 16 teams left, do you feel like there's a perception that you guys are the students in the student athlete tournament? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: Well, I don't think that we're -- we're the team with the only students in this -- in this tournament. From my perspective, not much has changed since we had the restructuring. Our buildings are still in place and our ticket office still works as does our media relations office and our fundraising office and all the other things that go on in an athletic department. So we may not call it an athletic department but we have one. Now we put it under another umbrella and so on so forth, but we're certainly proud of the fact that our institution values academics and values the student side of the student athlete's life, we don't want it to be anything different than that. But to say that those young men from Georgetown or from North Carolina or from wherever else are not truly students, would be completely unjust and unfair. Q. Talk about Derrick Byars and how he's improved as a player the past two years, what he has improved the most in and why does he seem to come up with the biggest plays in the biggest games? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: The area where Derrick has made the most progress has been in his consistency. I think his talent level has always been what it is. Now, we had a great summer, great off-season in terms of working on his game, and I think that the more he worked on his game the more confident he became, and I think that confidence transferred into consistency because Derrick has always shown flashes of brilliance as a player at Vanderbilt. The thing that was missing was the consistency piece and I think that this season he's been a very consistent player and consistently played at a high level. So we obviously won't be where we're right now without Derrick and his progress, his development has been one of the key pieces in our achieving this, but I think as much as anything else, Derrick has improved mentally. I don't think his physical game has improved nearly as much as his mental game has improved. That mental progress has made a huge difference. Q. Story on man-to-man versus zone defense, you are a guy that has been all man all the time. Talk about that philosophy, particularly how it relates to a matchup maybe inside that's a little tough for you guys? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: Obviously, we're all really products of our background and our training and my college coach, Gene Keady, was a man-to-man guy. I worked for Roy Williams at Kansas for five years and Roy is primarily, almost exclusively a man-to-man guy, so that's how I was trained, if you will, and we play some zone. We play it somewhat out of necessity, sometimes we'll play it just for change-sake. But one of the reasons a team like us has to have a zone is when you play a team like Georgetown who is overwhelming inside and has some advantages that we have a hard time competing with. So we'll probably use our zone tomorrow and hopefully use it effectively, but when you have a lack of size, that's one reason to play it. When you -- maybe when a team struggles to shoot the ball from the outside that's another reason to play it, which that's certainly not the case with Georgetown. But certainly the size differential and the advantage that they have on the interior in this game would be a reason for us to be motivated to play zone. Q. You have played Georgetown past two years, they have a balanced team. Talk specifically about the challenge that Jeff Green presents and what do you like about his game? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: I like everything about his game. I like the fact that he's big, he's long, he's tough. He makes winning plays. We talk a lot in our program about making winning plays, and Jeff Green makes a lot of winning plays. He can shoot threes. He's great on the block. He has got a mid-range game that most guys that are 6'9" don't have, and there's just not much that he can't do. He will be an NBA player without any question in my mind. So in addition to doing all those things, he makes other people better on his team that might be what I like the best. He's a great passer. He has a knack for making other people, the other players on their team better, and I think that's what great players do. It's what Derrick does for us. I think that's what Jeff Green does for Georgetown. Q. What is your success rate on the half court behind the back shot? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: Used to be better than it is now. I have gotten a little old and my arm and my shoulder don't work quite like they used to. But it used to be a little better than it is now. There was a time when I thought that I could make one out of five or six, but not anymore. I am down into the 10 and 15 range now. Q. Are you friendly with the Belmont coach, take anything from their game recently? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: Rick Bird is one of my best friends. As a matter of fact, he was recruiting in Tallahassee a couple days ago and my son was down there playing with his high school baseball team and Rick drove my son home from Tallahassee about eight hours. They got to our place at 2:15 in the morning. Rick is an extremely close personal friend. I don't know that I take a great deal from their game that I either don't know or haven't suspected and haven't experienced in the two times that I have played -- we have played Georgetown. There's not a great deal I don't think that we can take from that game or that we didn't know from that game that we know now. But certainly Rick and I spoke about it and I did get his thoughts on their experience with playing Georgetown. Q. Do you mind sharing if you have any recollections of the Georgetown aura or kind of that the image that they had maybe back in the 80s and 90s, kind of what it's like to see them back maybe on this stage again? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: Well, I remember the aura being quite honestly a little bit different than the way I see them now, whether I am right or wrong. Never experienced playing Georgetown's team at any level in terms of being assistant or head coach until last season. But I think that John has done a terrific job with that program in getting it back to national status as quickly, and one of the things that Rick Bird said that we have experienced as well, their team plays; they don't stand out there and talk trash to you, and act ugly or bad or anything like that. They conduct themselves like great competitors and they play their rear ends off, so I have a great appreciation for how John coaches his team and how they play and how they compete. Q. You guys had pretty good success on the road this year. How does that translate or help you all as far as NCAA tournament play? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: I think that being able to win out of the confines of your own gymnasium is important, not only for your team's mindset, but your program's mindset. A lot of people can win at home, not a lot of people win on the road. And we have always strived to be a team that can win basically when we're -- we like to win when we're the better team or when we play the best regardless of the venue. I don't know that that helps that much here. We got into a situation last Saturday when we're playing in Sacramento and obviously there were more Washington State fans there than we had. I am sure they will be more Georgetown fans here tomorrow than we have, but this will have enough of a neutral court flavor that I don't think the fans will make that big of a difference, and so it will just be about who executes the best. It won't be about home court or road or anything like that. It will be about the team that does what they do better than the other. Q. Relative familiarity you have with Georgetown, they have with you from the last couple of years, how does that help or hurt? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: I don't think that it helps or hurts either team. I think we're advantaged equally. Maybe it helps them more because quite frankly they have more defensible parts than we have. I mean, we know what Roy Hibbert and Jeff Green and Wallace and Ewing and we know what they do, but can we stop it. They know what we do and they might -- that's why we're not being picked to win. They might have a better chance to stop what we do than we do what they do, if that makes any sense with all those dos in there. Q. Will you have a chance to see or talk to Coach Williams while you are here or is this not the kind of setting that doesn't lend itself too much catching up with an old friend? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: I am sure I will talk with Coach Williams at some point. But we speak on occasion anyway, and we won't really need to catch up and other than he will probably enjoy seeing my kids because he hasn't seen them in a while, and I worked for him when my son was born 17 years ago, so as a matter of fact, we had a game the night that my son was born and when I got out to the court side and Allen Fieldhouse there were balloons stuck on my chair that I sat on the bench, said, "Congratulations, it's a boy," so that was pretty neat, but Coach Williams has been very instrumental in what I have been able to do professionally, and my entire family is very grateful to him for everything else done for us. Q. A couple of years ago when Derrick was looking to transfer, what was it that you sensed that he was looking for and what was it that he saw in Vanderbilt that made him come to your program? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: We recruited Derrick out of high school and as a matter of fact he was scheduled to visit our campus the weekend after he went to Virginia. He went to Virginia and made a commitment so he never ended up making official visit to our place. When he left he called us. It took a little while. There was a bit of a process involved to ultimately get to where we were in position to offer Derrick a scholarship; some things happened that we weren't expecting to happen quite honestly. But in any event I think Derrick just wanted a new start, an opportunity to play for someone that would believe in him and kind of support him and maybe even to some extent nourish him, and Derrick, I don't think, trusts people real easily. I think he has a little bit of a suspicious mind when it comes to trusting people, and I think as our relationship evolved, the more that he figured out that he can trust me, the better he played. I think maybe that's just taken on a completely new status this year, but he's been a great player for us, and he's just as fine of a young man as he is a player. Q. Early this season I think you got off to like a 1 and 3 start, something like that. Did you see this -- I don't mean Sweet 16 -- but did you see the pieces in place and if so, when did you get a sense that it was turning? COACH KEVIN STALLINGS: I didn't know what was possible. I have answered this question, as you might imagine, a number of times over the course of the season. We didn't know what the potential of the team was. We were 1 and 3. We had lost to Georgetown, we lost at Wake Forest, then we lost a game to Furman at our place, coached by my former assistant, Jeff Jackson. And of course I don't spoke to him anymore. Just kidding. We didn't know what the potential of our team was, but we really believed that whatever the potential was, that we would reach it because each when we were 1 and 3 and people were being very critical, our players never lost faith in themselves; they never stopped believing in each other. And they never lost their trust and their faith in the coaching staff. Because of that and because of their approach to practice and how hard they work, we knew that whatever was within the grasp of this team we would get to it. We had a couple of significant moments, I think, as any team does throughout the season. The first probably being a victory over Georgia Tech, at our place in mid-December, we didn't have any real good wins and they came in and we played very well and beat them. We beat Tennessee on a last-second shot in the second game of the conference season. And then in succession, we beat Alabama at Kentucky and at LSU, and then I think at that point we had a firm belief that we were a good basketball team. And from that point it was a matter of let's just keep trying to get better and see where this things take us, and here we're. Q. Dan and Ted, the talk has been a lot about Georgetown's post game. You guys defended some pretty strong post games over the course of the season. Can you talk about what you feel like will be different tomorrow as opposed to maybe the Florida, the Kentucky, the Alabama games? DAN CAGE: One of the differences especially with Green is the fact that he can shoot it from the outside as well. He can handle the ball and I can pass. These aren't two big slow guys down in the post that you have to try and just front. These guys get out on the 3-point line. They pass the ball, they dribble the ball well, and they are extremely versatile and athletic and quick. They run the floor. So they present some unique matchup problems for us and they present some opportunities hopefully for us on offense, but they are really good, we appreciate the things that they do well and hopefully we'll be able to figure out a way to neutralize them a little bit. Q. Coach was saying that you guys feel like nobody has given you a chance to win this game, nobody is picking you guys to win. Does that make you play a little bit more loose and free like you have nothing to lose? DERRICK BYARS: Well, given the fact that they already beat us by a deciding margin last game, 86-70, whatever the score was, that's okay if people don't give us a chance for this game. We just need to go out there and do what we have been doing to get us here, get us here in the first place. That's just playing a good defense when we make up our minds to do so, and sharing the ball and getting good shots. We don't need to worry about all the outsider stuff. DAN CAGE: Sure, I mean, who are we? We got Georgetown and USC out here playing really great basketball. No pressure on us whatsoever. We're going to go out there and play loose, try and do things that helped us be successful all season long. At the end of the day hopefully we can look back and see that we won the game and things went the way we wanted them to. That's what we're hoping for. TED SKUCHAS: We're on top of our game right now. We haven't had given a chance in any of their games so far, they picked Washington State. It's not much difference for us. All you can do is go out and play loose and play our game. Q. Dan, give me some reasons why Derrick has had a great season this year, maybe the improvements he's made? DAN CAGE: The reason he's been successful is that he's a heck of a player, I mean, he does it all. I have said it a lot over the last couple of weeks, he's our best defender. He's our best offensive player, he does it inside and outside. He does things on the court that none of the rest of us can do. Creates his own shots. He rebounds well. He passes well. He does it all, so it's good to see as his teammates, finally, that he's getting the recognition that he deserves, and hopefully he can continue playing the type of basketball he's playing because that would help us a lot. Q. All three, some of you were at Vanderbilt when it happened, some of you weren't. When they did away with the athletic department, what was your gut reaction and do any of you have any -- get calls from friends family like they are not playing ball anymore, any anecdotes? DERRICK BYARS: Actually I believe they got rid of it the year prior to me transferring or even the year before that when I entered Vanderbilt. I was like kind of like, they don't have an athletic department like what, so I mean, I was just like who is in control then? But I mean, it seems not even a factor. We have some great programs doing some great things right now, and it seems to be not much of a factor really. DAN CAGE: When we heard it we had a couple of hours before Coach Stallings called a team meeting. I remember when we had found out people were calling us and telling us how will you enjoy playing intramural ball. They thought some of the great life on campus, some of the frats on campus were calling their buddies on their team, things of that nature, we didn't take too much of that to heart. We had a hard team believing they were going to take away all the athletic programs in Vanderbilt, coach let us know everything was fine. Like Derrick said we got a lot of programs doing a lot of good things right now. Obviously things have worked out. TED SKUCHAS: It's not really a big deal on the individual level. It's more an administrative thing. I mean, nothing has changed from the first two years that I have been there and after it changed its something that from higher up and coach Stallings came in, told us look we're going to have the same kind of program, recruit the same kind of players and continue playing the same kind of basketball that we have and continue to have success. In the end it's something that just kind of changed higher up. We don't see the effect on a daily basis. Q. Derrick in reference to the fact that you are from Memphis, a lot of your friends have probably been in this tournament, you had to go home every year and kind of face them. What has it been like and how many friends do you have on the Memphis team and who do you keep in contact with? DERRICK BYARS: Let's see. As far as my friends on the Memphis team some of those hometown guys Jeremy Hunt, Andre Allen, I am happy what they have been able to do over the last few seasons. Dane Bradshaw, me and him go way back. It's not like I am the guy left out of conversations because I can really talk about my experience. But this year I will be able to. I am happy to in my fifth year now of college to be here and given that we had two consecutive NIT appearances at Vanderbilt, I am glad we have been able to right the ship this season. Q. Coach Stallings was saying over the summer you really worked hard on your game and a lot of things changed both in your game and mentally. Talk about what happened and how it changed you? DERRICK BYARS: Well, I mean, first of all, I think this is the best off-season collectively as an entire team that we had. We had guys putting up 18,000, 20,000 shots, 16,000 shots and I mean, that was everybody, everybody on the team did that. Everybody on the team was you know, I mean what I did everybody else was on the team doing. Waking up early, lifting weights getting our bodies stronger. It's been a mental thing as well. We looked at each other and everybody likes everybody, so that makes for great chemistry on our team. Mentally we figure we wanted to get it done this season. Q. Derrick, what was the decision to leave Virginia and how did you end up at Vanderbilt? DERRICK BYARS: Well, I mean, sometimes you know, I have said before that it has just been issue of indifference with myself and Coach Pete Gillen at that time, and, to put it mildly, that's what it was, and I was just trying to get back home, closer to my family so they were able to see me at least, just see me play more, and it's been a remarkable story, as far as you know, many could go here to Vanderbilt and what we have been able to do. Q. Talk about your experience of playing power forward in the SEC? DAN CAGE: Obviously me being 6'10" and 275 pounds of pure athleticism, you know, I have been pretty successful. Just kidding. I have to play against some of the most some of the premier athletes in college basketball which is something I really enjoy doing. It's a big time challenge, not a lot of people can say that they are able to be confronted with, and you know, it hasn't really even been me who's been successful versus some of them. I work really hard to get around in the post and stay in front of them, but you know, the other four guys are keeping one eye on me and seeing how much -- how in trouble I am at any given moment in the game and our team utilizes double teams really, really well, and really it's just been a five man effort to try and compensate for some of the weaknesses that we have had. Me guarding Joakim Noah from Florida, for example, as one of those times that we needed really good team defense, and tomorrow could be a similar situation in which I get matched up with one of their big guys who are -- premier big players in college basketball. We're going to have to play really good team defense like we have all year, and hopefully things will go well. Q. Having seen Georgetown last couple of years have you pinpointed an area or thing or two that you are going to have to do to win the game tomorrow, things that are most important? DERRICK BYARS: They do a number of good things. I'd say one thing sticks out with me, how well they hit the boards both offensively and defensively. We need to limit their second chance opportunities as best we can. The big guy down low 7'2", 280, that's a hard matchup, but like Dan said, we have been able to compensate in other games this year for our lack of, you know, guys down low, so that's what we're looking forward to doing. DAN CAGE: I think sometimes their defense gets overlooked. Coaches have made reference to the fact that they contest shots better than anybody in this tournament right now. That's because they are so long and athletic and quick and they are really, really well coached. So we're going to have to be really patient on offense in terms of moving the ball, being unselfish and making sure guys like Derrick get the open looks that we want him to get. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. End of FastScripts |
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