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NCAA MEN'S 3RD & 4TH ROUND REGIONALS: ST. LOUIS

March 24, 2007

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

MODERATOR: We have the Pac-10 Oregon Ducks with us. I'll ask Ernie Kent to start off with a statement about being in this situation and St. Louis for the game tomorrow and we'll go to questions for everyone on the dais.
Coach?
COACH KENT: All last night I tried to think back to when we had this program here before and the Elite 8 facing Kansas and some of the things we did right, some of the things we did wrong to make sure we gave this team every opportunity to advance.
And when you look at Florida, I mean, they're just a superb basketball team that's the defending national champions, and we're really going to have to play with an intensity level and an intelligence level that gives ourselves an opportunity to compete with them.
So it's a great venue to be at. It's a great opportunity to be on this stage right now. And I'm really happy for these young men that are here with me because they've been through a lot to put themselves in position they're one game away from hopefully going to a Final Four. And there's not a lot of people that get into this situation in college basketball.
So hopefully we can take full advantage of it to the best of our ability and see where we go from there.

Q. Tajuan, could you talk about those first three games of the year when you went off for like almost 30 a night and had the 38-pointer and Coach took you out and you wanted to get 50, and just talk about how that got you going this year and then kind of maybe what's happened since?
TAJUAN PORTER: Well, I just came in, you know, with a sense of urgency to prove everybody wrong. Everybody was doubting me because of my size. They told me I wasn't going to be able to play at this level.
So I came in excited. I'm happy to play in college basketball.

Q. Follow-up, you can't keep up 30 points a game all season. But what kind of happened over the rest of the season before you kind of regot it last night?
TAJUAN PORTER: I just settled down. I had to step back. We have four other players that's been here, more experienced than me. So I couldn't go out and score 30 every night. I'm just a freshman. I'm still learning.
So these guys have helped me out and I just had it going those couple games.

Q. Tajuan and Aaron and Maarty, I guess you're familiar with Florida's defense last night. They brought some bigs out to help on the perimeter against the three-point shooters. Your thoughts on how that may affect you guys tomorrow and whether you think that will be an efficient strategy?
TAJUAN PORTER: I think it will be a disadvantage for them. We just gotta make smart basketball plays. Obviously their big men trying to guard perimeter players so you gotta make smart basketball plays and the right decision.
AARON BROOKS: I think their big guys are definitely versatile to come out and guard guards. But we're a little bit quicker on the outside than them. So we could use that as our advantage.
And we just gotta get after them and play hard on offense and move the ball and kind of exploit it that way.
MAARTY LEUNEN: Yeah, that's kind of our strategy, why we play with a smaller lineup is to find our mismatches and take advantage of those. So with those guys switching on to obviously a smaller player, make things difficult for them.
So we'll just try to take advantage of our opportunities and do the best we can.

Q. Ernie, could you kind of enlighten us on how this seemed to come together so quickly this year for you guys after a couple mediocre seasons and are you surprised that you're in this position now?
COACH KENT: This to us is still part of the process that's going on. And we've talked about this often, if you were to talk about the chapters in a book, our book, our final chapter has not been written in this book. And we went through tremendous amount of adversity with this basketball team over the last couple of years.
And it toughened us up mentally. It strengthened us spiritually as well, too, and it brought us together as a basketball team. When the team hit the Bahamas this summer after the conditioning program we put them through, we knew we had a good basketball team coming out of the Bahamas even though it was against inferior talent over there.
It was a matter of getting to the season and managing our schedule through the season. And once we got into the preseason and decided on the small lineup and we had a chance to beat play Georgetown at Georgetown, then it took us to another level of understanding. We had a special basketball team that can have a special year.
And then it's just a matter of getting into the year and playing.
So it hasn't been a quick process at all for this group. I mean Malik and Maarty and Bryce Taylor, they've been here three years and Brooks on four years. If anything it's quick for Tajuan Porter and he's the guy that come in to stir everything for us. But these other guys have worked extremely hard over the course of the last three and four years to put themselves in this position. I'm real proud of them for doing that.

Q. Tajuan, variation on the possible defense by Florida. Last night they caught you in a two-man trap at mid-court, forced a turnover. Do you think Florida will try that and if they do, will that create passing and assist opportunities for you?
TAJUAN PORTER: Yeah, you just gotta stay out of trapping areas and make smart basketball plays. Obviously two players are trapping me, one man is open. So you just gotta make smart basketball plays.

Q. Malik and Tajuan, when you were growing up in Detroit, how much did you know about Oregon basketball and how many of your friends actually get to see you guys play with you guys being out on the West Coast? And then, Bryce, does it bother you that many people don't know much about you guys because you might be playing after people go to bed?
MALIK HAIRSTON: Well, I definitely didn't know too much about Oregon basketball. I was being recruited by UCLA and I was watching UCLA and Oregon play. That was the very first time I watched Oregon play. As I began to watch them more and saw the way that they played, the pro style offense, the way the guards were successful, it made me very interested.
TAJUAN PORTER: I really didn't know too much about any school. I didn't know about Oregon. I didn't even know Oregon was a state until Malik came here.
(Laughter)
That's pretty much it. So when Malik came here, I saw my opportunity to play.
BRYCE TAYLOR: It doesn't bother us that people don't get to see us play because that's just been the case for however many years it's been that way. West Coast teams a lot of times get overlooked and are underrated. But it's just our job to just make sure that when we do get the opportunity to play in front of people who haven't seen us play, we represent our team to the fullest and make sure we let people know what Oregon basketball is about.

Q. Aaron, you guys are the best free-throw shooting team in this tournament. As a team are you guys aware of the importance of that this time of year?
AARON BROOKS: Free throws could be the key to winning this game, being that the guys shoot at a high percentage sometimes. I mean, last couple of years we lost a lot of games off free throws and missing free throws at the end, so we put a valiant effort into making free throws and becoming a great free throw team. We have to go knock them down because that's where the game could be won or lost.

Q. Ernie, please discuss how you kind of got involved with the Detroit kids and how you sold your program to them?
COACH KENT: You know, we've always felt like first and foremost for us we could build a championship team because there's a lot of great players in the Northwest. If you look at Washington and Gonzaga and the history of players that have come out of that state, if one of us could capture all those players, we'd have the opportunity to do this.
Secondly, we felt like we had an opportunity to go outside the state of Oregon and really sell our basketball program. Sometimes it's difficult to sell the rain to people coming from California, although Bryce Taylor ventured our way. We felt coming back to the Midwest and with the cold and snow they could come out to Eugene see the green and trees. I'm from Rockford, Illinois. They sold me on it 30 some years ago. I thought it was a great opportunity to sell a special situation, particularly having gone to school there and being able to come into a home -- not only sell your program, but sell it with a passion because you believe in what you're selling and everything.
So with the kids in Detroit, Kenny Payne on my staff is an amazing individual that's done a tremendous amount of good for our program. When I had an opportunity to hire him, it opened up the door in a big way to our recruiting into Chicago and to Detroit because he's so well known and well respected back there. So with his reputation, our style of play, the Luke and Luke show and how well they played and how well they did when they came to the Elite 8, we felt we had a lot to offer to kids as long as we had an opportunity to get in their home and sell those things.
More importantly, when they had an opportunity to step foot on that campus and see those things that we talked about were true, and I think we've done a great job of selling our situation and they've certainly done a great job of representing it.

Q. Tajuan, you say you didn't know much about Oregon. Were you a little apprehensive about going there in the first place? And were you finding yourself maybe holding out and hoping that some of the schools closer to home might have given you a look?
TAJUAN PORTER: No. Oregon was the only school that was recruiting me. They showed a lot of interest in me. They wanted me more than I wanted them. And I found myself wanting other schools more than they wanted me. So I really didn't worry about other schools trying to recruit me. I just wanted to go somewhere I felt most comfortable.

Q. Malik, Maarty, they have two great front court players. Which one of those two players do you see as more important to shut down and limit?
MALIK HAIRSTON: I think they're both great players on the inside. And they're both very effective on both ends of the court so I think it's kind of an equal thing. You gotta balance it and we have to be there to help each other out on each of them.
MAARTY LEUNEN: Yeah, what he said, they're both easily -- you can't forget about one or the other because they're both very dominant players. So, yeah, me and Malik are going to have to help each out a lot and it's going to be a great team effort in stopping both the guys on the inside.
So just trying to make things difficult for them and make it tough and hopefully we can get stops.

Q. Bryce, you guys are the champion of one of the BCS conferences. You've been in the Top 20 pretty much from January on. And yet you are the lowest seed left in the tournament. I was just wondering, do you guys feel like this year's George Mason?
(Laughter).
BRYCE TAYLOR: No. I feel like a lot of times people haven't seen us play so they don't know how good of a team we are. But we feel that over the course of the year we've had some big wins just to prove that we're capable of playing with the best teams.
So we kind of take that underdog role. We take it personally and we just use it as extra motivation to prove that we deserve being here.

Q. Coach Kent, you talked about mistakes that maybe you thought you made the last time you were in the Elite 8. What did you guys do today or throughout the course of the evening to rectify some of that stuff and what were some of those mistakes?
COACH KENT: I think the biggest thing I found with this team compared to my other time we were here was to rest this team and let them get reenergized. They're a well-conditioned, well-coached basketball team that knows what to do to be successful. If I can get their energy back and get them to where they play at a high level that way, usually we're pretty good.
And the biggest key is just to not overprepare them in terms of getting them ready. We don't do a lot of film work. We do some walk-throughs and some mental work in terms of those things, but they're not a team that needs to sit in a film room for hours on end. And that team, when I was there before, we probably -- they were a little bit fatigued mentally as it was. Maybe just all the media and all the work we did and all the prep work maybe even fatigued them more and having to run up against a great Kansas team.
This team, we're going to leave here, go take a picture downtown and let them relax and calm down this afternoon, get a great night's sleep. We're going to do our work in terms of getting them ready, but not overburden doing too much. And bring them to the floor with a tremendous amount of energy because it's going to take that type of energy to win this game.

Q. When it comes to cities' reputations Detroit and Eugene don't exactly jive. How would you compare the two cities and was it a culture shock going out there for you?
TAJUAN PORTER: Yes, they're much different. It was an adjustment, but I was brought up in an inner city. It was a little rough, but Eugene is more nice and the people are more nice. So it was a big adjustment.
But I was mature enough to adapt to the environment.
MALIK HAIRSTON: Definitely, apples and oranges. But going out to Eugene for what I was trying to do I thought was perfect. I thought it was a great college town and a great time for me to be able to focus on my academics and athletics.

Q. Ernie, if you could expound upon what you said last night about that 38-point night where you didn't want him to break the record, was it because the game was already out of hand or you just didn't want to see a freshman set the scoring record in his second game? And then the second thing for any of the guys, could you talk about the first time you laid eyes on Tajuan and wondered what he was doing there?
COACH KENT: Last night I joked about Ronnie Lee and Greg Ballard and him breaking those records and he's broken some of those records, and it was a game that had gotten out of hand.
He had played so well in the ball game. He probably could have went for 50 that night. But I probably would have been attacked pretty good if he had turned an ankle really bad trying to get him 50 points in the game, but we were ahead 20, 25 points.
So I felt he played superb on the game, was on a roll, hit his tenth three pointer. When the guys told me that, my staff, I felt like it was time for him to sit down and watch and give somebody else an opportunity and protect him too.

Q. Can you tell us what you thought when you saw this 5-6 guy walking in?
AARON BROOKS: I had to guard the little dude when he first came in.
(Laughter)
He kind of put away my things I thought about him. He put that to rest quick, a couple moves and kind of shook me a little bit. And I knew he was in the right place.
We was lucky to get him. We were lucky. A lot of people turned their heads on him because he's definitely a diamond in the rough. He's been showing that the whole year. We're glad to have the little guy.
(Laughter)
MALIK HAIRSTON: I knew what he was capable of. I saw him in the eighth grade. He played at my high school. Scored 38, 40 points, 8 threes. I guess that's when recruiting began in middle school, high school. We knew we needed him.
MAARTY LEUNEN: Like Aaron said or whatever, just after the first couple of practices he definitely earned our respect as to how well he can play and me being from Oregon never really saw him play in high school and everything.
So he earned my respect real quick just to how well he could shoot the ball and be a great teammate. I guess he's earned everybody else's respect, too, just how well he's played.

Q. You said people may not get to watch you guys a lot on TV. How much have you been able to watch Florida on TV and what goes through your mind when you see them play?
AARON BROOKS: I mean, you see Florida almost every game. They're always on ESPN and stuff like that. Kind of like you're in two different leagues as far as they got the East Coast league and the West Coast league. So it's finally good to get a matchup against them. You definitely see them on TV and you see them running and playing hard and winning games and stuff. They're a great team. They've got a great front court and great guards too.
To finally get to match up and see how you stack up against them will be great for us.

Q. Ernie, do you maybe expect Florida to rethink that strategy they used against Butler in protecting the perimeter because of your guys' quickness?
COACH KENT: Again, I think when teams get to this level there's not a lot of adjustments they're going to make. I've seen Florida play big against everyone. And really doesn't matter. They're so skilled and they're so good at what they do, they're going to press you. They're going to zone you. They're going to trap you in the half court. They're going to trap you a little bit in the full court. And they're just a good, well-coached basketball team.
What they do is what they do. Now, maybe during the course of the game, maybe they go away with some things and make adjustments. But I think initially they're going to do what they do and they're going to do it very well and see if you can make adjustments to them and everything.
So again it's going to be one of those games that who can kind of impose their will on the other, because we have big guys sitting there. I've told them to get ready, because there might be some minutes here or there for a couple of our seven-footers, as well. But for the most part we are who we are. And we've got to make do with that for right now. It's going to be an extreme, extreme test for us against this basketball team to try to hopefully impose our will upon them versus them making us make the adjustments.

Q. Ernie, what is it about a smaller player that seems to connect with America and who are some of the great small players you remember and how does Tajuan compare?
COACH KENT: Nate Archibald, and Spud Webb are some of the great ones. And I think America, they love a hero. Everybody cheering for the little guy. And he's a little guy that plays with a big, big heart. And the thing I've told him, and I think he's a great example for parents who have that little kid in the family that everybody looks at and says, you'll never be a basketball player, play soccer. Well, that's not true. You can be whatever you want to be. I think Tajuan proves that. If you've got a big enough heart and a big enough game, you can play at this level and play beyond this level.
And I think that's the thing that he's giving people in the Midwest the first opportunity to see him play and I think he's going to have that impact on a lot of people across the country now seeing somebody with that size being able to play the way he's played. That's nothing with coaching you're seeing there. That's somebody that's made the necessary adjustments in his game to adapt to his size to be successful in this, what you want to call, the big man's game.
So he's done a tremendous job of it, and I think he leads by great example what you can do with that kind of size.

Q. Tajuan, are you at all familiar with the Tall Firs and do you think that you would ever qualify as a Tall Fir?
TAJUAN PORTER: No, I don't really know what you're talking about.
(Laughter)
COACH KENT: We're going to have a geography question when we get done here today.
MODERATOR: Let's go back to the great small men you've seen. You didn't get to that part.
COACH KENT: I talked about Archibald and Spud Webb are some of the great ones, especially Archibald. I thought he was a great player, his size, playing at a time when there were great power forwards and dominant centers in the game. Here's a guy that could control the tempo of the game with a basketball in his hands. He's probably the greatest I've seen.
I think when you're that size there's a couple things that need to happen. You need to be a pest at the defensive end of the floor. That's where the coaches shy away, that's the biggest liability. And it's the biggest area where Tajuan has made the most improvements. And you have to be a guy that can control things on the offensive end as well, because we always say that people have to come down and guard our small lineup at the other end of the floor as well, too.
So if we can hold our own defensively you have a chance to play at the other end as well, too.

Q. Tajuan you mentioned you wanted schools more than they wanted you. What were some of the schools you wanted to go to and how much does that snubbing play a part when you're on the court?
TAJUAN PORTER: Schools like Michigan, I did want to get away to school, but I wanted to stay home close to my family. Like Florida, I got a couple of letters from them, and like NC State and Cal. But I think about that a lot when I'm out there on the court. Because obviously my size was an issue. That's why so many schools shied away from me.
So I'm just trying to take advantage of this opportunity and prove everybody wrong.

Q. Tajuan, when you were little, did you do anything? I think I read something where you used to hang and try to stretch yourself out try to make yourself bigger. What were some of your hangups when you were younger?
TAJUAN PORTER: That was about the only thing. Once I found I wasn't going to grow anymore I had to just accept who I was and how tall I was. I just had to make adjustments in my game and adapt to who I was.

Q. Ernie, can you just talk about when you made the decision this year to go small, what that meant for Maarty and then the job that he did all year? Almost a mismatch every night?
COACH KENT: We sat down and when we came out of the summer, we had played so well overseas and we came into the year, we sat down as a staff and said what would it look like if we put our five best players on the floor, regardless of the size, whatever, and because we could score the ball so well with about five, six or seven guys.
So when we went that direction, and I think the guys were excited about it, too, the biggest question was could you defend and could you rebound.
And when we took a good look at it, we knew Maarty was going to be undersized but if we could pressure the ball, front to post, and get weak side help, it really eliminated post play, particularly when there's only one really good big man on the floor. Becomes a little bit more trickier when you've got two big guys on the floor and the other was rebounding, and that's more of a mentally conscious and mentally tough thing to get your body on someone and get them off the boards. And then people feared our transition so much that it allowed our guards to come back and rebound the ball. And really you're looking at five on two rebounding because people would send two and three back because they would fear our running game.
So it really hasn't hurt us at all this year. And Maarty, you know, for him to stay out of foul trouble and pretty much 99% of these games playing an inside, undersized five-man and going against the likes of some of the big guys we've gone against, it's pretty impressive.
But I think he's a very, very intelligent basketball player that knows how to position himself the right way to keep himself out of foul trouble as well.

Q. Do you feel like when you were at that little swoon there towards the end of the season that he dipped in energy and he got a second wind now?
COACH KENT: I think we all dipped. I think Aaron Brooks, Bryce Taylor and Maarty definitely dipped in energy. Again coming home with those three games at home to close out the year reenergized this entire basketball team. Being able to give them some time off and getting back to the friendly confines of Mack court.

Q. You look at the other teams in the Elite 8 and they're some of the biggest names in college basketball. You guys have been here before, but then took a dip. Is consistency the challenge for you and kind of how do you stay at this level do you think?
COACH KENT: Recruiting keeps you at this level. When you look at those programs, I think you'll notice that they all have great players year in year out and great recruiting classes year in and year out. So anything we can do to enhance our recruiting, and that's from continuing to play successful basketball, our style of play, new arena, the hype that comes along with all of this. We need everything we can do to compete with those teams. But there are some big names in college basketball sitting on the center stage and we're one of those teams that are sitting here.
But our name is not as big as those names, but I think our game is one that is very attractable style of play. And hopefully we can continue to recruit because the style of play has shown if we can put the players in place to play the style, we can play at this level.

Q. Florida is fueled by its junior class, Kentucky struggled with a junior class that maybe didn't live up to expectations. Your thoughts about your junior class and kind of the lessons that it has learned and maybe the lessons for fans in following a class like that?
COACH KENT: This class has become mentally tough, going through the adversity they've gone through. In terms of fans -- we've said this several times. There's very few programs in the country. You mentioned some of them, the Kentuckies and Florida and UCLA and Arizona recruit at a level where their freshman come in have an enormous impact on a conference. Typically freshman are just that: Freshmen. And they need to go through a year of going along the hype of high school. AAU, being away from home, new offense and defense, new academics, it's growing pains they have to go through.
If I am a salesman or the owner of a company, I think it would be ridiculous for people to come in and tell that sales force that you're going to finish tenth out of 10 in terms of sales this year. They wouldn't do that. I don't care how new how young they are. Malik Hairston and Maarty Leunen, they would not be at the University of Oregon if we didn't sell them on coming in, winning Pac-10 championships, being successful right way.
I'm not going to have them go in and be failures. Sell them as high as I can sell them and see where the chips fall after that. The reality is you've got to give teams a chance to grow and you never ever give up on young people and you don't give up on teams, because you just don't know when they're going to figure it out and when they come.
And this team, it just took them two years to figure it out. And grow up very similar to Washington State, Notre Dame, if you want to look at two teams that went through the exact same type of season we've gone through the last couple of years, losing a lot of close games then all of a sudden they're here in their junior year, and all three of us are very successful programs now.

Q. Coach, your name has been named for some of the vacancies out there. Obviously you're focused on this team and this tournament run. Have you given any thought to where you might be at next year?
COACH KENT: Understand I'm probably in one of the more unique situations of any coach in this tournament, let alone in the final eight right now, that I attended the University of Oregon. My entire family has attended the University of Oregon right now. And my son played for me at the University of Oregon. So it's a little different coaching and playing for your alma mater and it's a job that I worked 20 years to come back to. Everything I did in my career for 20 years was directed on coming back to the University of Oregon.
And now we have an opportunity that we're reaching heights they have never been before. So my love and passion is for my school and for my alma mater. We have a unique, unique situation there because it's one of the greatest college basketball environments ever in that building that we play in.
I know there's some things we need on the table. It's a pleasure and it's an honor your name is mentioned for these jobs across the country. But I have never ever pursued a job out of the University of Oregon and I never will.
If schools come and call you, though, I think it's a professional courtesy to listen and talk to people. But in terms of me coaching my alma mater, it's a great situation for me that I'm in right now.

Q. Coach, Butler and Purdue the last two opponents that Florida had are similar to your team at least in size. Neither one of them really has much going on in the post in terms of big guys. But in style they are a lot different, they are more ground-it-out kind of teams on the floor. Did you learn anything from what Butler did to Florida in terms of how to attack them or does it not fit so well because your style is so different?
COACH KENT: I've watched the Butler game, the Purdue game and Tennessee game and a couple other games. My assistants have looked at it. But I've looked at those three games and I've seen them so many times on TV. We've watched them quite a bit because they're on TV so much. Butler and Purdue tried to control the tempo of the game and the way they do it and everything.
We're not going to change who we are. I mean, we are a team that gets up and down the floor. We have to defend. And I thought both of them did a pretty good job defensively in those games, that we learned some things from how they defended in those games but offensively we're not a team that's going to run clock on you at all.
We are an attacking basketball team. We just gotta play smart basketball because if you turn that ball over, you feed into a feeding frenzy in their transition game and that's not where you want them to be.

Q. Coach, have you heard from any of the guys from that 2002 team the last week or two during this last week, have you talked to them, what have the conversations been like?
COACH KENT: I know they talk to people on my staff. I'm tougher to get to. I know they're excited. Luke Jackson gave us the advice, make sure you watch enough tape on them. We didn't feel we watched enough tape when we played Kansas. I scratch my head, how much did we and did we not watch and everything else. But I know they're excited we're in this position and I know they're excited to give us any advice they can give us to get beyond this position. We also know there's a huge, huge challenge ahead of us.

Q. Ernie, I'm guessing that you all have cable out on the West Coast and get to see the occasional Big East game. Did what Villanova did last year give you any sort of encouragement in going to the four guards this year? And if so, are you at all tempted to watch the tape of the Villanova-Florida regional final and see how that went?
COACH KENT: I'm tempted to do it and probably will do it. They encouraged us a lot. If fact, we looked at tape of Villanova and I looked at Villanova and Florida last summer when we talked about going to the four guards. I watched them play two or three tapes of Villanova and one of them was the Florida game, and those types of things.
So it definitely influenced us with the success they had last year. And they were more of a full court pressing team to control or disrupt defenses that way to offset their size. They made you speed the game up and make it play a little bit faster so maybe there wasn't as much dominating and pounding into the post as it was shooting more 3s by your opponent so they could get out and run you. That's not us.
We're not a pressing team that's going to pressure you full court. We're more of a team that's going to play a little more solid defense in the half court and more of a possession by possession.
But Florida, again, they offer the ultimate challenge. First it was Georgetown this year. At one point in time -- obviously it was UCLA and one point in time. It was even Stanford with their size, and now you've got a team that offers you the ultimate challenge because they are the defending national champions. They've got size, they've got great guard play. They've got great bench play. Size coming off the bench. It is going to be an enormous test for these guys. And I told them it's one more big final exam that's sitting there for them, because we've taken the week to get through our final exams. In fact, Maarty Leunen is finishing up his today.

Q. Ernie, you're in a merciless profession. When you made the stylistic move this year, did you consider the professional risk you were taking if it were to blow up on you?
COACH KENT: No, this is a business that, you know, it has changed so much over the course of the last 30 years and certainly 20 years and certainly 10 years. With the day and age of the Internet and everybody wanting instant success right now, with people being very impatient with what George Mason did last year, and I think it set the mid-major world on fire and turned them upside down with all the firings this year, because everybody feels like we can do that. It's a business that it's a very demanding profession.
And you need to have a passion and a love for it to do it. Otherwise you better get out of it because it can gobble you up.
As long as my passion and my love is still there to work with these young people, to work for my alma mater, to build teams and build programs, I'm going to stay in it.
And it is still there. But it never even dawned on me because we are a speed team going to the small lineup, all it has done is made us play faster. If anything we went back to our style of play. When this group came in the door we wanted them to play fast. They wanted to play fast, but they didn't understand or have the mentality or mental toughness to play fast. Because it's a lot of work to defend that one end and then run as hard as you can down to the other end of the floor and run as hard as you can back on transition and defend like madmen. Freshman can't do that. Most sophomores can't do it. They figured it out this junior year and the decision we made is we're going back to what got us the success in the first place and we'll be more demanding with this team and luckily they responded.

Q. You talked about being at your alma mater and your ties. How much more difficult did it make that when things were down when you had personal issues to get through that? Did you actually look at the fact that I might be leaving my alma mater?
COACH KENT: You know, any time I think you come back and coach at your alma mater it's different, because the reason for that is if I were the head coach at say wherever, Wisconsin or wherever, where you can go into an environment where you don't know people, it's a big enough area where you could catch your job and maybe get someplace where people don't know you.
When you coach at your alma mater, there are people that sit in those stands behind our bench that I was in the home when their kids came home from the hospital and I baby-sat for a lot of those boosters sitting behind that bench.
And you turn around and look behind that bench and those same boosters are sitting there with their same kids who have their children now and they're sitting next to your kids who are adults, that's Oregon. And that's the passion and the intimacy of a community and a building like Mack Court. So it's difficult because you know so many people on a personal note and you take winning and, more importantly, you take losing more personally because you feel like you've failed not only yourself and your family but you feel like you've failed people too. So there's a lot more pressure on you wanting to be successful in that environment when you're coaching your alma mater.

Q. What kind of role do you expect Joevan to play against Florida?
COACH KENT: He's a freshman about three months behind everybody else in the program. He's someone that at one point in time they were talking about potentially down the road hip replacement because he had a hip injury requiring major surgery coming out of high school before he put on a uniform. Had the surgery. He was three months behind everybody in terms of conditioning and everything else. Over the course of the year he's dropped 25 pounds and he's just now starting to come on.
He plays with so much passion for the game and fire that you can't keep him off the floor. And he's an undersized big man that is pretty skilled out on the perimeter to handle the ball. So I see a role for him that he's going to have to help us in this ball game. He's got to find a way to defend and he has to find a way to score against those big guys in this ball game and hopefully he'll be able to do that.

Q. Coach, you're a team that has a number of kids that can shoot the 3 and make the 3, and you use it in your offense. They, for at least a large part of the year, they're number one team in the country for defending the 3. Why are they successful doing it and how can you attack them?
COACH KENT: Again, I think people overlook what we do against ourselves in practice. It allows us to be a pretty good defensive team. We love to shoot the three-point shot. I think the biggest thing in defending a team that shoots the 3 is to get back in transition and try not to give them any open looks. If they're going to shoot it under pressure, then there's nothing you can do about that. But when you have great three-point shooting teams, you definitely don't want to give them wide looks because they'll kill you. Transition becomes a big key. In the half court, just making sure you're paying attention to where the shooters are on the floor and try not to give them any open looks.
I thought we did a pretty good job against Vegas. Cal is a terrific three-point shooting team. Arizona was a terrific three-point shooting team as well. So we've played against some teams like that but nothing like what we're going to see in the game tomorrow.

Q. Were are they so good at defending it?
COACH KENT: I think they're so great at defending because he's a great coach. He understands those same things I told you about, defensive transition. They're a team that shoots so many in practice, they work against it every day, get after each other every day. They're a long, athletic basketball team. They do a good job sometimes of switching ball screens on the perimeter. Their big guys are not as bad as you think they are at defending smaller guards out on the perimeter. They make it tough for you to score because they're very well coached and they're pretty athletic as well.

Q. Coach, what were the circumstances of you once coaching in Saudi Arabia and what did you take from that experience?
COACH KENT: You know, I was the low man on the totem pole at the University of Oregon when NCAA changed the rules and they cut back on a number of graduate assistants and part-time coaches were done away way back in 1978.
In 1979 I went into radio and television broadcasting. In 1980 I had a chance to go overseas and coach to get the, quote/unquote, head coaching experience on your resume. I figured I would go over and do it for two years. My wife and I were the only Americans at a Muslim Shiite village in Saudi Arabia where I had to learn how to speak Arabic and do everything through a translator. It was one of the more amazing experiences I ever went through. For the next five years over there I continued to coach and went to work for the Arabian-American oil company ARAMCO. All three of my kids were born over there. Dual citizenship up until the age 21. And if you have six months, I could tell you some pretty amazing stories that went on over there.
So it was a great experience. I was very fortunate. I spent seven years out in this business out of the country and to come back have a guy like Boyd Grant believe in me and hire me at Colorado State and give me an opportunity to coach stateside. From Boyd Grant to Mike Montgomery at Saint Mary's to six years at Saint Mary's as a head coach to Oregon, it's been a long road to get back to my alma mater and a unique way to get there.

Q. Listening to some of your answers today and it sounds like you are that rare guy that understands professionally what makes him happy. In general, when all these jobs start opening up and guys' names come up, how do you avoid chasing after something that looks good on paper but really isn't as good as where you already are?
COACH KENT: I think the important thing is to search what's in your heart and find out. I've never been a guy that has chased the almighty dollar. I don't believe in that. Money is not the thing that motivates me to be in this profession.
What's in this profession for me are these kids and being able to be in a situation where people want you there and you can be successful and in an environment.
I feel like we have an environment that's a very unique situation. A lot of people west of the -- east of the Mississippi don't know a lot about the University of Oregon. But if you step foot on that campus you see the facilities, you see the environment, you see that green, you see those mountains. You see that water. You see that MacKenzie river, which my daughter is named after. You'll see the passion and love I have for my institution and that university.
So I think it's a comfort zone that's coaching you gotta be careful with. If you can find a place where you're comfortable I think it's important that you ride it out and you stay there not get into a situation where you're chasing dollars.
Although this is a business where the pressures go along with winning and losing as well.

Q. When you were the Shiite community, did you play the Sunnis in anything?
COACH KENT: Yes. I say that because my incoming boss, he made the comment to me about you seem to be one of those guys like me that work better with your feet to the fire. I kind of chuckled to him. I said, Pat, let me tell you something. I've been in an environment where my passport was on one side of the table and my paycheck was on the other side of the table and I was in a room where I spoke no Arabic and the understanding was you cannot leave the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia if your basketball program doesn't win.
I said, when you go to the games, there was a young Saudi holding a submachine gun at every tunnel at these games because the rivalries were so intense. I said, I think I can handle a little bit of pressure of college basketball having gone through that environment. We got a good chuckle out of that.
So understand it was an amazing, amazing situation that I've come to have a lot of respect for, a lot of people that I still know over there as friends. And, in fact, my boss called me after our win in Spokane. They happened to be in Houston, and they called me to congratulate me. I thought that was pretty neat to be able to speak Arabic to him over the phone on the bus with some of my players and they don't know what I'm talking about.

Q. I guess nobody has held a submachine gun to your head --
COACH KENT: No, no, no. They held my passport, though.

Q. For those not up on Oregon basketball, it seems like given the success you have and the Elite 8 and your ties to Oregon, just to hear that you are -- the job is even a question is surprising. Can you just enlighten us on why would it even be a question at this point?
COACH KENT: We came in the door with a great recruiting class: Malik Hairston, Bryce Taylor, Maarty Leunen, Chamberlain Oguchi. And our marketing department named that team the team of the century and off we went.
The front page of the newspaper had this big blownup picture of Malik Hairston dunking the ball, and then came the next Michael Jordan. Then Malik made the comment, I'm going to Carmelo-ize the University of Oregon. We came in and I said, this is a team that can win the Pac-10 championship. You have the ingredients, which is what you need to sell a young team on being successful.
As a community, if you look back over the past 10 years we've been at Oregon, I'm probably the only coach -- I don't now smart this was, I gave my boss a 10-year business plan so I put in writing that we're going to win the Pac-10 championship, Pac-10 tournament championship. We're going to go to the Sweet 16. We're going to Elite 8 and Final Four and build a new arena and put guys into the NBA and we'll have top recruiting classes.
We've done everything on that business plan with the exception of going to the Final Four and building a new arena. And when you look at the expectations, we've raised the bar. Our football program did it and our basketball program did it. So along with that when you have that little slippage for two years, we're in a business in this day and age when you look at a great coach, like Tubby Smith that has averaged 25 wins, won a national championship, five SEC conference championships, and they don't respect him where he is, that's just amazing to me because he's one great basketball coach.
But that's the nature of our business. And again you either deal with it or you get out of the business. And in my case it's something that you have to go through. We took the heat. We moved forward now and we'll see where we go from here.

Q. Everyone knows about your affiliation with Nike and Phil Knight's involvement with the program. What are the advantages, pressures, how much influence does that company have and does he have over the athletic program?
COACH KENT: Phil is here at the games. He was with us in Spokane as well and saw those games.
And he is no different than any of the great boosters at Michigan and Wisconsin and UCLA. He just happens to be Phil Knight and the owner of Nike. We've talked about this all along. I've been there 10 years and I have yet to see him on the bench call one single play for me. I don't know if I'd let him do it anyhow. But he has a love and a passion for his institution that I think is very, very unique in this day and age.
And again, he just happens to be the owner of Nike.
His influence is one that he's given generously to the academic side of the university. Him and his wife Penny have been generously to the athletic side in terms of the facilities and like that.
And it's one that you want to really -- makes you want to get the job done because they're such great people and they have such a great love and a great passion for that university in all aspects of it.

Q. Ernie, Billy Donovan obviously goes back to the start of the three-point thing and everybody identifies with that. Do you relate to all of that, or where do three-point things become so key, part of your system? Where did you decide that that had to be and can you imagine basketball without it?
COACH KENT: Billy was at Providence, correct? I was on the bus with Stu Jackson and that team when they went to practice one time. And I saw them practice at the Final Four. And through the years I think his relationship with Rick and how they get up and down and press and shoot it and everything else, I think it's a great, great weapon.
It's obviously a thrilling thing for fans to have that three-point shot there. I do not think they need to change the line. I think we have a great, great game. Why change it? It's great at every level. And obviously with the Final Four and all that hype it shows you how great it is.
So it's a shot that I love and I've given -- there's probably seven, maybe eight guys on my team that have the green light to shoot it at any time. They just need to understand good shot/bad shot and time and shot situations.
I think when you can give a team that can shoot at that type of confidence in return what they give me is just getting in the gym and working on their shooting and making sure they're confident as individuals themselves to pull the trigger on it and everything.

Q. There was a lot of attention recently when the new athletic director came in with his background. What does he bring to the table? What changes can you anticipate in your program and the whole athletic program?
COACH KENT: We lost a great athletic director in Bill Moos and I think his understanding of the business side and athletic side was tremendous. We're getting a great athletic director in Pat Kilkenny, when I look at him, having him on board for the last month or so and seeing him operate, what I see is somebody that loves athletics but he has a sharp, sharp business mind and really pays attention to detail and there's a reason he's a successful businessman.
And I think, and I'm hoping, very much like the gentleman that's in charge of Michigan right now that stepped out from corporate America and things like that, he'll bring that same type of impact to our program at the University of Oregon, because he has a love for the University of Oregon. And he has a very sharp business mind that I think will allow us to go to great, great levels in terms of our competitiveness in the years to come.

Q. Has Jordan ever expressed regret about dropping by the wayside and what this turned out to be a pretty special season?
COACH KENT: He hasn't, but I have because I look at Coach Kruger and his son and what it would be like having my son on the floor as a player. And this would be the perfect team for him for who he is and everything, what this team has developed into. But part of what this team is having Jordan with us and not with us, to go through that stage to develop them where they are today.
What I mean by that is he brought a tremendous amount of passion to the game. He's given his heart and soul in the area of the track program at the University of Oregon, football at University of Oregon, basketball at University of Oregon. He's already graduated. As a family we sat down and I figured that he had given everything he needed to give to the University of Oregon and it was time for me to support him in whatever he wanted to do.
And he chose the direction of football. And as much as I can financially and supportively in any way I can, I'm going to allow him to reach his dreams now.
He's with us on this trip. He's in the locker room with the guys, comes on the bus and shoot-arounds. It's neat to have him around because I think what he went through as being a three-sport athlete and how hard and how focused he worked gave a tremendous amount of respect for him being a coach's son. He has a tremendous amount of respect for them for what they've gone through the last couple of years and what they've developed into as a basketball team as well.

Q. You mentioned earlier a policy when you were approached by schools, you said you owe it to them as professional courtesy just to hear them out. Billy Donovan is in that same sort of situation with Kentucky and the rumors and such. Seems like a coach, if he comes out and says he's interested he will alienate a lot of people at home; if he says he's not, he may be cutting himself short. How do you walk that fine line when you're in that position?
COACH KENT: I think as being in the stands you need to respect coaches in that position. Because Billy is a great basketball coach that runs a great basketball program. And I think again in our business and being professionals, being courteous and all those things, I think he's giving the right answer.
Let him coach his basketball team and get the basketball season over with and see where he is. He has a love and passion for his school. I see it in the way he coaches. I have a love and passion for my school as well, too, but I think he understands the level that he's at and what's involved in everything that goes into it. The ins and outs. So I think it's difficult. You have some coaches that come out and say not interested. If it was this job or this job, and maybe Billy would come out and say that. I don't know what his ties are, what his feelings are for a school that he's been involved with in the past and everything else.
And give him the opportunity to coach his team and the challenges and things, may take a different direction. I don't know that. I can't speak for him.

Q. That track program, the conditioning program I hear the players talk about, was that something that someone came up with for them or did they do that on their own?
COACH KENT: Oregon is maybe like many other places in the country. When you deal with superstar athletes that have been catered to at the AAU level and coming out of high school, I think it's very easy to walk into environments you're surrounded by so much support and so much love of boosters and fans that are just so excited that you're there. I always say it's very easy to be very mediocre and feel like you're successful because you've got all these people still in love with you, patting you on the back. In our environment where players are, we had them on billboards promoting our Oregon Sports Network and things like that, and there's so much hype around them, I felt we were a soft basketball team that needed to get tough.
And we took them off the billboards. We went back to work. We went to boot camp. We went to our track coaches and said we need a program put together that's going to push these guys beyond their limits, and they gave us one that I even looked at and said, am I doing the right thing, particularly with my big guys, could I hurt them from pushing them that hard? The thing that was explained to me, what you want to do is expand their mental capacity to handle toughness.
And we put them to work. And to their credit, Malik, Mitch Platt and Maarty Leunen put the program into place in the spring and went through it. They did a very good job and got excited, and the other players saw the results of Mitch Platt dropping 20 pounds and Malik's game and how it changed, Maarty Leunen's game, how it changed. It was easy to convince them to do this program through the summer. And it was a grueling, grueling program that really not so much got them in shape because everybody gets in shape. It made them mentally tough and that's the last step I felt like this group needed to get to. And I felt like they've been that way the rest of the year.
MODERATOR: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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