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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: BIRMINGHAMMarch 20, 2008Andre McGeeDavid PadgettRick PitinoTerrence WilliamsBIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA THE MODERATOR: We'll start here with questions for the Louisville student-athletes. Q. Fellows, you guys have lost your last two games, but just looking at you right now, still seem loose, still seem very confident. Just where does this team stand at right now? DAVID PADGETT: I guess I'll take this one. Obviously, we didn't finish the Big East season like we wanted to, we lost to Georgetown and Pittsburgh in the first round of the tournament. But it's pretty much a whole new season from this point on. The NCAA tournament is a whole another level and we can't really dwell on what happened in the past. So, our focus right now is just our first round game to tomorrow and just take it one day at a time. Learn from the mistakes we made and then move on from there. Q. Does the fact that y'all competed in the Big East, you lost to Pitt, but they went ahead and won the tournament and are playing well. Does that help you feel better about coming into this tournament having to face that kind of competition? ANDRE MCGEE: I think we feel real good about ourselves right now. Looking at our last two losses one was against Georgetown, one of the best defensive teams in the nation and Pittsburgh one of the hottest teams in the country right now. So, losing to two great teams, one by two or three points and the other team in overtime, it says a lot about our team. We really fought hard but didn't get the job done in the later stages of the game. But we really have a lot of confidence in ourselves. Q. How do you go about defending a guy like Reggie Larry who's just been on fire the last five or six games? TERRENCE WILLIAMS: Got to be team defense. You can't just say Earl Clark go stop him or Palacios go stop him, it got to be team defense. Everybody helping out each other. We played a lot of great players throughout this year, so I mean, it might not be nothing different, but of course, you got to stop him. So the answer is team defense. You can't just put one person on him. Everybody got to help out. Q. David, is that a T-shirt, a new thing or is this a message behind it? DAVID PADGETT: No, we just -- I think, I don't know, I think our equipment manager maybe or one of the assistant coaches came up with. They handed them out yesterday at practice. So, it's was kind of one of those new shirts that we got so we're just wearing it around. Q. What concerns you the most about the Broncos? TERRENCE WILLIAMS: The way that they shoot the ball. I think they're first or second in shooting. They shoot a high percentage from the 3-point, high percentage field goals so that's always tough to guard when you have -- and I think their five man is shooting 65 percent or something. You got to always worry about that because that means that he hardly misses. So what concerns us most about them is the way they shoot the ball. ANDRE MCGEE: I think the way they shoot the ball along with their fast break attack. They're one of the greatest fast break teams in the country right now. They really push the ball with less dribbling and more passing, which enables them to get open threes, which they shoot at a very alarming percentage. So we really got to be able to get to those shooters before they make the attempt. Q. Can any of you guys talk about your press and what it's designed to do and is that a key to slowing Boise State's transition? DAVID PADGETT: Yeah, our press is -- no matter who we're playing, if we're playing a team who plays up tempo or a slow down team we don't really change our style a whole lot. I think the one thing that is probably constant with all of our defenses is just the fact that it comes out to taking good shots on offense which allows us to set up our press. So even though Boise State's one of the best offensive teams in the country and they shoot the ball extremely well, we're not going to just completely change our whole game plan. We approach every game the same and just really try to focus on what we need to do our five versus their five. So our press is just a factor, no matter who we're playing. Q. Terrance, Matt Nelson said he played against you in high school. And your team beat them. And he said he really would like to give you that one and take the NCAA tournament win. What do you say about that? TERRENCE WILLIAMS: Probably in high school it was more of an individual thing with me and my team. And like we won, but now it's more of a team thing. So I can't really go out and say, well, that's not going to happen we're going to beat them. I'm very confident in the Louisville Cardinals, this team, and the way we have been preparing and practicing and I think that we'll be clicking on all cylinders, hopefully, and whatever happens, happens. I wish him the best of luck, to him and his team. Q. I wonder if you guys can talk about the job that Coach Pitino has done this year when things weren't going so we'll at the beginning of the year and how he kind of gave you guys the confidence to turn it around. DAVID PADGETT: Well that's what you get with somebody who has been coaching as long as he has and who has experience as he has. He's been to five Final Fours and he's, on the NBA level and college level, and somebody who coaches for 32, 33 years, they know how to handle every kind of situation. So just a lot of it just comes with experience and he knew with the injuries that we sustained early in the year that it was going to be tough but he knew that myself and Taj were going to be back so we just kept trying to play hard every game and just kept trying to battle it out and just play as well as we could. Q. You guys lost two close games to two good teams at the end of the year, did coach -- how did he deal with that with you, guy? Did he dwell on it? Did he tell you to forget about it, how did he handle it? TERRENCE WILLIAMS: He didn't really dwell on it. Of course he was kind of upset with the situation. We were upset as players. But it was like it's kind of like I told them, like you never look down, unless you're helping somebody up. So what I mean by that is you can't hold your head. Do you know if there's still more to play in the season. So everybody took the words that he said, the message behind the words and kept going. And he just basically told us that it's not over. We had to watch film on it, you got to learn from your mistakes, and we're just fortunate enough to be in the situation where we can hopefully correct it. Q. The last eight games y'all's free throw percentage has been less than 64 percent every game. Shooting 59.1, which is actually less than Memphis, has that been a big talking point the last few days? ANDRE MCGEE: It hasn't been a huge talking point. But free throw is something we work on every practice. Coach has really been out talking to us about slowing down, posture, balance, follow through and things like that. And just trying to be focused when we're at the free throw line, take deep breaths and things like that. Because NCAA tournament, a lot of games are decided by the free throw line. So it is going to play a factor so guys really do have to focus in. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you. Coach Pitino, why don't you start with an opening statement and then we'll go to questions. COACH PITINO: I feel like I'm going to be interrogated. Well we're very excited to be here and certainly representing the Big East. As one of our teams. We're going to play against an outstanding ball club who as far as shooting the basketball running the break is as good as any team in the country. So we have got to take good shots ourselves, make sure we don't turn it over, and keep them out of transition. And we got to guard the 3-point shot as if the game is on the line almost every possession as they shoot an incredible percentage from the 3-point line. THE MODERATOR: Questions? Q. Have you played anybody that is anything like Boise State this year? COACH PITINO: Yes, very much so. BYU. And BYU, they do a lot of things offensively that they do in terms of the transition game in terms of the way they work inside to out. In terms of the way they can have a quick trigger on the 3-point shot because they're so good at it. So they remind me of BYU. The unfortunate thing is we lost to BYU. (Laughter.) Q. I was curious how much you conversed with Marvin this week in trying to get some inside information in how to attack the Broncos? COACH PITINO: No, we didn't talk to Marvin about it. We would not -- that's their league. And generally we would not, although Marvin's a very close friend, we would not do that to Marvin, it puts him in a difficult situation. We have enough tape on it that you don't need to do that. And we think that Marvin would dead out lie to us. (Laughter.). Q. Louisville's almost here every single year, Boise State's not been here for 14 years, is there a hunger factor there that you might be concerned about between these two teams? COACH PITINO: I can just say we're very hungry ourselves. We'll play like starving dogs and so does every team in the NCAA. So it's, if they beat us, it's because they have the ability to beat us, it's not because they're more or less hungry. Because we're all very hungry. Every team in this tournament is hungry. And we'll play that way and so will they. Q. You've certainly seen your fair share of good players this year, where does Reggie Larry rank as far as athleticism and among the elite guys? COACH PITINO: Well, I would probably be a bad judge of that. Because I see those guys so much more watching guys on tape is not the same as watching them in person. But he certainly pound for pound, inch for inch, is a very effective basketball player. Outside as well as inside. Q. As one of the early pioneers of the 3-point shot how much do you enjoy watching Boise State shoot it and how they play? Is that what you envision when you came on the scene in the '80s when the 3-point got introduced? COACH PITINO: Yes, because they shoot such a good percentage. A lot of teams shoot the 3-point shot, but their percentage is not as good. This is a team that shoots 51 percent from the field, shoots a high percentage from the three, and has a good terrific low post game. And I think that's what makes them so effective, because if you give them single coverage in the low post, then they're going to hurt you inside. If you trap down or dig hard on their low post, they throw it back out and they're so proficient at the 3-point shot that they can hurt you there as well. They're also terrific in transition and they take the three in transition, which a lot of teams do not do. So they're very effective. It's a great weapon for them. And they bring guys off the bench and shoot it at four positions and bring guys in off the bench who are great 3-point shooters as well. Q. I was just going to get your opinion on the parity in college basketball it could be argued that this year's tournament is top heavy, but with George Mason and other Mid Majors going deep in recent years, how does that approach how you approach a game like this against a 14 seed? COACH PITINO: I think it's year to year. Sometimes you see a lot of upsets, sometimes you don't. Certainly certain leagues are stronger in other years and then not. I think it's cyclical, depends on the year. There haven't been too many upsets yet today. So you don't know how it's going to play out. You certainly are going to see a lot of upsets, but I think that the ability to shoot the basketball creates the upsets. In a given night in a 40 minute basketball game, this is not a pro series, if somebody is shooting the ball extremely well, anything can happen. And I know that happened to us in 1987. You know, we just got on a tremendous run shooting the basketball. As long as you take good shots, you have the ability to shoot it, play good defense, you have a chance to win. Q. Can you talk about when you first got into the NCAA tournament back 25 years ago, your expectations and what it was like the whole arena and whole setting as compared to what it's like now for you. COACH PITINO: Well, Boston University was the first tournament and for us back then we were just excited to be part of it. In '87 Providence College, we Providence had not gone to a tournament since the inception of the Big East, seven straight years. So we were elated to be part of it. We were very upset though, our fans never traveled with us because they were upset because they felt that we got the shaft because back then they made us come to Birmingham, Alabama to play UAB on their home court. So our fans thought it was unfair and were very upset at that. And it was a heck of a ball game, it was, as I remember it was one, either up or down at half time, and we wound up winning I think by 28, 30 points until the second half because an old pudgy kid just went off on them, from Billy the Kid Donovan. So it brings back great memories to be back here, but I remember our fans being so upset at the fact that we had to play on another team's home court and how unfair it was, that it took us awhile to make the tournament, so we were elated, we didn't care that it was at their place. Even though it was going to be on a road game for us. And then it took off from there for us. Q. Talk about the tempo, I know you said in the past you like to take a few more chances in a tournament, but with them being an up-and-down team that shoots a lot of three, do you still hold that philosophy? COACH PITINO: No, we're going to hold the ball against Boise tomorrow, we're going to run it down to about six seconds, run some high pick and rolls, see if they can defend it well and you're going to have to live to try and beat the clock at the last second for us. So I hope it works. THE MODERATOR: Other questions? Last chance. Okay. Thank you, coach. End of FastScripts |
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