|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: RALEIGHMarch 21, 2008Tyler HansbroughTy LawsonDeon ThompsonRoy WilliamsRALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA COACH WILLIAMS: Well, we're very pleased with the way we played in the second half. The first half, I thought they had us on our heels a little bit, no pun intended. We weren't doing a very good job of running back, and so they were scoring on the break and we would score and they would score, and so it wasn't a very consistent thing. We had a little separation right before the half, and then got it up to 19, and then we came out early in the second half and I think made our first three shots. Then after that, we were just more gifted and talented, is what is boils down to. I told Milan, I really thought his club played extremely well the second half of the season. I got to watch four games of theirs, and they got better and better as the season went along. But we are more gifted than they are, and our guys really had a great workman-like attitude about playing the game. The margin on the back boards and what Deon and Alex gave us inside that we haven't had recently was really a big plus for us, and in the second half, I thought we really played well. Q. Tyler, how did it look up to see Carolina Blue inside this arena? TYLER HANSBROUGH: It's definitely different from what we are used to. It's good to see everybody pulling for us and all of the blue. It's a little different feeling. Q. Your injury, it seems like you were almost 100% today, particularly the sequence in the second half, you had a steal and a spin-dribble and the layup, can you talk about how you felt compared to the way you've been playing? TY LAWSON: My ankle has been feeling better the last few games. That ACC Tournament I was trying to push off on it and things like that. I think that helped it out a lot more playing in the ACC Tournament and I feel like I'm a lot better and trusting my ankle. I just pushed it and he tried to cut me off and I sped off of him and my ankle, felt good on it. I was just pushing and playing like I normally do? Q. You had eight points last week total, and I know you had a talk earlier with Coach this week, how inspirational was that talk and how do you feel about your performance tonight? DEON THOMPSON: I felt good, I felt like I got back to playing the way I know I can. Last weekend was pretty bad. I just kept working on our off-days and kept talking with Coach and working on my mindset. That's the big thing for me is my mental game, so just working on my mindset. Q. Tyler and Ty, tonight's game is kind of like the reward game for finishing first in the ACC, winning the tournament and being the No. 1 seed. Could you talk about what it enabled you to do as far as getting back in the groove without having to be pushed too hard so that you can be ready to go on Sunday? TYLER HANSBROUGH: Well, in the first half, I thought they ran the ball real well, and you know, they came back at us, which was good for us, just because we can see that farther on, and also, I think you know, they came out, not intimidated by us, and really played well. You know, just was good to, you know, kind of get back in the flow of things and the second half, I think we played a lot better. TY LAWSON: I just feel they pushed us. They pushed the ball up and down the court like we did, so we had to react to it. They are a good team. They just pushed the ball, and we had to react to it, basically. Q. Just to follow up, there are not a lot of teams that run with you. Once it was clear that they were going to, what was your sort of reaction in? TY LAWSON: We actually like when teams run with us, we practice like that every day, getting back on defense and then pushing us back. It gives us a lot of opportunities to score on the break and that's the way we like to play. So we like it when people run with us. Q. Recently at our campus, we had a death of our track star, a very popular kid, Dustin Bower (ph). I guess this is for all of the athletes up there. How has the team regrouped and coped with the death of Eve Carson who recently died? TYLER HANSBROUGH: We all know she was a great person and she was a big basketball fan, and you know, we did what we could. We know that she pulled for us a lot and we were thinking about her and things like that. DEON THOMPSON: That could happen to anybody. That's just the crazy thing about it. The same age as us and to see the effect it had on our whole campus, it's a tough thing to see. It's on our minds but we just try to cope with it and do what we can. TY LAWSON: Basically like Tyler said, she was a great person and ran the student body real well. She was a great person. We just have to cope with it. We had a memorial service, went to the memorial service and also gave the family a jersey because we knew she was a big basketball fan. So basically, I mean, we just had to cope with it. COACH WILLIAMS: I'll interrupt here a second. When the kids went out tonight for the opening warm up period where it's not structured and they just go out and shot on their own, the majority of the kids wore t-shirts with Eve's name on it, they had some of those and Quentin Thomas asked me if we could get some, and the kids wore those on the court tonight the first time they went out. Q. For any of the basketball players, what did you -- when you look back on it, what do you like that you did tonight? What do you feel good about, and where do you feel like you want to sharpen up for Sunday? DEON THOMPSON: I think as a team we didn't come out slow and sometimes when you see teams like Mount St. Mary's, you might come out a little slow, not as prepared to play. But we came out from the beginning prepared to play, and we're going to need just as much intensity for Sunday if we play Arkansas or Indiana, so just being into the game and playing hard. I like how we came out at the beginning of the game. Q. Did you pay attention to the crowd, did it sound like the Dean Dome tonight? COACH WILLIAMS: Not really. It was good to have everybody pulling for us and have the home atmosphere but I don't think anything really compares to the Dean Dome to me just to be honest with you. Q. For Ty, scoring 60 points in the first half, you were feeling good running the basketball and you have been playing pretty good defense as of late, do you not worry about that as much when you are running the floor that well and scoring so many points, still up by 20, even though they are shooting it well and they scored 41 in the first half? TY LAWSON: Do you mean do we not worry as much about defense? Q. When you are scoring at will like that, does it get put on the back burner? COACH WILLIAMS: I'll answer that one. Their butts better be worried about it. (Laughter) That's what Ty was going to say also. TY LAWSON: Exactly. (Laughter) Yeah, I mean, defense is always on our minds, No. 1 priority when we are on the court. We have to stop the other team. I mean, if our shots are not falling some games, we have to rely on that. So that's the first thing we want to do well on the court. Q. Can you talk about mindset coming into this game, and not being overconfident and to play the way you did tonight? COACH WILLIAMS: We did talk about it in the terms you said. We have to go out and be ourselves regardless of who we play. The kids laugh at it but I have a saying, don't go out there tip-toeing through the tulips. The let's go out there with force and a sense of urgency regardless of who we are playing. The guys were focused and they did hit us between the eyes a little bit with how hard they were coming up our backs. I felt like our guys would be prepared to play. I tell the guys all the time, if you're looking down the road at somebody else, that's where you're going, down the road back home. Q. Did any of that have to do with Belmont last night? COACH WILLIAMS: No. Mast I was watching Mount St. Mary's against Sacred Heart tape, the finals of their tournament and walked from one area where there's a TV to another one and saw the kid from Belmont shoot it from the center line and saw Rick and Mike shaking hands and saw the score, and that's the only play I saw of the whole game. I don't know what the players did. We have been pretty fortunate, first-round games, we have won a bunch of them, and hopefully we'll always be focused. Q. You mentioned the play of Alex and Deon, was it more imperative for those guys to get more on the offense tonight? COACH WILLIAMS: Well, they got him more on the offense because of their work on the offensive back boards. You know, as Deon was reminded over here, he only scored eight points the whole weekend and was 3 for 15, but I had already reminded him of that so he didn't need anymore. I can live with some things but you have to play on the defensive end and you have to rebound, and that's what we didn't do from that spot as well as we needed in the tournament. So we did have a conversation with Deon, and I think Alex stepped up, as well. But Deon is finally starting to feel a little bit better, because I think today, it's the first time he's been in double figures since he got hurt at Virginia, so he's finally getting healthy again. Q. You've talked to us about the ACC Tournament and the fact that it is very strenuous. That's three rugged days. So a game like today, it is sort of -- even though you've got to come out and play and all that, it is sort of a reward to kind of get you back in the groove without losing and being ready to roll on Sunday, isn't it? COACH WILLIAMS: Well, it is, I think that that's the reason the regular season does mean something. But also, I probably came closer to losing the 16-1 matchup than anybody that's ever coached. Because Holy Cross had us with six minutes to go when I was at Kansas as the No. 1 seed, so I never take anything for granted, never. We decided to go out and play the best that we can possibly play. The reward for playing real well on the ACC Tournament was the way you feel. It's not that somebody is going to give you something later on. So the reward is the satisfaction that you get from winning an ACC championship, getting the ring, cutting the banner and getting that feeling. Q. That run, do you feel that's a suicidal game plan over the years? COACH WILLIAMS: No, every coach has to trust what they believe and I think you need to ask Milan this question, and I think there was a time they decided this season there was a time running because the best thing for them and they won nine of their last ten games playing that way, and it was effective. If they held the ball, we might have won by the same margin but might have been by fewer points. He's got -- I don't think I'll miss, he has a freshman and sophomore in the backcourt that will be big time players for him and I think he's trying to build a program. I did tell him I was very proud -- not proud, but I admired what they had done looking at the tapes over the course of the nine or ten games they had played. Q. When you entered the 2005 tournament, you obviously had a strong team, top seed. Does this feel similar to that or different? COACH WILLIAMS: I felt like we had been a very good team all year. I felt like we were extremely talented in some ways, we weren't given much respect for playing as a team, and this team doesn't get much respect for the way we guard and play defense, and everybody says we are talented and we just roll the ball out and play. So, you know, you can make those scenarios, but I think there are two different teams. That team just had a strong, strong will to win a National Championship, but it was built during the course of the NCAA Tournament. So it remains to be seen what this team is going to do. Q. Could you just talk about your feelings about the league,3-0? COACH WILLIAMS: I think it's the strongest league. I was really disappointed we only had four teams in the tournament, and hopefully that we can show during the course of this tournament how well we can play. But the good news is, again, it's not like football where you play and Wake up on Monday morning and see what people vote. You get a chance to step up and do it or not now. End of FastScripts |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|