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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: LITTLE ROCKMarch 21, 2008Malik HairstonErnie KentMaarty LeunenLITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS THE MODERATOR: Go ahead, coach. COACH KENT: I want to say I thought we had an excellent game plan. We did a very good job in the first half, maybe some of the best basketball that we played in the first half. I felt like the second half they had made some adjustments, their defense stretched us out a little bit, and, in essence, we got some of the same great looks in the second half that we had in the first half. The ball didn't go down. There's probably five, six that rattled in and popped out, and they gained the momentum of the game and defensively we were a little bit better in the first half than we were in the second half. A lot had to do with missing some shots. We missed some shots. They made some buckets. It was like they really started coming at us and really played well in the second half. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the players. Q. Malik, what did you think about their struggles from the 3-point line? Did you sense once they made that first one, they settled down a little bit? MALIK HAIRSTON: Yeah, definitely. They definitely had some guys that can put the ball in the hole. They kind of got going in the second half. Gave them a lot of confidence. Started to knock them down. Q. Maarty, did y'all face many people like Rhodes? He had a big night. He had 34 points. Just talk about him. MAARTY LEUNEN: Yeah. He's a tough player. Got a lot of things around the hoop. He's very skilled, can shoot the ball, made things tough on us. In the first half I felt even though he had 18 points, we did a good job as a team limiting other players and established a lead, but in the second half, they kind of got going where he was making buckets, and other guys were kind of feeding off that. It's unfortunate things happened that way, but they did. Q. Did y'all focus your defense a lot on stopping Gordon offensively and you ended up holding him under double figures? MALIK HAIRSTON: Not just Gordon. We definitely did focus on him but we also knew Rhodes was a great player, and we wanted do some things with both them, but we understood that the big fella would get some buckets because he is very skilled. We didn't want to let a lot of other guys have career nights. Q. For either of the two players, just Mississippi State is like second in the nation in field goal percentage defense. Lots of teams have struggled to shoot the ball against them. What is it about them that makes it difficult to try to score against? MAARTY LEUNEN: They got a great shot blocker in the middle. So kind of force everything to the middle, knowing they got great help in there. Tonight we had a lot of open shots, just weren't able to make it. Made it seem a little better, but give credit to them just because they did play very good defensively and were able to get going on the offensive end. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions? Guys, thank you very much. Congratulations on great careers at Oregon. Have a safe journey home. Thank you. Questions for Coach Kent. Q. Coach Kent, can you talk about their defense as, say, it compares to UCLA's? Are they even in that kind of category? COACH KENT: To some degree. UCLA is very sound defensively. They don't have a lot of breakdowns and slippage on the floor. They really don't give you a lot of looks. With Mississippi State, particularly second half when they start to really get up into you and pressure, they force you to drive. They got a great shot blocker inside. UCLA doesn't have a great shot blocker, but great team defense and great rotations and make it tough for you to score. I felt like we had some great looks at this game in the second half and the ball didn't go down. Consequently you're not making those, you're going to have to start driving and there's a shot blocker in there. We probably didn't do a very good job of attacking them in the second half. We had some wide open looks in the second half. Q. Coach, can you just talk a little bit about Maarty and Malik and Bryce and what they've meant to you and the program over their careers? COACH KENT: You got three guys, three 1,000-point scorers. Leave a huge legacy at the University of Oregon. More importantly, they've just raised the bar in our program, back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances and Elite 8 last year. Academically they've been off the charts. When you've got six guys on your program that graduated and three guys graduated early, that's just a phenomenal job they've done from a character perspective. It will lit take our community some time, but eventually they will look back and realize those guys left footprints in our program. Not only did they do that, they've been phenomenal in bringing kids into this program. A lot of it has, too, to do with them and at the University of Oregon. Q. Can you talk for a minute about Charles Rhodes and the impact he made in the game? It seemed for awhile he kind took over the game for them, and is there anything you could have done differently to slow him down? COACH KENT: I think he's a guy that's taken over a lot of games. I thought he was phenomenal in the game. He is a pro. He's very, very gifted as a player, very athletic. He's got great size and great feel for the game. Probably I thought we were pretty good on him in the first half, even though he had 18 points. We did do a good job of controlling the tempo of the game. He gave them a lot of confidence. Not that they shot the ball extremely good from the 3. They were four big 3s they hit. Lot of it had to do with us focusing on him. They did a great job of skipping the ball. Even when he wasn't scoring, he caused some problems because he was so focused on him. He left that weak side open a couple times, and Stewart hit some big shots over there. The thing different we could have done is have a bigger body player like them that could have guarded him and defended him a little better. Memphis has players like that. We don't have players like that we had on the floor and they got a lot of minutes with us. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions? Coach, been a real pleasure to have you here. Best of luck to you and your guys. COACH KENT: I thought the city did an excellent job of hosting this tournament. We've had a great time here. The city should pat itself on the back how well they did things here. It's a first class organization. Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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