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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: BIRMINGHAMMarch 23, 2008Wayne ChismBruce PearlTyler SmithRamar SmithBIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and get started. Take an opening statement from Coach Pearl and then go to questions. COACH PEARL: We're very pleased to have survived and advance. We're about to head to a place we have been before and we've not been able to go past and that is to get to the Elite 8. Once again, what more can you say about Butler and the way those kids played, how they honor the game with the way they play and I thought Graves and Green were both terrific. I think we did a good job on Howard in the inside and that was a big factor for him. Our inside guys did a terrific job. And to be able to win the battle of the boards and be the more physical club, which we should be coming out of the SEC, I thought that was very, very significant for us. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions now, please. Q. Tyler, could you talk about that block? Did you think that you caught it on its way up? TYLER SMITH: They gave it to me, so I was happy they gave it to me. I don't know if I caught it on the way up or down. But I was just happy to get to the ball. Q. What makes Butler so difficult and unique to play? WAYNE CHISM: They got two guards that can play. And then they got a shooter that can shoot the ball. And they do a lot of screening. And we already went against that in the first round. And they kept screening the whole game and getting open looks and penetration. But we sat back and played a good defense in the first half and we played a good defense in the second half, but we had a couple of fouls and then they went to the line, but we still made it hard for them to get off a 3-point shot. We contested most of them and half of them went in, but we still played good defense at the end. Q. Ramar, talk about the break-away where you scored 26 seconds to go, was that something that just developed? RAMAR SMITH: No, Chris got the ball and I just tried to run the wing. He got it to me and my main focus with to get the ball up on the rim and score. Q. Tyler and Wayne, could you talk about the attention you paid number 34, Pete Campbell in the second half, because I can't even remember him getting and hitting a three in that half. TYLER SMITH: We saw him shooting the ball with the lights out two days ago. And our main focus was to make sure to run him off the deep line. Because he's a great shooter and sometimes he will run the three and the four, but coach got us defensively where we were switching everything and also the guards helped us out on that a lot. WAYNE CHISM: We came, when he played the four, we even ran a couple of different guys at him and I went on him a couple times, Tyler went on him a couple times, we had everybody rotating on him, don't matter who it was. Just staying in his passing lane in the second half. I think he hit like one, I believe, but other than that, he was missing because he was taking contested jump shots. In the first half, he was coming off drive, draw, dish and he was hitting them. But we came in the second half and contested all his jumpers and then after that he couldn't touch the ball any more. Q. I know you ran in to some foul trouble and had to sit a long time, could you talk about coming in to overtime and how comfortable were you running the offense again, despite all the recent struggles back there? RAMAR SMITH: It felt good just to -- the team stepped up for me. I came in and backed my teammates up. I tried to make play, defensive plays and on the offensive end and I came out there and played my heart out for my teammates. Q. For Wayne, again, foul trouble in the first half, you only got in nine minutes, I think in the second half. Can you just talk about your mindset? It looked like you were really demanding the ball in there. WAYNE CHISM: That's what we needed and coach gave me the calls, but in the first half with the two quick fouls, the same thing happened to me two days ago. But I kept my head. Like coach said, you got to keep it in the tournament, if you don't, you'll lose all your focus. I kept my focus in the first half, and in the second half, I came out and played good and hit inside shots so coach started going inside because their big man was in foul trouble, but even though, he was still in the game and we still went inside. I hit a couple of shots then and we had a bunch of inside shots and inside rebounds, that's why we won the boards. Q. Did you guys get the sense that Mike Green was maybe getting a little bit tired or that he was trying to draw contact so hard that maybe he was taking the focus off his, off the shot? TYLER SMITH: Our main focus was to make him make tough twos. He was getting to the rack a lot, but he really wasn't trying to pull up, he was trying to commit fouls. So we were just trying to make him make tough twos and keep our hands straight up. THE MODERATOR: No more final questions for the student-athletes? You can go back to the locker room, guys. Thank you. We'll now take questions for the Coach Pearl. Q. You saw plenty of Butler during your days in the Horizon League, as I asked those guys, what makes them so unique and difficult to play? COACH PEARL: It seems like they have got five seniors every year. Their system is built to beat the best teams in their schedule. With their ball screening and their flare screening and the fact that they will put four or five guys on the floor that can shoot the three ball. With Howard on the inside, it's made them a more balanced team. Now, when he got in foul trouble and we did a good job guarding in the post, they lost that element, they lost that dimension and that's why they -- part of the reason why they shot 36 percent. They played great defense. They're fifth in the nation in scoring defense, because they have five guys helping one another. They actually defended like we defended tonight. A lot of switching, and just very physical. They're a very physical team. Todd Lickliter's teams were very physical. And that's been a terrific carry-over to Brad's teams. Q. It was obvious their strategy may have been in the last ten minutes to drive to the basket, either score or draw a foul. What were you telling your team to counteract that? COACH PEARL: I want to give you one more: The Horizon League, Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, there are tough kids in that league. And that league has always had tough, physical, hard-nosed players. It's almost like Big-10 basketball but even tougher. I'm sorry, I apologize, what was the question? Q. They were driving to the basket the last ten minutes and trying to draw fouls. What were you telling your team to counteract that? COACH PEARL: Like Tyler said, we were trying to show our hands and trying not to draw fouls and they did a good job of jumping in and drawing contact. We tried to make them make tough twos, and the fact that they only made three threes in the second half and overtime combined was key. That's the first game Butler's lost when they have made eight are more threes this season. They normally make more. I think fatigue was a factor at the foul line at some point for them because the way -- I thought the way we guarded, I thought Tennessee really played a great defense tonight and we did what we needed to do on the boards. Coach Summitt called me this morning and she reminded me about the physical players in the tournament. And she said, because she saw the game early against American and she said just, "Tell those guys to rebound the basketball." I thought the way we started the game was extremely important. We sent a message right off the bat that we were going to represent the SEC, and I thought we showed a tremendous determination to advance. Q. Could you talk about just the point guard play and then also winning without Chris or JaJuan and really getting it going from the perimeter. COACH PEARL: I thought J.P. Prince played well. I thought he did a lot of good things whether it be offensive rebounds or taking charges or making plays. Our execution down the stretch was challenged because he's not, I mean how about never being in that situation and finding yourself in that situation for the first time as a point guard in the NCAA tournament. I thought he handled it well. I told the team, I said, "J.P. and I did not close out regulation well." We didn't. I didn't play call well, and no fault of his, he's never been in that situation. So I said, "Bail me out." That's what I told him. I said bail me out. And I went with Ramar just because I knew we were going to be in a close game-out situation and even though we hadn't been getting great plays from Ramar, he's been in that situation before and he obviously delivered. Q. You mentioned yesterday it's a bad time to mess with the point guard position, how do you use these five or six days to get that back up to speed? COACH PEARL: The deal is this: I just thought that the point guard play we were getting wasn't going to win a national championship. So, if we make the decision and it doesn't pay off and I'm sitting here in front of you and explaining why I made that choice and we lost the game, I could go to bed going, it's okay. I don't think this is going to help us advance. Watching tonight gives us a better chance to win Thursday. It's not a panacea, but we got five guys out there with J.P. in that position. I was able to do some different things offensively. I was able to do some things that Butler hadn't seen. And that was fun. Actually, it was fun. Q. You juggled your point guard position, Lofton doesn't score in double figures in either game, and you still are going to the Sweet 16. It looked like you guys didn't play your best, but you got out of here with two wins. Is that how you look at it? COACH PEARL: Boy, I thought we played pretty well today. I really do. Butler, they have held 13 out of the last 14 opponents to 55 points or less, or something like that. We scored 76 points. I thought we played awfully well. Turned it over a little bit too much. We had some unforced rushing, but I thought we made a lot of progress today. And yeah, we're thrilled to survive and advance, that's what it's all about. Q. You don't think great guard play's necessary to advance? You're going to see if you can prove to do it without a true point guard? COACH PEARL: Well, you know, let's see, J.P. was four for five, he had seven rebounds and five assists. He did have six turnovers. Okay. So that's nine and seven. Ramar had eight and three. So we got 17 points and ten rebounds and he had an assist, six assists, I thought we got pretty good point guard play. Q. I'm going to ask Brad Stevens the same question, about you did you feel it was unfair or unfortunate that you have two 30 win teams facing each other in the second round the earliest that's ever happened? COACH PEARL: Yes. A little unfair. And a little unfortunate for whoever's going to lose this game. This is usually a Regional Final number. Butler was ranked 10 or 11 in the country all season long. But you know what, Brad will tell you, listen, you you're going to play great teams to advance. He'll tell you that. This is the best Butler team that I have seen and how many times was Butler in the 5-12 game? And they were seven. I mean you know it's interesting. And see why we talk about it is, we as coaches try and schedule and figure it out so that we can put our teams in the best position to advance. That's what we do. So it's really not about, nobody's complaining, we're trying to learn, we're trying to figure it out. I'm sure Butler's trying to figure, what do we got to do, they were 30-3 or whatever they were, you know. Q. When Pete Campbell hit that unguarded three right at the end of the first half, did that give you a teaching point for half time? COACH PEARL: We had him, we had that identified. We had that taught. That would have been a breakdown. But Wayne I think made an excellent point. That when you switch like we were switching, it's not always going to be the same guy on 34. And so there were times that if one guy misses, doesn't stay in his passing lane once and one another guy misses once next thing you know he's got three of them. So that was a breakdown. He was a no-leave guy, he never should have been able to catch that, been in that passing lane. We were to let somebody drive the ball to the basket and make a two versus leaving that passing lane, and yet we left it. Q. You said that you told them that it was your fault and J.P.'s at the end of regulation, to pick you up in OT, how did he do it? Just poise? COACH PEARL: You know what, sometimes you tell them that, because they're looking, it he they didn't want to be in overtime. And they're looking for somebody to blame. So go ahead and blame me. And let them band together. And if they love me, they will bail me out. And Ramar has been -- I love Ramar. I'm on him pretty hard. And his teammates have got confidence in him to go make plays. And you know, I thought, defensively, I mean, we did okay. And we held them again they shot, they didn't shoot a good percentage in overtime, we did. So it's just away to get them to band together. Q. Now you get to go to Charlotte next week and another level. Playing a tough game at this level, could it be now that you won it, an advantage, because you got one of these under your belts, they always talk about you have to struggle to get to that next level. COACH PEARL: We struggled plenty. We struggled last year against Virginia, to advance to San Antonio in that game. So there's no question I think that winning these games does give a team confidence. The one thing about this basketball team, I coached a lot of teams, this has been my most resilient team. They do find ways to win and I think it's because this is a close team, there's terrific chemistry, we have too many weapons, and they count on one another. And you take the play of Ramar Smith and J.P. Prince at the point guard and that says it all. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. End of FastScripts |
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