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NCAA MEN'S REGIONALS SEMIFINALS & FINALS: CHARLOTTEMarch 26, 2008Chris LoftonBruce PearlJaJuan SmithTyler SmithCHARLOTTE, SOUTH CAROLINA THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Chris, how is the ankle, foot? How are you feeling? CHRIS LOFTON: I'm fine, it was precautionary to ice it and take care of it. It was no big deal. Q. Chris, could you take us back to your recruitment. You're a Louisville fan coming out of high school and ended up at Tennessee. Talk about Louisville and if this carries significance for you because you're playing them tomorrow night. CHRIS LOFTON: When we played them my freshman year, it meant a lot for trying to get back at them for not recruiting me so hard, but it's all over now. It's four years later and we're trying to go to the Elite Eight. Q. JaJuan, a lot of people talk about your offensive pressure and how you thrive on it, but it seems like Louisville's press has worked the last couple of games. How do you attack their press? JAJUAN SMITH: Like you said, we're going to attack and break it. We're going to get the ball down the court and make shots, make them pay for trying to press us. Q. Would you talk about the stakes of this game and how it affects you and Knoxville and the Tennessee community? CHRIS LOFTON: This game means a lot for Tennessee basketball because this is a place where no Tennessee men's team has been before, the Elite Eight. Our team has prided itself on making history this year, and we're just trying to add to that. JAJUAN SMITH: We just as a team are taking a lot of pride in making history this year. One more game and it just takes us closer to that level, and we're just going to try to do everything that we can to move on. Q. Chris, could you talk about the differences from your freshman year as you've gone along? You've added more players, talent around you, guys like Tyler and JaJuan. How much easier has that made it for you, going back to your freshman year, just getting more good players in the program? CHRIS LOFTON: It's great. This year we have so many weapons on our team it's like, you know, the game -- one of us struggles and somebody picks us up. Everybody is going to struggle. This team takes pride in helping your teammate out. Because nobody is going to play good every game but somebody else has to step up. Q. Tyler, could you talk about what this season has been like for you and the path you took getting here and what you've been through and how gratifying it is? TYLER SMITH: It's been a long path for me to get here, but finally I'm back home. We are going to try to make a run to San Antonio, got great players around me, so I think we can make it. Q. If you guys could talk about, all three of you, what the coaches have told you about the Cardinals and the dynamics of the game, and what do you think it's going to take to win the game and go to the Elite Eight? CHRIS LOFTON: Louisville plays the same style we do, and we got to make sure we attack their pressure, get deflections and try and play our game, and that's fast break and go getting the ball down low and inside/outside shots. TYLER SMITH: They play just like us, they press a lot. We just got to control their penetration and not letting them kick it to the open shooters. JAJUAN SMITH: Coach preached to us that we all can't have a good game, it's going to take a special performance from each and every one of us, so we know we gotta bring our A game. Q. Chris, can you talk about the impact Coach Pearl has had on the program and what it's like to play for him. CHRIS LOFTON: Coach came in his first year and turned the program completely around. We went from no post-season play to NCAA tournament. So he's done so much for this program and he continues to take it to a new level each and every year, and we're just trying to help him add to that. Q. For Chris and JaJuan, who haven't been in the NCAA tournament before, can you talk about the environment and what you think about being in this style of arena in North Carolina? CHRIS LOFTON: It's going to be a great atmosphere. Louisville is going to be here, Tennessee fans and it's going to be a great environment for the Sweet 16 to advance to the Elite Eight. We know we're going to have our hands full tomorrow but we've got to come out and play for forty minutes. JAJUAN SMITH: It's a great environment. We all dreamed about this as kids, being in this position so we're going to try to make the most of it. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, guys. Questions for Coach Pearl. COACH BRUCE PEARL: Our team is excited to be here in Charlotte, being one of 16 teams that are still playing for a National Championship. If you look at the field here, it looks as much like a Final Four field as it does a regional field. I can only tell you as a coach what a privilege it is to still be working. And I know that all the coaches that are here feel exactly the same way. Because we know how tough it is to get to this point and I know how tough it is going to be to advance beyond this point. Q. Any concerns about Chris's ankle tomorrow and especially considering the way they can pressure all over the court? COACH BRUCE PEARL: Accord to go our trainers, if Chris had to play in a game Tuesday, he would have played in the game Tuesday. Instead we chose to keep him in a boot at practice. He got on a bike and got his cardio workout, he watched what we were looking to try to do to defend Louisville. He will practice today, the day before the game. I don't know how long he'll go, but we'll try it out and I think he should be fine. Q. Bruce, could you talk about what problems Padgett presents for you guys. COACH BRUCE PEARL: Padgett presents a ton of problems for anybody that he plays against, because the offense does run through him. He is their leader, he's a senior, he's a confident, experienced player. He's a great person and he's got great fabric, and as a result he's able to lead by example. He's able to say things to those guys and they better just listen to him, because he knows what he's talking about. And he lives that life both on and off the court. He's got that high basketball IQ. Physically what he's able to do, score in the low post, being an excellent passer out of the low post when he's doubled and his ability to hand off the ball on screens at the perimeter, and get guys shot and allow guys to turn corners is very important. He's sort of the glue out there to a lot of what they do offensively. And then he gives them a great, physical presence. Q. Bruce, not looking at any particular game match-up but the regional as a whole here, how would you like to have looked at that bracket last Sunday night and saw the first two rounds in Chattanooga, the regional finals in Nashville? To what advantage, if you think it's an advantage for North Carolina to be here with their following? COACH BRUCE PEARL: I think it can be an advantage because I think the crowd can inspire North Carolina in a very positive way. But I don't think the crowd is going to do anything to intimidate Washington State, Louisville, or Tennessee at this point. We could play in Nashville and there may be a few more folks in orange and it could be hyped and it could catch fire but it wouldn't intimidate a team that we're playing against at this point. Q. Bruce, Chris's recruitment has been beaten to death, but in your opinion how does a kid in that backyard get overlooked? What do you think happened in your honest opinion? COACH BRUCE PEARL: I've said it many, many times and I think the media and the fans have been way too critical of both Louisville and Kentucky. I think Coach Pitino is on record saying they recruited and offered him. If you look at the players that both Louisville and Kentucky were able to sign, at that time they were better than Chris Lofton. They were better prospects and they may well have been better players. Chris is from an area Mason County, Kentucky where there is such wonderful pride in Kentucky basketball, and the basketball in that state, that's the one thing you've got to do in that state as much as any other state is make sure you don't let any of them get away. They love their players. Chris had a following in Tennessee that came right out of Kentucky and that town was in orange for four years because they love their Mr. Basketball. But I don't think you can blame Kentucky and Louisville for signing better players and I don't think you can blame Chris Lofton for becoming the player that he became. He is a self-made player. Give no coach credit, give credit to Lofton for being the hardest working player that we've had in four years, for being a gym rat and for getting the most out of his ability. Q. Bruce, have you decided in terms of point guard for tomorrow? Can you talk about the importance of getting good play there with their pressure? COACH BRUCE PEARL: We won the SEC this year with good point guard play. We did not have great point guard play. I decided to make adjustments at the position to get J.P. Prince on the floor more than 10 or 15 minutes he was getting playing behind JaJuan Smith and Chris Lofton on the wing. He played the position for about a month in the preseason when Jordan Howell was out and we liked him at that position, and when J.P. joined us mid-semester it was natural to put him on his normal wing position. But I didn't think good point guard play was going to get us win a National Championship or help us advance, so I made the adjustment to put my best players on the floor. Is it difficult to do in late season? Yes. It's most difficult to do at that position, because that's your quarterback. But I'm convinced if we don't make those adjustments we're not here today. And how J.P. handles Louisville's full-court pressure defense will be a big factor in the outcome. We will struggle with it at times, regardless of who is playing the point guard position. Q. Wayne has had a good run in games, the last four games. He seems to be using his left hand more, hitting his threes more, do you think this is the best he's played? COACH BRUCE PEARL: Yes, Wayne Chism is one of the most underrated players in college basketball. As a big man he move his feet as well as anybody. He can guard guards, he can guard inside, he just doesn't get a lot of attention on our team because of the Smith brothers and because of Chris. He's a key player for us, and he's going to be a key match-up with Padgett both offensively, defensively, foul trouble in that situation. I'm just so proud of Wayne Chism. As a student athlete there are 99.5% of the students at the University of Tennessee who have not gotten more out of their first year and a half or two years at Tennessee than Wayne Chism. He's done a wonderful job in the classroom, a wonderful job off the court in community service, and it's wonderful to see the young man just grow up and blossom. So it's one of the greatest things about doing what we do. Q. I was wondering if you could talk about when you decided you wanted to play full-court press. I assume that was under Coach Davis, but maybe it wasn't and how your pressure differs from Louisville's? COACH BRUCE PEARL: No doubt it's not what you teach but how you teach it. It's what I know. It was the system I grew up in at Boston College with Dr. Tom Davis, and I've talked about the fact that that full-court pressure defensive system, which really grew and evolved in the city of Boston when Coach Pitino was at Boston University and Tom Davis was at Boston College and Jim Calhoun was at Northeastern. They all pressed and they all pressed a little differently. Coach Pitino's press, it takes a couple of forms; it's an aggressive 2-2-1 pressure that matches up and that is reminiscent of the press that John Wooden used in 1964 when he introduced that with that small team with Walt Hazzard and that's the basis of his press. And Tom Davis took the guy off the second line and put him up on the ball and helped with the 1-2, 2-1-1, and Coach Pitino did that at Lexington in his runs tremendously. Tom Davis in our press was a one-and-done press. If we can get a good trap, we will take it. If we can't, we will get back. Coach Pitino will press you more multiple. Coach Pitino's press will be multiple. Will put it on you on a more regular basis. Our press is more of an annoyance. Q. Coach, a lot of your players we spoke to talked about the closeness that they have and the family feeling. I was wondering how important is that to you and how you go about creating that. COACH BRUCE PEARL: You know as a coach there are a lot of things you can't control. One of the things I try to control is how hard we play, how unselfish we play and the unselfishness. If you're closer, you tend to be less selfish, you care about teammates, you rely on them a little bit more. My players don't care how much I know until they know how much I care. I hope my players know how much I care about them. There are dozens of coaches in this tournament that are a lot better coaches than I am, but my players, I believe, will tell you that none of their coaches care more about my kids than I do. I care as much about them as anybody. How do we do it? We spend time with them off the floor in areas other than basketball. Your expectations of them academically, in the way they behave, and sometimes it is through disciplines. It is through time spent. There are only so many hours a day. They don't lift alone; we're in there lifting. We're in there as coaches when the NCAA allows working them out. It's not like, you guys go to the gym, I gotta go to this meeting. I'm in there with them. Q. Coach, I'm curious, did you see hesitancy in Duke when he came back from his scare? Where do you see him now as compared to before? COACH BRUCE PEARL: I think Duke's situation in the sense that he's got a little lower blood flow than we would either like or -- it's not abnormal, it's a little lower. I would think that if his blood flow and his heart was pumping a little stronger, he might have a little more energy. He might have a little bit more stamina. He's not in a situation where he is in any danger. His heart is strong. It functions normally. I think sometimes he gets fatigued a little sooner than -- because Duke Crews, if we could do things in the offseason to work on his stamina and conditioning, his strength and quickness, if he could play like the Tasmanian devil or Dennis Rodman, but Dennis Rodman played with such amazing energy, you've got to be in great condition to play that way. If we can get Duke closer to that he's going to be a terrifically effective player. Q. Coach, play analyst for a second. If you had no dog in this fight how do you see this game playing out, the tempos back and forth? COACH BRUCE PEARL: I think it's going to wind up being up-tempo because ultimately both coaches like to play that way, all the players prefer to play that way. Both teams will attack pressure. The problem is this: You know, Louisville, although I think both teams have demonstrated that they can win playing fast and win playing slow. One of the things about this Louisville teams that's impressive is their defense. Teams don't score a lot against them and they have defensive numbers that are unprecedented amongst Louisville teams and Coach Pitino teams. They're much more solid at the drop-back. They're a solid rebounding team. They block a lot of shots, and that's going to be a factor. I don't want a track meet because I think we've got no chance to win a track meet. But I think we're going to run and when there are times we need to be patient we will be patient. Q. What has Tyler Smith meant to you guys this year? And not just from a basketball perspective, how that's evolved with your team. COACH BRUCE PEARL: Basketball-wise we're not here without him. He's a point forward. He leads us in assists and field-goal percentage and rebounding, and so many other categories. Dane Bradshaw was the captain of the All-Glue Team last year, if CBS does one again this year, Tyler Smith should be the captain of it. But it is off the court where he became a great teammate and a great friend. I think Tyler has known a lot of these guys for years even through the recruiting process and being a Tennessee fan, so he came in with a comfort zone. But it was his own unselfishness, not worrying about his play calls, and how many touches he's going to get. He was only concerned about one thing, and that was Tennessee winning and trying to go someplace that he had never gone to as a player yet, and that is to have success at the college level. So he's a very, very quiet leader of our basketball team. Q. Going back a couple questions, you talked about off the court and dealing with the kids. When it gets this time of year, you've talked about being forty minutes away, you're just a few days away now, is it different? What's it like coaching them when you're this close and being around them off the court when you're this close? COACH BRUCE PEARL: I think the cream rises to the top at tournament time. I've always said that. You look at Louisville last weekend and maybe you saw the highest level of focus you'd seen all year long. They were so efficient offensively. They didn't take possessions off. There was rarely a bad shot, every they did -- for us, I'm hoping that we have that step-up at this time. I'm hoping that we haven't played our best basketball. Are they listening more closely because we're in the tournament? I don't know. But I don't think we've played our best game yet, and I can tell you looking at Washington State and North Carolina and Louisville, for this Tennessee team to advance we're going to have to. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. End of FastScripts |
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