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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT


March 11, 2009


Corey Butler

Pete Herrmann

Terrance Woodbury


TAMPA, FLORIDA

CLAUDE FELTON: We're ready to begin with Georgia. Coach, if you'd begin.
COACH HERRMANN: We talked about this on Saturday. We talked about the SEC Tournament after our game with South Carolina. And we wanted to come to Tampa and handle ourselves as the defending champions. Very proud of that, very concerned that we come down with confidence as the defending champions in the league tournament.
We're really looking forward to defending our championship and playing with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of confidence as the defending championship.
CLAUDE FELTON: Okay. We'll take questions for either of the two student-athletes.

Q. Do you remember this exact same time last year? You guys were coming in almost the same situation, no one was thinking about you, then you guys made that huge run. Is it sort of like a déjà vu all over again for you? You're sort of in the same situation this year. Do you remember last year thinking is it similar to what you're thinking now?
TERRANCE WOODBURY: Yeah, last year we came into it, you know, sort of the same record, just one more win. But I remember we definitely came into it with a lot of confidence. I felt as if last year we knew that there was a lot of games that we should have won that we just weren't able to finish. Whereas this year we kind of weren't, I guess, old enough or tough enough to finish out the games or start the games like we needed to.
But I felt like we're coming in with a lot more confidence, you know. Representing ourselves as the previous SEC champions and just try to uphold it.

Q. Do you look at this tournament as, you know, there's been a lot of parody in the league. Do you look at it as wide open, anybody can win again just like last year?
COREY BUTLER: Well, the entire season this year has been wide open for the SEC, I believe. The SEC Tournament is definitely wide open because it's a new season. All you have to do is win four games and we've you played all those teams before. So it's just a matter of coming out, competing hard and playing hard.

Q. Have you ever seen anything as crazy as last year, the tournament, the tornado, having to play Georgia Tech in front of friends and family? Is there anything as bizarre as that was last year?
COREY BUTLER: We haven't had anything as bizarre as that, but that definitely was an experience to experience. I enjoyed it a lot because, you know, we saw what resulted from that. Maybe we can get something like that down here.

Q. Can you both talk about just the up and down of the season, losing your coach, what that was like. How you guys have banded together and stuck together as a team?
COREY BUTLER: It's definitely been a rough season. We definitely didn't expect that. We knew that trouble was lurking, but we didn't expect it at that point. But it happened. Coach Herrmann stepped in, did an excellent job getting the guys together, playing together, and just playing more freely. You have to give credit to coach Herrmann stepping into an awkward or weird situation and doing the job that he's done thus far. Hopefully we can continue to lead us until Sunday.
TERRANCE WOODBURY: I mean, it was very tough. I'm sure it was tough for me and tough for everybody else on the team. But as I talked to Coach Herrmann later in the weeks, he just told me keep my head up. Try to keep the team together and lead with Coach Herrmann.
Coach Herrmann has done a great job like Corey said, coming into a situation like this. And I'm sure he didn't want to lead without his head coach that he's been with the past 17 years or however long they've been together.
So I feel like it's a tough situation for everybody. But we've kind of got to get over it and just play through it. And I feel Coach Herrmann's done a great job. We've been playing a lot better as a team. It's just we've got to finish strong on the court.
COACH HERRMANN: See, I call these guys numbers a lot more now that I'm coaching. That's why they're saying these nice things, you know, because I want them to score more and have more recognition (laughing). No, I'm only kidding.

Q. Can you look back on the MSU game in the regular season, y'all got down early and almost came back. But what's kind of the key to y'all getting off to a better start against them?
COREY BUTLER: Last game, No. 21, No. 2, Laverne Johnson, he got off to a great start. We held him, you know. We shut him down in the second half. But it's just a matter of coming out ready to play. We got off to a lot of bad starts this year in a couple of games. It's just a matter of being there in the beginning of the game, and we'll definitely be there in the end.
CLAUDE FELTON: We'll excuse the student-athletes. Thank you very much. And we'll continue with Coach Herrmann.

Q. Same thing I asked the kids. Do you remember sitting the day before the tournament last year and even remotely thinking that you guys had a chance to do what you did? Because like I said, it's sort of almost déjà vu, you're coming into last place again and all that. Do you remember those thoughts last year and are they similar to now?
COACH HERRMANN: Oh, vividly. We had played Ole Miss on Senior Day in Athens. Of course, we were very excited about Dave Bliss and Sundiata Gaines finalizing their career. We played very poorly. We got beat badly by Andy's team. We got killed on the grass, and we were going to play the same team four days later.
I can remember calling the big guys in and talking to them about, you know, how are we going to send off these two seniors? It's the last time they're going to play in the Georgia uniform and we've got to play better than we've played.
So our whole focus then, as is now, is on the first game. Then the first game is key. We wound up beating Ole Miss in overtime. We followed the three point shooter. We didn't play great. We played much better than we had the first time we played Ole Miss. And we won that game.
Then, of course, everything changed with the tornado, and I'd never been in anything like that ever. You know, the thing that surprised us the most was the players never seemed to be mentally or physically fatigued throughout playing so much ball in a short period of time. I thought that was just amazing.
We jumped out on every team we played, starting with Kentucky, and going to Mississippi State. Then in the Arkansas final game when we should have been exhausted, we weren't.
It's just a tribute to those kids that they played so well and so hard and so together in that time period. With all the circumstances surrounding everything, it was truly a great, great experience.

Q. What do you think it says about the league that a three-win team can come in here and talk about being confident and talk about winning the tournament?
COACH HERRMANN: Well, I've coached in the big eight when it was the big eight, and coached in the ACC. I've coached now in the SEC. Every league that I've coached in has been as competitive as can be.
You really don't, you know, everyone asks me do you think this team or that team should be in the NCAA Tournament? When you're coaching in a league that is as competitive as this league, you have to feel confidence. You have to feel believe that your players can win. Our players went up to Lexington and won at Rupp, and they beat a very good Florida team on our court.
We just feel you've got to be on competitive and you've got to feel you can win. I'm still an SEC guy right now. I think that a lot of our teams have a good chance to go to the NCAA Tournament. I'm not talking one or two. I'm talking like five or six. So I'm a big believer that the SEC should be very representative when we go to the national tournament.

Q. You talked about the kids toughness they showed last year during the tournament run. Did that help them hold it together this year, that experience, as things kind of got crazy with your program?
COACH HERRMANN: You know, it's a very emotional roller coaster when you go through this. I was with Dennis Felton every day in practice and games for 11 years in a row. And to take over as the head coach was very difficult. I talk to Dennis a lot. We still talk all the time about how we're preparing and what we're going to do in regards to the next opponent.
So I think it's a tribute to our players that they've hung in there, hung together. Especially with nine freshmen and sophomores, that they have gone forward and continue to play very competitively.

Q. Let me play devil's advocate if I can. You were talking about five or six teams getting into the tournament. The rankings and the RPI ratings don't seem to indicate that. What are you basing your belief on that many teams in the tournament on?
COACH HERRMANN: I guess what I'm basing it on is every time I prepare our team to try to play one of the teams in the SEC, I see, you know, how they compare to let's say some of the teams we played in the non-conference schedule, such as Virginia Tech and Illinois and Missouri. Taking the teams from these other leagues that are highly ranked and highly rated and looking at our teams, looking at Kentucky and Florida and teams like that. You know, I see teams that are very capable of winning two and three games in the national tournament based on playing other teams from other leagues.

Q. I was just wondering when the last time you talked to Dennis was, and what was that conversation about?
COACH HERRMANN: I just talked to him before we came down. I think it was Thursday or Friday before the last game with South Carolina. Dennis called me and congratulated us on the win at Lexington.
You know, he was great. He was very excited about it. He was going to go down and speak with the burn victims from the war in Iraq down in San Antonio. He wanted to visit with the friends of ours, with the spurs, Greg Popovich and R.C. Buford and a number of the coaches there.
I haven't talked to him since he returned. I know he's been so complimentary and so congratulatory about what the kids have accomplished in the last couple of weeks that it feels good, because we're still very close.

Q. What do you remember of what Ravern Johnson did against you guys in the first half in Athens and what is the key to defending him?
COACH HERRMANN: It wasn't like a big surprise. We knew going into the game everyone was shooting it great. As the whole team shoots it great. Rick's team had two games of making 14 threes, and one game of making 16 threes. So they're very confident shooters.
What we did was we played zone out of bounds. We played a little zone where we kind of lost Ravern, and he got going early, and I think he made five out of six in that first half.
Now obviously we were concentrating on him in the second half. And we made our own threes with Ricky McPhee making five of them to come back and make it a two-point game and make it a dog fight down to the wire.
So we've got to make sure we locate them, find them, don't let them get going in transition to begin with. That's where he's really best. And don't disrespect his range. It's from the sideline in. It's very deep, as is Turner's and Stewart's, and they can shoot that ball. With the creation ability of Dee Bost, this is a very dangerous team.

End of FastScripts




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