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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 14, 2009Rick StansburyBarry StewartPhil TurnerJarvis VarnadoTAMPA, FLORIDA Mississippi State – 67 CLAUDE FELTON: We'll ask Coach Stansbury for opening thoughts on the game. COACH STANSBURY: I thought two really good basketball teams going at it. I'm not for sure either one of us were as good as we want to be offensively. But I think give each team some defensive credit. No question LSU's been one of the best defensive teams all year long. And as I've been saying from day one since being here first game, our team continues to get better defending the rebounding. In the first two stats I can look at is again that rebounding war. We got rebounded bad against them a couple times tonight. It was one different rebound, we held the LSU team to 31% for the game. 27 in the second half. And, again, that's the difference for us. Even those moments we struggled in scoring a little bit, and again, we probably missed some shots that normally we'd make. Probably were not as efficient from the free-throw line as we'd been for the most part. But our defending the rebound allowed us to get a little separation and find a way to win the basketball game. And these three guys right here were terrific. Q. What was it like to go through the whole game with basically no fouls? You had one foul, none at halftime. Talk about having no foul trouble? How that affected your game the way you were able to play? JARVIS VARNARDO: By not having no foul trouble. I mean I just went at Chris Johnson, and the rest of their bigs. I mean, I played loose. I was able to block a few shots and rebound the ball. Q. You guys gave up a lot of points to Marcus and Tasmin in the regular season games, different games. Talk about the defense you guys played against them today. What was the plan relative to those two coming into the game? PHIL TURNER: Tasmin Mitchell and Marcus Thornton are two great players. We just focused on defending and rebounding. And Jarvis made a great call into the game. Tasmin Mitchell was coming at me pretty tough and starting to get a rhythm in. And Jarvis said let me switch off on on him and throw a different look at him. So we switched it up for a while on a couple of plays and he put me back on him so he couldn't get a rhythm going on me. I think that was a great call by Jarvis just seeing that during the game. Q. When was that? PHIL TURNER: Just during the game he he made the call. I think Tasmin came down and hit two or three shots back-to-back on me. And Jarvis was like look, man, let me get him. And Chris Johnson, I think, was in the game, and we switched off like that. And I think that was just great recognition by Jarvis. Q. Can you address your team's confidence level right now? It's got to be sky high? PHIL TURNER: Well, we try to stay in the middle. BARRY STEWART: I think the team's confidence is very high right now. Wins cure all things. So right now the team's playing with a lot of confidence, our starters, our bench is coming in and doing some things, and it's just helping the whole team. Q. This was your third game in three days, their second. But it seemed like you had maybe a little more energy in the second half getting to a lot of 50-50 balls. Can you talk about how your legs were as the game went on? PHIL TURNER: We know what we were playing for. We've played a couple of games back-to-back, but playing for a championship is motivation to just keep pushing through. Of course, it is kind of tough on your body, but we train in the off-season for times like this. A couple of games back-to-back is not going to keep us from playing our best. Q. Will fatigue be an issue tomorrow? BARRY STEWART: I don't think so. The way Coach is rotating us, it's helping our legs a lot. We got to rest the first game a whole lot more than usual. I think our benches are coming in and adding to. Q. Last few times against LSU they basically single covered you, gave no defensive help. What's that like for you to know that if you work in the post, it's just you against other guys? Obviously, you got them all in foul trouble? JARVIS VARNARDO: My eyes lit up, you know. I knew coming into the game that they weren't going to help our shooters, so I just had to make a quick move and score. Q. There was a stretch in the second half where your bench was in the game in full force. You guys were on the sideline. I don't know if they maintained the lead, built the lead, but it seemed like they kept it going pretty well. I mean, how big was that for you guys? JARVIS VARNARDO: It was huge for us. Without no bench, we probably wouldn't be able to win. I mean in a tournament like this. Our benches came in, added to, and that's what we want from them. Q. It felt like the second half with the fouls there was a bit of disparity. Did you feel like LSU y'all started to get in their heads a little bit? PHIL TURNER: I don't think so. LSU is a veteran team. They stick together pretty much. But our coach did a great job recognizing their bigs were in foul trouble and we kept feeding the post. We knew they were going to have a hard time defending Jarvis one-on-one. And that game plan worked for us. Q. As a shot blocker, how have you gotten better this year? Seems like you're staying out of foul trouble even more even when guys jumped at you like today. What have you done differently? JARVIS VARNARDO: Just the same thing I have been doing. Being that we play small smart, I can't afford to get in foul trouble that much. Being that we play smart, I can't just go foul them. I play position defense, and try to alter the shot, not block it. CLAUDE FELTON: We'll excuse the student-athletes and continue with questions for Coach Stansbury. Q. You went with your bench in a lost key moments, pretty wholesale changes there. How confident are you in those guys and how important have they been to where you are right now? COACH STANSBURY: I think it's very obvious that they're very important. I've got to show some confidence in them, too. I left them, not just this game, they've been in games for the last two and a half weeks and very important moments. This time of year is where your bench has to be its best. Our bench, no question, is playing its best. It helps your chemistry. Everybody's playing together. And that bench is coming in and adding to. And your question earlier, I think it was like they cut it back to two, and that bench spurred it back up to eight in that stretch there. That was huge for us. To register starters and your bench able to expand the lead some. Q. Everybody talked about that beet being the ultimate shot blocker in the NCAA. Your guy isn't chopped liver. He blocked 7 shots today, just probably at least 7 more. He's a pretty good player inside, isn't he? COACH STANSBURY: He's a pretty good player. He is. I'm glad he's on our team. You know, the thing I think is continuing to make him better is his effort. He attacks every rebound. He's really active. I see a little bit of that in him right now. When you're able to rest him with your bench, that's important. Again, Brian Johnson came in today, played 12 minutes and got six rebounds. That's huge. Q. Going back to your bench. When you played LSU in Starkville, Tasmin had 41. Today you were able to bring Kodi in and put a big body on him, that was something you couldn't do back then because Kodi wasn't playing well. Talk about bringing Kodi in and putting the big body and keeping Tas outside? COACH STANSBURY: We tried to guard him three ways. First time, in Baton Rouge we started the game guarding with Jarvis. Didn't work very well. Second time, we started guarding him with field. And that obviously didn't work very well. Tonight we had two options. We were going to mix it up. Number one, we thought we went with Kodi we'd have a bigger body that could play 15 to 20 minutes a game on him. In those other moments there's moments when we wanted Jarvis on him just to mix it up, like field said. We started going at him. It changed Tasmin's mentality. He went at field twice there in that post, made the switch. And I again, I think he shot a jumpshot the next time down and missed it. The versatility and flexibility after that is huge for us right now. Q. Obviously, you have to ask the question about what this win does for your NCAA chances, or do you just focus on if you win tomorrow you don't have to worry about anyone thinks of you? COACH STANSBURY: That's what our focus is. I learned a long time ago for me to worry about things I can't control is an absolute waste of energy. You guys y'all can make the point. I don't know. I know this. We're 7-1 against the east. 7-1 against the east. We're 9-7 coming into this. And being 9-7, two of those games were double overtime losses. Well, we would have the second best record in the league a. And one of them was to LSU. Four road wins. 4-4 on the road in the SEC. And you go into the finals of the SEC Tournament. So you start breaking that down who becomes the third and fourth team to get in. You guys make your case. As long as you make the right one (laughing). Q. Jarvis had a good game, but can you talk about Barry Stewart and him being able to get to the line and being aggressive? COACH STANSBURY: Let me tell you what, everybody misses Barry Stewart. You look at that stat sheet, see how many points he scores. It's very obvious. The last two games he's been really good offensively making some shots and doing some things. He doesn't get the credit he deserves defensively. Tonight you look at that shot chart with Thornton, and he is the most difficult player to guard one-on-one in this league. He's going to get some points. Again, he's 5 for 19. He scores 14 points and stew was on most of the night. There are two big guys, Mitchell and Thornton, 5 for 19, 7 for 18. It was a pretty evenly-balanced game. Both teams played turnover free. We had six turnovers. They had 7. One difference in rebounding. We shoot 33%. They shoot 31. The huge difference was we attacked them one other way versus the way we did in the start. We threw it to the block and got them in foul trouble. We shot too many threes in Starkville against them. With Thornton and Thornton and Temple up into you, had too many contested threes. Tonight we drove the ball and didn't settle for three pointers. I would say 16 attempts would be a season low for us. Where's my stat man? I'd say it's a season low with 16 attempts from the three point line is low. Enabled us to get to the free-throw line 35 times compared to LSU's 13 times. When that stat right there tells you two things. You're getting the ball to the paint two different ways, from the pass, which is the way we did it the first time. But this time we got it on on the pass and got it there on the dribble, and that was huge for us - -- Q. Having to play three games in three days. Talk about what it's like from a coaching standpoint. You'll have to sit here and watch the winners, kiss the wife goodbye, say see you Sunday and start looking at film? COACH STANSBURY: -- I can promise you I'd like that problem a lot more than the other problem you have. That's for sure. That's a good problem to have. You know, I wouldn't be kidding anybody to say that the fourth game there's not some fatigue, but I can promise you it will not be an excuse. I think our team as much as any team in this tournament, because I do have a bench and I'm willing to play this bench right now. We'll be fresh-legged. We'll be fresh mentally tomorrow. If we win by 20 or lose by 20, it's not going to be because of fatigue. We're going to come out and fight and give it everything we've got and see what happens. Q. Just address part of this? This win was a lot different than the other four in your most recent winning streak. The other four were in the '80s, except for one. And you were really stroking the ball from the outside. Can you talk about adapting maybe what was different about this game? COACH STANSBURY: I think it shows the maturity of our basketball team a little bit. As I've said again, it started two weeks ago, three weeks ago. I thought our team we were starting to get better defensively. We were starting to rebound the ball a little bit better. It doesn't take one of two plays defensively to help win a lot of games. We've had close losses. Lose by three at Tennessee, another close loss. One play here or there is the difference between winning and losing. But our team has started making more of those plays again. Offensively I thought we showed more maturity. Slowing it down. Making it a game some. And not make it a free-for-all shooting threes. Our advantage was in the paint. Every time you shoot a three against a very good defensive team, best in the SEC, leads the SEC in three-point field goal percentage defense. Is an opportunity that's taken away from us to get a foul or get a higher percentage shot. On our guys new when to push on that gas tonight and to let off at the right time. A month ago we probably couldn't have done that. So I think we're getting better in that area. End of FastScripts |
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