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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 14, 2009Andre McGeeRick PitinoTerrence WilliamsNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK Louisville 76 COACH RICK PITINO: First I'd like to congratulate Syracuse on a tremendous performance. It's not easy to do what they did and they did it again tonight most of the game and sooner or later, you know your legs are going to give out sooner or later. But they were brilliant throughout the stretch. Our guys have a lot of respect for their basketball team. I want to congratulate them on a great season. We're real proud of our guys. Tonight the first half we were doing some good things. The shot was not going down. We missed some easy ones are the ones outside and inside. At halftime we said, look, it's not going to happen in a matter of a minute or two like last night but it did. We got a great run. We turned it around where we shot 61 percent and they shot 30-something percent. Got 15 steals again and these two seniors are taking us on a great run. T. Will (Terrence Williams) had his normal brilliance tonight, the steal record tonight of 7, he had six assists, he rebounds, he carries the trophy, he does just about everything, so he had an unbelievable senior year and this young man Andre McGee puts more pressure on -- than any mother-in-law in the country (laughter). Q. Rick, your first year in the Big East, you said a number of times after games that the opposition is back to the woodshed. Where is this program now is my first question? COACH RICK PITINO: We entered the Big East for us the wrong year. We entered it coming off a Final Four where we lost our talent, our leadership and we knew we weren't going to be a good team that year. We were competitive so we had to rebuild. We were going to reload Conference USA. We had to rebuild in the Big East. Asking, boy, how does it feel to finally win a Big East championship? I've only been in the league four years. They forgot we just joined the league. We had to get the talent back up certainly and these guys came in the inaugural year and going out tournament champions. Q. You have just about everything in your resume. Now you have a Big East conference championship in this building. What does it mean for you? COACH RICK PITINO: I'm really proud of what the guys have done. Personally, to me to see these guys smile and have such a good time because I get after them very hard. The last two half times I've acted like a typical coach being a horse's ass, but they know me and I know them very well. They know -- we all are starving to win and this is a very tough group of guys to coach, the age group. We're all into instant gratification, AAU basketball, what's happening now and points and touches. I think the word "touches" probably infuriates me more than anything in life. These guys have just bought into total team. They all want to do what they can do but winning is the most important thing. We had to get that through to is a Samardo Samuels and Terrence Jennings. These guys have been a part of it. Terrence can do anything on the court. Andre McGee averaged 30 points a game in high school. They know we're going to win and sacrifice and play. For me personally being part of this team is great. I love the fact that we did it in the toughest year in the history of the Big East to sweep both of those things and then the thing I'm most proud of is the way we played on the road the last three years. You know, your program turns when you play -- when you play terrific on the road. Q. Coach, you kind of disappeared when all the trophy and everything and I understand you went back to the locker room. I mean were you just kind of reminiscing back there? COACH RICK PITINO: I also just prepare. It's their time to be cutting the nets. They do all the work so it's their time and I just wanted to put some things on the board and my insides are gushing with pride. Coaching these two guys has been a special treat for me. They're like children to me, both guys. I'm hoping Andre stays with me as a coach and the other young man is going to go on (to the NBA). I'll be borrowing money from him real soon. Q. Rick, as far as the conference goes, do you see three number one seeds coming out and where would you put the chances of a national champion coming out of the Big East? COACH RICK PITINO: You know, I think there's a distinct possibility we'll get three Big East teams number one. I think it's well deserved by all three teams. You know, there's so much banter and talk about seeding. I've been doing this quite sometime. I've never seen so much talk about in-and-out seeds. I'm amazed that everybody is getting so much into it. It's great, it really is great but I can tell you from coaching in the tournament, it really doesn't matter. You're going to have to play good basketball and all the teams in the Big East play great defense so that's why you have a shot. That's what we try to drill every day. No matter what we do offensively, if we play great defense we have a chance to win and great defensive teams are going to get to a Final Four. We've got a bunch of teams in the Big East that play great defense. Q. Terrence, you could have been the most outstanding player. I saw you go over to Jonny Flynn. What did you say to him? TERRENCE WILLIAMS: I told Jonny to keep his head up. You guys can ask Andre, watch him play against UCONN and Seton Hall, I say he reminds me a lot of Chris Paul. I told Andre that was the best point guard in the country to me just the way he handles the ball, the way he runs his team and the way he is always smiling. I told him to keep his head up and have a great run in the tournament because at the end of the day we're all from the same conference. It's like a family and we were at the Lebron Skills Academy this summer, we were on the same team so we have a history. Q. Terrence, you weren't giving the trophy back to anyone after the game. Do you plan on giving it back to anyone? And how gratifying just is this whole thing for you guys to double up this year? TERRENCE WILLIAMS: I might share it with Andre holding it a little bit but I was just being greedy with it. It's a team thing and for us to win this, it means so much to not only me and Andre but the team, we've been here three years in a row and got sent home early every time so everybody says we can't play well in the Garden. So come here and prove that wrong and say we're in the toughest league and in the paper it says we're supposed to finish 2nd and finish 1st and come in here and finally be able to hold that trophy and be part of the history of the Big East, it means a lot for us. Q. I'd like to ask the players how big of a motivating factor was it to fill in that line on Rick's resume, Big East tournament champ? ANDRE McGEE: I wasn't sure he won that yet. We're glad to give him one more. We came in the inauguration year and Louisville into the Big East together, all three of us and me and him are leaving as Big East champs. It feels good. TERRENCE WILLIAMS: I actually heard it I guess being one of the few times I do watch ESPN, that he didn't have that, the conference champion and Big East champion. I didn't want to say it to the guys. I kept in it my mind that he didn't have that and me looking to him as a father, it's like your father leaves and you change the oil for him. You help him out in some way. That's what I tried to do personal as a player. Q. Coach, how about the fact that your career began in the Big East world, at least on the national level, and now you bring the Louisville program back to the Big East and win it outright. What does it feel for you and your staff? COACH RICK PITINO: You know what's interesting? I don't think I would have taken the Louisville job if they were in the Big East when it started. I wanted to do something different. Not that I would -- it's been a secret desire of mine to be in Conference USA. I don't mean that. I wanted to try something different, play against different coaches, play against different competition, do different things. That's why I took the Louisville job. It was very difficult for me to take the job because of Kentucky. I felt, you know, one time every two years, it would be difficult and I would get through that. I wanted to try something different. I wasn't looking to go back into the Big East, whether it was a Big Ten or Conference USA or the PAC-10. Then when it all happened, Tom Jurich said could you call Michael Tranghese and help me to get into the Big East. Some football schools are going to defect. I said, Tom, you're not right on that. He said, yes, I am. I called Michael. Is there something going on? He said, I can't talk about it. I said, can you put us down because we need to get in there football-wise. I forgot what I was getting back into. We were just trying to get in because of football. We felt we had a big time football program and seeing that we're back in the Big East. We've been number one revenue producer in college basketball five straight years in row. We always sell out, 19,500 tickets. We have a new 22,000-seat arena and $350 million, there's no money. For us I notice everybody leaves early Conference USA, everybody shows up late. Our people are rivetted. They tailgate for basketball. So what the Big East has done for the basketball program has just been unbelievable. I didn't expect it, didn't think about it until it happened. It's been a tremendous gift for our city and our state. Q. For both players, can you -- do you guys feel that it's only a matter of time before your defense gets to the opponent whoever you might be playing? TERRENCE WILLIAMS: Well, our four guards do a heck of a job pressuring the other guards the whole game and you may handle it for a short period but if you don't have a nice amount of point guards to handle the ball it's going to get to them and wear down. The way we practice we run so much and we don't feel that there's other teams in the exact same shape as us. Even if they go by the guards the back pursues and the forwards will level them off and really slow them down in the second half. ANDRE McGEE: Our defense, it's a relentless attack when we play the way we like to play. In the first half we didn't do that. They had runouts on us and get easy buckets. We made sure we came in the second half and stepped up our intensity. Even breaking the press through dribbling, it's a hard thing to do. That wears guards out trying to dribble through two, three, four guys and we're bringing in so many different guys and we lose nothing when go to our bench. Our depth is one of our great assets, so when guys come in ready to keep pressure on the ball it really helps us out and teams do end up wearing out late in the second half. Q. Coach, it seemed like in the second half you came out really consciously wanting to work it inside out. I was just wondering if that was something that was bugging you or you felt was hurting you in the first half. COACH RICK PITINO: I think we missed a few easy shots in the first half around the rim. We got our shots blocked a couple times and that's a tribute to the defense. The guys did a good job in the second half of distributing the basketball. One big key for us besides the pressure, besides the passing is, stop the three, make the three. And if you look at our run since we've been hot, you know, disparity from the 3-point line the way West Virginia; Providence, you're looking at sometimes 30 to 15 (points) or you're seeing a lopsided point total from making the three and stopping the three. I don't think the 3-point is a weapon unless you stop it. I've always believed that, even going back to 1987 at Providence. I didn't think if -- if we didn't stop it, it was of no value. So we're doing a very good job in this run of stopping the three. We did it in all these games as well as West Virginia at West Virginia to win the regular season championship. Q. Rick, all the years you've been doing this, is there some type of art or science in doing during the conference tournament it's really emotional and then switching gears and then begin the NCAA? Is it different or what? COACH RICK PITINO: I think it's sometimes like last year I think it really helped us going home but this team, the bench is so deep that they all play. I just yell, give me two new guards. I don't even say their names and they go. I say, give me two new guards and they go. We have a deep bench and it's the way we play. Some teams -- I always -- well, they have a deep bench. Every team has 13 scholarships. It's whether you want to play them or not. We want to play our guys. We don't play (Jared) Swopshire and T. Will (Terrence Williams) plays 40 minutes. About 30 seconds before a timeout I take them out. We can't play in the game without T. Will. It's impossible because he gets every rebound, every pass, makes all the plays. Andre is -- he's the most relentless pressure guy. This young man spent his whole high school career in the hospital when I was recruiting him with cramps. We figured out the cramping problem. Now he's gone from about 18 percent body when I first came to 6 or 7. Never gets tired. I think sometimes it's not bad going home. I think it helped us last year, we went to an Elite 8. I think this year was very important for our guys to continue winning because our bench is so deep. Q. Coach, you mentioned you were back in the locker room writing some things on the board. Can you just give us an idea of what some of those things were? COACH RICK PITINO: Some of the statistical things we did in the second half and I said, you know, you got to soak this in now guys. Regular season champs, tournament season champs. Two different things. The regular season championship is a body of work for two and a half months. So that's the most special thing. The tournament championship is playing great for those three days and I said you're going in the Knick locker room every time. That's what you get in Madison Square Garden. If you're the 8th seed, 9th seed, you put in a little high school locker room maybe some of the maintenance people change. When you go into the Knick locker room and you're number one, relish all of this and understand it going into the tournament. It was a big treat for us and for me to go into in Knick locker room and have all the plaques and to just reminisce and think of those things and think of Mike Saunders, the trainer, and Patrick (Ewing) and Mark (Jackson) and Gerald Wilkins and Oak (Charles Oakley), all the fun we had. It was a security thing, this whole thing, not so much winning it, just memory lane. You played Providence where you coached in '87. You play Syracuse with me getting your first job at the major college level. You're in the Knick locker room where you coached. For me it was just a trip down memory lane. Sometimes really happy and sometimes reminiscing and becoming an old son of a gun now. JOHN PAQUETTE: Louisville, thank you. End of FastScripts |
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