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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 15, 2009Wayne ChismBruce PearlTyler SmithTAMPA, FLORIDA Mississippi State – 64 CLAUDE FELTON: We'll begin with Tennessee. Get opening comments from Coach Pearl. COACH PEARL: I' like to congratulate Mississippi State on winning the SEC Tournament championship, and receiving the automatic berth into th NCAA Tournament. They're worthy of the Championship, and I congratulate Rick Stansbury who does an absolutely outstanding job. He had his team well prepared. Obviously, we shot a low, probably a season low, probably a low in my career as far as field-goal percentage is concerned when we have been playing so very, very well offensively. Varnardo was a factor on the inside, and our inability to get out and run in transition. Mississippi State was very patient, and spread us out controlled tempo, which has a way of forcing tremendous impatience on the opponent. Often times, through our cutters, we dictate tempo, we control tempo, and the other team gets impatient, and that's just exactly what happened to us tonight. And I couldn't get -- I just couldn't get that turned around. As a result, we rushed, we took a lot of bad shots, and as a result struggled terrifically offensively. Q. On the inbounds play, it looked like you were calling a timeout before the 5 second call. Can you take us through that play and what happened? TYLER SMITH: It was a play call to get the ball to a cutter, to J.P., and I thought I had called timeout in time. But the referee made the decisions out there, and that's what happened. Q. You and Tyler were 18 of 31 from the field, today you were 7 of 31 from the field. Is it something in your game or something they did defensively? WAYNE CHISM: Like Coach said, we were impatient, and they rushed us to take a lot of shots, and we did. We still battled back though, but we just was impatient. Q. A lot of people know about Varnardo. But were you surprised by some of the defense inside from Phil Turner? TYLER SMITH: He played great "D". We just go back to rushing the shots. I wasn't taking my time. But I mean, I give him credit. He knew the moves, and I just got to make adjustments and that's what happened tonight. Q. Coach said Varnardo affected you inside, did he affect you personally? I know you've played against him quite a bit. Just talk about your match-up in the paint against him today? WAYNE CHISM: The match-ups in the paint, it was very good. I mean, me and Varnardo have been going at it since we were little. We finally played each other on the big stage, and we both played our best. He came out with a good championship. He played hard to win it. I tried to match it, but he was a lie down inside. And he alternated a bunch of shots. That's what he's good at, and he did a great job at it. Q. After a tough first half, you hit that one at the buzzer, and going into the second half. Did you feel that it was going to be your half? Did it give you a lot of confidence? TYLER SMITH: It gave me confidence. But at the same time I was down in the first half, and my teammates picked me up and we were still in it. Though, again, through the second half, they still picked me up, because I still didn't do so great. My teammates who I was really counting on, and they were counting on me down the stretch. CLAUDE FELTON: We'll excuse the student-athletes. Thank you. Continue with questions for Coach Pearl. COACH PEARL: Q. Your team had played so well in this tournament. I know you've been up and down all season, but I think people kind of thought you were going to continue that today. Maybe you did as well. Why do you think it didn't happen that way? COACH PEARL: Well, just, I think we've talked about it here, and I agree. I think coming in we thought we'd continue to be playing well. We were impatient. We forced a lot of things. You want it so bad. You know, you want it so bad that you revert back to trying to do too much. Tyler tried to do too much, J.P. tried to do too much. Wayne tried to do too much. Those are our three best players. You just force the action a little bit. When you force the action, you force it right into the teeth of Mississippi State's defense. Again, offensively, I couldn't get our guys to run continuity and be patient, just so anxious. Now, defensively we did a really good job. I mean, defensively they shot 36%. We out rebounded them, and turned them over 17 times. So we did a lot of good things defensively. And I think it's really important that it's been one of the toughest things about this season has been how disappointed I continue to hear how people are disappointed. Well, we disappointed them again. At the same time, I'm proud of my basketball team for getting -- for how many times we've picked ourselves up off the deck and played beautiful basketball. Here in Tampa, up until today, people were talking about Tennessee basketball and the way on our kids played. And how fun it was to watch. It wasn't fun today. The opponent did a terrific job. We're disappointed we didn't win this championship. But it's been frustrating to continue to have to defend this team. Q. You had one of the most talented teams in the country this side of UCONN. You showed in this tournament what this team is capable of. Which team do you think will show up in the NCAA Tournament? COACH PEARL: I told our guys that first of all, you know, we obviously didn't help our seed. So the road to the Final Four will be much more difficult, much more challenging. If we can come together again, and I think John talked about we've been consistently inconsistent. And if we can get it going again, because we've been playing great basketball here in March. We'll forget about the disappointment of not winning this tournament. But if we're not able to pick us up again, this missed opportunity will hurt for a long time. Q. On the Tyler inbounds play, I guess it seemed controversial. It appeared you were also calling for a timeout. Did you feel like you'd called for it before the 5 second call? COACH PEARL: Just on a lighter moment, Claude and I are the only two up here. So if this question's for me. Unless you want to take it, Claude. CLAUDE FELTON: I wasn't on the bench. You go ahead. COACH PEARL: Okay. Yeah, the officiating was good. They had a tough job. As long as you leave the game thinking that you had a shot, we had plenty of shots. He got to 5. Blew his whistle, and we had a violation. Q. The last shot, was that called for Cam Tatum? What was the play called there? COACH PEARL: It was called to, I can't begin to tell you the number of play calls that were called and then how we got different options. I felt like Mississippi State was going to foul. I wanted to try to run a play, sort of a bait-and-hook play, where we get them to bite on Cam coming up for the ball, see if we can get to Wayne in the middle of the floor, and send Cameron long and get a three ball. But they didn't bite too much on Cameron, and they played sort of a zone, and we couldn't get the ball to Wayne. So we got the ball to Cameron. Wayne did the right thing and took off down the floor. There was a lot of time left. They didn't get to Cam in time to foul him because he probably pulled a little too soon. But it was to get him a look. There's some things that we run every day in practice. And given out unsettling -- given how unsettling our offense was, again, I just wanted to do something we do all the time. Interestingly enough, on the last under basket of the bounce play, same thing. Try to get it to J.P., try to do something that we do all the time, and we didn't execute. Q. Getting deep in a tournament like this, a conference tournament where you're playing every day, compare that to playing in the NCAA where there's a little more preparation time, maybe a little more recovery time? Compare the two? COACH PEARL: I thought both teams recovered very well. I really don't think that fatigue was a factor, although it takes great conditioning to be patient. And so, I think perhaps our shooting so quickly and taking 22 more shots than Mississippi State was really a function of our fatigue and our unwillingness to work within our offense. We didn't rest defensively, and we didn't rest on the boards. But we rested offensively in our inability to execute. There is a difference. When you're done last night at 5:30, 6:00 o'clock and you've got a 1:00 o'clock tip, there's not a lot of time. Conference tournament you're very familiar with your opponent. So the scout is not difficult for the coaches. But it is hard on the players to have to bounce back physically. I thought both teams, both training staffs, did an outstanding job getting their kids back and ready to play a very hard-fought game. It was sloppy, but it was very, very competitive and very, very hard fought. We'll finish this up. But I'd like to say, I'd like to thank the SEC for a marvelous job of hosting this tournament. The City of Tampa did an amazing job. This is a wonderful place to have the tournament. We got a lot of very fond memories. Our Tennessee fans travel, and they were glad to stay for the weekend. All the band, and the cheerleaders and all the student-athletes that came with us, I can't tell you how much I appreciate their support. Q. Win or lose, usually your people don't look at your teams as playing up tight. They usually play pretty loose. And particularly in this tournament, did you think maybe they were a little uptight today, you know? COACH PEARL: I don't think that was it. I don't think we were uptight. I don't think we played uptight. We didn't play well, and I think, again, I could go back. I think I've tried if you go back and look at your notes, try to explain why we played the way we played. Varnardo is a huge factor on the inside. It was difficult to get two point baskets. He blocked a ton of shots. He changed a ton of shots. We got a question about Phil Turner. He did a great job on Tyler Smith. I don't know what Coach Stansbury's press conference was like, but I guarantee you he gave Phil Turner a tremendous amount of credit for the job he did on Tyler. So you take away some of their inside stuff and it was just really, really challenging. Mississippi State did a great job with that, and we were not -- we were impatient. End of FastScripts |
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