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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 15, 2009Rick StansburyBarry StewartPhil TurnerJarvis VarnadoTAMPA, FLORIDA Mississippi State – 64 CLAUDE FELTON: We'll continue with Mississippi State. Opening comments from Coach Stansbury. COACH STANSBURY: Well, number one, I'd just like to thank Tampa. What a great place to host this SEC Tournament. The facility was great. The weather was absolutely beautiful, and the experience couldn't have been any better. Give Bruce and Tennessee a lot of credit. I thought Bruce in the last two and a half weeks, basically the month of March, they were playing like the team everybody anticipated preseason, Top 10 team in the country. And it's very evident of the people they were beating and how they were beating them. Again, they played hard today. They fought, and they had opportunities to win it. Today our kids wouldn't give up. About that 6:00 minute mark, 6:50, we had that six-point lead, and kind of lost that lead a little, and there was a time out. I can remember the look if those five starters eyes, and absolutely there was a look. We were going to find a way. We'd come too far to give up now. From that point on, I think we made most of the effort plays. Now that last 22 seconds, I can promise you we didn't lose no TV viewers neither. Because we made it interesting. But I'm just proud for our kids. We backed in here the hard way. Our team has been playing well. We had some setbacks during the season, and never gave up. Kept believing. And because of that, the SEC championship. CLAUDE FELTON: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Has your opinion changed? Obviously, it's changed. But a few days ago you were not very high on the city of Tampa's location for the tournament. What changed that? COACH STANSBURY: Well, wasn't for sure how many people would be able to travel number one. I can tell you this, Bulldog fans travel. Now do we have as many as maybe in Atlanta? I don't know that. But they were here in the last couple of days. This facility is a great basketball facility. The size was great. And again, everything's close enough. You don't have the traffic jams that you've had some other places, so it's a tradeoff in some ways. The weather was absolutely beautiful. Again, the experience of playing here and winning was special for us. So hey, right now, I love Tampa. Q. You made some big plays down the stretch, can you talk about how you felt down the stretch, what your legs were like given how you were substituted with Kodi and played fewer minutes than some of the other starters? PHIL TURNER: Well, I felt rested. Right then wasn't the time to be tired, so I definitely wasn't tired. We saw what we wanted, and everybody that played today went after the same goal. Wasn't any eyes out there. So just says I stepped up and made big plays. I don't think that's fair to the other team. Took a team effort to do everything that we did. And we just got it done all together. Q. Could you talk a little about what you do against Tyler Smith defensively? Because you really did a great job on on him today, giving away so much height? PHIL TURNER: Tyler Smith is a great player. Strong athletic, 6' 7", knows basketball. But I mean we just had favor today. I don't think it was anything special that I did to him besides just gave it my all. He hit me with some stuff early. I mean, he was just a good battle to play against a great player like him. Q. Was there ever a time that you felt fatigued? Or did you just kind of get by on adrenaline today or what? BARRY STEWART: When the game was over. Now I feel it. I told Coach last night my legs felt good. And he told me to do some -- get some fluid into my body and ice down and stuff. But after the game I felt fatigued. Q. Looking back before the season, did y'all see anything in this team that gave you a clue they might be capable of this? BARRY STEWART: Yeah. I know this team, we're young and we have ups and downs. We have been up really high winning at Rupp. We've been really low losing 5 out of 7, I guess. But all in all, every day in practice, the team worked hard. I think that's why we overcome on that. JARVIS VARNARDO: I knew coming in, when we won at Rupp this team could be special. That was a big win for us. You know, coming off the loss against Ole Miss, I was wondering how we were going to respond today, and we responded well. So I knew this team was going to be special. Q. Your reaction to being named the tournament MVP? JARVIS VARNARDO: Just a blessing. I thank God for it. I never thought that I'd be sitting here SEC championship and MVP. I just thank God for it. Q. Everybody on this team has a role. Jarvis as a defensive guy, Barry a shooter. What exactly is it about Phil that makes him so tough against the Tasmin Mitchells and Tyler Smiths of the world? What is his role? BARRY STEWART: You need that guy that can do it all. Phil, he can shoot, as you saw. He can shoot from deep, he can defend. And he's that glue guy out there. He gives you a bunch of energy, and he's really intense. So he gives us everything. JARVIS VARNARDO: Well, you got to be kind of crazy, you know, and Phil's just that. But, you know, he gives us a lot of energy. In practice, you know, he picks us up when we're down. He gives us a lot of energy. He's always saying something good, you know, trying to get us going. That's what we need from him. Q. Fairly late in the game, Hopson makes the drive, and Jarvis goes way up. It was maybe the most spectacular play of the game. Did that kind of spark you guys after that play because it was an incredible play? BARRY STEWART: Yeah, that was an amazing play. I mean, Scotty, we know he can jump, and he's got the leading shot blocker down behind us. So it was a big play. I think it was somewhat of a game changer. Q. I can get you to talk about your match-up with Wayne, and some of the history of it? JARVIS VARNARDO: Wayne always got the best of me. There had been a few times I won against him, you know, but it's really special to come on this stage with the SEC Championship, playing against your home state, and then playing against the guy you battle all year in high school. You know, to get the win, that's tremendous. CLAUDE FELTON: We'll excuse the student-athletes and continue with questions for Coach Stansbury. Q. Going back to what Phil Turner gives you. Everybody on this team gets more accolades all tournament. But just talk about he's like the forgotten guy who kind of holds it together? COACH STANSBURY: Let me expand on a few things our guys talked about. You know, that's the reason Phil was inserted into the lineup back in middle December. We're a young team, new team and just were not playing with the energy and passion that you've got to play with. And Phil has that. There are some things Phil doesn't do, great decision making sometimes. But the one thing he does every day, he plays with tremendous effort. He's our emotional guy, and to expand on that question, somebody asked about that 6:00, 7:00 minute mark of that game during one of those timeouts. I mean, Phil Turner is the guy that emotionally gets into everybody. Jarvis and Stewart, they're the nicest people you ever want to be around. They're not going to say a whole lot. So Phil brings that part to this team. It's very important in practice, too, to have that kind of guy. He just finds a way. He's 178 pounds, he guards most fours, guarded Chism today for a bunch. He just finds ways to use his energy and his quickness and his toughness to offset what he doesn't have. The best we can. You know, we don't win that war every night. But if we can win that war right there, he's a difficult match-up and offensively whether he's making shots or not, you have to guard him. Q. I was going to ask about Phil, too. He was kind of modest when he talked about the defense he played against Tyler. But I mean Tyler just didn't shoot well against him. As a coach, when you're sending a 6' 2" guy out there to guard somebody like that you must have a lot of confidence in him? COACH STANSBURY: We kind of guard him with two guys. You may not notice a lot. We let the one guy that we didn't guard get some points and probably let him get back in that game. We didn't guard Prince. Stew was on him. He's our best defensive player from the ability to anticipate who is where. He sees next play happening very well. We didn't guard Prince, which, in turn, enabled us to get a lot of support in there on Tyler Smith. You'll know, Prince got some drives and got some put backs. That's the way he beats you. Driving it some, limiting it some. If you can limit Tyler Smith to 12 points or 2 for 14, that's a huge stat. That's where they had the advantage at regarding Phil Turner. We kind of neutralized that a little bit. Q. The last few seconds of the game that took forever and so many weird things happened. Did you have any worries about your guys composure? COACH STANSBURY: Well, are you asking me he -- hey, I wish the clock would have run out and us winning the game. I wouldn't have enjoyed waiting for it, I can promise you that. Because in that stage of the Game, 1 play here or there is the difference in winning or losing. And there were about three in that situation. You know, Chism hit the big shot to get them back in the game. We're up 4, and he hits a big shot to cut it to 1. At that point, anything can happen. Our plans was late with that last. Get it to a second and we're in good shape. We made both free throws. A three. We were going to foul. Bruce knew we were going to foul. Phil kind of ran over there and jumped on Maze a little too long it was. We let Tatum get a shot off. We hadn't planned to do that to be honest with you. But again, we found ways to make plays. Phil Turner stepped up and made the two big free throws, huge. But more importantly than that, and I didn't watch the tape, but I think it was Phil Turner on two end outs he got deflections on. And those were huge plays. Ten, 12 seconds to go. Q. Did you sense that Phil had another gear late because he had played a few minutes less than the others? COACH STANSBURY: Well, emotionally, like we said, and I know as a coach, and we all knew this, we weren't going to talk about being fatigued now. We talked about fatigue wasn't an option. But we understand too, now, fourth day, fourth game, the people we've had to play. In particularly Jarvis. I thought the first half, Jarvis was spent. I think he played that way. But we knew this, we couldn't win the game without Jarvis, and we didn't absolutely have to have Jarvis scoring every time, but we had to have him rebound that basketball and defending that goal. And to his credit, he found a way to dig in when he didn't have anything left. And that was the key to that game. Timeouts, there were not a lot of X's and O's spent that last ten minutes. Most of the time outs were spent understanding now it's not a 40-minute game, it's not a 20-minute game. It's a 10-minute game. Understanding the focus you have to play with, and the effort you've got to play with. Because that's what it came down to. One more effort play, here or there is the difference between winning and losing. And our kids as tired as we were, we found ways to make those plays in that last six minutes of the game. Q. Bruce Pearl talked as if he felt his team was impatient on the offense. How much do you think your defense had to do with that? COACH STANSBURY: I think this. I think we allowed some guys to shoot the ball from the perimeter. And sometimes when guys are open, they can tell the coach, I'm open. Well, sometimes when you're open, it's not a good shot. And I do think we backed off a few people. In particularly late in the game, because late in the game is when everything starts to get a little tighter. We intentionally backed on off a couple of guys to keep it out of the paint. I do think they may have shot a couple. One of them got a rebound and got a putback. But for the most part, we did what we had to do. Keep them off the foul line. They're a very good shooting, free throw team. I thought we, again, won that free throw war. I know the last three games we won it huge. I can't remember the first game. But when you back up and check the free throws we shot compared to our opponents in these four games, there's a big difference, and that's a huge stat. Tells me two things: Our teams getting the ball to the paint on the pass, and we're getting the ball to the paint on on the dribble. And it wasn't a pretty game on any team's account, but it was a gutsy game. I'll repeat myself, against a very good Tennessee team that has a chance to get into the NCAA Tournament and play for a long time. They're that good. And, again, we don't have to be the best team now for a 16-game schedule. We just had to be the best team today for 40 minutes. That's what we found a way to do. For 40 minutes we found the way to to be the best team out there. That's all that matters. Q. You talked about Jarvis being fatigued, spent in the first half. Is that what he was when he fell down on the court and he came out? It was an injury or wasn't at all? COACH STANSBURY: He got the air, the breath knocked out of him. It's very obvious he doesn't have a whole lot of room to hold a lot of air, so it didn't take a very big lick to knock him out there at the end. But he's played tremendously hard for these three games. You know, his body is not like a lot of guys bodies. There's a little extra fat and energy stored up. There is nothing stored up in his body. But to his credit, he found a way again in that second half. When you have to dig deep, and coaches talk about it all the time, you have to find ways. It's cliche, but again, it's a perfect example of it. There was a guy that found a way to dig deep when there was nothing left in that tank to help us win this game. Q. This is about to become a moot point. But what kind of seed do you think you deserve in the tournament? COACH STANSBURY: You know how I'm going to answer it already. I'm not, you know -- I wouldn't think to comment on something I have zero control over. Only thing I know is we don't have to sit here and worry about being on a bubble. We busted that bubble. So that's all that matters. We're happy to be a part of the 64 teams. Wherever they send us, you'll be with us, so it doesn't matter. End of FastScripts |
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