|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: KANSAS CITYMarch 18, 2009Trevor BookerTerrance OglesbyOliver PurnellK.C. RiversKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI KEVIN KLINTWORTH: From Clemson, we have student athletes, Trevor Booker, KC Rivers, and Terrence Oglesby. We're ready for questions. Q. Terrence, you're trying to rebound from last year's performance in the NCAA Tournament. How big of a motivating factor is that for you this year? TERRANCE OGLESBY: Well, I mean, it's exciting just to be able to get back on the horse and give it another shot. Last year was very disappointing as far as losing the first game, but, you know, hopefully we'll be able to rebound like you said and doing a good job of just playing together and advancing. Q. Terrence, what's been the biggest challenge in trying to prepare for Michigan on such a short week? TERRANCE OGLESBY: I think the biggest {challenge} for us was the fact they play a lot of zone and we had to refresh a lot of our zone offenses. We haven't played against a zone offense since mid December. I think that was probably the toughest aspect of being able to represent for a team like them and moving forward to advance. Q. Can you kind of go over Michigan's offense. Seems like the common thread is when they're not shooting the ball, well, from three, that's when they lose. KC, just kind of wondering what the big principles are of defending them? K.C. RIVERS: We have to play some of their guards. They go more of a four-out, one in movement. Make you play for probably 30 seconds of the shot clock. Again, we're going to have to be sound defensively. Defense is going to be our main purpose coming into this game as far as trying to defend what we want to go do and beat us with their smaller guards, and we'll definitely have to make a conscious effort to sustain our defense this time around. Q. Can you guys -- the program has been down for awhile. Can you talk about the significance of getting to the tournament in back-to-back years? K.C. RIVERS: Well, my freshman year, like you said, we were down. We made an effort to have a winning season, and since then it's been {problems}. Coach has been recruiting guys and bringing in guys that want to win. So far the work he's put in has shown. We're back to being a tournament team. This is the second year in the row that we've been back to the tournament. Hopefully we'll advance. The program has sustained such good quality of players for the past six years and has been a good insight for people, especially Clemson fans all over the country. So {now} they have something to talk about is Clemson basketball. KEVIN KLINTWORTH: More questions for Clemson? Q. For all three of you guys, what's the kind of mindset after having a week to kind of digest the way you {twice} end the season and kind of getting into a focus of turning it around right within the season for the most important game? TERRANCE OGLESBY: Right after we lost to Georgia Tech, we had practice the very next day after the bus trip back. We've had an abundance of team meetings, and, you know, I think we've really come together a lot more as a team and just being able to focus on our goal and establishing our goal and our goals to advance. And obviously, you know, we have to carry forward and, like I said, play as a team in order to get that, and I think that's one way you rebound is just getting the mental part back into -- back into focus. TREVOR BOOKER: I think we're a little down on ourselves after the Georgia Tech loss, but like Terrence said, we had a lot of meetings. We got everything straightened out. We're having a lot of fun in practice the last couple of days. I think we'll rebound well. We lost our last, probably four to five games. So we are limping into the ACC Tournament, and I know a lot of people saying we're limping into the NCAA Tournament, but we can't let that get in our minds. We've got to come out and play Clemson basketball, and we're looking forward to it. K.C. RIVERS: Well, both of these guys spoke it all. Not much else to be said besides, you know, rebounding from the loss to Georgia Tech. This team is capable of bouncing back. We've showed it numerous times this season, but again, we don't play until what's been said about us. We stick together as a unit and going to look to get the job done. Q. How is it different for you guys going into the tournament this year than when you went into last year and know what to expect? K.C. RIVERS: Again, we've got a strong nucleus back, four that we lost with the head of us, our senior class of last year, they're gone, but still the guys were the majority part of getting us there is back. We've got four new faces introduced to it now. It's pretty much even now. We know what to expect going in. We understand what's at stake here. There's no shock. TERRANCE OGLESBY: I think one more thing, a lot of our guys were caught in the moment of being there. We enjoyed the fact that we were being there, rather than actually focusing on getting the win, and I think we got caught up in a lot of hoopla that surrounds the NCAA Tournament, and I think there's more of a central focus this year, rather than getting caught up in all the sideshows and things of that nature, and, you know, there's more focus, like I said. Q. Do you expect, Terrence, this is the first time Michigan has been in the tournament in 11 years, do you expect them to go going through some of that in kind just being overwhelmed a little bit in just being here. TERRANCE OGLESBY: It's tough to say because we're not in their shoes this year. They have a great coach who has been there a lot and he -- he has those guys ready to play every game. So, you know, it is a difficult situation rather than your conference tournaments and things like that, but, you know, it's a new situation and, you know, selfishly, we kind of wish that they do have that kind of problem, but, you know, we'll see on game day. KEVIN KLINTWORTH: Do we have more questions for Clemson? Thank you, guys. Now we're joined by Coach Oliver Purnell from Clemson. Coach, give us a brief statement. COACH OLIVER PURNELL: We're very excited to be representing Clemson University in this year's NCAA Tournament. Sitting there on Selection Sunday, even though we felt like we were locked to be in, it's still very exciting to hear your name and look back at the beginning of the year and realize what a {tough} road it is when you first of all look at your non-conference schedule and feel like if you can be successful there, will get you ready for the conference. And we certainly recognize the league would be tough, but probably underestimated how tough the league would be this year. As we got {into} it, we certainly understood that, and then to go through that murderer's row and be sitting down in Selection Sunday knowing you had done enough to be selected with a decent seed, that's exciting. And of course when we heard we were playing Michigan, we certainly recognize what a worthy adversary that they would be, having watched them a little bit during the year, certainly followed them, played Duke, Illinois, common opponents for us, and having {coached} against John before at West Virginia and Richmond, we certainly recognize we're going to have a very tough basketball, but, one, if we prepare and get ourselves ready for it, we're able to win. It would be a terrific win for us because we beat Michigan but also to have an opportunity to advance in the NCAA Tournament and it would just get more exciting after that. KEVIN KLINTWORTH: Questions. Q. Players are talking about how they've come together since the ACC, that there's some team meeting and whatnot and they let a few things out and they've got a focus now. That sort of implies that there's -- something was missing before the ACC. Is that true and what was missing that maybe is tied up a little tighter now? COACH OLIVER PURNELL: I don't think there's necessarily something missing. We're not as good as we want to be. We're not as good -- we were not as good as we needed to be. We're simply trying to improve, and I think so sometimes when you lose a game, no matter how high the level of competition, you know, you may feel like something is missing or whatever. The fact of the matter, we're playing, in my estimation, the best basketball league in America. One of the things that you try to stay out of which is very difficult is a rut. You can very easily lose two, three, four games in a row in the ACC and you feel like that maybe the sky is falling. Part of the reasons for the meetings was that we had time. Last year we didn't have time for meetings. We wanted to talk about get that perspective and understand that at this level there are just not a lot of room for error. We're going to have to improve in certain areas. We're going to have really emphasize the things that have made us good during the course of the year, and the major word, or couple words, that we came up with and we really wanted to resubmit in our player's minds {was} a defensive focus. And if you look at the last couple of ball games, we scored in the 80's and we did not win, and sometimes it's easy for players to, you know, focus on the offense. Well, we're not doing this offensively, we're not doing that offensively or our touches or when you score in the 80s, you ought to win. We wanted to give the players an opportunity to find out what they were thinking, which I think is always good for your coaches, but it's also good for their teammates to find out what they're thinking. And I think all of that was a positive force. And there's a lot of times, again, during this time of year, you don't have that time. So we wanted to make the fact that we lost in the first round of the ACC Tournament kind of a blessing for us or turn into an advantage. Gave us a time to {visit} with each other, meet, practice more than obviously we would have, work on some things we wouldn't have had time to, and refocus on some things that made us successful. So no, I don't think it was necessarily something missing. I just think we weren't as good as we wanted to be or needed to be in order to win that tournament, which was played at a high level, and if you want the advance and have an opportunity to have success in this tournament, we weren't where we needed to be. I think we're a lot closer to that today, and obviously we're very excited about finding out just where we are tomorrow. Q. Oliver, the common thread really in Michigan's losses. They haven't shot the ball well, particularly from three. With what {we} like to do spacing-wise ,even some of the backdoor cuts. What are some of the keys that you have to do against them? COACH OLIVER PURNELL: We want to keep pressure on the ball. Pressure is big for us. Wouldn't matter if it was Michigan or anyone. Pressuring the wall in the backcourt, pressuring the ball in the front court is important. I guess if I were to try to describe philosophically what they like to do, they like 3s or layups or they like free throws, and they don't like things in between. So just understanding that as you approach them defensively is important. You want to close out and pressure them, but if you pressure them and put them on the line they're going to hurt you. They're shooting 76 percent from the line. They're an excellent free throw shooting team. If you don't close out, they're going to knockdown the three. Yet, if you don't pressure them, they're going to hit -- pinpoint those backdoor passes which they're going to get some backdoors. When they get those backdoors, we want to have pressure on the ball, maybe get a fingernail on it, maybe cause them not to put it exactly where they want it and cause some turnovers. So, you know, we're not doing a whole lot differently, but we're thinking about them differently and understanding -- I think our players have a good understanding (Laugh). They want to do and we want to try to take that away as much as possible. We don't want to end up pressuring them and {foul} them all night long and giving them, you know, 30 points from the line. Q. Oliver, after taking the program to an NCAA Tournament last year, is there anything that you learned from that experience with this team that you would say okay, we're going to do this differently this year going into in game? COACH OLIVER PURNELL: Well, again, we're coming at it from a different angle this year. Last year we played in the ACC championship game. We didn't have a whole lot of time to catch our breathe and get ready. This time we've had an opportunity to really reflect on last year, reflect on this season, to think about what it would mean to advance and all those kinds of things. I think it's different. I think the only thing maybe we bring from last year that's important is, you know, how bad we felt when we didn't win, and to have an opportunity to advance, to really maybe turn it up a notch, because guys from last year realized, most of them realize, you don't necessarily get this opportunity, you know, again next year. K.C. Rivers and Raymond Sykes and Jesse Young understand that. Even our younger guys like Booker, they were here last year and they realized boy, we could have advanced, but we didn't. I think they're really motivated to advance. Q. Kind of stole my thunder. TO said you guys are coming with a more businesslike approach. You {got} caught up in some of the hoopla last year. Do you think there's something to that or -- COACH OLIVER PURNELL: I think it's possible. Anytime you're a year older, seven, eight guys in the tournament last year and gone through exactly this, I think they're better able to handle it, better able to kind of, you know, kind of put it over on the side. We do the media stuff. We look at the brackets. We talk about the tournament, but then there's playing the game, which is a completely different compartment. It's a big game. That's the way you got to look at it, and you got to just try to put your best foot forward for two halves. I thought last year we played really well in the first half. We didn't play nearly as well in the second half, and yet still a close game coming down the stretch. I think our guys are really motivated to put together two halves. Q. Oliver, just wanted to ask you: Last week you did some exercise after the ACC Tournament to kind of get the team focus back together. It seems like from talking to some of these guys, maybe that worked a little bit. They seemed a lot more loose than a week ago. Are you sensing this team has kind of bonded a little bit more since last Tuesday? COACH OLIVER PURNELL: I think we made progress as a team. Again, I didn't feel like we were where we wanted to be going into the tournament, and yet, at the same time, still a winable game, but maybe the fact that we lost a game gave us some extra time to have some meetings, to talk about some things, to have, you know, four, five practices, to work on some things, to have a defensive focus, to really understand what's important for us first and foremost, but then the last couple of days to understand what's important for Michigan and try to take those things away. I think all those things have helped us. Time will tell when we roll the balls out there tomorrow, but it could be a blessing in disguise that we've had some more time, some more meetings, some more practices, and hopefully some more focus. Q. Coach, just want to ask you about Trevor going into an unorthodox situation defensively with him. What's the most important thing for him to succeed offensively against Michigan? COACH OLIVER PURNELL: I think basically it's not different. It's sealing and posting inside. It's running the court. Occasionally knocking down an outside shot. Limits getting on the offensive glass. It's just bringing all that, and if they decide to double him inside, which I fully expect they will, he's got to make that good, accurate pass that leads to a basket for us. So, Trevor got to be good for us, but then he needs to make others better as well. Q. This program was down for a long time. Now this is two years in a row in the tournament. What's the foundation? Where does this put the program now that you've gotten here two years in a row? COACH OLIVER PURNELL: Well, I think it's more than just the last couple of years. We've been building a very solid foundation in our program, and we're at the point now we've got good players coming in each year and we're just like everybody else. We got good players leaving, and there are a lot of questions about our team this year because we lost outstanding players last year in Cliff Hammonds and Sam Perry and James Mays, particularly defensively and from a leadership standpoint. Had some guys step up and kind of step right into the breach and help us continue to move forward and help us to continue to play at a high level. You know, we're not where we want to be yet. We think we've got good players coming in next year, and every year we get more and more experience in settings like this. I think it really helps us to be comfortable in the top half of the ACC, to be comfortable in the NCAA Tournament. And I think when you're comfortable, great things can happen. You got to -- you get {one} close game early in the NCAA, and you can get on a roll. We're the type of team that can definitely get on a roll. There's no question about that because of our style, because of defensively we can cause havoc, and we're tough to prepare for just in a couple of days but also offensively we can be explosive with the 3-point shot and inside out attack. So, I don't know -- was your question? (Laughter). I got to pontificate. I think we're in a good place from a program standpoint, I really do. I'm very pleased with where we are, and now it's a situation where each individual team has got to, you know, do their thing and see how high they can go. Q. Oliver, can you talk about your zone offense. Specifically do you care if there's dribble penetration, or do you want the ball thrown in there? Does it matter? You want some of each? How do you approach it? COACH OLIVER PURNELL: We haven't dusted that off and dusted off our zone offense. We haven't seen a lot of zone since Christmas. We were talking to the staff maybe 20 possessions total and I think that's because people respect our ability, Terrence and KC's ability to shoot the ball from the outside, but to answer your question, all of the above. I think a good zone offense everybody knows you want the make outside jump percent, but I'm definitely a proponent you've got to have balance and you've really got a good zone offense when you're scoring on the interior with either dribble penetration or just simply posting up in there and/or you're attack being the offensive glass. Those are three ways that you can and should get the ball inside while attacking their zone. If you're knocking down outside shots, that makes life a lot easier and they count three. KEVIN KLINTWORTH: Any other questions? Thank you, Coach Purnell. End of FastScripts |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|