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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: KANSAS CITY

March 19, 2009

Willie Warren

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI

OKLAHOMA Â– 82
MORGAN STATE - 54

KEVIN KLINTWORTH: We have the University of Oklahoma. Coach Jeff Capel, Willie Warren, Blake Griffin and Taylor Griffin.
COACH JEFF CAPEL: It's great to get this win. I thought defensively we were pretty good. Contested shots made things difficult for Morgan State and we're pleased to survive and advance.
KEVIN KLINTWORTH: Questions for student athletes only.

Q. Blake, you just talk about the situation with Ameer Ali?
BLAKE GRIFFIN: We just kind of got tangled up and -- just got tangled up. Turned out bad.

Q. Blake, obviously your back was bothering you after that. How are you? What's hurting?
BLAKE GRIFFIN: Just my tailbone a little bit. My back is alright. It's mainly my tailbone. Should get better with time.

Q. Taylor, is this as good of a team win with several guys contributing as you've had in a?
TAYLOR GRIFFIN: Yes, absolutely. I think everybody played well. I think we kind of got back to playing how we were playing early on in the season and midway through the season. You know, I think we moved the ball well. I think we played good defense and, you know, something we've got to build on.

Q. Blake, also for Taylor. How do you manage to keep your cool out there when all that physical play, getting mugged out there and I want to get your reaction to your brother, too, Taylor? How do you manage to maintain your cool during a game?
BLAKE GRIFFIN: Just understand why people are doing it. The only reason they're doing it is to get me to do something stupid for me to not be able to play. I'm not going to let them win that game so I just walk away.
TAYLOR GRIFFIN: I think Blake has matured a lot over this past year just handling retaliation, knowing like -- knowing why people are coming at him. I think I have faith that he's going to handle any situation that comes up the right way and, you know, even though I may get fired up a little bit but, you know, I know that he's going to do what's smart and what's best for our team.

Q. Blake, it looked like early in the game everything was going your way in terms of getting you the ball and scoring and easy. Then later, 34 got in the game and you had a couple of situations with him before that play. Can you talk about how did the game get more and more physical the longer it went?
BLAKE GRIFFIN: As far as getting touches and scoring like I did in the first half, you know, he really didn't do anything except just hit me. I mean our other guys were scoring, Taylor was scoring, Willie was scoring. I felt like they were doing fine so I mean it got a little bit more physical but I don't think that contributed to not scoring as much.

Q. Willie, did you feel like from a guard perspective tonight that the guards got back into it and really played like you wanted to play and got into the rhythm of the things and got back on again?
WILLIE WARREN: Yeah. The guards did a good job tonight. T.J. hit a couple big buckets for us. I felt like Omar came in and give us good minutes and T.J. came in at the end. We didn't lay down. All our guards came in and stepped up. That's what freed Blake up and freed Taylor up to be able to make shots.

Q. Willie, with that in mind and all the talk about the guards, how did you get into the game without being too aggressive, trying to do too much?
WILLIE WARREN: That's a good thing about having Blake. In the first couple of possessions get a feel for the game. He gets it early and once you get the feel for the flow of the game it's easy for us to step up because the defense is getting down to double team him and opening up plays for our guards.

Q. Blake, that wasn't the first time something like that happened to you this year, might have been the more blatant. How do you keep your feelings inside from hauling off and hitting somebody?
BLAKE GRIFFIN: Just understand why people do that and not let them get the best of me. I don't want them to -- I don't want them to know -- it's an individual game they play with me. I don't want to have to sit out a game for doing something stupid in retaliation. The best thing to do is just walk away.
KEVIN KLINTWORTH: Any other questions for the student athletes? Okay, guys. Get back to the locker room.
Questions for Coach.

Q. Coach, we now how cool Blake is. What were you thinking about when you saw him getting judo-flipped there at mid-court, what goes through your mind? Talk about it.
COACH JEFF CAPEL: Well, I wanted to make sure he wasn't hurt. That was the first thing. Those kind of things really upset me. Look, I know Todd Bozeman. I know he doesn't teach his kids to do that.
Maybe it was it was inadvertent. I hope it was. I didn't see it as it happened. As I turned I just saw him up in the air so I didn't really see the play.
But it just really upsets me because he gets hit like that throughout the whole game and it's not called all the time and it just really bothers me.
I know he's a really difficult guy to officiate. I understand that because he's big and he's strong and you have to be physical with him because he's so physical. But some of these things that happen and that have been happening, you know, it's borderline on ridiculous, to be completely honest with you.
Again, it's not anything with Todd Bozeman because, again, I know him and I know he doesn't teach his kids that. Again, if I go back and see the play, when I go back and watch the play -- I'm pretty sure Blake said they just got tangled up. For me it's scary and it pisses me off, to be honest with you.

Q. Jeff, you were able to play a lot of guys. You substituted freely. You substituted early. Was that the game plan going in and did you accomplish what you wanted to in that area?
COACH JEFF CAPEL: We won so we accomplished what we wanted to there. I thought we did some really good things. We still didn't shoot the ball from beyond the arc as well as I know we're capable of. That excited me as crazy as that sounds because maybe it means we have that coming on Saturday.
But I thought we moved offensively better than we have in a while. I thought we defended better. Played a lot of zone in this game. We kind of played the percentages.
We knew that "Kelly" was a kid that shot the ball really well and other than that they had guys that shot it just okay so we wanted to get back in the zone but we were really aggressive in our zone and very effective with our zone.
We were able to get up and press a little bit, some different types of pressure and so I was really pleased with what we did defensively.
I wasn't pleased with how many offensive rebounds they got. That's an area where we have to really, really improve if we want to have a chance to win on Saturday.

Q. Jeff, using the zone did it also kind of -- it seemed like it kind of slowed the pace of the game down, made it more of a half court game. Was that a little bit of the idea or not?
COACH JEFF CAPEL: Not really because we wanted to press. We were getting up in a press and falling back and, if anything, against this Morgan State team we didn't really want to slow it down. We wanted to kind of get it going a little bit and that's what we were more aggressive in our zone. Sometimes we'll just sit back.
But I thought we were really aggressive in the zone, able to force some turnovers and force some contested shots which in my mind are like turnovers as well. If we would have rebounded the basketball better then the zone would have even been more effective. We held them to 29 percent shooting. It was pretty good, pretty effective.

Q. Jeff, why is Blake hard to officiate and why don't other Player of the Year candidates get that sort of treatment?
COACH JEFF CAPEL: It's amazing to me. Again, because he's physical. You have to be physical with him. When I played, there were some guys in our league that -- Tim Duncan was pretty good. I played against him for four years. He got some calls. You couldn't be real physical with Duncan.
Randolph Childress scored 40 on us in the ACC tournament and the big reason is you couldn't (indicating). That was a foul. He was kind of a made man because of what he had done.
You know, I don't know. I don't know. I can't speak on that. Can't speak freely on that (laughter).

Q. With the grind that you guys have been through and Blake going through the concussion, losing four of six, how big is it confidence-wise for this team to have a game like this today where you're running up and down the court and throwing the alley oops?
COACH JEFF CAPEL: It's good. We moved on past that. It may be hard for some to realize or believe, but, you know, we're able to move on quickly.
Our guys are able to move on quickly better than me, to be completely honest with you. When you're 18 to 21, not a lot of stuff bothers these guys. Sometimes that drives me crazy but, you know, they've been able to move on.
We had to really -- we had really good practices this week leading up to this and, you know, I'm pleased with some of the stuff we did today but, again, we have a really tough challenge on Saturday against a very good Michigan team.

Q. Jeff, you had a number of guys contribute tonight in a lot of different ways and hadn't necessarily been that way for the last few weeks. I'm guessing you hadn't really liked that.
COACH JEFF CAPEL: Yeah, I did. I was pleased. Obviously when you're able to have a lead like we had, we're able to feel a little bit more comfortable as a coach to get guys in there. Some of these guys have been doing a really good job at practice.
Actually Orlando Allen has been doing good at practice. Obviously everyone knows Omar Leary has been doing a good job for us the last three, four weeks. I felt very confident having him in there.
Get Cade going a little bit. Get him some makes. Hopefully that will come on Saturday because we need him. Juan has given us a boast of energy throughout the season.
So, again, I'm confident in our bench. I feel confident when I go to those guys they can step in and deliver for us.
KEVIN KLINTWORTH: Last couple of questions for coach.

Q. Jeff, despite your anger and your fear over what has happened, did happen to Blake, do you appreciate the demeanor and the fact that he looks like nothing is going to be able to get him to blow?
COACH JEFF CAPEL: I appreciate it because I couldn't do it. When I was his age, there's no way that I would have been able to handle it like that.
One of the things I think it shows, Taylor talks a little bit about Blake being mature. I think more than anything it shows how smart he is. He understands why people are doing some of these things and, again, by me saying that I'm not saying the kid from Morgan State did it intentionally. I don't think that he did.
But it was something bad that happened and -- again, Blake is a really smart kid. He understands why they're trying to do it. He understands his value to our basketball team and, you know, he can't react selfishly because that hurts our basketball team.

Q. Jeff, second half, you guys had three straight turnovers. You called a timeout. Not trying to be negative, are you concerned -- 15 turnovers, was that any kind of --
COACH JEFF CAPEL: I was concerned about that. I thought we got sloppy. One of the things we talked about coming into this tournament was competing on every possession and our last game prior to this in the Big 12 Tournament, I don't think we competed -- I thought we got "out-competed" and that's why we didn't deserve to win that basketball game. That's something we talked about.
We tried to simulate those things in practice and I thought we did a pretty good job of that throughout the game but that's where that timeout was from.
I didn't think we were cutting hard. I didn't think we had a sense of urgency with anything we were doing. We got sloppy. We wanted to try to talk about that and remind them things that we worked on and that's changed that. We're trying to break that habit.

Q. Quick turnaround, Michigan, what do you know about them?
COACH JEFF CAPEL: I know that they're really good. I know that they're well coached. They have two -- the two players I really know about are Manny Harris who is as good as any guard probably in America and then DeShawn Sims.
Obviously I know they shoot a lot of 3s and they're a really good shooting team. They play various styles defensively, 1-3-1, 2-3 zone, man. I think they played all of them today. They do a great job offensively. They spread the floor, they cut, they move, they share the basketball. They're a really good team.
They've had some really, really good wins this year and it's going to be a quick turnaround. We did do some preparation for them before we came here just a little bit. We kind snuck some in there on them and Clemson just in case, you know, we won today and had an opportunity to get to play one of those two.
But we'll get back to the drawing board tomorrow with our guys. We'll actually do that tonight. We'll show them some tape on Michigan tonight, some clips we already had some things and we'll start talking about them with our guys.
We'll probably stay up all night as a staff, put together a game plan, get here and practice tomorrow and get ready for them.
KEVIN KLINTWORTH: Thank you, Coach.

End of FastScripts

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