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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: MIAMIMarch 20, 2009Chase BudingerJordan HillRuss PennellNic WiseMIAMI, FLORIDA Arizona 84 LARRY WAHL: We'll open up here with an opening statement from Coach Pennell, then we'll have questions for the student-athletes. Coach, if you want to get us started off. COACH RUSS PENNELL: Sure. Obviously we're real happy with the win tonight, and I thought that we came out and set the tone early. We were very aggressive, especially on the defensive end, and that really has been an issue for us the last few weeks, and I think it's one of the reasons that we have not been as successful. We kind of went back to some things fundamentally that we needed to do, and I thought the guys were just outstanding tonight with their effort and their energy. We knew how good Utah was, and they're an outstanding basketball team that's had an outstanding year. I know a lot of people were talking about us being the favorite, all that stuff is just rhetoric to us. It comes down to playing basketball and playing basketball for 40 minutes at a high level. And I thought tonight we did that, and we're just excited about moving on. Q. You were picked by an awful lot of people obviously to win this game coming in. Everyone talked about that. You guys were aware of it. But for those out there who said that 19-13 didn't deserve an at-large bid into the tournament, tonight would say, "what?" NIC WISE: We overcame adversity again. Everything that's happened to us these past couple years, Coach Olsen having to leave from us twice, and we've had three different coaches in the last three years. Lost three or four games by one point, and the schedule we played was pretty tough. So I just felt that we overcame adversity again and proved that we really should be in the tournament. Q. Chase, I remember the locker room last year after you guys lost to West Virginia, and your performance against Perdue two years ago was pretty bad, and West Virginia beat you guys pretty bad last year. It was a pretty divided locker room with Coach O'Neill. Talk about you guys showing up and playing well in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a while. CHASE BUDINGER: This team came focused and ready to play. We've had hardships throughout the whole season, but we stuck together as a team. We united and came closer with those hardships. That's what made us at this point that we're at now. We're just trying to play our best basketball right now, and we just played well tonight. We came after it on the defensive end, and our defense really led to our offense tonight. Q. Nic, how tiring was that? Was it tough to get your breath at times? NIC WISE: It is, but our conditioning is second to none. We pressed, as you can tell, all game. Us three pretty much played 40 minutes a game. You know, we're used to it by now. Whatever gave us an advantage, you'll be tired after the game, before the game, you put all your heart into it. Q. Jordan, can you talk a little bit about the start those first six, eight minutes or so and going up 16-6 and 23-10 and just what that did in terms of settling down and finding a groove out there? JORDAN HILL: Last interview, like I said, we've just got to be the aggressor, get out there and attack our opponent first. You know, we did that in the first half very well. We've just got to keep pushing, keep going. We all helped each other out. That was a real big thing that we need to do more, just help each other out on defense, offense, just go out there and attack. Q. This is for any of the guys to take: There were people who said you didn't belong, you didn't deserve a bid into this tournament. Did you feel disrespected? Was that a motivating thing for you? Did that help bring you guys together? CHASE BUDINGER: We felt that we belonged. We felt that we had some key wins throughout the season that we had a good enough season to get in the tournament. You know, all the people that were saying that we weren't going to make it, we just tried ignoring that. Once our name went up on the board, that was pretty much it. You know, I think we did a good job at keeping outside influences not within the team, and really just stuck together. COACH RUSS PENNELL: Let me answer that question, too. We deserve to be here, and the reason we deserve to be here is because we're here. The victories that we had this year were quality wins, and we weren't the only team in America that lost a few games down the stretch. But the thing is the opponents that we lost to, four of those teams are in the NCAA Tournament, and so we felt like that we deserved to be here. Would we have been surprised if we had not been selected? No, that's a different question. But as far as us belonging here, we definitely belong here, and today was not about proving that. That was not our motivation. Our motivation was to win the game and move on in this national tournament. Q. This is for any of you guys: The tournament kind of has two different phases where you have the early rounds where the people want to see the double-digit underdogs come out and win, and toward the end they want the more recognizable names and the big-time talent to see what they have. You guys sort of have the best of both worlds in that you're the low seed and you have the talent. Which one do you feel more like, like the underdog because of the seeding or just given the talent at that table right there that you should be one of the more recognizable teams that can advance pretty far? NIC WISE: We feel talent-wise we are one of the better teams in the tournament. But we like being underdogs. We felt all year long in the PAC-10 we were the underdogs. So we thrive on that, and we don't try to play mind games about being underdogs. We take it one game at a time. We'll watch this next game, watch film on them, practice tomorrow, and come out and give it our all again. Q. Russ, you still have the "interim" tag, and the implication is still you're not going to be with this team at the end of the season. I know you're not dwelling on it, but is there still kind of a surreal aspect about all of this right now? COACH RUSS PENNELL: You know, not really. The thing is I'm the coach of the 2008-2009 Arizona Wildcats and we're still playing, and that's all my focus has been all year and that's all it'll continue to be. I really don't worry about that. I've asked these guys next to me way back in October to not worry about their future. Everyone wonders are they going pro, are they do this. They've never talked about that. They've never even hinted that. I think that's one of the reasons that this has been such a successful year. We're enjoying this, we're having fun, and this has been an incredible ride. When it gets over, we'll all have decisions to make, but it's not over, and we're living to fight another day, and that's why we're looking forward to not only tomorrow's practice but the game on Sunday. Q. Russ, can you talk about how Kyle handled the grand stage that he did tonight? COACH RUSS PENNELL: I thought Kyle handled it the way he's handled most things this year. I don't know if he's calm, cool and collected, or if he's just naïve enough not to know that he's supposed to be nervous. But I thought he played extremely well. When Kyle is flying around, not only him, I thought Jamelle the second half did the same thing. When those guys are flying around on defense, it helps these three out but it makes us a better team and a different team, and I thought they really set the tone, Kyle and Jamelle, about the defensive intensity. Q. I came in a little bit late, but did you address the matter of your pressure early? And did you see something in Utah in scouting them and looking at the films that made you realize extending pressure on them the whole game would be a great help? COACH RUSS PENNELL: I don't know if it's something we saw. It's the way we play. But one of the things we were concerned about is Luke Nevill is so big and he's such a presence down low, and sometimes the best way to play against that is to pressure the basketball a long way from the goal. Some teams like to double-team, but Luke is a good passer and we knew Utah ran their offense through him a lot. Basically we tried to pressure off the floor and take time off that shot clock and not give them as much time to go through the pivot. Q. Did that take a long time in your study for the game? Did you right away say, that's what we're going to do? COACH RUSS PENNELL: Yeah, we actually did. We knew that he was such a good player, and we had quite a bit of game footage on them. We know the Mountain West is a good league, there's a lot of man-to-man played in that league, not a lot of zone. We felt like that was to our advantage, also. But we knew that if we were going to have success, we were going to have to do a good job on Luke Nevill, and it did help that he got in foul trouble tonight. But he's a very outstanding player, and we knew that he was the focal point of what they wanted to do. Q. You were up fairly comfortably most of the way, up 13 a couple of times, and all of a sudden it gets to two. Just talk about what's going through your mind at that point. And it didn't seem like you guys really changed a lot schematically, just shots started going down. What started working there? COACH RUSS PENNELL: I thought the big thing is we got fatigued, we got tired. We tried to use our time-outs the best we can. We're not a real deep team, and the guys we bring off the bench don't play heavy minutes. Obviously the longer time-outs here help us, but I think the adrenaline, the travel, everything else I thought caught up with us at times, and we kind of got through that and reestablished ourselves. I know Jordan hit a big jump shot in the middle of the paint that kind of let everyone take a big deep breath, and then I thought our defense picked back up. LARRY WAHL: Thank you very much. We'll see you tomorrow. End of FastScripts |
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