|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: BOISEMarch 21, 2009Derrick BrownJason LoveSean MillerB.J. RaymondBOISE, IDAHO THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and take questions for the Xavier student-athletes. Q. Jason, did you guys watch the game last night? And were you rooting either way for Wisconsin or Portland State or Florida State to win? JASON LOVE: After our game we stayed here and watched the first half, and as far as who we were going to play, we are just excited to make it past the first round and be here and we're part of the last 32 left and we're able to play another day. Q. B.J., what do you know about Wisconsin? Talk about them a little bit and what you've seen from what you've studied so far. B.J. RAYMOND: We know that they're a great team. We know they like to walk the ball up. They're a very defensive- minded team. They're similar to St. Louis and Miami, Ohio team with the way they play defense and the way they walk the ball up. They have a great junior point guard and they have Landry on the inside who is a tough -- he's tough to handle. It's just a good team. They're from the Big-10 and they have a lot of confidence right now. Q. For any of you guys, talk about the schedule that you played and it's pretty ambitious and the challenge that it gave you and did you like playing that type of a schedule . JASON LOVE: Oh, our goal this year was much like last year was to play the toughest schedule to put us in the best position to get a good seed in the tournament. We feel as though we got really good players and we were confident going into each game this year and we weren't intimidated at all by anybody we played. It really prepared us for the tournament game that we're about to play tomorrow and yesterday. I think that it definitely put us in a great position as far as seeding and just being ready to compete against teams, upper echelon teams of the NCAA. Q. B.J., we're going to hear again that a lot of the teams that Wisconsin plays are more athletic than Wisconsin. Wisconsin is not as athletic. I don't really know what that means. Do you know what that means when they say a team is not as athletic as another team? B.J. RAYMOND: No, we don't really listen to things like that. We know at Xavier we just try to focus on the things that we do best. We just try to come out and play hard every night and make sure that we're ready to play from the get-go. We don't want to get punched in the mouth and we just want to make sure that we play the whole 40 minutes of the game, and just whoever wins at the end of the game, you know, just make sure that we played our best. Q. You guys talk about the extended timeouts what it means to you guys. How does Coach treat them? Does he talk the whole time, does he give you some time to yourself? B.J. RAYMOND: Well, I know for me the air's a little bit thinner up here. I appreciate the longer timeouts and things like that. But you have a short window of time to get used to a team and they throw little wrinkles at you, and the coaches during the game they make adjustments. And it's important for us during that time to just sharpen up and see how the game's going and just try to get it tilted in our favor a little bit. Q. For B.J., can you just reflect on the last four years and where this program's gone in that time? B.J. RAYMOND: Yes, you know, one thing that has never changed is the way we play defense here. Coach Miller is always trying to make sure that all of the schemes and things are the same and that's why I can credit to myself become a becoming a better defender. And that's the one thing that's always hold true for our team is that when we come out and we play to our ability, we do it on the defensive end of the floor. Then also Coach has never ducked anybody. We have played some of the toughest games and some of the toughest opponents that we were able to. For that, it's made us and our coach and our system and our school it's got us out there a little bit. And in the tournament the way we do things, from scouting reports to going over personnel, we haven't changed that from day one and now that helps us during tournament time. Q. B.J., I know the team really shies away from any notion that you're a Mid Major. Do you still carry a little bit of a chip that you're not a -- you don't come from a football conference and does that in some way make its way into the program? B.J. RAYMOND: Yes, of course. We always have a chip on our shoulder. But we always do that at Xavier. We always try to play our best and try to win every game. Of course sometimes when you play different schools who have bigger names and things like that people might say it's a big game but every game at Xavier for us, we feel like it's a big game. And we go out and try to win every game and sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. But we know that for the most part we just try to play hard and we try to leave it all out on the floor every day. It doesn't matter what conference we're in or what, we just try to come out and play. Q. Derrick, B.J. talked about his assessment of Wisconsin, talk about what you think, what your assessment is, what you've seen so far from tapes . DERRICK BROWN: They're a real good team. They're very well coached. I think that's the strength of their team, very well coached, disciplined, they don't take bad shots. And it's going to be a war, but I feel like we're ready and prepared. Q. Derrick, how important is physical strength in your program? DERRICK BROWN: I feel like it's very important. It's important in every program, but we got a pretty good weight coach in a guy name Chris Rounds, he does a pretty good job with us and I think he prepares us in basketball strength. It's different types of strengths. I don't think it came down to us bench pressing, you know, a thousand times, we would be the best. But he puts us in a good position where we have the ability to go out there and compete against the best teams in the country. Q. Follow-up on a question that was just asked, you know, the fact that you're not from a football conference. Is it an attitude or a history or tradition that allows Xavier to supercede that and kind of like a Gonzaga and rise above any questions about the conference you're in or the program not being with the Ohio State's, so to speak. B.J. RAYMOND: Me personally I don't necessarily know, no disrespect, but I don't know what football has to do with basketball. Basketball, we simply recruit to the best of our system. I never have known of any school that needed a football team to be a good basketball team. We just focus on playing good basketball at Xavier. And just making sure that we have the right players that fit our system and they want to play basketball to the best of their ability. DERRICK BROWN: We can't control what conference we play in either, you know. It's not like it's a flip of the coin, we're in the conference and that's what we have to deal with. We play against the best teams in the country too. So we don't try to shy away from teams, I don't think. Coach puts us in the best position to win games. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you, gentlemen. We'll take questions for Coach Miller. Q. Coach, I know you got your coaching start at Wisconsin back in the early '90s, I wonder if you could reflect on that time starting off at Wisconsin and now how you feel about going up against Bo Ryan's team tomorrow? COACH MILLER: Yeah, Wisconsin is a very meaningful place for me. That's where I got my start. If I wasn't hired by Stu Jackson then, who knows where I would have gone out of college. But Stu Jackson gave me my first opportunity and I'm forever grateful for him and the staff that I was a part of in my first year as a college coach, included Stan Van Gundy, who remains one of my closest friends, Ray McCallum, who is really a terrific coach. And I learned so much not only at the University of Wisconsin by that staff, but Big-10 basketball, what it means and the passion that the fans have for their universities. And it was -- I couldn't have had a better start or first year for me and that allowed me to get other opportunities. Q. I was wondering how you handle these longer timeouts. Do you ever run out of things to say? COACH MILLER: It is different. It's something that when you're in the tournament in previous years that you're more ready for. It really knocks you off guard when it is your first time because they are a lot longer. But it really, to me, helps the quality of play. Players in mid March have been through so many games that the longer timeouts really allow the team to be fresher and you don't have to sub to get your players breaks as much in the tournament, those timeouts really take care of that for you. Q. A lot has been made about the 12th seed that Wisconsin has. When you were watching the game last night what is your assessment of the team and what you guys are going to need to do tomorrow? COACH MILLER: Well, once you get past the first round, or if you're not one of the top two seeds, even in the first round, it really comes down to who plays better on a given day. There's not a lot of separation between teams. I'm sure Wisconsin, Big-10 tested, a perennial power, a team that's been in tournaments before, I look at their senior class and what they have accomplished in their four years and it's amazing. So to play that team tomorrow, we look at it as out of the 32 or 33 games we played this year, among the most difficult tests. And really it should be. The Sweet 16 is on the line. But Bo Ryan is somebody that any young coach has to admire. I'm one of them. What he's done at the University of Wisconsin, his system, his style, the way he recruits, the toughness that his team displays, year-in, year-out, as faces change, their identity remains the same. It's very admirable and a lot of the things that he does with their program we try to do at Xavier. So we're really looking forward to a great game and I hope it is a great game. We're going to have to play among our best to advance. Q. You talked about one of the toughest games you'll have to play, you've played a very ambitious schedule and that's been kind of one of the stamps you've put on this program. Just talk about your scheduling philosophy, who will you play, who won't you play and how do you determine how you fill out your non-conference? COACH MILLER: We want to play a very, very challenging schedule. Two reasons: One, we want to prepare ourselves to have the best opportunity to win our regular season conference championship. And it's amazing when you go through tough Novembers and Decembers how your team is more prepared for the rigors of conference play. Number two, and it's the obvious one, it gives us an opportunity to qualify for an at-large berth in the tournament to improve our seed, to get those marquee wins that I think the Selection Committee has very honestly stepped to the forefront and said you have to have this to be a part of the tournament. I go back, Missouri's here with us, it seems like three years ago we played in the San Juan Shootout, but in that tournament you had Southern California, you had Chattanooga, you had Virginia Tech, Memphis and Missouri. Those three teams we beat. And in large part we achieved our number four seed by challenging ourselves to play in that tournament. It's always fun to talk about in March, but the reason you don't do it or not everybody does is there's not a lot of room for error when the season begins. I mean, you could clearly lose a couple tough games and it's not like you have a four- or a six-week hiatus and then the season begins after Christmas. For us even the two games we played before Christmas, which I think ruined everybody's Christmas in our program, Butler and Duke, we lost, but I'm very confident in saying because we played both of those teams we were better after Christmas having gone through it. Q. Xavier's obviously not one of the BCS football conferences, where do you see Xavier in the kind of the college basketball universe right now? COACH MILLER: Here's the thing: College basketball is not college football. That's A-No. 1. There's a distinct difference. When you look at Memphis last year being in the National Championship game and you look at what this tournament means, one of the reasons it's so special is on any given weekend any team in this tournament can beat the opposition. And that's what make it's so special. But for us, we try to compete to be among the best with who we are. And we control the Atlantic 10 Conference, that's the conference we're a part of. And Dayton advancing, Temple being in this tournament, some of the great teams of the past, UMass, Temple, some of our teams, Xavier, been in the Elite 8 two times in the last six years speaks for itself. But we try to be the best at who we are. And what happens in the fall when you're at Xavier you could cheer for any college football team. We're about college basketball and we have all the support in the world that we need to be the best we can be and that's all you can ask as a player and as a coach. Q. When you recruit, do you have any trepidation about going head to head with the Big East or Big-10 schools? COACH MILLER: No. It's a little bit like non-conference scheduling. We're not going to win every one of those battles, but for us to be a team that can advance year-in, year-out in this tournament and get the seed of three and four, which we have had the last two years, you got to have great quality players and depth, a balance in classes and that really starts and ends with recruiting. So we try to recruit the best players that we can get, and sometimes we fall short, but our attempt is always to put a team together that can advance in the NCAA tournament. Q. Wisconsin's been to 11 straight NCAA tournaments. As a coach that's been to four straight, can you put into context what that means? COACH MILLER: It puts Wisconsin probably in the top 10 percent or 20 percent of college basketball programs. We have gone to eight of the last nine years at Xavier. And I think we have tremendous pride in that, in the tradition that we built. But for Bo Ryan to do that and him to follow on the heels of Coach Bennett, they really have done just an incredible job building their program. And what all coaches hope is that you can do it year-in, year-out, that consistency. And that's really what we try to do at Xavier, to be back here next year, to have the opportunity to advance as the faces change in your program. The NCAA tournament almost comes to realize the identity that you have as a program. And Bo Ryan and what Wisconsin has done is incredible. Q. To follow-up on the scheduling thing, is there anyone you won't play? Do you only do home and homes, do you do a two for one? How do you pick which battles you choose? COACH MILLER: Being that we play Duke in the Meadowlands, I don't know if you realize this, I think they have won 18 years in a row there or Coach K's, I think it's his favorite place other than Cameron Indoor Stadium, would probably back up the fact that we're just looking for great opportunities. And certainly we want to play teams that will play us at home. And we now have that ability. On a neutral court, we try to play the best teams and programs in the country. I think for you as a coach to recruit the best players that you can get and to continue to build your program, if that's what you shy away from, then you really are caught in the middle. You have to be able to play great teams and in different arenas to be able to, I think, elevate who you are. And that's what we try to do. And we're not always going to win every one of them, but I think the philosophy is sound and trying to be that team that can advance in this tournament. Q. In your experience how does it, how do you think a team reacts when it wins a game like Wisconsin won last night? COACH MILLER: Meaning an overtime game? Q. Yeah. Coming from behind, winning, hitting a couple of tough clutch shots and winning that kind of game. COACH MILLER: Well, it's kind of funny, at half time we left and one of the themes of half time around the country was Wisconsin can't come back. The game was over. And as evidenced by what they did in the second half, it speaks volumes about their style and their toughness and you really have to beat them. They will not beat themselves. So I think they play pretty much every game like they played last night. They have been in 16 or 20 of those type of games this year. They're battle tested. And I'll tell you this: We have been in a lot of tough games as well, a lot of the teams that remain in the tournament, a team like LSU, Duke, and you look around, even here in Boise, Missouri, Memphis, those are teams that we played as well and being battle tested really helps you. Q. Is this a typical Xavier team for you balanced on offense, tough on defense? COACH MILLER: It is. We don't have the experience in the back court that we have had recently, but those guys, Dante Jackson and Terrell Holloway have just done an outstanding job of filling in for the departure of Drew Lavender and really allowing this team to have success. One of the identities of our program is that the oldest players, the seniors have really had great senior years and have led us. If you followed us last year Drew Lavender, Stanley Burrell and Josh Duncan were the story line of our tournament. And this year that torch has been passed to B. J. Raymond C.J. Anderson and Derrick Brown. And when you think about our first round game, those three guys really had a lot to do with us advancing, and they're going to have to play real well tomorrow for us to advance. Q. From your ties to Wisconsin, do you still recruit up there and just talk about with Wisconsin and Marquette here, the state of Wisconsin basketball even Green Bay and Milwaukee had winning seasons? COACH MILLER: The state of Wisconsin, when I was there, which is many years ago, it has really flourished with providing talent. Some of I know the best players, both at Marquette and Wisconsin come from in state. That's always healthy. When you look at our program, the state of Ohio, I think in our starting five Dante Jackson, B.J. Raymond, C.J. Anderson and Derrick Brown are all from the state of Ohio. And that really helps make the place you're at special when you can go with that in state talent. But you could tell that their state is plentiful. We would like to carve a niche in that state, but there's not a lot of room. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you, coach. COACH MILLER: Thank you. 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
|