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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS: JACKSONVILLEMarch 18, 2010Patrick ChristopherMike MontgomeryJerome RandleJACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA THE MODERATOR: Guys, welcome. Questions for these gentlemen? Q. Jerome, could you take this and then Patrick jump in, but obviously you guys are seniors and guards and Louisville starts three senior guards. With that much experience on both teams in the backcourt, what kind of game do you think that usually means? I mean, is it going to be a pretty well-played game, good performances in the backcourt, good shooting, good ball handling? What's your impression of the guards at Louisville? JEROME RANDLE: Well, it's the NCAA tournament. I'm pretty sure everyone is going to bring their A game. We don't know if every shot is going to fall in or you're just going to be 100 percent on your A game. But I know their guards are going to be ready to play, and we're going to be ready to play, as well. I'm pretty sure they're going to play hard. I've saw them play before. They have a great coach in Rick Pitino and they really play hard for him, and we play hard for our coach, so I'm pretty sure it's going to be a good match-up. PATRICK CHRISTOPHER: Well, Jerome said it all. I think when everything is at stake right now, you're playing for your livelihood as a college athlete, and you know you're seniors. You want to tighten up everything on the floor. You're going to be smarter with your decisions, I believe, and that's what we're here to do, and I believe they're going to do the same. So it should be a great game. Q. I just wanted to know how not having Amoke in the lineup is going to change things, especially given the circumstances that it just happened this week. JEROME RANDLE: Well, whatever happened with Amoke, it happened. We can't focus on that right now, and we're not, because he's not here. We're just going to focus on the guys that we have available right now and try to get the win without him. Q. As a senior, it's got to if not piss you off, tick you off hearing you're not going to have one of your starters in the lineup? PATRICK CHRISTOPHER: Well, just like life, things are going to be thrown at you, and the way you handle it, I think, defines you. We can't really worry about things that we can't control. This is a situation that we can't control. We have to move forward with it, work with the guys and work with our chemistry that we have. I think we'll be fine. Q. For both players, how do you expect the tempo of the game to go? How would you like the tempo of the game to go? JEROME RANDLE: We're just going to just go with the flow. Whatever they throw at us, we're just going to be ready for it, no matter what. I mean, I'm pretty sure they're going to press, and we just have to handle it the best way that we can. So that's what we'll do. PATRICK CHRISTOPHER: I think being able to play at our own pace is going to be key for us and not really trying to speed the game up because that's what the different and a variety of defensive schemes are for, so if we play at our own pace, I think we'll be fine, as well. Yeah, basically. Q. What, if anything, did you guys take out of last year's tournament experience that is definitely going to change this time around just in terms of the preparation and everything going into this game? PATRICK CHRISTOPHER: You know, when you're coming into something like the NCAA tournament, you don't really know what to expect, just for us, chartering, planes, we don't do that, police escorts, those different things. So everything is new for us, the level of intensity, I believe, changes. You watch the games that are being played right now. Every possession matters, and these teams that -- when you're filling out your bracket, you expect somebody to blow somebody else out. These games are tight. You know, everybody is focused in. So I think that level definitely changes, and I believe it will for us. Last year we came in, like I said, not really knowing what to expect coming here to compete and play basketball. But this year I think we have another year under our belt with Coach Montgomery, so that experience changes, as well. We're more familiar with the system, so the chemistry on the team is a lot better, I believe. And I think we're a great shooting team, so once we handle everything we can on defense, we're a great basketball team. So taking all that into account, I think we're pretty well prepared for something like this. Q. For most of the season Coach Montgomery has talked about how you guys don't have a real deep team, you play basically the same six or eight guys, and you lose one of the guys. Are you disappointed about that? JEROME RANDLE: It's disappointing, but like I said before, we just have to focus on the guys that we have right now. You know, I honestly feel like we have guys on the bench that can come in and contribute to this team that has not gotten the opportunity to do so. You know, so we're expecting those guys to come and give us a lift in this upcoming tournament. So we're not worried about it at all because I honestly don't feel like they wouldn't be at Cal if they weren't great basketball players. That's what defines a great team, when you have some people that step up and just shock a lot of people, and I feel like we have some of those guys on our team. Q. Jerome, just seeing your highlights, your range is unbelievable. Will you talk about your game, and what do you feel? When you cross half court are you in the zone? JEROME RANDLE: Just if I see an opening, if I feel like that's sagging off, I'm pretty sure I can hit from there if I'm really on top of my game. One thing I know is they're not going to give me a lot of open shots anyway, so I have to figure out another way to get my teammates involved or score with the basketball. Q. Coaches and players all talk about you scoring in bunches, 10, 12, 14 points at a time in a row, and just take the game over. What's going through your head? And do you teammates all realize that, too, and get you the ball? JEROME RANDLE: One thing about our team, if I'm not having a great shooting game, I have other guys that can light it up just as well as I can. You know, that's the strength of our team. We have great players all around. You know, so if I'm on, my teammates are going to give the ball, and the same goes for me to them. If they're on, I'm going to get them the ball. So it's an even share like all around, so that's just what our team, you know, produced right now. Q. Given that you're focusing on the game and on the NCAA tournament, when you see something like the Sports Illustrated cover with a small picture of you, and Patrick, there's a small photo of you in there, do you feel anything from that? Do you allow yourself to get a thrill or a kick out of that, or are you just so focused that you don't pay that any attention? JEROME RANDLE: No, I don't pay it any mind. People are going to say whatever they want to say about us, and all we can do is just focus on trying to be the best team that we can be. You know, I'll speak for myself, I don't know if Patrick looks at articles or anything like that, but that's not even my focus right now. My focus is on playing Louisville. PATRICK CHRISTOPHER: For me personally, I stay out of that kind of stuff, blogs and different write-ups, because you might -- in my experience, you might come across something that you don't really like to hear, so the best way to avoid that kind of stuff is not to read it. I haven't seen any Sports Illustrated magazines or anything like that. What our job is to do is to play basketball. You can get distracted, and it may throw you off of your game, so like I said, playing basketball is what we come here to do, and that's what we're going to do. Q. Just wondering if either one of you have spoken to Amoke since the suspension, text or phone calls, and what his spirits were. PATRICK CHRISTOPHER: Yes, we've spoken with him, and you know, that's about it. JEROME RANDLE: We spoke to him. That's it. Q. This is for Jerome. Have you ever played against Edgar Sosa in AAU ball or anything? What are your thoughts on Edgar Sosa? JEROME RANDLE: I think he's a good player. I never played against him ever. That's really it. I'm pretty sure he's going to come to play. He has a tough match-up coming tomorrow night, so I'm pretty sure he's going to bring his A game, and I'm going to bring mine's, as well. Q. Any impressions you guys have of watching tape or film of Louisville as to what you expect, what they're like to you? JEROME RANDLE: Well, one thing, I know that they really play hard for 40 minutes. They really, you know, speed a lot of teams up, and I feel like that's what they need to do to teams in order to beat them. They take 15, 17 seconds off the clock in order to get the ball over half court, and then you're rushing to take another shot. You know, so I honestly feel like they do a great job in speeding a lot of teams up. They really play hard, so if we just try to eliminate that, I think we'll be fine. Q. Patrick, same question to you about Louisville. PATRICK CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, like I was saying earlier, they do a great job of having a variety of different defensive schemes, maybe to try to confuse you, to speed you up and to play at their pace. So for a team like ourselves, I think what we need to do is, once again, play at our pace. They shoot the ball well. They go down and they have a great low post presence in Samardo. So they're a great team. Obviously like Jerome said, they're well-coached. Two thumbs up to Louisville. Q. For both of you, given what's happened the last five, seven days or so, losing the PAC-10 game to Washington where you guys were disappointed like that, losing a guy from your team, what's the overall mood of the team coming into this game do you think? PATRICK CHRISTOPHER: I think we're excited, obviously to be blessed and to be playing basketball regardless of different circumstances. Everything happens for a reason. We didn't win that game. I think we're playing a brand new season right now, so no matter if we lost to Washington or went to Madison Square Garden and lost to Syracuse and Ohio State, it's a brand new season. So opportunities are here for us. Everything that happened in the past, I think we need to take the experience and the lesson from that, put them all together, and pull this thing together. JEROME RANDLE: For the five seniors that's here, I mean, I don't feel like we want this to be our last game. Four years has went by so fast, and it's finally coming to an end. So in order for us to continue to enjoy playing college basketball, we need to handle our business come tomorrow night. We can't win two games unless we win one. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, guys. We have Cal Head Coach Mike Montgomery. If you would give us an opening statement about the tournament and we'll field some questions. COACH MONTGOMERY: Well, it's nice to be back in the tournament again obviously. It's a long process for everybody, and it's a difficult thing to actually achieve, even though it seems easy sometimes. It's not. I think the kids are excited. I think they feel like they belong. Hopefully we can muster up a good effort. It's probably a little further than we would have liked to have come, but it beats being at home. So we're going to come out, try to prepare. We've had a pretty good week of practice and try to see if we can't beat a real good Louisville team. Q. How will the loss of Omondi affect your inside rotation, in particular trying to deal with Samuels, they go to him a lot down in the post? COACH MONTGOMERY: Well, Omondi would not have guarded Samuels under any circumstances, so it hurts our depth obviously, changes our rotations. We've started with the lineup that we will start before. We're not very big, but we have other advantages. So we'll just go accordingly. I would expect that you'd probably see a little bit more of Mark Coury and Max than we've probably had here recently. Q. You've got two senior guards, they've got three in the starting lineup. First of all, when is the last time you were in a game this big where you had that much experience at both teams combined at guard and what kind of game do you think that may translate into? COACH MONTGOMERY: Well, the pundits all say that it's a guard-oriented tournament, that guards are what wins for you. Probably having the experience at guard makes a huge difference, but I would also say you still have to perform. There is the issue of going out and performing on the floor. It's probably no more complex than that. But they do have seniors that have been there before, been through several Big East battles, and they are battles in the Big East, very physical league, very deep league. But our guards have increasingly gotten better, and we're actually playing our best basketball of the year, I think, as we head into the final part. You know, the interesting thing is they're all really good players but maybe not lottery guys, and so you're seeing guys that have stayed in college and are going to get their degrees, at least ours are, and it's good to see. Q. How do you see Louisville, first of all, when you look at the tapes? What do you see? They would like an up tempo game. They're going to press and push like they always do. How do you react to that and how does your team react to it? COACH MONTGOMERY: Oh, the faster the better, I suppose, in some ways. But if it forces us out of good shots, then that's not what we're looking for. We're pretty comfortable in an up tempo game. The key thing we have to make sure is we're not turning the ball over. If we're turning the ball over versus their pressure and they're able to run back, then we've got problems. We've got to take care of the ball, make sure that we're not being bothered by the press too much. We'll turn it over some, I suspect, but we can't turn it over for run-outs for them. But they like to create off their defense. They're trying to create off pressure and changing defenses. They're physical, and they play game in and game out. Their league is probably more physical than our league, whether it be from just the type of players that they have or what they allow to go on in their league. That may be something we have to adjust to. But we're not uncomfortable getting up and down the floor, but I would say that there have been times when our transition defense hasn't been all we would like it to be in terms of picking up good shooters because I know they're not shy shooting the three off dry end kicks coming down the floor, so we're going to have to guard against that. Q. You've talked all season long about how thin your team is, talking about depth. How hard was it for you to leave one of your guys behind? COACH MONTGOMERY: Well, it's always hard. You know, he's one of our guys. It's just an unfortunate set of circumstances for everybody involved, for his teammates and for Omondi, as well. We've had a season where we've had guys out, and we've had to rally, and this is going to be no exception to that. We're going to have to get together and go out and make up for that with different people in different situations, and hopefully we don't get into foul trouble. If we do, that would compound the problem a little bit. But like I say, we've started this lineup before. In many ways it's our best lineup. It's maybe not -- it just takes away some of your flexibility. Q. I brought this up with Randle. The one common theme among the players and the coaches that I was able to talk to from Louisville, I always brought up Randle as getting hot, scoring 10, 12, 14 points in a stretch. Do you see that as a coach? Do you feed that, or does it just happen? COACH MONTGOMERY: It pretty much happens. I can't take credit for Jerome. He's got great range. We've given him a lot of freedom. I'm sure Rick is an outstanding coach and has probably faced players like Jerome before, and they'll do what they need to do. We've just got to make sure Jerome doesn't try to do too much, and if they're loading up on him he finds other people, because we do have other people. But there have been a lot of games if you've watched us and if you're looking at tapes, without knowing us game in and game out, you'd see him bang, bang, bang, three straight threes and you go from five down to four up or whatever. He's capable of doing that. It's not in the game plan, it's just something that as you play along and sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn't. But it's one of those things that it's allowed us to win some games. Q. Can you tell us, is Omondi still on the roster, still on the team? COACH MONTGOMERY: He's temporarily suspended. That's what it is. The kid made a mistake and we felt like we had to take action, and we did, and pretty much the end of the story. Q. Did you feel you had to address it with the team or did you think that the team understood what was going on? COACH MONTGOMERY: I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question. Q. With Omondi did you have to address the team and explain to them what you were doing or do you think they understood before you had to do that? COACH MONTGOMERY: Well, the incident came up, and we just felt like we had no choice. I think the team felt badly for him. I think they felt badly for themselves, but I think they understood. Q. You're starting Jorge, I understand, and this means that Theo gets to go back to playing his favorite position at the four. Any concerns besides foul problems as to how that impacts you guys with their size? COACH MONTGOMERY: Well, again, I think you might have said it facetiously. I think he does like the four. I think he enjoys playing there. Obviously rebounding becomes a premium at this point. They're going to start probably Swopshire at 6'8", they can go big and play 6'10", play two really big guys, so obviously we're going to have to fundamentally block off. Our wing players are going to have to get to the glass, so it does put a premium on that. But maybe we can cause them some problems. As I say, I think sometimes our best lineup in many ways has been with Theo at the four because it makes us a little more difficult to defend. So it gives us an extra ball handler if they press, it gives us an extra shooter if they zone. It just makes us small. We've been facing that all year long. Again, I don't know how much more physical Louisville will be than what we've played against throughout the year. That will -- we'll have to adjust to that when the time comes. THE MODERATOR: Okay, coach, thank you. End of FastScripts |
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