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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS: PROVIDENCE

March 19, 2010

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by student- athletes Ben Allen, Mickey McConnell and Omar Samhan.

Q. Omar, could you talk a little bit about the last 24 hours, how much messages you've gotten and voice mails and that kind of thing and how crazy it's kind of been maybe?
OMAR SAMHAN: I mean I know we weren't favored to win the game, but apparently nobody expected us to win. I've had tons of e-mails and text messages, I can't believe you won, you messed up my bracket, but that's great. And that's from my mom. I knew we didn't have a lot of believers. It's been fun, and the support in California has been unreal.
I actually heard some of the classes were canceled and they were watching in the cafeteria. It's been great. It's been a fun experience that we're trying to keep going.

Q. Ben, I know you guys have talked about, and Omar just referenced it, kind of the no respect. If you had heard Coach Wright and Scottie Reynolds talking about you guys, they had plenty of respect for you, does that does point you?
BEN ALLEN: No, not really. We demand respect after what we did the first round and conference tournament:we're going to go on the game with the same championship on our shoulder, as if nobody respects us, because I think that's working for us.

Q. Omar, Villanova has a reputation of an undersized team but they have Mouphtaou and Maurice Sutton, how do you assess their front line in?
OMAR SAMHAN: The front line hasn't been great this season, but they did play well the last game, they look good and they're strong. It's a much different than Richmond's front line. They're threes big enough to bang inside. I think their front line, especially if they double will be challenging for me, but it will be good. I'm used to seeing big bodies like that, so I think it will be a good challenge. People make it sound like their front line is horrible, and that's not the case.

Q. Mickey, Coach Wright made a point of saying that your bigs are excellent, obviously, but he was as impressed with the way you guys pass the ball and your perimeter plays, as well. Is that just that sort of balance that you guys have, what makes you guys a special team right now?
MICKEY McCONNELL: Yeah, definitely. I think our biggest strength is our unselfishness and our passing ability. We can put Ben out on the floor and he can pass just as well as our guards. And when we throw it inside to Omar, he finds the shooters when teams collapse. So I think our main focus this game is take care of the ball and move the ball around the perimeter and just try to get open shots.

Q. Mickey, Coach Wright was in here and compared you to Mark Price, just the way you handle the ball and shoot and that kind of thing. I'm not sure you ever heard that before. But it seems like every team you guys have played recently, whether it's Gonzaga or even yesterday has sort of that play making guard. How much more confident now are you guys sort of in defending that kind of guard now as to maybe three or four weeks ago?
MICKEY McCONNELL: I'd say we're a lot more comfortable, after the Portland loss up in Portland we kind of made a big focus on defense, from then on. And most of our practices have been just kind of focusing on defense and positioning and defending at all positions. So I think the biggest key is that our team defense has gotten a lot better since then. We've made it a big focus of our team to just kind of focus on defense during the games. Because we know we have a pretty good passing ability and we know our offense will usually be there. But if our defense isn't there we don't have a chance to win games.

Q. Omar, can you talk about your impressions of Providence? You've been here for three days or so? And also I notice that you were a redshirt. Talk about your progress as a player now that you're in your fifth year, correct, of college?
OMAR SAMHAN: Well, this place is awesome. It's been great. We got a chance to walk around a little bit last night and see some stuff and go out to eat. And it's just a great place. Really enjoyed it and the people have been saw some. I think they're excited to have the tournament here and they keep coming up to us and congratulations on the win or even before the game, good luck. So it's been a really fun environment, a fun place to have the tournament.
As far as my redshirt year, Mickey was pretty accurate, I was fat.

Q. How much did you weigh?
OMAR SAMHAN: I weighed 310. I lost 60 pounds, which I'm slowly putting back on. It was just one of those deals, I wasn't really ready to play at that time. I talked to Coach Bennett and there were other big guys in front of me and with the weight and everything else, he thought it would be a good idea to redshirt, work hard and get in shape, and thought if I could do that I could have a special career when all was said and done, and it was definitely a good decision.

Q. Mickey, do you know who Mark Price is?
MICKEY McCONNELL: Yeah, I know who Mark Price is. I don't know about the comparison. I would say I'm not at that level at all, but it's a nice compliment.

Q. When you have a guy of Omar's caliber playing inside the post is it important to get him going, just so much as a statement, just tell the other team, hey, you're going to have to deal with him today?
BEN ALLEN: Definitely. And it frees us up outside for shots, having him draw such attention on the low block, double, triple teams all the time. So they can't guard all of us at the same time. If they go one-on-one with him, we're happy to to that all the time. He can dominate the game and it's really handy.
MICKEY McCONNELL: I think it's important in any game to kind of establish a low post presence early on in the game. It kind of opens up everything else from there. And with Omar, we know it's one of our biggest assets is that he can score inside. So we just try to feed him as much as possible early on.

Q. Omar, you won the conference tournament which St. Mary's hasn't been done in 30 years, and they're canceling classes and watching you back home. I think the human experience would be to be pretty satisfied with yourself and yet last night Coach Bennett said you were good at turning the page. How do you turn the page from a once-in-a-lifetime experience to get on to the next one?
OMAR SAMHAN: I try my best not to think about it. And I realize that reality is that you lose, it goes away. You lose, in two weeks they're going to baseball games and they've forgotten you. To go on you have to keep in with go. I know I'll look back on this year and just be so satisfied and proud of myself and the team. I'll hang pictures on my wall from pictures we've taken the past week. But I try to block that out and just -- my next loss is my last game ever in college. So I'm trying to keep that as far away as possible, I don't want it to be tomorrow.

Q. Omar, you guys are one of those schools that the country falls in love with this time of year, because you're a freaky team, you're from a little town that most people have never heard of. You've got half of Australia on the team, you have a Muslim guy playing in a Catholic school. Do you guys want to show that you're not just kind of a cute story, that you're supposed to be here and you're going to stick around for an while?
OMAR SAMHAN: Yeah, that's definitely how we feel about ourselves. We think it's funny. We laugh all the time about how we have a ton of Australian guys on our team. Was it Oral Roberts or somebody was -- who was it -- might have been Villanova, someone was doing a dunk contest and joking saying, hey, man, wish we could, we can't dunk, we were just as amazed as the kids. Wow. We take pride in being a blue collar team playing hard. And I think that's underrated so much today in college basketball and NBA, every level is how hard people work.
That's the measure that you can't put on paper is how bad people want, heart, determination. And I think this team has a lot of it. We don't have guys jumping 40 inches in the air, but we have guys that will dive face first at a bounce to get a ball. So that's why we are supposed to be here and we are a real team and hopefully we'll keep it going and we deserve to win because we put in the work.
THE MODERATOR: We're very pleased now to be joined by St. Mary's Head Coach Randy Bennett. Coach, would you begin with an opening statement.
COACH BENNETT: Yeah, I don't have much, just glad to be here. I thought our guys played well yesterday, we had to to get to this position.
Now trying to get our guys to focus on the next game, which I think they've done a good job of. I was telling somebody a little while ago, it's a fine line, because as a coach you don't know if you'll be in the same situation again, you hope you will. These freshmen just may think it will happen. It's hard to get in the tournament, hard to win a game. You want them to enjoy it a bit, but at the same time you have to turn the page and get them ready to compete for the next guy. I think our guys are there. Hopefully they are. We need to be mentally so we perform.

Q. To follow up on that, you mentioned last night about the turning the page thing and Omar was in here a little while ago, getting the text messages examine just being flooded with congratulations and apparently they're canceling classes back at school so people can watch the game. So human nature would be to be pretty satisfied. How do you as a coach get them to turn the page?
COACH BENNETT: I'm not sure. I'm not sure I have the answer. We talked about it last night after the game. I think this morning we went right away and started doing the scouts, showed them the film. I think those things help. And then we'll practice today. I think it's just, there's a time period that has to pass for them to get there.
And so I'm going with just let time take care of it, talk to them a little bit. But these guys are pretty good competitors. They're high achievers. And so I think high achievers understand you can't -- they get it, they know the deal. They understand that you can't just bask in all the texts, all the congratulatory things you get. You want to take it in a little bit, but at the same time you know you can't just dwell on it, you have to move on. So I think these guys are there.

Q. Jay indicated that you guys are unique in sort of the modern college game because you just don't see great post presence as much as you did 25, 30 years ago, and often the times are more used to preparing against great perimeter teams these days, maybe it's the three point lines that changed everything, I don't know. But it is that an advantage for teams like yours, when you're throwing them a change up that maybe they don't see all the time and how do you try to take advantage of maybe that kind of thing?
COACH BENNETT: It can be an advantage if you use it. And I'm sure they'll do everything they can to keep the ball out of the post. And if it does get in the post they'll bring help, I'm sure, just based on seeing them play.
They have some size guys, though, and I think that's what you need, first of all, you need some size guys. Richmond didn't have any size guys and that's just a hard way to play good inside plays.
Obviously our whole deal, it's no secret, we try to put the ball inside, in different ways and play from there. Omar wouldn't have had the year he's had if he didn't have a lot of good players on the perimeter to -- they've got to be careful about bringing help, because those other guys are good shooters, good passers. And they're smart players, so they understand the balance of inside out. And that's why I think -- we're a very efficient offensive team.
Villanova will do -- I'm sure they'll do everything they can to neutralize that or take that away from us and we have to do a good job of executing so that we can get the ball inside to them.

Q. Can you just talk about Omar's progression as a player? I understand he was a redshirt. He came in as a heavy kid. And now you can certainly make the case he's the best big kid in the west. Going on is he an NBA type guy in your mind?
COACH BENNETT: I would think they'd look at him, for sure. I'm not good at making these NBA predictions. I haven't been in the NBA, but I know he's a heck of a college player. He's had a great year. If you study his lifecycle as a player, it's been steadily up every year. It's a tribute to his work ethic. Throw everything else out on Omar, and when you cut it down to what makes him good is his great work ethic. And so he's reshaped his body, his game. He's a very skilled post guy. He's become -- he used to not pass out of the post, it's made him a better player, made us a better team. So that's why he has become the player he's become.

Q. I know the players have mentioned in the past few days how no one really believes and they've got a chip on their shoulder. Do you sense the perception is starting to change about the team, the more people are starting to believe in you guys because you're playing your best basketball right now and maybe Villanova isn't?
COACH BENNETT: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what Villanova is doing. So I don't know where they're at. They may be playing well. I know they lost some games down the stretch but you can certainly do that in that conference.
For us I think -- I think I said this yesterday, we've been under the radar all year. It doesn't mean people don't think we're good. I think people respect us. I know in our league and in the west people respect us. Do they respect us as a team that would be in an NCAA Tournament, final 32, probably not. I think a lot of that starts with how many players we lost and who we lost last year.
So we were starting from a team, people thought we'd be 4th, 5th, some 3rd in our league. So I think our guys, yeah, I think they use that to motivate them a little bit. They have all year, and we've finished top two in our league. We finished 2nd in our league. For somebody to throw us down to 4th, 5th, our guys didn't believe it, bottom line, they didn't believe that they were -- that these other teams were better than them.
It's been motivation. It's still motivation. I don't think we're going into this game that way. I think we're going into this game as it's a tough game. We're playing a good team. But we played good teams before and we've beat good teams before. But like I said yesterday, we respect everyone, fear no one.

Q. Gonzaga broke through in '99 and became a nationally prominent team over the last decade. Was there anything in the way that -- how they did what they did, what they've done, that you are able to build on or figure out how they did it? You've caught them now, but how did they fit in the equation of -- as a target and how to overcome them?
COACH BENNETT: Yeah, no, I do think they threw a blueprint out. There's been some other teams, Santa Clara, Pepperdine, right before Gonzaga, obviously go back to USF days. But those are the ones. What Gonzaga has done was smart and we've studied it, and our athletic director is sitting right over there, and he understands the continuity. And I think that's key at mid-major is a lot of times those coaches leave, they have success, they go on a bigger deal like Munson did. And that -- when that happens you need to have continuity in a program.
And hopefully, like we do, with assistant Kyle Smith he's been in the West Coast Conference 16, 17 years. And I've been in it about 20, as assistant. We were both raised on this league. That was where we learned Division 1 basketball, West Coast Conference, as was the case with Mark Phew and Dan Munson. So I think that was -- that's key. I think continuity is key. I think what's helped us when it came to St. Mary's is I knew the league, we knew the league, and we knew that you had to bring in good players. They're playing with pros, Turiaf, Dickau, Morrison, they don't just bring in some mid-major player and think you're going to get to the top. So I think that helped.
We've been around, around that league, we understand the talent level. And then we had to go as a program, when I started, we had to get us where we were competitive and get us where we want. And in '04, '05, my fourth year here we were able to get to the NCAA Tournament, but we had done it with some transfers, some JC guys. The next step was to get it going with four-year guys. That's when we brought in Simpson, Samhan, O'Leary, and Hunter, we dipped a little, we dipped to 17 wins for two years. And when those guys were seniors, that was two years ago, three years ago, and Samhan as redshirt and now Mills, we brought in freshmen recruiting classes more so. And that -- what that gives you is you don't have as big of dips.
Even last year we lost a bunch of them, we had some guys sitting there under need those guys, McConnell, and Ben Allen, and another one, Wayne Hunter who tore his ACL who was having a heck of a year for. To be honest, I think we've done it as well as any college program in the country, to do what they've done. The bar is pretty high. I'm not saying that we have reached their level. They've done it for a lot of years, but we've certainly gotten closer.

Q. The way Beau played yesterday, you said that had something to do with the fact that he was familiar with Richmond's St. Mary's. But that he played so well, might he get a decent amount of minutes tomorrow?
COACH BENNETT: He might. Jorden Page won great. He didn't play in the second half yesterday. So sometimes it's match-ups, and like Jorden should probably help us tomorrow because they play a guard-oriented St. Mary's. They're going to put pressure. So ball handling will help us. I think he has a good match-up defensively. Beau played so well I'll certainly think about going back to him.

Q. Back to the motivation thing, I wondered if you used last year's snub by the NCAA at all or you just left that in the past and moved forward?
COACH BENNETT: It was definitely a factor. I didn't have to use it. We all sat in that room together last year with about four or five hundred of our students and fans sitting there watching with us and our name didn't get called. It was humbling. And I think it motivated all of our guys to work hard in the spring and the summer and the fall and when it came down the stretch this year our guys remembered.
We talked about it a little bit, but I didn't have to talk about it much. When we lost at Gonzaga and at Portland which can happen, everybody else in our league did it, too, I told them, listen, the only way we're getting into an NCAA Tournament is to win the conference championship. Win the conference tournament championship. From that point on, we had three more regular season games, we went out and won the conference tournament. You read the bracketology, read the last four in, last four out.
Five of our guys are from Australia, they don't understand all this culture. They don't get it. They weren't raised on it. And they think they're in. Listen, we thought we were in last year, and some of them sat through it and experienced it, some of them didn't. It was a point of emphasis after that trip, we never practiced on Sunday when we got back. We practiced on Sunday, and it was totally to get their attention on listen, we have to improve over the next two weeks, so when we play in that conference tournament we give ourselves the best chance to win that tournament because that's the only way to get in. Whether I was right or wrong, I don't know, we'll never know, but our guys bought into it and they didn't leave it to chance. So, yes, I think it was a motivator.

Q. Several years ago, and I don't know if you remember this or not, Rick Majeris, I think he was still at Utah, was rhapsodizing one day he'd like to wind up his career at St. Mary's?
COACH BENNETT: I don't remember.

Q. Could you summarize St. Mary's, therefore as he saw it and you see it?
COACH BENNETT: That's a great question. I know what he was talking about. What a great place to finish your career. It's a beautiful campus, the great place to live. The values of that school, the mission of that school. What an awesome way to finish. I don't need to get paid big money anymore, and when I'm not necessarily trying to chase a National Championship anymore, which he was at that time, this would be a great place to finish. And that's how I think he meant it and said it. And he's right.
I think -- but I think it can be more than that. I think it can be a place where you can try to compete at the highest level. And that's probably the dirty secret about the St. Mary's job people don't know is there is some basketball tradition there and we've created some and there's a fan base there. We're in a little community that's kind of tucked away. It's close to the big city but it's kind of -- it's seven or eight minutes from a major town or whatever. You're off the beaten path a little bit. And so you have a fan base, a -- we have great community support. We pack our gym for all our games. I didn't know what when I took the job.
I was just fortunate to get the job and then I was lucky that St. Mary's is like that. They care about St. Mary's. They care about their team. And we've had to win for a duration of time for me to see how strong that was. But it's strong. And that's why I think we can be really good there year after year.

Q. Jay Wright said that you and he knew each other a little bit when he was an assistant at Las Vegas and you were at San Diego or wherever you might have been. Was it just a hi, how are you kind of thing or do you have any recollection of him at the time or have you followed him because of that later on? He says he stays up and watches your games and has always followed you a little bit?
COACH BENNETT: No question, as you do with a number of assistants. Jay is personable, first class guy. And I think when I met him that stuck out as far as he was approachable. And then he got the Hofstra thing and moved on to Villanova and made it to the highest. Then I'd see him at the Final Four and he'd talk about St. Mary's, our team. I watch you guys on TV all the time. I like what you do with the offense, we're doing the same thing. And it's funny, because he's always been an approachable guy that we've stayed in good relationship with. I just -- to me he's a guy he's made it big, but he didn't forget where he came from.

End of FastScripts

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