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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS: NEW ORLEANSMarch 19, 2010Ben FinneyFrank HassellDarius JamesBlaine TaylorNEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. What do you know about Baylor? You played a team that's similar to them? FRANK HASSELL: I know they're really, really athletic. I know they're a really, really good team. I know they run a lot of zone, and I know they're pretty strong in the post. Q. Talk about philosophically-wise what makes your defense work and why it's been so successful this season. DARIUS JAMES: Well, basically, everybody's bought in that we're going to start with defense, from Kent and Ben being able to check, they can check from the point guard down to a forward and, you know, make us real versatile. And Frank and Gerald are down there. That's two big bodies that can weigh down on the big man and basically wear him out. BEN FINNEY: I would say everybody knows their strengths and their weaknesses. And we basically do what we've been doing all summer, working hard, doing just boxing out, rebounding, trying to contain people. Q. Y'all are practicing and preparing today. The other first round games are going on. I just want to know are there any games going on today that you have any particular rooting interest in or anything like that? DARIUS JAMES: I'm just interested in ODU games, basically (smiling). FRANK HASSELL: I'm with him. But I'm going to enjoy the games to watch. It don't really matter who wins to me, or who loses, as long as we win. BEN FINNEY: Me, myself, I enjoy watching basketball. But I'm not watching anybody in particular. Q. As a No. 11 seed, does that give you all a little more motivation maybe as a lower seed to knock off some of these higher seeded teams? FRANK HASSELL: We never really truly thought about it as what seeding we are. We just know who we play. All teams in this tournament are good. As long as we come out and play like ourselves, we'll be okay. So really we're just focusing on us and not really the opponent as much and getting our strategies right. We're not really thinking about who is seeding and all that. We're just playing ball. Q. There's probably a lot of people nationally who don't know a lot about you guys. Are you looking at this as a way to like introduce the program to the nation? Do you think about that? I mean, you guys obviously feel like you should be here, but when you beat a team like Notre Dame, that's really a lot of people's first introduction to you. What do you think of that whole big-picture thing? FRANK HASSELL: Yeah, our fans and coaches look at that more about people looking at us and all that. We're just playing. Personally, we're not thinking about all that. You can put a team in front of us, we're going to play them. We're not thinking about who knows us. Because, truthfully, we don't know a lot of teams. So we're just out there playing. You put people in front of us, we're going to play. So that's basically what it is. BEN FINNEY: Yeah, we're just out here doing what we do. Everybody knows their weaknesses, like I said, and their strengths. And we're just out here playing. MODERATOR: Coach, your opening comments? COACH TAYLOR: I compliment the rest of the tournament field for watching our game being the first game, and how exciting it was, and how close it was. Because everybody fell according to form the rest of the day for the most part. It was quite a first day of the tournament. We were just visiting. Couple observations I have. Few years ago we played Michigan State really early the first Thursday, and we played like 9:00 o'clock at night the game before against Syracuse and Vermont, goes to overtime. It was just all day watching all these games, then our turn came. It was kind of fun being early in the day and getting the chance and knowing that we're in, and getting to watch the rest of the first round of the tournament. But I think our game was symbolic of just the magic of this time of the year. And if you watch the rest of the day you just kind of said, wow, this tournament. You wonder why everybody talks about March Madness and all the stories. As I reflect on the Notre Dame game, Mike just did a great job. He's done a great job there in total, but this year ending the year the way they did, they did a lot of good things in that game. Just really proud of our ability to kind of hang and then kind of find a way. Then a thrilling ending, and you just feel fortunate. Some people think they're really smart when they win games, but, you know, in my world I just kind of feel a little more just fortunate. You get enough slices of humble pie in this business that it's kind of nice to know that good things happen and you appreciate them. Our team, I think we can play better. Just looking forward to the Baylor game. I think a lot of people have to kind of get the first-game jitters out and kind of get a sense for the tournament, and I think we did that. I think that we can play a little better than we did. Although when you start advancing through the tournament, the team you're playing is probably playing better also. Q. You mentioned about the other games. Do you have any particular rooting interest in any games today? And, secondly, Sam Houston used the triangle and two so effectively yesterday, I don't know if that's in your playbook and you wouldn't want to give it away, but is it something that might be in consideration for you to use tomorrow? COACH TAYLOR: Well, we've been working on the box and five. We think if we can get away with it, we think it will be very strategic (laughing). That was, for Bob, that was a good ploy, a good plan. They obviously had a chance. If they made a few more shots, they might have pulled it off. But the surprise factor is probably gone. It's not a tactic that we've used at all, and I don't consider us to be a weak defensive team. A lot of times you gimmick when you are masking the inability to match up at certain spots. And I think it was a really good tactic on his part. But that hasn't been our modus operandi. Ours has been to come pretty straight at you with maybe different looks, but not with the gimmick stuff. What was the other part of your question? About the rooting interest? Well, Cal, you know, my former head coach, guy I worked for, one of my assistants that was with me at Old Dominion for five years is at Cal, so I'll be watching that closely. A guy I worked for, followed as the head coach at University of Montana, Stew Morrill, went to Colorado State, is now at Utah State, so I'll be watching that game with great interest. Had to stay up more than I wanted to last night, because Montana is my alma mater and a former player of mine is the head coach. And saw a lot of people in the stands that I recognized. I've got six brothers and sisters still up in that region. So those were some games that I followed closely. I've been around for 25, 30 years so I walked into the coach's meeting yesterday and knew virtually six of the eight coaches pretty doggone well. So I watch a lot of the games with interest, because I've coached from coast to coast, and numerous different leagues in postseason play and with success at different stops. So you get to meet a lot of people over the years. But those are the ones that are the closest to me. Q. Given the depths where Baylor was not too long ago, how impressive is it to find them here in the second round, a 3 seed, tieing for -- was it second or third in the Big 12 during the regular season? COACH TAYLOR: Well, I really have a lot of respect for the Big 12. Played them over the years and know some of the coaches and know the quality of play, so it really speaks volumes for how high they've risen. Then, as you say, from the depths that they came, it wasn't as if they were in an average spot. They were basically bankrupt. I would say this: I'm not sure that everybody in that whole place didn't pull themselves up by the bootstraps and said we have to do things a little better, little differently. So what happened to me at Old Dominion we were kind of in between things, new facility, school growing. What I sensed was a commitment from the administration, the athletic department across the campus, the community, even the media was a little more vested in us as we started to grow. I would like to think at Baylor they probably went back to square one. Obviously Scott and his staff have come in and done a really nice job. But I would think the whole Baylor community probably has a pretty good feel for the accomplishment and probably a lot of people said, hey, if we're going to have a good basketball program, we're going to all have to get involved and do things right and do it in a first-class fashion. But they've recruited well. They've got very good talent, they've competed well and they've had a gradual climb. I find it interesting that a year ago they played in the NIT and went to the finals and lost to Penn State. We were in the College Insider Tournament and went to the championship against Bradley. I think Oregon State won the CBI. At the time, I said if you would have taken those three champions and played them against one another, it would have been quite a round-robin. So I think that fuelled a little bit of their season in some respects, and I think it's kind of fuelled ours. You start getting into the postseason play, you start playing good people. You're developing a roster of younger players and things start to come together. So my hat's off to them. I used to teach history, but I'm not keeping track of every fact and figure. But to not have had a postseason win since 1950; is that right? That's something. I sensed there a little extra glee. For a 3 seed, you know, and to be where they are in the Big 12, to win a first-round game against Sam Houston State, I was kind of like looking at them. They were pretty giddy. And I didn't realize until later how much of an achievement it had been to get to the tournament, to win a game and to advance. So I'm sure they're thinking this is going to be a memorable run for their people. But I would caution you that in our setting, we feel the same way. If you were to look at the environment on our campus yesterday, the environment in our community, you know, it's pretty special in our setting, too. It's not something we get to do every day. Q. Earlier you mentioned the box and five. You've kind of shown a sense of humor while you're here. I'm wondering in the game or dealing with your team, do you use humor as a tool at all? Or is that all business? COACH TAYLOR: No, you know, there's a time and a place for everything. Sometimes you have to have a little tough love. Sometimes you have to lighten the moment. I usually have a story for them before the game to kind of tells them a little bit about how the game I think will unfold. Sometimes I can refer to that story in the huddles in the game and they'll kind of laugh a little bit and relax. I don't think you play your best when you're absolutely, absolutely on a hard edge all the time. I think a lot of the best competitors can find some calm, can find some peace, and sometimes you just kind have to lighten up. You know, Frank Hassell was being interviewed here yesterday and somebody asked him was there any panic when you were down nine. He said, Well -- he looked over at me, you know, and we sat and talked in huddles and laughed a little bit, and there wasn't a lot of panic. I didn't make any baskets or anything. But our environment is one where we're not afraid to laugh at ourselves. Can be kind of self-deprecating, maybe a little off color at times, but sometimes that gets at your funny bone, too. Q. Can you just talk about Baylor's inside-outside balance, and kind of the challenges they present? COACH TAYLOR: Well, they're an across-the-board bunch, if you look at how good their back court is and look at those scoring averages and the headaches they've given to people in the Big 12. I'd consider the Big 12 quite a speed league, and when you've got really good guards that's a good start particularly in that league. Then you look at their length, and not just length, but tall guys that are long. So they've kind of got all the pieces. They're very impressive statistically. If you look at they're shooting 48 percent on the year, giving up 39. They're plus 7 on the glass. Things of that nature, it's pretty impressive. You don't do that without a lot of good pieces, position by position. And so the inside-outside balance, you know, probably one of the reasons that the triangle and two was employed was to try to take something away, which obviously it was to try to minimize the guard play. Taking their chances on maybe outshooting them and forcing their front line to beat them. But I don't think they've experienced that that much in the Big 12. People feel they can kind of match up toe-to-toe. I have great respect for the personnel they have. But I feel like we have good personnel too. As I said earlier, I'm not so sure that both teams are probably not sitting there in team meetings talking about we can play better than we did the day before or yesterday. Q. Do you guys play a lot of zone? Would that help you going against Baylor since they're also a zone team? COACH TAYLOR: Well, I should just invite Scott to our meetings and tell him what I want to do? You want to just go run and tell him right now (smiling)? No, we are primarily a man team. Most of the principles of man defense transfer over to zone defenses, quite honestly. The ability to have vision and to close the dribble and change the shot and whatever post D. So we employ multiple defenses for a variety of reasons. But the backbone of our program is man defense. If you were to look at us down the stretch run of the season, we played probably 60 to 70 percent man defense. Certain games we used the zone. The difference between us and Baylor is, boy, I don't know. If I had to do a tape of how many man possessions they have run this year defensively, it would be like a 30-second infommercials. So they're very committed to the zone, and they'll change it up, and they play it very well. It's their night-after-night thing. We use zone as a part of our picture. At times when it's working, you use it, and people go, boy, those guys are a zone team. Well, that's not really what we are. But we can zone, and we're proud of the zone we play when we do use it, because at times it's been effective against some pretty good teams. Maybe change the rhythm of a game. Probably employed it more against Notre Dame, just because they were taking so much time off the clock and they were giving us problems with the rhythm that they had on offense. So as much as anything it was to change their rhythm. It wasn't that, hey, you know, I've got a great idea, I love playing zone. It was more of a strategic ploy trying to just change the way the game was being played and see if we couldn't shift momentum just a little bit. Q. You talked a little before about using the postseason last year to help the team come together and grow a little. Was there a point this year where you saw it coming together the way it has? Was the Georgetown game that big a deal? Obviously it's a big win for sure, but was there a point in the calendar and the schedule when you guys thought this might be a pretty special team? COACH TAYLOR: That point would go back a year and a half to early January. I can't even remember what our record was, but it wasn't very good. And we had just climbed the standings in our league race with one of the youngest teams in the country. So I'd actually go back to last season where things started coming together. And we made a push in the conference. Then the postseason experience. Now this year, quite honestly, sometimes a loss is as good experience as you can have as much as it hurts. We went to Texas and were beaten by Missouri and Mississippi State. And both of them played pretty good games against us. And our kids, it hurt them because we planned on being real good and beating those types of teams. They took it real personal. They just almost were in disbelief that that had happened to us. We had to kind of go back to the drawing board a little bit and tighten things up. It wasn't shortly thereafter that we went and beat Georgetown. It wasn't shortly thereafter that we started making a push up through December. And then obviously picked to win our league race, won that tournament. So I would point to right after Thanksgiving, early December, we started, you know, kind of tightening things down, and getting our role definition. This team, every team fits together differently. If you look at Notre Dame you can see how differently their team fit together with Luke and without Luke. This team this year, if people were to compare it with my last year's team, they would say, well, it's together a little differently. We've had to kind of do that because each year kids develop and certain things fall together. So I would say early December. And I don't mean to have such a long-winded answer, but there's always this kind of like the stock market. You know, the Dow goes up one day and down the other. But you hope it's going up. In our case it's gone up pretty good over the last year and a half. Q. You said you knew six of the eight coaches in the room. Do you know Scott? COACH TAYLOR: You know, of the coaches in the room, it's interesting -- of the coaches in the room, the two I probably knew the least were Scott and Mike Brey, and those are the two we end up playing. But through the course of playing, I'll probably get to know Mike a little bit better. And of course Scott I know his father, Homer, quite well. When Homer was coming through the years, we played in tournaments together. So maybe that just tells you that I'm older than Scott. But I know Homer better than I know Scott. But I've known of Scott, and his brother, Bryce. You know, there in Valpo, I remember watching Bryce play. We played against those guys actually at Valpo when Homer was playing and Bryce was playing. Scott might have been in the system back then over in Hawaii. So those are probably the two I knew the least. Probably have more history with some of the others. Interestingly enough, Bob, I've probably known Bob for 20, 25 years. He might be the least known of some of the other named guys, supposedly. But I was a head coach in the early '90s, I was in my early 30s at the time, so I had a chance to be on shoe contracts and trips and Final Fours and tournaments and get a chance to know quite a few more people. End of FastScripts |
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