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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS: MILWAUKEEMarch 19, 2010Blake HoffarberTubby SmithLawrence WestbrookMILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN Xavier – 65 DENNIS KRAUSE: We're joined by Minnesota. Coach, your opening comments. COACH SMITH: First I want to congratulate and commend Xavier on their performance today. I thought they were well prepared. They did some good things. Every time we tried to make a run at them, they found a way to keep us at bay. So I want to congratulate them and I'm really proud of our team and how we competed all year long. DENNIS KRAUSE: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Will you guys talk about the way you finished the year and what the mood is like in the locker room after a game like today? BLAKE HOFFARBER: We're definitely disappointed. Come in, a run after the Big Ten. Feeling good about ourselves. We're hoping we could get past this first round here like we did last year. Trying to do better than last year. But Xavier played well, and it's just a tough game. Q. Lawrence, can you talk about that first half, especially at the end where Sampson and Damian Johnson and Colton were on the bench with foul trouble but you were able to step up, make some shots and you guys had some momentum going into the break? LAWRENCE WESTBROOK: Yeah. It's tough playing without them, because they're some of the main contributors on the team. They went out so everybody just had to pick up their game and I was able to hit a couple shots in the first half. And we were feeling good going into the locker room with the game tied with them three in foul trouble. Q. Lawrence, it's kind of frustrating on both ends defensively. You want to stop the guards. You want to be able to create a tempo for your team defensively but on the offensive side. Seemed like you tried so hard and it doesn't go the way you want it to go to keep your team in the game. What was going through your mind? How frustrating can it get in a situation like that? LAWRENCE WESTBROOK: You've just got to keep your head. I got more frustrated on defense. Crawford would cover shots, and I thought I was playing good defense, and I got a couple of touch fouls called. So I mean that got me more frustrated than anything. So you just gotta keep your composure and trust your teammates that things are going to go the right way. Q. Blake, can you talk about this second NCAA tournament appearance for the younger guys, guys next year, what are you going to take from this? Obviously you lose Lawrence and Damian, some quality guys, just talk about that. BLAKE HOFFARBER: I mean, I think we've just got to improve during the offseason here. I think it's a motivator to realize that we need to get better moving into the next season being a lot better team. We're definitely losing some good seniors there. But hopefully next year some guys can improve over the offseason here and hopefully we can get here once again next year and make a run at it. Q. Lawrence, this is your senior year. And I know you said coming into this you didn't want it to be one and done. In the second half, you guys had some open looks. Did you feel like maybe you guys were pressing when you were missing some of those shots? LAWRENCE WESTBROOK: No, I think I missed a couple of shots that I usually hit. I mean, they felt good. They just didn't go in. And maybe guys maybe got a little tired when they started making their runs and kind of made us feel a little pressure to tie the game with one shot. But things just -- the ball just didn't go in for us in the second half like it did the first. Q. Lawrence, your senior year, when you look back at your career a month or two from now, the ups and downs, what you've been through, how are you going to think about it? LAWRENCE WESTBROOK: I'd just like to thank coach and the coaching staff and all my teammates for a great four years. Me, myself, personally, I like to thank myself for sticking through it. I've been through a lot here. This is a lot of good times. And there's just as many bad times as well with distractions or other people saying stuff, when you read stuff and the paper and other stuff. I think a lot of people probably would have broke down, but I just like to thank my family and just thank God that I stuck with it and I never let anybody break my spirit. Q. Blake, could you talk about the defense between offense between the first half and second half especially late in the game when you went through that scoring drop? BLAKE HOFFARBER: I think in the first half we were hitting a couple more shots. And any time you're not hitting the shots like we weren't in the second half, it's going to be tough. But you gotta -- Xavier was playing some pretty good defense. We had a couple of open looks that a lot of guys will normally hit normally but tonight it just wasn't falling. So we learned from this and hopefully the underclassmen will improve during the offseason and get ready for the next year. Q. Lawrence, last two years you've been kind of the go-to guy for this team, led them in scoring. When you're gone, have you seen anything from these underclassmen and who do you think might be able to step in and take your place? LAWRENCE WESTBROOK: There's a lot of good players on this team. So they just have to get better and continue to work, you know. Blake, second leading scorer, he's going to have a bigger role. And everybody is. So they're going to have a team effort. It's not my job to say who is going to step up and who is not. Hopefully everybody works on their game and they could equally contribute to be a good team. DENNIS KRAUSE: Thank you. Questions for coach. Q. You held them to 21 percent in the first half, incredible. Ten blocked shots. Were you disappointed that you were only tied at half? COACH SMITH: Well, yeah, because I thought we didn't capitalize, and they got a lot of those blocked shots back. One of the problems we have when you block a shot near the basket like that, you gotta have -- you gotta have game rebounding and guys have got to come in here pick up those loose balls. I think they may have scored on five of those ten blocked shots. And so that's been an issue for us. We are rotating over but not getting that extra body in there. There were challenging shots at the basket. Unfortunately, they were getting the ball at the basket too frequently. Q. Can you just talk about, obviously Jordan Crawford, you guys have had problems against players like that, wings like that? Could you talk about how effective he was and the trouble you had stopping him? COACH SMITH: He was pretty effective today. That's why he's Player of the Year Atlantic 10 and All-American. He's pretty talented. Something we knew coming in we thought we could try to make him work. But he seemed to get better as the game went on. He hit some big-time shots and taking the ball to them. When you have that type of versatility, you can take the ball to the basket. He's 6-4, and jumps over people. He's just got the total package. Puts it on the floor well. Passes. Has good basketball IQ and understands how to play the game. He's a tough matchup. Any good player is going to be a tough matchup for any team. But I thought for the most part Lawrence really is a competitive. Westbrook really got after it. We tried to use Damian. We tried to use different types of looks but nothing seemed to work, especially in the second half. Q. Can you talk about the quality of player that Jordan Crawford is? Do you think you have that kind of talent with the guys coming back, or is that something that you'll have to go out and look for a player like that? COACH SMITH: Players like him are pretty rare. But everybody wants a player that good. We think we have them in our program. We just think we need to continue to develop guys. We have a lot of youth and a lot of young players returning, that I think if they work hard in the offseason and get stronger and work on all the aspects and phases of their game that are going to help them get better, yeah, I think we do have those type of players. Maybe not a Crawford level, because he's really -- he's a kid that's played two years Indiana, set out a year. He's a four-year player. So he's grown into his role and he's developed, and obviously he's worked extremely hard to get as good as he's gotten. So if we can motivate and inspire our guys to work that hard, I think we have them in our program. Q. Before the game, there was a report saying that Auburn, linking you to the Auburn job. CBS reports saying they were close to hiring you. Could you address that and talk about your intentions with this program, whether or not you plan to return next season? COACH SMITH: Obviously that's just talk, because I'm very pleased with what we've accomplished here. I'm pleased with where we are in the program. I'm very -- I'm looking forward to coming back to Minnesota. Q. Talk about this season. You lost your dad and all the distractions with the suspensions, eligibility issues. But you still got this team to the tournament. What does this team and this season and what you accomplished mean to you in view of all the things you've accomplished? COACH SMITH: Well, I haven't accomplished it. It's all about the players. What I told them at the end about respect, you know, people are going to say and do things. You've got to hold your head up high and respect your teammates, respect the people that believe in you, that care for you and love you. You're not going to worry about what's said or written. Concentrate -- worrying about the external distractions. It's all internal, inside you. So I'm really proud of how our guys showed their character that they have, like Damian and Lawrence. They're the guys that held it together, the upper classmen. It's not easy, because you're now getting it from all angles then, you're getting it from media, you're getting it from everybody, family. People questioning. So I'm just happy that they kept believing, kept the faith in one another, and that's what it's about, in any family. There's going to be storms and there's going to be adversity. That's what we do. We teach and we try to prepare guys for life and hopefully they'll go out and they'll share what they learned and the things that we tried to inspired them to do. I'm just happy for them. Obviously I was fortunate, I grew up in a household with discipline. Giving and caring was a part of it. A lot of guys don't have that. So we're -- it's our job as adults, as grown people, to know the difference and share that with these young people so they understand it. And sometimes we lose that because everybody's worried about, everybody's got to write something or they've got to say something. They just think they've got to do it. It's part of their job. I know that. But we have a job too to develop and raise these kids the right way. Q. Coach, last year you made the NCAA tournament and lost to Texas in the first round. After a first round loss this year, how do you look at your program differently a year down the road now and going into this offseason, what step has this program taken, do you think? COACH SMITH: We got back here. We took the same step we took last year. Obviously you want to take another step. But we didn't. I thought this team has really grown and matured. And nobody's really -- when you measure it, there's a lot of people -- everything is not measured on wins and losses and how far you go in a tournament; it's about I think doing things the right way. And every kid dreams of -- every basketball player, Division I player, dreams of playing in this tournament. So these guys have been a part of it for the last two years, have lived their dream. Maybe it didn't -- the dream didn't take them as far as they wanted to go, but they lived the dream of being a part of something special. And we can build on this. It's a lot of positive things that have happened for us over the last couple of weeks. And over the last month, as a matter of fact, and that's what we're going to focus on going forward, that this is just another step of maintaining -- obviously maintaining, continuing to grow the program. And there's some things we have to continue to do recruiting-wise, facility-wise, all kinds of things we can get better at, a lot of areas we have to get better at. Q. You say that Auburn is a lot of talk. And there's been rumors of other schools. This time of year for coaches it is crazy. Have you had schools make offers to you? Can you confirm that? COACH SMITH: No, I haven't. DENNIS KRAUSE: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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