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

March 20, 2010

Omar Samhan

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

St. Mary's Â– 75
Villanova - 68

THE MODERATOR: We have today's winner of the first game, St. Mary's 75-68 winner over Villanova. We have St. Mary's student-athletes, Ben Allen, Mickey McConnell, Omar Samhan, and Matt Dellavedova along with head coach Randy Bennett. Coach, would you please make an opening statement.
COACH BENNETT: Yeah, not really sure what to say. Definitely we're very excited to have been able to advance to the Sweet 16, something our program hasn't done for a long time. I think they did it in 58, 59. But just exciting. Our guys played well. We had to play well. We played well both games this tournament. Our guards did a great job getting inside to Omar and he did a great job of handling that. We beat a good team. A team that was ranked No. 1 in the country, I think they started out 22-1. And anytime you do that you feel proud of what your kids have done. And it's kind of where we're at.

Q. The question on everyone's mind, Mickey, did you need the bank, yes or no?
MICKEY MCCONNELL: Yes, definitely. I just kind of threw it up there and it was a little left but the backboard was there, so we'll take it.

Q. Mickey, why did you take that shot? There was time on the clock, it seemed well guarded, what was going through your mind when you decided to shoot?
MICKEY MCCONNELL: I got a little separation and so I had an open look. And so I just let it go and luckily the backboard was there.

Q. Ben, what was going through the conversation in the huddle coming out of the timeout with 10:05 to play?
BEN ALLEN: I remember saying to the guys, we haven't made our run yet. We had a run in the first half but we have to run in the second half as well. We just had to stop their momentum and go on our own run. And Omar got a few buckets, Mickey went on a run, Della made his free throws. We all stuck together and got he win.

Q. Omar, obviously going inside is the team's game and your game. But based on your scouts, did you anticipate being able to do it as successfully as you did?
OMAR SAMHAN: Just from a player's perspective you kind of always have to think that. I go into every game, I'm going to score 30 points. If it's three points, it's three points, if it's 30, it's 30. We thought they'd double team us after what I did on Thursday. But they did -- sometimes they did. They threw some different looks at me, but it was good, successful inside tonight.

Q. Omar, at the end of the game you certainly felt the euphoria of this victory. Kind of popping your jersey as you walked down the court for that last free throw. And then you ran into the stands. Can you talk about what that means? It seemed like you wanted to embrace everybody there.
OMAR SAMHAN: Yeah, just the support we have, it's such a small school. There's more people at the game for Villanova than we have students at St. Mary's. Just the support we get and the people that we have are so loyal and dedicated to us. It's just great to see them, and just embrace them. That's all of our friends and family. With a small community you know everybody. It's great. I'm happy for them that they're able to experience it with us and I'm happy we were able to do this for St. Mary's. It's the mid-major, we get that label, we get that title. And I was happy we were able to come through not only for the city, but the fans around the country.

Q. Clearly Villanova wanted to pressure the guards to try to disrupt things and come at you in waves. Can you talk about what the plan of attack to try to handle and get into the offense without getting side tracked?
MATT DELLAVEDOVA: Pretty much just like look after the ball and try to get a shot up. We knew they were going to get up and into us. So me and Mickey just kind of, yeah, whoever we thought was the weaker defender of the two, we brought it up. And, yeah, just tried to get both of us.

Q. Omar, at the end of the game were you feeling tired? You looked pretty tired sitting on the bench. Is that how you look at the end of games or were you really feeling beat /TPE end?
OMAR SAMHAN: McConnell said that's how I always look. No, that was a physical game, emotional game. It's funny I told these guys on Friday morning, my body hurts more this morning than any other morning this season. I feel like guys play harder this time of season. I was definitely tired and I'll be looking forward to the break before our next one.

Q. I know you know a lot about St. Mary's history. I know you've been through the books and you're in a lot of books now. Is this the most significant win in school history?
OMAR SAMHAN: You're supposed to be like diplomatic with questions like this. No. 1, best win ever, quote it, Omar Samhan said best win ever. It was. It was.

Q. Mickey, they tied the game up at 51-51, did you think that the game was kind of sliding in their favor at that time and how did you guys maintain your composure?
MICKEY MCCONNELL: I didn't feel like it was sliding. We've been in situations like this before. So we knew we had to stay within ourselves and stay composed. We knew we still had to get shots because it was late in the game. We just tried to keep attacking and keep getting stops. They definitely did have a little bit of a run but I think we did a good job of maintaining that.

Q. Anyone other than Omar, you guys -- how would you describe your reaction to the success he's had in the low post. Shocking people with this? You are watching him do this, are you saying, we've seen it all year, you're the best in the country, you're seeing it now?
BEN ALLEN: Definitely we can credit that to practice. He dominates guards in practice. It's definitely no shock to us how well he's been playing in the post and in games. He's absolutely dominant and he creates so much for us when he goes and gets dirty like that, and it frees everyone else on the perimeter.
MICKEY MCCONNELL: It's definitely not a surprise to me. We see him every day in practice and he's done it the whole year, I think he's averaging over 20 a game. So he's definitely consistent on the year. And I think when we get it inside and surround them with shooters, so it's either double on him or just leave our shooters open. So definitely not a surprise.

Q. Obviously Omar and Mickey having been more exposed to the NCAA Tournament and all its magic and whatnot, do you guys fully grasp now the magnitude of this win and the bigger stage that you guys are going to play on?
MATT DELLAVEDOVA: Probably not yet. I think probably after the season I have to soak it all in and look back. But just to see what it means to everybody else, like the fans, yeah, it makes it pretty special.
BEN ALLEN: Being in America five years now and playing four years of college ball, I really understand how big this win is. The Sweet 16 is something that's put up so high on this pedestal, to get there, like Omar said, like a mid-major is an unbelievable achievement. All our fans are so happy and proud of us. My dad is going to stay another week, he's staying another week to travel to Houston.

Q. Being here in going forward, do you feel like it's the why not us mentality or the it should be us mentality? You seem confident in what you're doing.
MICKEY MCCONNELL: I'd say it's definitely kind of it should be us. We work in the offseason, we do just as much. So I don't know -- it's definitely not a surprise to us. Going into the year, we feel like we should be here. We don't want to stop now. It's not like kind of a good feeling story, it's we should be here.

Q. Omar, since you're not interested in diplomacy, I'll take a crack at this. You watch ESPN and television all year long, you hear this make a big deal of this big man and that big man. When you're listening to it, are you going I'm better than him, do you go through that?
OMAR SAMHAN: I don't. I really don't. I do think this, though, I hope we can play them. I really, really want to play him. And I still think that -- I have great numbers, but it's so much the team. Like people think I'm being diplomatic when I'm saying, these dudes are so big time outside. The fact that they can shoot 3's opens it up for me. So they do most of the hard work, I just get the credit. So it's a good deal as long as I keep buying them dinner they'll stick with it. I'm really lick go my chops for the best big. And I want to play the best beg every night. Let's see how good you really are.

Q. Is it true your mom told you she wasn't going to bother coming here, she was going to wait until Houston and see you there?
OMAR SAMHAN: That actually is true. I think my mom is like one of the Australians, she doesn't understand how big this is. She's like, I talked to Coach Bennett's wife, and she said I'll meet you next week in Houston. She's like, yeah, just win two games, I'll book the ticket. My mom has had a flight to Houston since Selection Sunday. I'm glad we'll be there, too, because she was going either way. That's where we get our confidence from, my mom.

Q. It's kind of an odd box score, you almost didn't win anything, Omar has one offensive rebound, you shot so much better than they did. That was what the difference was, you had 20 more shots or something. We talked about Omar and your offense, what did you guys do defensively on the perimeter to hold them down to these kind of numbers?
COACH BENNETT: You know, that's a great point, because everybody is going to look at Omar's stats, and he played great. And we did a great job of getting the ball to him. But we did -- our guards did a really good job on their two guards. Those guards are really good, Reynolds is probably first or second team All-American. And McConnell did a good job on him, and Dellavedova did a good job on him.
We're under the radar as a team. Just our players are. They're better than you think they are. McConnell is a better player than people think he is. He's a much better defender than people think he is. And same with Dellavedova. Ben Allen is a sneaky player in that he has a lot to do with Omar getting 32. His ability to move the ball and see things.
Defensively didn't do anything different. We had about 36, 40 hours to prepare. And our guys -- these guys pick up things quick and they're pretty sharp. And they're very mature about handling situations like this. They've never been here, we've never been here. But I wasn't really worried. I didn't feel like we were going to be overwhelmed with the magnitude of this game. I thought our -- I just think we're good that way. Our heads are pretty good and defensively those guards did a great job on their two guards.

Q. You guys were talking about since the loss the Portland how your defense has improved considerably. How did that happen? It's easy to say we're going to improve defense, but it's not like you shoot 30 shots and become a better shooter. And particularly Mickey's defense has been so much better these last six games, how has that happened?
COACH BENNETT: Mickey has been good all year, he really has. There are some match ups that bother us. We play big inside. We're basically playing two five men in the post defensively. But we worked harder. We didn't change a whole lot. We had to understand that our margin for error defensively is not much. And so the minute we slip, whether it be transition game or whether it be how we defend an on ball, it can get bad quick.
So I think after we went to Portland, Gonzaga, I think our guys, they were listening better. And their sense of -- somewhat a sense of we're running out of time here, we better get this done. So I think that's what we did. Like I said, we got back from Portland, we practiced that Sunday and we didn't take many shots, it was all about our defense so that they understood we have to make it -- you don't make huge changes this late in the year, we had to make an improvement. And we did. That's why we're moving on.

Q. What we saw here with the guys talking to each other and joking, Omar piping in, is that post game euphoria or is that the way they normally are? Is that fun for you as a coach or is that something you have to slap them around sometimes?
COACH BENNETT: No, that's how they are. They're pretty loose. They know the boundaries. You're supposed to have fun. Shoot, who knows if any of these guys or myself, anybody at St. Mary's will ever get to this point again, you don't know.
But normally they're a pretty loose crew. They're pretty fun and they know where the line is. So this is normal. They enjoy winning. They won a lot of games. These guys -- Omar and Mickey have won a lot of games the last three years. Obviously they enjoy it and when they do it I tell them and they know, they enjoy it.

Q. Just expanding on that, how does the team chemistry, how does that translate into them being confident and in being what they are?
COACH BENNETT: You know, how much does this team help you win, that's the question. We believe it helps a lot and we sell that in our program. And if you don't want that then St. Mary's isn't the right place for you. So when we recruit we talk about that. When we have that first meeting of the year we talk about that so they know. These guys are good kids. They're really -- they get it. And I think it's -- yeah, from my coaching staff to my players, all the way across the board, we believe team wins.
Omar gets a lot of attention, but they're all important in helping us win. And Omar knows that and he believes that. When he says it he's sincere.

Q. Your players mentioned the mid-major label. Is this win sweeter because it transpired against a team that hales from a power conference?
COACH BENNETT: No, not at all. We play good teams. Villanova, we don't get to play these teams very often. Villanova has a great reputation. They're No. 1 team in the country, like I said, this year. They were Final Four last year. So we understand, it's more Villanova as opposed to the conference. We understand Villanova is one of the powers in college basketball.
Our guys -- it's funny, I don't think anybody -- nobody expected us to be in this situation when we started the year. Maybe the guys did, but I think even they would admit we were a little unsure. But as we played we keep winning and winning and winning and winning and they just gain confidence. This team has improved so much. We've improved in different areas as the year has gone on. But from start to finish this team has improved a lot.
So to be in this situation is impressive for me as a coach looking at these guys, what we -- where we were at to start the year until now. Yeah, Villanova is Villanova. We don't really care -- we don't care -- we think our league is good. Gonzaga is a good team, they're in our league, we have to go through them every year. And it's almost like if you don't win your league, you're not that good a team. We have a really good team in our league that we have to go against. I told our guys, we're playing -- Villanova is a lot like Gonzaga. I thought Gonzaga had as good of talent, threes. And Villanova has great talent. But that's what we have to deal with in our league.

Q. What was the first recruit from Australia, how did that first connection come about?
COACH BENNETT: His name is Adam Caphorn and he was looking for a school in August, my first year. Yeah, we needed guards desperately, and we took him sight unseen, and he had a great career, and brought another one and we rolled from there. We were lucky it happened, but I think we were smart enough to go back to that same well and bring nine more.

End of FastScripts

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