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NCAA MEN'S REGIONAL SEMIFINALS & FINALS: ST. LOUISMarch 28, 2010Wayne ChismBobby MazeBruce PearlJ.P. PrinceST. LOUIS, MISSOURI Michigan State – 70 MODERATOR: Tennessee Volunteers are with us. I'll ask Coach Bruce Pearl the open up with a statement on the game, then we'll have questions for just the three student-athletes. Bruce, please. COACH PEARL: Well, there's nothing I could say that's going to make anybody from Tennessee feel any better. We came to this regional to win it and get to the Final Four. Michigan State played very well. And obviously made enough plays to win the game. But I'm proud of my seniors and proud of our basketball program, the way we represented. I don't know how many people came over on Saturday, but there was a lot of orange in the building, and I think that our basketball program took a major step, thanks to these guys up here. But this one here won't go away forever. MODERATOR: Questions. Q. J.P., you were involved in defensive plays at the end of both games. Maybe got the benefit of the doubt the other night. Maybe not today. What did you think about the call today at the end? J.P. PRINCE: I don't know if I got the benefit of the doubt today. I just think at the end of the game you let the players win the game. That's the only thing I always say, let us win the game. But it's unfortunate he called it. I just wanted to make sure he saw the call clear, because with one second on the clock, I don't know. Like I said, it was a physical game. For it to end like that with one second, that's just one of the most painful things, because there was nothing the players can do about it. You want to earn it, and he called it. I can't argue with it. It's over. I have to live with it for the time being. I'll have to watch the replay and see what happened. But it's a tough way to go out. Q. Wayne, if you could just talk about your feelings, I guess, now that your career is over with, what's going through your mind right now. WAYNE CHISM: What's going through my mind is: I'm just proud of my team for what we overcame this season. And the way we came together and put on a nice run like we did. This team would never have been nowhere without us three seniors leading this team and Coach keeping us motivated and together the whole time. But how I feel right now, I'm just proud of my team. Michigan State played a good game, and they came out with a good one at the end. Q. J.P., that last shot, it just didn't seem like you were able to get it up high enough to get a good shot off. Was that the case? J.P. PRINCE: It was just tough. One second you're trying to get the ball, you just want to shoot it perfect but you gotta rush, just didn't make it. You don't want it to come down to a half-court shot; you're just hoping for a prayer with that. I didn't make that, but that's what it came down to. Q. Wayne and Bobby, just talk about how you wanted to defend Michigan State a little bit, in particular it looked like you guys really put a lot of pressure on their point guard. That was a big part of your game plan. Could you just comment on that a little bit? WAYNE CHISM: That was the whole game plan was to pressure everybody out on the court. We did an okay job. It wasn't the best. And we made some mistakes out there, let some of the other guys penetrate and we didn't stay on the hand that we were supposed to stay on. But at the end, they made plays. And it was tough. BOBBY MAZE: Well, like Wayne said, we wanted to pressure the ball a lot and pressure the point guard and make it as difficult as we could for him and try not to let other guys get off. And we knew they were a team that liked to throw inside. A couple times we got stuck on screens and lost our men. We got beat to it with a 50/50 ball in the first half, and they were able to make big 3s and capitalize off some of the mistakes we made. Q. Bobby, what you accomplished was great. Second most wins in the program history. First to go to the Elite Eight. In the long run, will that soften the blow of not making it to the Final Four or not? BOBBY MAZE: Not right now. I mean, that was our expectations coming into the season. And right now, you know, it's going to stick with us. And forever we'll always -- anytime we watch college games or during tournament time, we'll always come back to that very moment where we were just too short, especially when you only lose by one point. Q. Wayne and J.P., if you could both answer this. Wayne, you hit a 3 to put you guys up 50-45. And then you got outscored 14 to 1, about seven and a half minutes without a basket. What are your thoughts -- your remembrances during that sequence, just what happened there? WAYNE CHISM: We just made a couple of mistakes. We really wasn't doing what we were supposed to do. But at the time we just couldn't make shots. Sometimes it happens that you -- some other team goes on a nice run like they did. It was because they were capitalizing off of our missed shots or some of our bad play. J.P. PRINCE: We just had I think miscommunication on the defensive end. Left their shooters open, went under some screens and we should have been hip pocket. It was just bad communication. We got a lead up and they came right back and buried two 3s right back. And we just weren't communicating out there. And just got caught on some bad switches. It's just unfortunate that we let that slip away so fast. Q. Wayne, could you just talk about what Draymond Green did for them, and how you will remember him? WAYNE CHISM: Green is a great player with a big body inside. He just -- he was kind of undersized, but he played with heart. He went after everything. He went strong to the basket. And he is just a great player. He's going to be a great player for their team. And he's doing a good job. Q. J.P., can you just describe that last play where I think Green threw that pass inside to Morgan, and did you see it coming? I think you turned to the radio side at one point and said, Did I foul him? I don't think so. How did you see it? J.P. PRINCE: Raymar -- Green made the pass down low and I saw Raymar going up, and I think my elbow hit the ball, actually, as I remember. It happened so fast. And you hear the whistle. I remember, like I said, y'all probably -- TV people, news probably had a better look than I did. I don't know. The ref made the call. It's a foul. Gotta live with it. Q. J.P., during the stretch where they scored 14, you mentioned how they got their 14-1 run with your defensive mistakes. But as far as offensively, a lot of times you've gone to the basket. What happened there? Why weren't you able to break that dry spell? J.P. PRINCE: We just weren't finishing. We missed easy stuff. And we just didn't make the clutch baskets that we needed in the end, and it was physical down there. You gotta man up. You got to score strong. And we knew it was going to be a physical game coming in. And there was a lot of rough playing, and a lot of bodies falling out there. But we knew that going in. That's how Michigan State plays. That's how Tom Izzo teaches, hard-nosed basketball. And, in the end, I guess they made the tough plays at the end. Q. Brian, what did you guys tell each other when Raymar Morgan made that free throw at the end? Wayne, after Cameron made that free throw there at the end of the game, what did you guys tell each other when you guys called the timeout and he came back out and missed that second shot? WAYNE CHISM: In the timeout, it was us talking about getting a stop on defense. That's what we were supposed to do, get a stop. And we had faith in our team to make that shot and it was Scotty shooting a free throw. And we had faith in Scotty. We can't blame this on Scotty at all for missing that shot. It's a whole team effort, and it's going to be about the team on this. And all we were saying is we needed one stop, and we fell short. Q. Coach mentioned how tough this loss -- how it would linger. Is it harder to go out this way, do you think, one-point game, down to the last second, than maybe getting beat by 20 or something? BOBBY MAZE: I don't think any type of game of basketball you want to lose by 20 points. We fought hard, and we played the best of our ability. And sometimes you can't question the decisions that God make. Apparently we weren't supposed to win today. So we take what the defense gives and we learn from this and we move on. WAYNE CHISM: This is a NCAA tournament, and any team is going to play their tail off to try to get a win. But no team wants to lose by 20 at all in the Elite Eight. It was two great teams out there playing tonight. And one came up with a win. And nobody wants to lose by 20 at all. We accept this one-point loss. It hurts us, but we accept it. J.P. PRINCE: It is what it is, regardless of 20 or one. The way it happened, is it tough, yeah, to come down to a whistle. But, like I said, it is what it is. We can't sit here and argue with the refs. That's for you, the media, to do. We'll leave it to you all. I can't change anything. I'm proud of my team and the program. We achieved a lot. And this will sting for a while, most definitely. MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach. Q. Coach, just looking back on the game, is there anything you would have done different from a strategic standpoint, or did you guys execute exactly what you were hoping to? COACH PEARL: Well, I thought that we did a better job in the second half rebounding the basketball. They had ten offensive rebounds in the first half and we had five. In the second half we had 12 defensive rebounds and they only had three offensive rebounds. We fixed the second shot offense, and as a result Michigan State didn't score as well. I thought that when they did score, we just missed some assignments, whether it be staying pressed up against a shooter that can't drive or whether it's covering a guy with a proper hand and just lost some attention to detail. I thought offensively we shot 51 percent and 43 percent from 3. I mean, the numbers look pretty good. But Michigan State doesn't let you get anything easy. And I thought we missed some shots, maybe, that a couple of them that were pretty good looks that we didn't get. Q. Bruce, you talked about the first half. You looked like at times you really had things going the way you wanted at that point. And, yet, you shoot 56 percent. Summers doesn't play most of the half and you're only up two when they get that late basket and stuff. Was part of you saying, I feel we should be up more than this right now? COACH PEARL: Yeah, I did. I thought it had to do with our defense and Michigan State, they got 11 second-chance points in the first half. And our first shot defense was pretty good. And, yeah, we looked good offensively. We were making shots. We had a really good inside/outside attack going. And there was some real flow. In the second half we didn't get much of a fastbreak. We had some nice lob looks that we had scouted that we thought we could get, and that was uplifting to us, and maybe could have come back to one or two of those to get the guys kind of fired up a little bit. But we've been winning with defense and rebounding, and I felt we lost control of that game there when they made some shots that we just didn't contest. Q. I know the loss stings, but could you talk about what the team accomplished and how you would like for this team to be remembered? COACH PEARL: It's hard to reflect right now. It's just hard to reflect, because I've been here before as a head coach. This is my first loss in the Elite Eight. I was an assistant at the University of Iowa when we lost to go to the Final Four to Vegas in '87. And you want to know about that game, I can tell you every detail. So these just stay with you forever. I think we came to St. Louis expecting to win two games. And we played two really good teams, and we played well probably, I think, both nights. I'm proud when you looked into the stands and saw all that orange up there. This isn't close to home either. These people got in the car and they drove and they got here. And they're proud. They're very proud of this team. And they stayed with us all season long through a lot of adversity, and I think they enjoyed this group tremendously. And so we added to the history and tradition. I know I'll talk to Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King. Alan Houston was here. We've got some great kids coming in. We're going to be a good basketball team next year again, and we're very blessed. This is a very, very special time of the year. Today was Palm Sunday. Easter's next week, and I'll begin celebrating Passover on Monday. And I feel very blessed that the Lord has blessed us so much. I'm very, very grateful. And we'll be reflecting and praying a great deal this Passover for all the blessings. Q. Bruce, knowing how difficult it is to get here and how many coaches and teams never do, what does it say that Tom's been able to get to the Final Four six times in 12 years? COACH PEARL: It's incredible, the consistency and obviously the expectation. You know, I thought that -- the accomplishment certainly speaks for itself. And to do it with numbers of different teams. And it's obviously a great accomplishment. Tom Izzo is probably as accomplished and outstanding a coach as there is in our profession. Q. Bruce, what was your interpretation of the final two seconds? COACH PEARL: We didn't get back defensively. We didn't get matched up properly. They got the ball way too close to the basket. They got way too good a look. And the foul was called. I mean, if we had gotten back better and been matched up better, and, you know, if the look wasn't such a high-percentage location, then you begin to maybe be concerned that the game was won or lost on a free throw. They got it in there close. And so regardless of the contact, it was a foul. If we did a better job getting matched up, then we wouldn't have gotten it that close, then we don't put ourselves in that position. Q. Bruce, can you just walk us through the last 1.8 seconds or 1.6, what was your plan there? COACH PEARL: There were two things. We anticipated that they would miss on purpose. And as a result of the miss, if they could get the ball bobbled or loose then the time runs off the clock. So I told the official prior that if we got the rebound, we're going to call timeout right away. And Brian got the rebound. We called timeout right away. The clock went down to one second. But obviously looked at it, and, again, once the player touches the ball and we're asking for the timeout right away, the clock stops. So with 1.6, we had a little bit more time on the clock to run a play for the win. We called a four and it's for the win. We had not had to run it all year. It's a play that usually takes about two and a half seconds. It's actually a play to get the ball to J.P. and then he's got an opportunity to either throw it or get it up there one more time. I just didn't think it was a two-touch possession. I just didn't think that we could get it in touched to somebody else. J.P. got to half court with a decent look. So if it was a little bit more time, we would have run something else. Q. Bruce, as I know there's only one basket out of many, but at the time, even, did you have any bad sinking feeling about the ramifications of the last sequence of the half? COACH PEARL: You know, I didn't. That was a great momentum builder for Michigan State. We had the proper coverage. We had great coverage. And we switched out on the curl-curl, and the post just rolled to the basket. We didn't stay between our man and the basket, and they got a great look. I mean, it wasn't a blown coverage. And so when we -- it's all we could do to try to put them in those positions. And you know what, so many times games are won and lost, people think about those last-second shots. Games are more often won and lost on the defensive possession. And we get back defensively. We get matched up. We go to overtime. And we like our chances in overtime. So this is painful. This is disappointing. Michigan State, we congratulate them. But this is not what we came here to do. MODERATOR: Thank you. End of FastScripts |
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