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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 9, 2011Tony BarbeeKenny GabrielJosh WallaceATLANTA, GEORGIA THE MODERATOR: We'll open up with questions for Auburn University coach and student-athletes. We'll start with opening statements by Coach Barbee. COACH BARBEE: Excited to be here in Atlanta at the SEC tournament. It's always kind of the fun time of the year, post-season play. And we talk about three phases of the season with the non-conference schedule, the conference portion being the second part. And then when you get into the third phase, which is post-season play, the best part about it is nothing matters with what you did before. Because everybody starts over. The one thing you want to do coming into the third phase or post-season play is you want to be playing your best basketball. And there's no question this team has gotten progressively better over the course of the season. And right now we're playing at our peak. So I like the feel of my team going into the tournament. They're excited to be here. They want to keep their season going and that's always a good feeling. THE MODERATOR: We'll take your questions for coach or student-athletes. Q. You talked about the growth of the team from day one to now. Is there anything that you didn't feel comfortable with calling or doing or playing early in the year that now you feel like they're better equipped to do today? COACH BARBEE: Not necessarily. It's just, with not going into too much detail about what happened early, it's the growing pains that I talked about. When you take over a program. There's so much to get in. There's so much to be taught, there's so much to be learned from the players' side of it that it doesn't come together right away. And just especially when you have the youth and the inexperience that I had on the team to begin the season. So it was kind of the normal growth chart, so to speak, to where we are today. So nothing different from early on to where we are now, it's just a better understanding of my expectations on both ends of the floor. Q. For the players, coach talked about progressively getting better. Can each one of you, starting with Kenny, talk about where this team is now compared to where it was earlier in the season. KENNY GABRIEL: I think we have grown a lot because we have been executing more our offense and we have been guarding more. We have been trying to out-rebound teams because we know that we don't have that big, we don't have a guy on the team that can get 12, 13, 14 rebounds a game. So we got to do it collectively, all five people on the court at the same time got to rebound. So when it's all said and done, at the end of the day, the last couple games we been playing together and we have been counting on each other and been holding each other accountable. So I think we have taken big steps from the beginning of the season to now. JOSH WALLACE: From the beginning of the year to now it's just a totally different team. So you can just tell we're growing as each game goes along and I feel like we're going into our peak at the right time. We're going into the SEC tournament at the right time. Q. You guys probably knew going into the season that you would have some limitations and some challenges, but any of the outside talk about the low expectations or negative expectations, did you guys ever take that personally or use it as a motivating factor at all? JOSH WALLACE: Yeah, I feel like it's all motivation. We don't get into reading the papers and what they're saying but it's all motivation. And at the end of the day, we're somewhere people thought we wouldn't be even now. So it's just all motivation and we love to prove everybody wrong. So, yeah, I look at it, I think we look at it as motivation. KENNY GABRIEL: I say what he said. We look at it as motivation and we can't really look at how other people see us as a team. We can only see how we see it as a team collectively. So we just look at each other every day and tell each other that this is a brotherhood and we're in it for each other. And we don't really care what other people have to say about us, as long as we know that we can go out there and win games and compete just like any other team in the NCAA. Q. How much confidence do you take from the fact that you were able to push Georgia to overtime in that game in Athens earlier this year? COACH BARBEE: Well, one, I don't think that game's going to have any impact on the game tomorrow. That game's almost seems like it was six months ago. It's been so long. We are a completely different team from that game. One, we didn't have our starting, one of our interior players, Rob Chubb, in that game. And I know they're a different team from that first game. It's going to be a difficult matchup. I mean you're talking about Georgia and the season they had, the great season they had. Mark does a great job with his team. They're probably the most talented team in our league. You're talking about three or four pros on that team. Guys that are couple first-round picks that we're going to be seeing playing in the NBA for a long time. And at the same time, with what they have got on the line, also, I mean they're playing, coming into this tournament, you look at and you read some of the stuff that's the NCAA tournament and what's at stake and all that, they have got to do some things here to put themselves firmly in the field. And so they have got a lot at stake to play for. But on the flip side, so do we. Even though there's probably no post-season in our future this year, these guys my guys are still excited about playing. They're excited about competing. You see how we played down the stretch and how we have gotten better over the course of the conference season, and so I think it will be a good game. But it's going to be a hard game from our side of it because of the challenges that Georgia presents. JOSH WALLACE: I feel like all we can really do really is watch film and learn what we did wrong in that game and just watch for them on their past couple games going into the tournament and just get ready mentally and just everybody know what we have to do and know what we do to execute, offense and defense, to get ready for it. Q. Josh is a great story from walk-on to starter now for you guys. Can you just talk about what it means to you to have a guy like that that maybe wants it a little bit more than some other guys because he's got something to prove? COACH BARBEE: Well, he's not your typical walk-on. He's a guy that passed on some Division I scholarships maybe not at the level of Auburn, but is truly a Division I player, capable player. The one thing I always said about Josh, and it's what I look for in players in general when we recruit, we want players to play bigger than what they are. There's a lot of 6'10", 7-foot guys that play like they're 6' tall, and Josh is one of those guys who I say is 5'9" with heels on (Laughter). When he looks in the mirror, he sees a guy that's about 6'9", 300 pounds and that's how he plays. And so that's, he has all the attributes of a guy that I would recruit when we go out and evaluate talent because of the size of his heart. And it drives his game and he's been the heart and soul of this team because we thrive off of his toughness and his desire to win. Q. You get an hour out there out on the court, can you get acquainted to this shooting background in a dome like in this situation, in preparation for the game? JOSH WALLACE: Yeah, it's going to take some getting used to, but we pretty much just shot for an hour. So by the end of it, I feel like we were all acquainted to it. And yeah, I feel like we're ready to go out there and put the ball in the bucket. KENNY GABRIEL: You can get acquainted to it as long as you go out there and do game stuff, which we did out there, and just get familiar with the court. I think we'll be okay. Q. I think you said earlier this week that you guys are a team that a lot of the other SEC teams don't want to fool with, don't want to play with. What qualities do you guys have do you think that the other teams want to stay away from? COACH BARBEE: I think it's the ability for us, and I don't want to make a habit of it going forward, but to be able to come back from big deficits and we have done it all year long. You know, we would like to play better earlier in the game for some reason, we don't. The thing that we got working for us coming into the tournament is we're playing our best at this time of the year. You can't say that about a lot of teams. And some teams might have peaked two weeks ago, a month ago, I think we're starting to peak right now in terms of how we're playing offensively, defensively, and that can be scary for a lot of teams. Then you look at what we have done over the course of probably the last 10, 11 games, the ability to make comebacks, when we're down 15, 20, 24 points, which obviously we don't want to put ourselves in that position. But it's kind of happened and we have been able to work our way through some of those positions and pull out a couple wins. Q. There's a lot of talk this season about reseeding the tournament. Do you think what Mississippi State getting up to 9-7 with those last three wins maybe that talk will die out because it wasn't an obvious disparity between the team with the bye there and teams that didn't have byes in the East? COACH BARBEE: My thoughts on the restructuring from the divisions to a single division or reseeding is whatever gives us the best opportunity to get the most teams in the NCAA tournament. As coaches and administrators in this league we got to do our homework and do our due diligence and study it to make sure whatever decision we do make, if there is a decision to make in terms of change or not to change, is what's best for this league in terms of getting the most teams in the tournament. Right now, I don't think anybody can say because we haven't looked at it closely enough to say is well, are the two divisions and how we see the tournament hurting some chances of some teams. So I think that's something that we'll approach and attack as coaches and administrators probably this spring in the spring meetings. And really we addressed it last year, but we didn't have facts, we didn't go into detail, and so we weren't prepared to make a decision. But I think this spring we're going to have to really dig down and look at it and do our homework and make sure we make the best decision for this conference. Q. Mamadou helping out been here since January can you talk about how he has helped along the line? COACH BARBEE: I'm trying to figure out a way to get him another year of eligibility. He's been great for me, he's been great for the players, a guy who, in his own way, has come a long way from where he started in college to where he ended up and having a successful playing career of several years in the NBA. And having a guy like that around, it's two ways: we're helping him, because he wants to get into coaching now that his playing career is over and he wanted to finish his degree and he's within a semester, so we were able and had the ability to help him come back and get started on his coaching career, and get him on his way to finish his degree. So he can get on his career path now and coach, and at the same time he's helping us. When you got a guy with that much knowledge from his playing career, he can do nothing but help these players every day with his presence being around them, not just on the court, but off the court and in the locker room, hanging out with them. And so it's been a pleasure having Mamadou around. THE MODERATOR: All right. thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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