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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 10, 2011Tony BarbeeChris DensonKenny GabrielATLANTA, GEORGIA Georgia – 69 THE MODERATOR: We have been joined by Auburn. We'll start with an opening statement from Coach Barbee. COACH BARBEE: I'm proud of the way my kids fought all year long. What could have been a long and difficult year because of the wins and the losses can separate or divide a team, and this team has stayed together all season long. And fight, they did all the way to the end. So I'm proud of them for that. But again, Georgia, they're a talented team. I said that coming in. Their size and their strength and their bulk up front was a major concern. We had to win the paint to win this game and we didn't. Hats off to Georgia because they dominated us in that area of the game. THE MODERATOR: All right. We'll take your questions for the student-athletes. Q. Kenny, you guys just about every game seems like you've been down a lot of points and been able to come back. But you weren't able to do that today. What was the difference today? KENNY GABRIEL: We couldn't get stops and rebounds. I didn't rebound the ball very well today. And we just got out-rebounded. Q. Chris, talk about your progress from the start to the finish of the season. This is probably one of your better games. CHRIS DENSON: Yes, sir. I progressed a lot in the season. Coach Barbee give me a little hard time at practice, but I had to work on my game and progress defensively and otherwise. And as I progressed defense-wise, I got more playing time. Q. Kenny, how hard has this season been for you guys with all the ups and downs, mostly downs, this year? KENNY GABRIEL: It's been real hard. After every loss, we would say we always say, "Family," and that's one thing that we can lean on, we can lean on each other. But with all the tough losses that we had and all the bad losses that we had, we know that we have been in every game. But when it's all said and done, at the end of the day, I mean, we stuck together and that's how we got this far in the season. Q. You talked about the positive things you got out of this season. Just talk about what that means to you going forward to next season and what that will do for you coming back. CHRIS DENSON: We got a lot of rebuilding to do. We're young. We got a lot of good dudes coming in next year, so hopefully we'll do way better than this. I know we will, because Coach Barbee and the coaching staff is great and we'll have great players next year. KENNY GABRIEL: I feel like that we can take a lot of stuff and learn from this year because we had a lot of young guys. But now all of us young guys have experience. The experience plays a big role in basketball games in late game situations. Then with the guys that we have coming in this year, they can contribute. So we just got to put them on our back, show them the ropes off the court. And on the court, stay together as a family and just get the season going next year. THE MODERATOR: Okay. We'll take questions for Coach Barbee. Q. Talked about all year you struggled to score the ball. How do you generate offense in the offseason. What do you got to do, other than just get more guys on the floor who can score? COACH BARBEE: That's the answer. I mean, it's two-fold. I told the guys in the locker room how they got a lot to be proud of this season. In terms of just the players is always difficult in terms of wins and losses, when you rack up that many losses, but give these guys credit. I think as a staff, we never showed that we were quitting on them. I think that went a long way. They stayed together as teammates and didn't point, didn't blame. They knew they had a lot of growing to do because of the inexperience. And I talked about the growing pains from day one. And you see how we progressed as a team and got gradually better over the course of the season. And that's what we want to try to do every year. But in the locker room just now, I said a lot of things, but one of the things that I did was I challenged them, I challenged them all individually, because we're nowhere near good enough individually to take the next step that we need to take. So individuals have to commit to physically improving themselves, because we're not strong enough. We played against some men today, and I had some boys out on the floor physically. So we got to make some serious gains in terms of the weight room. We have got to make some serious strides in terms of our skill level, our ability to finish at the rim, our ability to make shots from the perimeter. But we have to improve in a lot of areas. A lot of that is this team individually committing to that and a lot of that is recruiting, I think the way we are going to upgrade our talent level in terms of who we have got coming in, transfers sitting out and our recruiting class. So we have got some immediate help, but there's guys in that locker room that are going to be able to help, too. But they got to commit to improving. If not, they will get left behind. Q. You mentioned the building blocks, the foundation that this team has set so far, and you mentioned the recruiting class. Talk about the ups and downs and what that means for the future of the program and going forward with the recruiting class and these guys getting better? COACH BARBEE: The main thing, one, my expectations are always going to be higher on the season than anybody can put on the season. Obviously, there weren't many expectations on this season, but I don't look at a schedule and see a game that we can't win. That's just how I am. But at the same time, the main focus for this year was laying the foundation of what this team is going to be like, or this program is going to be like on the floor while I'm coaching it. And that's a mean, tough, nasty team that doesn't quit fighting. And I think we embodied that over the course of the season. Again we built a lot of big deficits that we don't want to make a habit of, but we never, never folded up the tent. Same thing today. We got down offensively. I thought defensively we did a lot of good things. We just couldn't. We got them to shoot jump shots early against our zone, which is what we wanted to do because we couldn't guard them in the post. We just couldn't rebound those balls. And it's hard when they're as big as they are. But at the same time we didn't quit. Guys didn't hang their heads. They kept fighting all the way to the end and that's what this season was about, laying that foundation. And now we go from there. Can't look back, we got to look ahead. These guys got a lot of work to do individually that I talked about and excited about the group we have got coming in. We have got some immediate experience, obviously, when you talk about Varez Ward and Noel Johnson, two Division-I transfers who played at a high level already. So now we have got immediate experience there. You can add Frankie Sullivan to the recruiting class because this was a loss year for him with the injury. So you add those three in the back court, we go from a very inexperienced back court to maybe one of the most experienced in the league. And then our front line. We have got to improve there. We have got to get stronger. We got to bulk up, work in the weight room and get better in our individual skills. So we can come back next year and take another step in the building of this program. Q. A lot was made prior to this game about Georgia needing a win to play themselves into the NCAA tournament. From what you saw today is that a team worthy of the NCAA tournament and why? COACH BARBEE: There's no question because I don't know of another team maybe in our league or across the country that can matchup with them physically. Across the front line. It seems like they go to the bench and there's another 6'9" guy that's about 260 that they bring off the bench. But they're not just big, they're skilled. They can play, and their guards are big. They're not long, but they're all physical. They're all men out there. So I said it all year long, we were lucky to play the way we were, the way we played them in Athens. And I knew this was going to be a difficult game tonight because not only they're big, they're talented, and well coached. Coach Fox does a great job. Q. Trey Thompkins said he's healthier than he's been this season? COACH BARBEE: He looked like it. Q. Could you tell any difference and what kind of matchup challenge does he provide? COACH BARBEE: When he shoots the ball like that from the perimeter, which he can and that's not like that was a shock to us today, but when you got a guy that's that talented in terms of his skill level at that size, he's hard to guard man on man in the block. And he can stretch out a four-man like he did today and be able to knock down long jumpers or put it on the floor and make plays for not only himself, but his teammates, he's going to be a tough matchup for anybody that they play, whether it's in this tournament or whether it's in that NCAA tournament, where I think they belong. Q. You talked about some of the guys that are here already helping you some more next year, how good was it to see Chris have a game like he had today going into next year? COACH BARBEE: I was proud of Chris. I was proud of Chris the way he's grown all year long, and I said it early on that he was one of the least prepared players that I've ever coached starting on this level as a freshman. He just had no understanding of individual defense, of team defense, of offensive concepts. And until he was ready, I was never going to put him on the floor where he wasn't going to be successful. And I knew he couldn't help our team be successful, but I give him credit because he didn't hang his head because he wasn't playing. He understood what I was saying. He took it on to get extra work with the coaches, not only the floor, but in film sessions. So we can improve his IQ, he's started to grasp offensive and defensive concepts, team. And so now I knew what he could do for us offensively. Because we struggled to score all year long, he's a guy that was capable of creating points. Now not a shooter, but more of a scorer, a guy who could slash and get to the rim. And he showed it again here tonight, but he showed it a lot over the course of the last half of the season because he earned that opportunity. Because of how he improved. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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