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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: WASHINGTONMarch 17, 2011Jim CalhounAlex OriakhiKemba WalkerWASHINGTON, D.C. Connecticut – 81 MODERATOR: Coach Calhoun, if you can give an opening statement about your thoughts on the game. COACH JIM CALHOUN: We had seen Bucknell certainly enough on tape, and obviously their big kid is going to be a terrific player. He is a pretty good player. Johnson really shoots the ball. They got a good point guard. I thought we felt we were physically stronger than they were No. 1; No.2, they're a team that likes to control the game, and I thought we would do as much in the -- transition became very important to us, rebounding became very important to us which obviously leads to our transition. And then having I think Alex do a great job inside along with Charles and Roscoe Smith. But to have Kemba who's been our scorer become our initiator of almost everything he did, he did that early in the game. For a lot of these kids, everybody really except for Kemba, no one else had meaningful NCAA minutes, so it was important for him to kind of get his teammates involved in the game. And he did that as well as you're going to do it. And then he obviously made some big baskets. But his biggest contribution was controlling the game on the offensive end for us and definitely he and his teammates, and even Jeremy, played great defense on Johnson, and we just locked down what they wanted to do and tried discourage them a little bit on the defensive end, and then really have Kemba run the show on offense and get people involved. Early we were trying to go low as much as we possibly could to take advantage of fact we felt we were stronger inside. MODERATOR: Questions for Kemba and Alex at this time, please. Q. There was a buzz in the arena before the game that your game with Bucknell could be close game. Did you think that it would be kind of this easy? ALEX ORIAKHI: No, I didn't think it was going to be this easy especially when I was back in my hotel room watching all the games, watching some upsets, I was a little bit nervous to be honest. I didn't know what to expect. But I'm just happy we pulled it off and we won by a lot. Q. Kemba, you didn't shoot too much in the first half and I wonder, was that a conscious effort, as Coach said, to get your teammates involved or was that because the way the defense was playing that you had open players out on the wings? KEMBA WALKER: I think it was because the way the defense was playing. I knew coming into the game that they thought I was going to try to be extremely aggressive and try to score, but I just took whatever they gave me. As the game went on I seen that my teammates were getting a lot of open shots and I just told those guys to be ready, and they were ready and they made shots. Q. Kemba obviously you were very tired and had trouble -- just kidding. Any lingering effects at all from the long weekend in New York? KEMBA WALKER: Not at all. Everybody's trying to say that this team is tired from those five games in five days but there's no way we could be tired. This is the best tournament in the collegiate level and we just want to play basketball and get as far as possible. Q. Kemba, when you're watching Louisville lose and some other high seeds struggle, does that get you nervous a little bit too or does that inspire you a little bit knowing that these upsets can happen? KEMBA WALKER: Yeah, I know it can happen but my teammates set the tone early and that's why we was able to get a great lead because knowing myself and knowing my teammates, we came out aggressive with a lot of intensity, and a lot of enthusiasm, and we also made them trail us from the jump. That was really the big difference. Q. Alex, how important was it to establish yourself inside on the rebounding end of game? They only got one offensive rebound the whole game? ALEX ORIAKHI: My big things was always being inconsistent. So I just wanted to pick up where I left off in the Big East Tournament. Go after the basketball as Coach always told me. When I do that, everything will take care of itself and my teammates will find me in the post, and I don't have to worry about scoring, just go after the basketball. Q. Alex, what do you like best, do you like Kemba the scorer, Kemba the assist man or Kemba the rebounder best of all? And were you surprised at how good he was as he set a school record for assists today in an NCAA game? ALEX ORIAKHI: Obviously I like Kemba the assist man so I could score some more, but he definitely did a good job, but not forcing the issue. Every time I came off a pick basically he had two guys on him and they didn't know that we have other players on the team that could actually score, and are very good as well and we made them pay. Roscoe had a great game. Jeremy had a great game. And we just made them pay because they put so much attention on Kemba. Q. Kemba, you came out in the second half you were involved on every possession, what adjustments did you make at halftime? KEMBA WALKER: Did I make? Nothing really. We came out with the same game plan, just take whatever the defense gave me. It was times where my teammates, they're playing so well that things were able to just open up for me and I was able to score a little bit, so there wasn't really any changes. MODERATOR: Kemba and Alex, you guys are all set. We'll now take questions for coach Calhoun. Q. Coach, I was wondering if you could speak to the importance of Roscoe and Jeremy being able to knock down shots like that? COACH JIM CALHOUN: We've a whole different team in -- Jeremy did that during the Big East Tournament and made All Big East Tournament. They're still arguing about the one rebound which would have given -- Kemba had the ball and Alex ripped it away and he says, "It meant nothing to you." And Kemba said, "It meant a triple-double to me. It meant a lot to me." So they were kidding all the way down. I'd like to have our whole time fighting for the ball every time. Bottom line is that when Roscoe and Jeremy has been, and Roscoe actually did in the championship game, we're a different team. We're just a different team because if you want to do what Coach decided at Bucknell to do, that's been done before and that's fine. You load up with Kemba and you're going to -- we ran the pick-and-pop time after time after time. And when Kemba came down the middle you put three guys in there and try and take a charge, block his shot. He did a wonderful job. He could have had 15, 20 assists tonight. He really could have. And it's something that now that we've moved on to Saturday, we're gonna have to bring more Saturday. Bucknell is a fine basketball team, exceptionally well coached, run really good stuff. We worked on their stuff a lot. I mean, a lot. And Johnson can really shoot it, even the shot he shot late is what I saw on tape, but the reason you didn't see that early because we got to him. We got to their people and keep the point guard with pressure. I thought we did really good on defense. I thought we really ran and distributed the ball very well. But we're going to face bigger and stronger people now. They got one offensive rebounds because they sprinted back. They were sprinting back to prevent our fast break, and you do that when you're a control team and obviously they have a terrific record. Coach has already won a Division III national title. They're a well-coached basketball team. But bottom line is that if we can continue to have the help from other people besides just Kemba, then 10, and if we can get it, 12 assists, and we're a whole different kind of basket -- now -- it never came tonight, thank God, but when it comes down to winning time, Kemba would be much better served to be the scorer than if in fact he had tried to put up 27, 28 -- that type of thing. No question it makes us a whole different kind of team. At times tonight, I'll be very honest with you, I thought we were brilliant offensively. I really did. I really, really loved the way we played offense, and a lot of it was keyed by we really tried to choke them defensively. We really thought we could do that and then run out of that. Q. Midway in the second half, Roscoe is on the bench and he said something that you apparently felt was funny and you kind of gave him a playful kick, nudge, whatever you want to call it. Can you tell us what he said? Because you had a big smile on your face after that. COACH JIM CALHOUN: It was a fall-away jump shot by Alex. And I said, all of a sudden he thinks he's either Lew Alcindor, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and everybody else rolled into one. When did that one come in? And he said, I've never seen that before. And just the way he said it, I've never seen that before. Neither had I. But the point being the game was flowing very well. You all know that when the game flows well, we played terrific. We really did play terrific and Bucknell I'm sure knows that. And that happens in the NCAA Tournament. And when a good team plays terrific, you got problems. And, but sometimes it builds upon itself. And we get probably carried away with some of the shots, but the sum total was, yeah, I was -- over the past three or four days, I told you, the only thing I've been worried about is psychic fatigue, and the second thing I was worried about is that Kemba Walker scored 23 was his high going to the Final Four against Missouri. But no one else had really been, quote, the guy or even played in an NCAA Tournament game, so it was important to try to keep them in a more relaxed mode as much as we possibly can. The game, in essence, ended close to halftime. And if it didn't end there, the first five or six minutes of the second half, which we talked a lot about at halftime, the game was put away. Q. Given the amount of time Kemba played in the Big East, what was your thinking going into this game and how many minutes you'd have him play? Do you think that through beforehand or feel it out, or did you want to see him in this slightly different role of distributing? COACH JIM CALHOUN: Well, if the other guys are going to make shots, gotta make choices. And their choice was simply Kemba Walker is not going to beat us. But he did. He beat you by making other people better. And that's the key. And if you didn't have the ability, we'll be exposed. We've had occasionally people tell us because he averages 23, 24 points a game, he's not a pure point guard. Yeah, he is. But on our team, he has to score a lot of points. So the minutes I had thought of Kemba, probably 5:00 o'clock this morning as I was thinking about the game, where they use box and -- you know, all the demons inside your head thinking what could go wrong. But I put him in for his usual 40 minutes. I felt -- he doesn't get tired. He plays basketball all the time. And I truly believe that. I think if I refuse to believe they're tired, it should have an effect upon them, because I've already told them: You aren't tired. You guys aren't tired. And eventually they start to believe that. And we told them they needed to practice for two hours. They practiced for an hour and 30, but they didn't know the difference. We're here, there's no clocks. My point being: You guys are fresh at the end. So little deception like that is very good. More importantly, as I said, psychic makeups of teams, in my opinion, obviously with physical talent, but make the difference between how good you play. And we felt fresh. Wasn't like playing five games in a row. He we had some time off, and hopefully we bounce back and be able to play well on Saturday. Q. Coach, was the need to get the other starters more playing time in an NCAA game the reason why the guys stayed in as long as they did? COACH JIM CALHOUN: Here's the thing -- well, we rotated enough people, as you probably noticed. First thing, when Kemba Walker is going to be exposed, if I worry about his fatigue, I will get him out a little bit quicker. He only played 35, only 35 minutes tonight. But that's the way he's going to play for us, and I want him to get maximum exposure. I think I owe it to him, what he's done for this program, and he doesn't get tired. As far as everybody else, when Jeremy Lamb, who is a freshman, is playing like that, why would I pull the plug on that and then hope he restarts it as opposed to having him pass the test. Alex the same way and Roscoe the same way. So everybody has different philosophies about these things. I don't certainly want to try by any stretch of the imagination to ever embarrass another school, and I don't think we did. We just happened to outplay them very badly. That happens. That's the sport of basketball. But the most important thing to me, those magic moments that you have when you're playing really well and they're flowing and the ball is moving, I want to capture that. It's hard to get that ever even in practice sometimes; we got it in the game. So I was going to try to make Jeremy score more and do more things, even as you probably would admit that the game was in essence over, but I still want them to feel good about themselves heading into Saturday's game, yeah. MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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