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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: WASHINGTONMarch 18, 2011Jim CalhounJeremy LambAlex OriakhiKemba WalkerWASHINGTON, D.C. MODERATOR: Joining us on the podium from Connecticut Kemba Walker, Jeremy Lamb and Alex Oriakhi. We'll open it up the floor for questions for the student-athletes. Q. A lot of New York City guys, New York area guys, in the Tournament, you, Sean Kilpatrick, Travon from Brooklyn and Dante. Is there something about growing up in New York that makes you guys tough? And is it something about playing in the playgrounds as opposed to inside that prepares you guys for playing in the Big East and stuff like that? KEMBA WALKER: Travon is from Jersey by the way. He's from Jersey though. But, yeah, being born there don't mean you're from there. (Laughter). Yeah, I guess you could say it makes us tough. Growing up, you usually play against older guys, playing in the streets. So it makes you more mentally tough than anything. That's one of the positives that you definitely get out of playing street ball. Q. When you guys were in Cincinnati, Mick Cronin talked about how close you came to going to Cincinnati. How close did you actually come and what kind of relationship do you have with him? KEMBA WALKER: It was close. But I really wanted to come to UConn my entire life. So I was just waiting for the opportunity and it came. But as far as me and Coach Cronin, we had a great relationship. He did a great job recruiting me. He had a good relationship with my parents, also. So if UConn didn't come in, it would have most likely been Cincinnati. So, yeah, it was pretty close. Q. Kemba, what do you remember about the game at Cincinnati? A couple of fans get you riled up early in that game and get you going? KEMBA WALKER: Yeah. That was a guy on the sidelines just talking, but I just scored a couple points, nothing major. It was -- I know we came out with a great win, though it was a tough win. We grinded that one out and we took it. Q. Jeremy, Kemba last night talked about the growth of the offense overall and how several months ago he said, boy, this might be a long road, we're going to have a lot of work to do to get this offense running and doing things right. It was a tough journey to get the offense to be consistently clicking as it has been lately, and how much better is the offense now than it was a few months ago? JEREMY LAMB: I don't know if it was tough. I just know coaches and Kemba everybody was just encouraging us, me, Roscoe, Shabazz, Alex, just to be consistent, get our confidence up and now it makes us harder to guard because you gotta throw two and three guys at Kemba, everybody is focused on Kemba as the majority of our offense. So he gives us a lot of open shots. Like I said me, Shabazz, and Roscoe, it gives us a lot of open shots and all we gotta do is just knock them down. So maybe earlier in the year we didn't have as much confidence, but now that everybody got their confidence up, we know how the Big East is and how this league is. So we can play off Kemba better and play better as a team and make it harder for other teams to guard us. Q. Alex, is it easier or tougher when you're facing an opponent that you've seen before, a guy like Gates who you know a little bit, does it make it tougher because they know you pretty well, too? ALEX ORIAKHI: I always say it's tougher to beat a team a second time because in the Big East Tournament, all the teams we beat, they beat us the first time and we wanted to get revenge. So I expect them to be hungry and be real aggressive to get a win knowing that we beat them at home last time we played them? Q. Alex, Cincinnati rebounded the ball well at the offensive end against Missouri. How important is that to keep them off the offensive glass? ALEX ORIAKHI: I think their front court makes their team go. If we can slow them down and stop them getting offensive rebounds, that's going to be key for tomorrow. Q. Kemba, the first matchup against Cincinnati, what sticks out to you about that game, how well did you guys actually play? You made a lot of shots. And what are the biggest challenges they bring? KEMBA WALKER: What sticks out to me is Alex played horrible. That really sticks out to me. (Laughter). And Jeremy played great. So, you know, and Jeremy can play great again and we get Alex play great and things should be great for us. Q. What kind of challenge does Cincinnati bring to you? KEMBA WALKER: Oh, they're extremely physical. Their frontline is great, they rebound the ball well, so we've got to try our best to outrebound them and as guards we have to try our best to help Alex and Charles and those guys to rebound. Rebounding is probably going to be one of the biggest keys. Q. This is for anyone who wants to take it: Coach Cronin said last night was saying the last thing he wants to do now is playing another Big East team this early in the Tournament. How do you guys feel about that? KEMBA WALKER: Same way. MODERATOR: Alex, if you can go first. ALEX ORIAKHI: Yeah, kind of agree. We saw everybody early in the season and know how crazy the Big East is. I kind of want to play some somebody new, somebody we haven't seen before, but it is what it is and we gotta play Cincinnati. JEREMY LAMB: I guess I think about it the same way. I didn't think about it that much but now thinking about it, yeah, probably want to play another team, but that gives me confidence knowing that we already played them, how their defense is and that we can get a W. So, yeah, like I said anything can happen, but it's not that big of a deal to me. KEMBA WALKER: They said it all already. There's not anything much more to say. MODERATOR: Other questions for the Connecticut student-athletes? Okay, guys, you're all set. Thank you. Coach, if you can give a couple thoughts about facing Cincinnati in the third round tomorrow night. COACH JIM CALHOUN: We really needed a win, and I'm not the biggest fan of 12:00 o'clock games on Sunday, but we played them at 12:00 in Cincinnati, and quite frankly, I think we started off hitting three of our first four threes, and we made ten of 19, and I don't know if we really got a full flavor. Only played them once obviously. And of Cincinnati, I've seen before, scouted them, played them, and then saw them afterwards, but they're one of the more physical teams in the Big East. They have great size. I've always felt that Yancy Gates -- and I think that Mick's done a great job getting terrific athletes, Gates being one of them. And when he's coming down the stretch now playing much better. He's a good post guy, probably along with Rick Jackson in our league. We never really tasted that physicality because quite frankly, we just up and down the court played exceptionally well, played one of our better games in the Big East. So we know tomorrow that we're in for a battle. We gotta solve their zone, number one, take away their inside game, which Missouri didn't have much success with yesterday, and eventually probably make some shots ourselves, which means we have to probably get up and down the floor much like we did yesterday. MODERATOR: Open up the floor for questions for Coach Calhoun. Q. Can you remind me what your stance was on expansion, when it happened, and how do you think it's played out for your conference? Has it been a good thing? COACH JIM CALHOUN: You want personal or professional? Professionally it doesn't make any difference because you're going to play x number of games. Personally, I'd probably like nine teams, playing everybody home. When you have got a full -- play 16 games, I don't like 18 at all. That's one thing, expansion or no expansion, I think the 18 games allows us as a conference to go 50/50. We're going to have 50 percent record in that total. If we allow those other two games, I know since we played Michigan State, Tennessee, Texas, et cetera, that we're going to play good people. But we have a chance not to be 50/50 in the league. Has it lost some of its romance in the sense of being on a first-name basis? I know Mick a little bit, but I know him more through Bobby Huggins than I do actually as a coach at Cincinnati. So I miss a lot of that. I think this year, as champ, regular season, Pittsburgh was the champ. I'm not sure any year that's come about because of the imbalance in schedule. We were picked tenth. And I think we probably -- even though and we ended up ninth. But I don't know if there was much difference between nine and three this year, but this is an unusual year. Bottom line is I feel like Bill Belichick was talking about what's happened in the NFL where you play so many teams after a while, different conferences, West Conference, et cetera, and I kind of feel like. The schedule is thrown in front of us. I miss -- we only play Syracuse once. I miss some of those things, but beyond that, it's a schedule. We'll play it and do the best we possibly can. But if you asked me, would I love to be able to play in a smaller conference, yeah, I would. I just like that part of going home. Q. Kemba was in here talking about his recruitment a little bit and how he considered Cincinnati but UConn was his first choice. Can you talk a little bit about his recruitment and did you ever think he might go somewhere else besides UConn? COACH JIM CALHOUN: We know that he had said to Mo Hicks at that time, his coach at Rice, who is now at St. John's, that his dream school was UConn. At the same time, in around that period, September, October, Brandon Jennings was visiting us. And Brandon, like did he with the other three schools, committed on the visit. He had done at the previous two schools, so I didn't no if it was that firm of a commitment. And he's a great, great kid, by the way. Brandon was a great, great kid. When the visiting got conclusion and we made a phone call to Brandon and Brandon said, well, I still want to visit a couple more schools but I'm definitely coming to UConn, I turned to Andre LaFleur and said, let's see if you can go all out to try to get Kemba Walker. He'll be a program player, a terrific player for us, a lead guard. We've got Taliek Brown, we'd got Ben Gordon. Let's go after him full blown. He'll be here long term in the program. And the rest I guess is history in some ways. I always thought he'd be a good to very good to excellent guard. I didn't know -- I didn't automatically see some of the greatness that I now see. Q. You just mentioned about not much difference between third and ninth in the Big East. What about when you're coming from where Cincinnati came from and you're in that bottom part, the difficulty of getting into that mix where there's not a lot of difference? What they've done over the last few years to make that jump, how difficult from your perspective has that been? COACH JIM CALHOUN: The one thing I know about Mick, and I do know him fairly well, but know him, once again, through Bob, you gotta get players. I thought they're just too thin. When Andrew Kennedy coached there, that was a good team until the best player got hurt in our game unfortunately, and that was a very, very good basketball team. And then, you're right, they went through a couple years without having the kind of players to compete in the league. And I think what Mick has done is a great job of going and getting players. Yancy has a big reputation in Connecticut. We all know him, but some of the other kids like Bishop and some of the other kids, Dixon, they're terrific players and probably maybe more on the lines of some of our young players, that people aren't McDonald's All Americans, that aren't the big name, but he gets really good, good players. They can match talent-wise with anybody in our league. And he builds his system and builds his program, and that may be his style to win in the Big East. If you're going to come in our league and finesse your way through, you're not going to win. Notre Dame is pretty physical. I know they're a great ball skilled team, but they're pretty physical. So I think the way he built his team is just as important as the fact he went out and got players. I don't think any team -- if you try to run up and down and shoot a whole bunch of three-pointers in our league and that's the way you want to play, don't play as good defense as they play -- they're one of the best defensive teams in our league -- you're not going to win. So he's done a terrific job building that program. A, getting good players, and B, playing the style that can be successful in a very physical league. Q. Coach, you're familiar with Cincinnati. They're familiar with you. Is that a good thing or a bad thing, that you kind of have their X's and O's all planned out, but they have your X's and O's planned out as well? COACH JIM CALHOUN: Well, my preference probably would be I don't want every Big East team to win, but I didn't want to face any. And it's impossible, obviously, just the way things are being put together. I think it makes it more difficult when you have to play someone from your league. I do for both teams. And we'll see what happens tomorrow. But just when we were talking about scheduling, that's who we have next. They have attributes, that physicality, their inside play. I think during this season, Cashmere Wright has really developed into a really good point guard, and they're just a very solid -- they're what their record says they are. They're really good. And we didn't know that earlier -- I'll be very honest with you -- because they were kind out of radar, even though they were winning a lot of games. But since we didn't play them twice, it's probably not as maybe the same as some of the other teams we've played. But it's like the other team that they won and they won convincingly, and that's the team we play tomorrow. And I don't see -- both of us -- you're right. Both of us have the same advantages and disadvantages. So we'll just go out and play the basketball game and see who can advance to California. Q. Mick said last night that you called him earlier this week, I guess, to talk about what Kemba Walker -- whether you voted for him or -- COACH JIM CALHOUN: I called him. I didn't ask him that question. I just said that there was a misunderstanding, he and I needed to talk as opposed to publicly discuss it, and we had a good conversation. Q. So it's all cleared up? COACH JIM CALHOUN: It's all cleared up. We had a good conversation. I never knew there was a -- I was just talking about my kid, who I was trying to push every way, and I said someone's away for a month and we went to two different places and they wrote about how they recruited him. I said maybe they didn't vote for him or something, and I shouldn't have said that and I did. So I called Mick just to let him know that. I'm the one who said something initially and just wanted to have him get squared away. So I'll root for him. I think he's done terrific -- as I just said, he's done a terrific job. And I initiated the phone call and we had a good conversation. Q. Jim, Coach Cronin was talking about how maybe some of his players didn't respect some of the other players on your team as far as their abilities besides Kemba in the last meeting, and now they'll be learning that guys like Jeremy and Roscoe can really play. How much did their development help you be a better offensive team? COACH JIM CALHOUN: I don't think that most of the people in our league, quite frankly, initially really knew who Jeremy Lamb was. He' wasn't a big, big name player. Roscoe was probably a little bigger name but not a super name player. And the same thing, true of our kids who were going to go back to prep school, Tyler Olander and Shabazz Napier. So a lot of people didn't know who our or players were besides Kemba. But obviously the season has brought about that. I think both teams are going to go in -- I told the kids that we played terrific against them and didn't have many more complete games in the Big East -- and particularly offensively, as we did against Cincinnati, and we may have to find other ways to try to win tomorrow. But we know we're up for a tough grind. They're a team -- they're the type of team that's bothered us during the season, their physicality. I said in the first game, we were able to get a game that wasn't that physical because we kind of kept it on the outside, used fast break and made shots from distance. Q. Coach, have you ever had a point guard who was as proficient at pick-and-roll offense as Kemba Walker is? COACH JIM CALHOUN: I'm just trying to think. We had a kid Doron Sheffer, who ended up being a great European player for us, who was incredible coming off the pick-and-roll. Khalid El-Amin was a tremendous player off the pick-and-roll. If you take the total package, defense, 5.4 rebounds, three steals, all the other different things, I don't think I've had a point guard -- Marcus Williams was probably a little bit faster. Went on to the NBA. A couple guys maybe didn't -- I'm not sure too many pure point guards were better shooters but I think he can play both roles. Bottom line is he's really learned how to take the pick-and-roll, reject the pick-and-roll and just because of his incredible ball-handling ability, splits the pick-and-roll. And you're right, if not better, than anybody I've ever coached. Q. Jim, guys in Kemba's position sometimes feels he has to make a decision at the end of season what he's going to do, whether to turn pro or come back, can get distracted during this time but he hasn't. He seemed to be pretty focused. Why do you think that is? COACH JIM CALHOUN: I think it's because of his upbringing, No. 1. Great parents, very disciplined kid. Same way he approached school. When he came to UConn instead of going with the national team, was the MVP at the end of his senior year. Went with a 17-and-under team. Had a chance to travel a year ago and instead stayed at UConn to try to get ahead academically. Everything about him is the word "discipline" and yet fun and yet a guy who has true joy for life and playing basketball. And I think that nobody in the last three years has hung around the office as much as him. I always think that's great sign when you see a kid in the academic center, see him in the office, see him talking to coaches. I think like Ray Allen said, I don't want to leave college, but his mother and father had just separated and had other domestic issues and he needed to move on to the NBA. But he loved college, too. I think Kemba Walker loves college life. He was very hurt personally, that's why he almost personalized me about last year. Last year was an important year for us, but he took that, that he was unable to do more to help us get to where we needed to be last year, and he put it on himself and I think the results kind of speak for themselves. I've never seen him really distracted from anything. Q. You ended up touching on this a little bit before but to follow up, he seems to be in such a terrific mood around us, anyway lately. It seemed at times in the season he answered the same question over and over again and seems to be having fun. Do you feel like he's trying to relish and appreciate what could be his last few weeks with this program? COACH JIM CALHOUN: I don't think there's any question about that. I don't know if he's thinking quite that way, that he's thinking, well, this is out. I might as well suck every bit of joy out of it as I possibly can. He's going to find joy wherever he goes; he's that kind of person. But he'd be less than human -- he's more than very, very human -- that he wouldn't at least consider how much he likes this whole scene. I don't think he's as happy as he was in Maui when we won that championship, which is kind of his coming-out party. But he was that way in New York. He's been that way in other big games we have had. He is what you see. And he's just an incredible young man. I always feel very, very fortunate that I've had the ability, the position that I have in coaching him. MODERATOR: Other questions for Coach Calhoun? Okay, Coach, thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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