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NCAA MEN'S REGIONALS SEMIFINALS & FINALS: SAN ANTONIOMarch 24, 2011Thomas RobinsonBill SelfTyshawn TaylorSAN ANTONIO, TEXAS THE MODERATOR: We'd like to welcome our Kansas student-athletes. We'll open the floor for questions. Q. Can you just talk about your development with your outside shot, your perimeter game, three-point shooting? TYSHAWN TAYLOR: I think the biggest thing is I'm shooting with a little bit more confidence. I think I had a pretty good shot before, just kind of rushed it a lot. Now I'm just taking my time because I'm realizing that defenses are backing up on me, so I can just pretty much take my time when I shoot those threes, so I'm showing more confidence and taking my time. Q. Can you also just talk about the suspension and your growth from that and how it's changed you? TYSHAWN TAYLOR: I think it definitely opened my eyes a little bit and realized that my team was just as good without me, so I had to come back and prove myself to my team and my coaches. And I think I did a pretty good job of that, staying hungry, staying positive throughout the whole situation. And I bounced back pretty good, so I just want to keep it up. Q. When you came back could you tell there was a certain point that they had accepted you back, or were there certain, I don't know for a lack of a better term, hoops you had to jump through to prove everything? TYSHAWN TAYLOR: I think the whole time my teammates supported me through the whole thing and understood my situation. They never got down on me or anything. I never had to prove anything to them. It was more to myself. I wanted to come back and show them that I belonged on the team with them. I felt like I kind of hung them out to dry a little bit. So I wanted to just come out and work two times as hard as I was working before. And I think once I came back and I got back into the flow it was like I never left. Q. How has Coach Self imparted the "seeds don't matter" message to you in the past few days? Bucknell, Bradley, Davidson, have they gotten brought up? THOMAS ROBINSON: No, those games don't get brought up too much. We were the No. 1 seed last year and lost a 9 or whatever it was. We lost to a team that we probably seed-wise shouldn't have lost to. So we understand, I think this team this year understands that we can't look past anybody or take anybody lightly. We've got to come out ready to play. Play everybody like they're the No. 1 seed. If we do that and we're hungry to win, I think we have to be the aggressor. THE MODERATOR: We'd like to welcome Kansas head coach Bill Self to the dais. COACH SELF: We're obviously very excited to be back to San Antonio, a place that we've immensely enjoyed in recent memory, and certainly hope we play well again down here and create some new memories for our players. Q. Coach, just in the locker room talking to some of the guys, they aren't certain how many minutes they're going to play. They all seem to have the same speech and the same focus. How important is it for them to keep that focus for you guys? COACH SELF: I think it's very important. And we don't know, we don't play with a set rotation, somebody plays 30 and somebody plays 10, and all that stuff. They've got to be ready when they're called on. For the most part we've done very good this year. Our bench has been very good, our depth has been a bonus for us. At this time in the tournament I think depth is less important than during the course of the regular season, unless fouls occur, because there's an extra timeout and you don't seem to get as tired. But it's still very important. And we've got good quality players coming off the bench and they just need to be ready. Q. Speaking of San Antonio two years ago, you guys had gotten there by beating a lot of lower seeded teams before reaching the Final Four. With the seeds that you've already beat and the seeds in front of you, does it feel familiar? COACH SELF: Not really. When we won it in '08 we beat a 12 seed, I think Villanova in the round of 16 and beat an 11 seed, Davidson, in the round of 8. And Davidson, up until the National Championship game gave us the best game in the tournament, our best game, without question. And that was a one-possession game. It's not about the seeds. Fans and media people may play it out to be that way. It's not about the seeds. It's about players. It's about match-ups. And Richmond has good players. Everybody left has good players. But Richmond has good players, they've got NBA prospects that could play anywhere in America, and just so happens they play in the Atlantic 10, which is a great basketball league. But our guys will not look at Richmond as a -- they will look at them as incorrectly seeded and certainly very capable of beating anybody in the field. Q. Going a little further on that, is it not eerie how similar this season is, does that make sense? In 2008 you guys lost to K State and you come in and beat the 16 and I believe it was an 8 or 9, and beat a 12 and 10 to get here. COACH SELF: Was Davidson a 10? Q. Yeah. And a possibility of playing another 10, Florida State. Is it that the selection committee has a sense of humor or is it eerie to you? COACH SELF: No. In '08 we also went through Nebraska and Michigan, which is the same path that they went in '88. So there's a lot of similarities. And when you do the -- when you're in the business long enough you're going to have things like that crop up. But I haven't thought about the eerie at all until you mentioned that. And I don't think that at all. We're excited to be here. The field here is strong. It may not appear from a seeding standpoint to be as strong as 1, 2, 3 and 4 that are left, but I guarantee that there will be nobody that will be looking forward to playing anybody in this field right now. Unless you get to the Sweet 16, you expect to play a great team. And certainly we have an opportunity to play a great one tomorrow. Q. Speaking of Richmond, does that loss in 2004 at Allen Fieldhouse in your first year as head coach, you've got to think about it sometime, like, Man, I get to play Richmond again or does that crop up for you at all? COACH SELF: It's cropped up a little bit, but not much. Their coach, Jerry Wainwright is a good friend, and he's reminded me they beat our butt in Allen Fieldhouse. We made a couple of bonehead plays late, which I've seen on television this week, to remind me of that. But for the most part that doesn't even register. That was a long time ago. But I told our guys, you know, last time we played them they got us in our building. So if anything our guys know that they're capable of playing at a high level as a program, even though it was several years ago, but they certainly did that night. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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