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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 7, 2012Bruce EllingtonDamontre HarrisDarrin HornNEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA CLAUDE FELTON: We'll ask coach for his thoughts on the South Carolina's team coming into the tournament and then we'll take questions just for the three student‑athletes and excuse them back to the locker room, and then we'll finish up with coach. So coach, if you would begin. COACH HORN: March is the best time of the year. Always great to get to the SEC tournament, and regardless of how your season has gone, and obviously ours hasn't gone as well as we would like for it to, in terms of total wins, you get a fresh start and a chance to start all over. And we have got a very challenging matchup in Alabama and in this first game. They're a team that's a much different team than we saw the first time we played them in terms of some of the things they're doing and the personnel they're playing with, the dismissal of Mitchell. But for us, we feel like some of the same things are going to be important, taking care of the basketball and doing the job on the glass and trying to find a way to get out and run and get as many easy baskets as possible against a really good defensive team in the half court. CLAUDE FELTON: Take questions just for the three student‑athletes. Q. Could you guys talk about being here and about how you view this weekend. Maybe the odds aren't great, but there's a chance like Georgia did a few years ago, for you guys to win four and four and be playing somewhere next week. BRUCE ELLINGTON: It's just a great opportunity that we just get to come here and just start all over and just play, and hopefully we come out with wins. DAMONTRE HARRIS: Pretty much like he said, it's a brand‑new season. I feel that we just have to continue doing what we were doing, play as a team and compete on both ends and come out with a W. Q. Where do you feel like you've made the biggest improvement this year from the beginning of the year? Obviously you had the nice honor of being on the SEC all‑defensive team. I guess particularly defensively can you pinpoint a couple areas where you really feel like you made some strides and enabled you to make that team? DAMONTRE HARRIS: For the most part, I would just say staying positive, listening to my coaches, coming out of practice and competing every day, trying to get better, trying to stay focused and do the things that I can do to help the team win games, to put us in position to also win games. Q. Bruce, you've been getting your scoring totals a lot, they have been a lot better these past few games. You're the guy that beat Alabama with the last second shot. What do you think they're going to do defensively to try to stop you? BRUCE ELLINGTON: I don't really know what they're going to do. I guess they're going to do what the coach tells them to do, but I'm going to do the same thing. I did last game and helped make my team better. Q. For any player that wants to take it, obviously it's been a rough year for you guys in terms of wins and losses, but as I watched you in person and on TV, I'm very impressed how hard you keep playing. Could somebody just talk to that, speak to that about where that comes from? MALIK COOKE: Pretty much just comes from our coaches and the players that we are. We never want to give up. We're always going to come up and keep working and try to be the best that we can be every game. Q. Is that hard to do when you're not getting results in terms of wins and losses? MALIK COOKE: At times it can be a little discouraging, but you got to keep on pushing and find a way to get wins and to come out and be your best. Q. As your career winds down, is there anything you want to kind of take an opportunity to really soak in this week here, just anything in particular that you really want to make sure you remember out of the final few days of your college basketball career? MALIK COOKE: Yeah, I just really want to just enjoy my teammates and coaches and just enjoy this time and just try to go out and get some wins to further my college basketball career. CLAUDE FELTON: We'll excuse the student‑athletes and take questions for coach. Q. You mentioned Alabama's absence of Mitchell. What have you seen from them on tape, how they're doing things differently from the first time you guys played them? COACH HORN: They're playing what you would call 'small' a little bit more, and with they're doing that, a little bit more full court pressure. Of course that's when they don't have Jacobs and Green in at the same time. And so a little bit more zone, being very aggressive in it, so just having to play a little bit differently. I think Jacobs has really stepped up. He's a young freshman who I think is going to be a terrific player in this league, has a presence around the basket. And you've seen kind of collectively different guys on the perimeter have nights where they're capable of making shots and doing some good things for them. With Cooper, who is capable of doing that, and Randolph and Lacey, those guys as well. Q. Address the same thing I asked Damontre, from your perspective, obviously you kind of have a different perspective from him on his game. Where have you particularly maybe seen the biggest defensive strides for him from the beginning of the year to now? COACH HORN: That may be the understatement of the year, that coaches have a different perspective than the players do. (Laughter.) But I think the biggest thing with Damontre, and I think he touched on it to his credit and recognized it, is that he's learned to be more consistent. And he comes out and he's one of those unique guys that's blessed with a great deal of ability that if he'll just go out and play hard and compete and run the floor and be really active on both ends every night, he's capable of making the strides that we saw this year and then having some of the nights that he had. There were a handful of nights, if you took his best five or six, where you could argue he was not just all‑defensive, but potentially all‑conference I thought. So I think just maturing as you hope sophomores are going to do and being more consistent in his effort and his focus has led to better results for him. Q. One thing about Nick Jacobs, what makes him effective? What is he doing? COACH HORN: He's got a big body, and he's one of those guys that just finds a way to do what we call 'get it on the rim.' He's a guy that when he touches it in the post, he seems to have a knack for getting it up at the basket. I think for a freshman, especially, he does a really good job with that. The fact that he's left‑handed probably in some ways helps that a little bit. But I think he's done a good job of getting position and finding a way to get the basketball on the rim. Q. You had one of your best career moments right across the street in 2003 for the Final Four. Could you just describe that moment, what it was like and what it's like being back here? COACH HORN: Well, it was a culmination of a lot of hard work and building a program, and not any different than what we're trying to do at South Carolina in terms of what goes into building a program. So it was great, after four years of that, to have the opportunity to do it. And one of the things that was really neat about that was that we played Tulane that year on the road in conference play and Coach Crean actually brought us by the arena. I don't know how he did it. He's got a knack for this kind of stuff, but he brought us by the dome and there was nothing in the dome at the time, and we went into the dome and looked around and said, Hey, wouldn't it be great to be back here and playing? And we were able to do that. So that's not my first trip down here, many times in the Sunbelt, playing there as well, and it's always been a good place for us. Q. I asked your guys about continuing to play hard and at this point, how do you sell them on that and how do you sell them, with the record and everything, that this tournament can be an opportunity to do something? COACH HORN: Well, it really is. I think you touched on it in your earlier question. It's hard to do what our guys have done without getting the results that you want. I think it speaks to the character of our team and the fact that even though the wins aren't there and the results aren't exactly what we want them to be, that we continue to make some strides in building our program. And I think the good thing is when you have done that consistently, and played some really good basketball, in our last four games we played Vanderbilt extremely well‑ we played great basketball against Mississippi State and lost on a last second shot‑ I think that you can come into tournament week and it be a fresh start and you can honestly say, Hey, guys, we have been playing well, we've been right there, this is a brand‑new start, record doesn't matter, and let's find a way to keep it alive one more day. Our guys have had a good response to that and hopefully we can carry that on to the court tomorrow. CLAUDE FELTON: All right. Thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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