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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 9, 2012Kim EnglishFrank HaithPhil PresseyRicardo RatliffeKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI Missouri – 81 THE MODERATOR: We're ready to begin with the Missouri Tigers, Coach Frank Haith, student‑athletes Kim English, Ricardo Ratliffe, and Phil Pressey. Coach, congratulations on tonight's victory. Your thoughts. COACH HAITH: Good hard‑fought game. I thought it was a very competitive, physical Big 12 basketball game. Proud of our kids. We played really together on the offensive end. I thought we were solid on the defensive end. THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Phil or Ricardo, because I don't think Kim will answer it, have you guys ever‑‑ is this the best you've seen Kim play these last two games individually? PHIL PRESSEY: No, he's hitting shots. When he gets hot, I mean, there's not much you can do. We see that every day in practice. He stays after late, and it's paying off for him. Q. Phil, you've talked a lot this year about defense kind of picking their poison. Did you sense early you had open jump shots from Texas, and I mean when the first couple went down, how confident did you get? PHIL PRESSEY: Well, I usually try to get a feel for the game and see how teams are going to play me, because some teams tend to play me for the pass. Some teams tend to just let me shoot. So I just took what the offense gave me. My teammates were confident in me to hit those shots, so I'm just going to take them. Q. Talk about what happened in the second half with your thigh and how is it feeling now? KIM ENGLISH: I just was coming off a cut, an offensive action that we had been doing all game. And he shot the gap, and his knee hit my quad pretty hard. And just got to get treatment tonight. I'll be fine for tomorrow. It's the championship. It's the Big 12. Q. For any of you, I know I've seen on Twitter the hashtag "businesstrip," and it seems like you guys really have kind of narrowed your focus here as you've come here. For any one of you, just talk about how you are approaching this tournament right now as that business trip and kind of how this whole entire thing came about? KIM ENGLISH: That's how it's been all year. We've really been dialed in what we have to do in the process. I feel like I'm really redundant with that word. But we really, truly have been focusing on each game and, to dive deeper in that, each possession. We want to get the best shot each time down court and try our best to get a stop, and then with a rebound each time down court. It is a business trip. Every game is about business. Every road trip is about business. And we came to Kansas City to take care of business. And we're in the position where we expect it to be. Q. Right before you got a hit, I think you said: They can't guard me. I was wondering if you thought that it was a little cheap and maybe in response? KIM ENGLISH: I didn't say that. I didn't say that. Q. Well, then, a follow‑up. You said coming in here that‑‑ when asked about playing Kansas, you said you'd play Fort Hays State to win the Big 12. Now that you're there, is it a little‑‑ do you wish you were playing KU or are you happy playing Baylor? KIM ENGLISH: Again, we would have played Texas Tech, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Baylor, Texas, anybody. We just wanted to win the Big 12. We played Baylor to beat them my freshman year to win the Big 12 tournament. We knew that was going to be a big game. Our coaches didn't come here early to scout Kansas. They came here to see what both teams do. And we were prepared to beat Baylor tomorrow and try our best. We came here just wanting to win the Big 12 Championship, no matter who it was against. We knew a bunch of teams could have been in this game tomorrow. Q. Kim, you've joked, mentioned a couple times about nobody in the Big 12 is rooting for you guys, that kind of thing. Just hoping to get your thoughts along those lines for tomorrow's game with that on the line and what other people might be thinking. KIM ENGLISH: We're focused on people that's in our locker room, the people that support our program. The fans in the state of Missouri. That's who we want to win this championship for. We don't care about the Big 12 not supporting us or whatever you said. We're really focusing on doing this for the people that do support us, for our coach, for our seniors, for our young guys, for the entire state of Missouri. Q. Kim and Ricardo and Phil, going back to what Kim said about taking care of business, is it difficult to stay focused on what you're here to do with all the stuff that's going on with the other tournaments and everything? KIM ENGLISH: No. Absolutely not. First and foremost, we get back and dive into the things we could have did better in our game and our preparation for our next game begins immediately. And then all of that next day how we're going to execute. All the other stuff is fun, because we are basketball fans, so it's great watching the Big East game and the Big Ten and ACC games. But our number one focus is our game every night. RICARDO RATLIFFE: Not at all. I mean, we watch basketball just because that's the sport that we play. We're not really focused on it like the Big East, ACC tournament. We enjoy watching it just because it's other DivisionI basketball. But we just focused on the Big 12 right now, which is playing Baylor tomorrow. PHIL PRESSEY: To piggyback what they said, us as a team, we're trying to focus on the next game, because if you lose that next game, then everything else is impossible. We're trying to take one game at a time. If you do that, you'll be successful. We're just trying to take one game at a time. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Questions for Coach. Q. I'm curious if you were pulling for Kansas to win today, and if there's any sadness that the title game isn't with you guys? COACH HAITH: That's a really tough question. No, I don't care who we play. All right? We're happy to be in the championship game. And that's all we concern ourselves with. It's a great opportunity. We got here. We talked about winning championships. We had an opportunity to do that earlier in the year in the CBE Classic. That was the championship. We have an opportunity to play with the Big 12 Championship, regardless of who we're playing against. Q. What do you think it says about where your team is right now that your one guy who is a First‑Team All‑Big 12er, Marcus Denmon, can go 0‑10 and you guys can be in control of the game basically the whole way and win by 14? COACH HAITH: I've said it all year about the team. And I think that's a great example of a ball club that's a team. And we don't ever want to be‑‑ and Marcus Denmon is our leading scorer, but we have other really good players on this team. Flip had one of those nights. He was shooting the ball extremely well, and then obviously Kimmy was outstanding and Ricardo got going late. We've got other guys who can score the ball. We put five guys out there, all those guys can have a big game. Q. I don't know if I've ever seen a group look so visibly focused on the goal at hand. I feel like they should have been wearing suits with you afterwards with the way they're treating this. Talk to me about how they're approaching this and how excited that makes you. And at the same time, despite that cold‑blooded look on their face, how much fun they're having doing what they're doing? COACH HAITH: I think it's a fine line. You want them to have fun and enjoy what they're doing because they've got a tremendous opportunity to play a sport that they've grown up playing all their lives under the bright lights. But you want them to stay focused on the task at hand. And these guys have all bought into that. And I know Kim sounds like a broken record, but all these guys do in terms of the process. They've really bought into that. They bought into preparation and they bought into focusing on doing the little things every single game. Q. With regard to that, with Kim, it looked like his demeanor looked a little bit even more stern or something tonight. Have you seen something in him in the last couple of days about how he's looking at this tournament? COACH HAITH: He's been really focused. I think he's been focused all year. But obviously I can sense that he's really determined. And the way he's played the last few days has been unbelievable in terms of just shooting the ball. But he's been outstanding all over the court. Q. The old cliche about playing your best basketball at the end of the season, do you think this is the best basketball your team has played all year? And, if so, do you have another level you can possibly get to? COACH HAITH: We're playing really good. I think the one area‑‑ and Texas is such a really good offensive rebounding team. I think they really emphasize that. They went after us. But we've got to continue to rebound the ball. But we're playing really good. We're executing. We're not turning the ball over offensively and we're not just taking a bunch of 3s, we're executing, getting good shots. I thought our defense has been good the last two days. We played really good defense. The only thing we've got to continue to do is rebound the ball. Q. Talk a little bit about the post play.  It looked like maybe the biggest difference between this game and the game you two played in Columbia, it may have been Chapman. Looked like defensively he was doing a better job on Ricardo, and obviously he got a lot of rebounds. At the same time Ricardo ended up with a strong game numbers‑wise and contributed a lot, especially the second half. COACH HAITH: Ricardo had a double‑double, 18 and 18, outstanding night. We'll take that every night. I think he was outstanding. And I think Steve gave us really big minutes, too. Steve was outstanding for his 14minutes he played. And but Chapman has had a really good career. I think they wanted to‑‑ based on how the game played out, they were emphasizing getting the ball inside. And I think they wanted to attack us in the paint, and obviously he had 13 clips. And I think they made a concerted effort to get the ball inside to him. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Congratulations. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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