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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: PITTSBURGHMarch 14, 2012Darryl BryantBob HugginsKevin JonesDeniz KelicliPITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA THE MODERATOR: We'll bring out our student‑athletes from West Virginia. Questions for our student‑athletes from West Virginia. Q. Most of your teammates are younger and have never been here before. What have you told them about the experiences of having gone through this in the past? DARRYL BRYANT: Growing up, this is something you live for, to watch the NCAA tournament. To be in this position, you can make things happen or you can go home in one game. From here on out, it's win or lose. It's something we put in their heads, we have to give it our all every game. KEVIN JONES: We definitely try to encourage them not to be shy. This is not a once in a lifetime opportunity, but not an opportunity that everybody gets take advantage of it and cherish the moment and you'll be fine. Just play hard. DENIZ KILICLI: I just talk to the guys and tell them that they have the talent and they made it here for a reason. I think they're able to do whatever they want in here. So I think they just got to be confident. That's what I told them. Q. When you looked at the tape of Gonzaga, what really stands out about them? KEVIN JONES: Well, they're a real disciplined team. They're a team that won't beat theirselves. They make open shots. They're solid on defense. So we just got to locate all their shooters. And definitely they have a post presence in Sacre. We got to limit his touches as much as possible. DARRYL BRYANT: I mean, they're a very talented team. Basically what Kevin said, no open shots. They put a lot of pressure on the ball actually. That's something coming from the perimeter standpoint. I mean, I'm not sure about playing in the post. But, I mean, a lot of pressure on the ball. Really need to do what we do and take them out of things. DENIZ KILICLI: Well, being in the post, they double the post a lot. They put a lot of pressure on the guards. If you pass the ball, I think we get what we want. So that's what we try to do. On the defense, Harris and Sacre, they're solid players. We try to keep him away from the basket as much as we can. Q. The Gonzaga players were talking about how they were looking forward to being physical. Is that something y'all think you'll have an advantage on, considering you have to do it 18 times in the Big East? DARRYL BRYANT: Everybody think we the most physical team. I guess that's just how hard we play. We don't even know we're physical. We just play hard for 40 minutes. That's just something we want to do and keep going. Q. Kevin, for a lot of the season, especially lately, teams have been able to deny you the ball, shut you down late in games. Do you have to do a better job of getting the ball or do your teammates have to do a better job of taking advantage of the fact people are trying to shut you down? KEVIN JONES: I think it's a little bit of both. Definitely as a senior leader, kind of a go‑to guy, me and Truck are definitely out there to make sure we get the ball late in games, kind of demand it more. Our teammates have to do a better job of either finding us or taking advantage of, like you said, them denying us. I think our teammates kind of look around and look for us to do something instead of making their own play. I think it comes from both sides. We both got to do a better job. Q. Is this more about Gonzaga or is this more about West Virginia finishing the game? You have had trouble finishing the game a lot of times. DARRYL BRYANT: I think this is more about us. We came here to win a numerous amount of games. It just happened that Gonzaga is our first opponent. I think this is about us playing games away and us winning games. Q. It was announced yesterday that Fab won't be playing. You got a chance to play against Syracuse without Fab. What was it like to play them without him in the middle? KEVIN JONES: Well, we did play them without Fab Melo. He definitely is a difference maker. You can see it on their team. They definitely play better with him in the lineup. I think it is a crushing blow to them. We'll see what happens. I think it might make them better. They might band together and play even better. THE MODERATOR: This is a relatively new building. You are the only team in the field that's played a game in here. How does this building play and how does this court play? DARRYL BRYANT: This is a great environment. We did get a chance to play in this building once. It came down to the wire. I felt like that's going to happen tomorrow. It's going to come down to the wire. It's just a great environment in this building. KEVIN JONES: Yeah, it is a great environment to play in. It's a nice building. Nice rooms, the court is nice. We do have a little bit of familiarity with it. Hopefully that will come to our advantage. We had a win here. Hopefully we get two. Q. How much are you as guards focused stopping Kevin Pangos? What do you think he means to Gonzaga? DARRYL BRYANT: I look at him just as another guard. My guards on my team are freshmen. To me, Kevin is another guard, another freshman. He hasn't been here before, don't know what it's like to play in this type of environment. At the end of the day, we got a freshman point guard, they got a freshman point guard. That's how I look at it. Q. Earlier today Gonzaga players were talking about how there's always that West Coast kind of thought where teams are thought to be more finesse, less about defense. When you look at Gonzaga, do you see anything like that? Can they play physical? DENIZ KILICLI: I think they're very physical in their conference. But we play Big East. I play guys like Sacre and Harris 16 times, 17 times, you know. So I think they're not going to be as prepared as we are, but they're definitely physical and they want to play physical. So we'll see what's gonna happen. I think we gonna beat them on the physical end. THE MODERATOR: Gonzaga has had quite a run in the tournament. You have quite the experience in the NCAA tournament. What do you take out of the past tournament experience you've had? What can you bring to this year's tournament that you gained in the past? KEVIN JONES: Just the experiences of playing against really good teams and knowing that anybody can win in this tournament, anybody can lose at any given time. It's the little plays that will help make you through the tournament. I think we have a big advantage in knowing that going to the Final Four and everything. That run really prepared us for the tournament experiences. DENIZ KILICLI: Hugs always says that, you know, you got to be able to make open shots, you got to play every play. So little details can, you know, hurt us or can win the game. So we got to play every time, every minute we're playing. We got to make open shots, so... THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you very much. We'll take questions for Coach Huggins. Q. Talking about Kevin and teams shutting him down at the end of games, your guys not being able to get the ball to him. Are you more concerned about him trying to get the ball and doing something with it or your guys maybe taking advantage of the fact that there are two guys on him and somebody is open? COACH HUGGINS: Probably a little bit of both. K.J. is not going to force things. He's not going to take bad shots. And he kind of lets the game come to him. Really, when you look at it, a lot of what he does is off the offensive glass. I think, you know, you go back to the last game, he threw it out. He didn't have a good angle to score. He threw it out. Instead of throwing it back to him and reestablish, we shot it. I guess it's good if it goes in, but it didn't go in, so... We got to do a better job of getting the ball to him. At the same time, I don't want him to force things. I think he kind of did that beginning of last year, you know, tried to be somebody that he's not. I think he's done a great job of playing within himself this year. Q. Mark Few characterized you as one of the last great characters in the game coaching. Has it changed and is it changing with the personality of the coaches being somewhat more than three button suits? COACH HUGGINS: There's just so much more attention now. With social media, I mean, could you imagine some of the other guys, old guys? I think there's still characters; they just do it behind closed doors now. I mean, I know just about everybody here in this field. I mean, there's guys that are funny and have a lot of fun. You can't do things as public as what guys used to do. Social media. Not even blaming you this time. It's social media (laughter). Q. When you look at Gonzaga's guard play, what does Truck have to do to answer? Is that even part of the equation? COACH HUGGINS: Make open shots. Truck has struggled at times to make open shots. He is our best perimeter shooter. He's our number one option on the perimeter. I mean, K.J. has been pretty consistent. When neither one of those guys play well, we're pretty bad. When we get both of them playing well on the same night, we're pretty good. You know, everybody wants guys to be something that they're not sometimes. Da'Sean is not around anymore. That's a guy you could throw the ball to virtually anywhere. He could get it on the rim and make a play. I think the most important thing is guys play within themselves and do what they're good at doing. Q. Frank Martin mentioned earlier that you had a conversation on Sunday just about being in the same place at the same time. How did that go? Is it special to be in Pittsburgh with him, your two teams? COACH HUGGINS: Frank and I have been friends for a long time. I met Frank when he was coaching at Miami Senior. I really enjoyed going down watching him conduct practice. I enjoyed watching their games, how hard they played. I teased Frank all the time. I said, I had to hire you before I got one of your players. Never got a player from Miami Senior. Frank went out and recruited some guys. Frank does things the right way. He's the guy who got into coaching for all the right reasons. He got into coaching because he loves basketball, because he wanted to help kids, because he wanted to make a positive impact on young people's lives. I have great respect for Frank and what he's done. I mean, obviously, talked him into going to Manhattan, Kansas, to start with. He's really what coaching should be about. Q. Is there any advantage in this situation going close to home versus Gonzaga's travels? COACH HUGGINS: It's like I told somebody the other day. They were talking about them flying 2200 miles. I said, They've never rode with our bus driver. I'm stressed from the time I get in the bus (smiling). You know, I don't know. I think Mark probably has a better handle on it than what I would. Hopefully our people find ways to get tickets and we have a nice crowd here. When you have 550 tickets, 8,000 season ticketholders, it doesn't go as far as what you'd like for it to. Hopefully they find ways to get tickets and we have a great crowd here. I mean, generally they do. Q. Going back to the relationship with the coach. You brought up Mark. Talk about your relationship with Mark Few and what he brings to the table as a coach. COACH HUGGINS: Well, I've known Fewy since he was working for Monson, so... He's a fun guy. He's a great guy to be around. We played him in Cleveland. I think it was 2000, '99 or 2000, something like that. They play the right way. He's done a great job of recruiting guys that are skilled. They pass the ball extremely well. They defend. Defensively they keep you off balance. He'll change it to keep you off balance so you don't really get in a rhythm against them. I think more than that, he's a good friend. He's a guy that is fun to hang out with. Q. Is your biggest frustration this season the fact that so many times y'all haven't been able to finish games when you had leads, let it slip away? COACH HUGGINS: I think it's we've lost 10 games by 29 total points. I mean, that's a lot. We haven't finished games. If it was just one guy that was screwing it up all the time, I wouldn't play him in the second half. But it hasn't been. It's different guys. It's different guys. You know, you could go down through all those games and it's not always the same guy, not always the same guy who throws the ball away, not always the same guy who commits some other kind of turnover, it's not the same guy that, you know, with an opportunity to put the game away, goes to the foul line and doesn't make shots. It's been a total team effort. THE MODERATOR: You've got players that have been to the Final Four, players who have made multiple NCAA tournament appearances. Does that make any difference, being able to draw on those experiences? COACH HUGGINS: You would like to think it helps. When I went to Cincinnati in '92, was the first time that we obviously had gone to the NCAA tournament. We went to the Final Four. The next year we got beat in overtime by Carolina who went on to win a national championship. We got beat in overtime. You start thinking, This isn't that hard. But obviously it is. I can remember my first NCAA tournament, I was at Akron. We played Michigan, who was the No.1 seed in the tournament. We played well, lost by I think it was 6. I'm sitting in the locker room, I'm thinking, How can you win six games like this? How could you possibly beat six teams this good? I mean, it's very, very difficult. I don't know. Sometimes I think it's great having that experience. I think what helped us probably a couple years ago when we went was we got beat the first game, the first round. They were very determined that that wasn't going to happen again, so... I don't know. You know, we depend on those guys that were up here for so many things because everyone else is basically a freshman. To answer your question, I don't know. How is that (smiling)? THE MODERATOR: I know you do know how good a player Kevin Jones is. Obviously he's the guy that carries you and will be an integral part of what you do in the tournament. COACH HUGGINS: He's the only guy in the country that's averaging over 20 points and 11 rebounds. He's the only guy in the country. Obviously he's had a terrific year. Q.  With Syracuse without Fab Melo, can you relate that to when you had to play without Kenyon before the NCAA tournament? COACH HUGGINS: I think what Fab gave 'em was a more physical presence. They still have guys that can block shots. They're just not as physical. They're not as big and strong as what he was. Kenyon was a totally different deal. I mean, we played two freshmen, started two freshmen, in the backcourt. The first guy off the bench was a sophomore. The next guy was a freshman. Didn't guard anybody, but they didn't really have to. Turned it loose to Kenyon, he blocked them. They ran down and scored, thought they were having a helluva game. Then we ran everything through him offensively. I mean, he passed the ball so well, you couldn't guard him one‑on‑one. So you throw it in, he did a great job of finding people. You know, I can remember we were playing Larry's team, Iowa State. My assistant said, Hugs, you got to run something. They had narrowed the gap a little bit. So I just said, Throw it to Kenyon. Threw it to Ken. They didn't double him. He scored. They doubled him. He threw it out. We hit a three. Makes you a really good coach, guys like that. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. COACH HUGGINS: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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