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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: NASHVILLEMarch 15, 2012Mick CroninDion DixonYancy GatesSean KilpatrickCashmere WrightNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for the student athletes. Q. Cash, you guys have made no secret of the fact that you don't like playing early games. What your reaction when you found out what time this game starts? CASHMERE WRIGHT: It's the NCAA Tournament. If you can't get up at whatever time the game is, you shouldn't be here. We going to be ready for this game because it's an important game. So, you know, everything else is irrelevant right now. Q. What time do you think you'll have to get up for this, do you know yet? CASHMERE WRIGHT: I have no clue, but it really doesn't matter. YANCY GATES: 7:45. Q. Yancy and for any of the other players, can you talk about the growing up y'all had to do especially after the shoot-out? YANCY GATES: I mean, probably not growing up. I think it was, you know, more of, you know, just finding our way, you know, so I think we did a pretty good job there, even though the guys want the games. I think we won 8 before we lost one. I think it was just, you know, our back was against the wall, we were shorthanded and had to make it all work once the suspended guys got back. I think we pretty much, you know, found our way and did a pretty good job of that. THE MODERATOR: Dion. DION DIXON: I mean, it was a little adversity. We handle adversity well. We just came together as one, you know and we looked at it as a problem, not so much as a negative as the media put it. We did a good job. Q. Yancy, this question is for you. As a senior big guy, what have you worked on over the years to kind of make you the guy you are now and to make you a threat inside, make you a good defender inside? YANCY GATES: I mean, pretty much, you know, a lot. You do a lot of things in the off-season, whether it's working on defense, playing one-on-one against the other bigs on your team. Even sometimes, you know, having to guard these guys up here, get used to, you know, using your hands and being quicker with your feet, and so I think all that being big for me with my defense and even offense, you know, playing against the littler guys helps me keep the ball low. They're going to foul me, so it makes me go through the foul and be able to finish strong. The same with the bigger guys on our team. We got guys who are good shot blockers, have to get the ball up over the over them. Kind of like a process going through the season. You get used to it as the year go on. Q. Just as a follow-up, your future. After this tournament, are you hoping to play pro ball and do you think -- YANCY GATES: I think everybody up here is hoping to play pro ball. Everybody in the tournament. Definitely. We'll be working out trying to accomplish that. You know, right now I'm kind of just focusing on getting a win against Texas. Q. Yancy, what did you learn last year as this team and this program broke a long NCAA drought. What can you do to build on that experience from last year? YANCY GATES: I think last year, you know, we learned how to get up and get prepared for this type of environment. I think it was easier for us to get prepared because we were so excited about it. You was ready to do everything. We were even excited about doing media, and we never excited about that. I mean, this year, I think because we've been here, you know, we're older and now we're still excited about it, but we also know, you know, the importance of being prepared and making sure when it's time for us to be off our feet that we're off our feet and getting ready for games. Q. Dion and Sean, can you talk about J'Covan Brown and what you've seen from him on film, how you try to slow him down? DION DIXON: I mean, he's the leading score in the Big 12. He's a great player. We going to just try to make every shot tough for him. It's going to be the main thing. Great players make tough shots. We're going to try to limit him. SEAN KILPATRICK: With a player like him, you can't quite guard him one-on-one. You've got to have help with the rest of your teammates with players like this. He's a great scorer. He leads the conference in scoring. So, I mean, just got to play him tough with the team. Q. Yancy, were you concerned that might be your last college basketball game, and how have you made the most of your second chance after that? YANCY GATES: The next day I knew it wasn't, so that was kind of over, but really I just made the best of it by coming out here and playing, helping my team to get to where we are now. We had a chance to win the Big East tournament, which nobody expected to us do, and hopefully we'll do the unexpected and win games here, which nobody probably expects us to do. Just do what we've down doing and keep playing against the odds and trying to prove people wrong. THE MODERATOR: Any more questions? Q. Yancy, I'd like to ask you this, what's been different about you the last couple of weeks? Do you feel like you've become an even more complete player, just talk about your play down the stretch. YANCY GATES: After the suspension, we kind of changed the offense. Lot of teams have now started to try to take our guards out of the game, so, you know, from before where I was getting double-teamed a lot, now I got more opportunities for one-on-ones with just me and the other team's big. I've really been able to take advantage of that. The guards have done a good job of getting me the ball in spots where I can just go score instead of me necessarily earlier in the season have to create baskets for myself and others. So, really, you know, with the new offense and the way the guards have been playing, I think it's made the game easier for me. THE MODERATOR: Anyone else? All right. Thank you, guys. Good luck. We will begin with Cincinnati coach, Mick Cronin. Q. Some of the Texas guys are saying maybe you guys remind them of Missouri with the four guards. COACH CRONIN: I hope we play like Missouri. Q. Have you seen them? COACH CRONIN: Yes. Q. Do you see any of that? COACH CRONIN: You know, at times, you know, we spread the floor like Missouri does, try to at least. We don't shoot it quite as well as Missouri, but I think when Cashmere Wright plays well, much to the level, the smaller press he's been playing with Missouri. But I haven't seen them a lot since I watched the Missouri/Texas game. That was my first time watching Missouri play. They're a great team. I'm sure from a Texas, from a preparation standpoint, not that they had any time to get ready for Missouri, but they played them more obviously a few times this year. We are similar in our attack. THE MODERATOR: Other questions. Q. Coach, a lot of the teams in the tournament feel -- in Nashville have big men. Having a guy like Yancy, I know you have a lot of guards in your lineup, but having a guy like Yancy, a senior, how much does that help a team make it into March and how have you seen him seen him improve his game over the years and what kind of personality does he have? COACH CRONIN: He's got a great personality. He's very funny guy, but he's extremely intelligent, but over the years, he's matured. He's still very young. He's one of the youngest seniors in college basketball. But his rebounding has probably been the thing he's improved the most throughout his career. Like all high school guys, he came in thinking he was a great scorer, and he's learned how to play defense and rebound. That's probably been his biggest growth as a player. But leadership is what we need from him, and down the stretch he's really matured as a leader, talking on the court, becoming a better teammate, realizing how his attitude affects his teammates, and I think that's the biggest area for him. Down the stretch, whatever we've won, we had a great record in February, he was a big, big part of that. He averaged double-figure rebounds in February. When he gives us low post presence and rebounding, it takes our team to another level. But really his leadership, his attitude in the locker room has been the big difference for our team since Big East play started. Q. As a follow-up, I mean, do teams that make it to the NCAA Tournament almost always have a veteran big guy, someone that has been in the system for awhile? COACH CRONIN: Well, I think it helps you. I don't know if it's a prerequisite. I'm sure there's teams out there that don't have that. You know, I don't think Murray State, they don't have anybody over six-six it looks like to me out there right now. They're pretty good. So I think leadership -- if were you to ask me what's the biggest key, to me would be the leadership amongst the players. You know, the leaders of your team being bought into winning and intangibles and attitude and hustle. That's been a big key for us since we've been able to turn our season around and go on a winning streak to end December and start Big East playoff 5 and 1 was the leadership and the attitude and the willingness to play hard. Q. You were almost answering my question right there. I was going to ask about the transformation of your team from the start of the season to now and especially you considering some of those early losses and of course the Xavier game? COACH CRONIN: Well, we were just soft. We lost five seniors and our intangibles all left our locker room with last year's senior class. Great defensive players. Guys had learned how to win over a period of time. We're really, really hungry to win. That team -- those guys had never been to an NCAA Tournament. They were willing to do whatever it took to get there, and they gave us tremendous toughness. Early on with JaQuon Parker out of our lineup the first five, six weeks of the season, we had talent but we didn't have any toughness. We really lacked toughness. We had to take some losses and get embarrassed and have our season be really put on the brink of extinction. But then I give our credit, give all the credit to our players, because it was at that point that, you know, the leadership on our team basically said, we're going to start playing hard, we're going to buy into hustle, rebound, defense, toughness, and play hard enough to win. So, when our toughness matches our talent, we have a really good team, but I think JaQuon Parker coming back from an injury was a big, big key to that. Q. Mick, you mentioned several times during the season you that your guys don't play well in early games. Do you think you've overcome that? I know you practiced in the morning all week. How did they react when they found out they were playing at 11:15? COACH CRONIN: We didn't really talk about it. I haven't mentioned to them that it's 11:15 Eastern [sic] time game. So we practiced in the morning all week, as you know. We're already done for today. I think we got past that. We addressed it, and I don't know if it was just maybe who we were playing but we struggled with that late last year. One of those noon games was UConn. They won the national championship. When you play in the Big East, it's probably your opponent more than anything else. Hopefully, we've addressed it. Q. Have you noticed any difference in your players' attitude or just the way they've reacted to being here this time as opposed to last time, just leading up to being here and what you've seen since you've been to Nashville? COACH CRONIN: I mean, we're a different team than we were a year ago. You know, I know last year the guys were so excited to be in the NCAA Tournament, not that they -- it didn't reflect in our play like we weren't here to win, because we played great and beat Missouri and lost to the national champs in a great game. Probably our freshmen are probably nervous, but I think all our returning guys, there's the novelty is not there like it was last year. So, you know, hopefully the fact that we're more focused on winning than just being here, but I think we were pretty focused on that last year. I know our guys are happy the weather is nice. They're all walking around Vanderbilt's campus. Q. Mick, could you go back and talk about the Gates thing again. You talk about the rise there in February, especially when you came, seemed like you saying he became that much more of a complete player. Was that due to a lot of talks with you or what fostered that? COACH CRONIN: Well, we've had multiple talks for four years. You know, I think it's just a maturing process with him. We played some changes offensively to put him in more of a position to be a better rebounder, and instead of him initiating our offense and being on the ball side, we moved him to the weak side, giving him a better chance to be a better offensive rebounder. You know, the finality of his career that -- you know, it's a sense of urgency for him and growing up. Like I said, you know, he's a young guy for a senior. This day and age with the prep schools and red shirts in 8th grade and all that stuff, there's so many older kids in college basketball and kids mature at their own rate. Yancy, he's still a young guy. He's -- to me he's four years away from maturing from a basketball standpoint. So, it's just -- I think he's starting to realize what he's capable of and learning how to be more physical. You see his confidence grow. I saw it in the Syracuse game. Once he realized that he could score on Fab Melo, he became a different guy. I don't think he had that confidence to play against some of the guys he's had to play against. He's been through a lot in his career, but he's played against a lot of great players in the Big East. It was nice to see him out there playing against arguably the best defensive team in our league. If they didn't double him, he was scoring every time. So, you know, he's just grown up a lot. The problem with college basketball is everybody wants freshmen to be great all the time. It's just not realistic. Q. A lot of us up here didn't have a lot of time to know if we would get Cal or South Florida in town. Could you talk a little bit about what you think of South Florida's team? COACH CRONIN: I could have helped you with that. I could have told you South Florida was coming. They're great. I'm going the tell you something. Somebody asked me if we had a let-down because we had beat Louisville and lost at South Florida by one. I said, "Let down? We couldn't have played any harder and lost by one." South Florida plays defense as well as anybody in the country. They take care of the ball as well as anybody in the country. They got -- they're as big as any team in America, 2 through 5. And Stan is a great coach. He's a very underrated coach. He's won everywhere he's been. It's just taken him time at South Florida to get the program where he needed to get it. I can tell you, I don't want to play him. Nobody in the Big East wants to have anything to do with him. There's no easy baskets when you play South Florida, because even if you run great offense, they're going to rotate at the last second and the rotating big man is going to be six-seven to six-eleven. He's going to know how to challenge your shot without fouling you. So, we couldn't get an easy basket around the rim to save our life against them. It's no fun make them. If they make shots and Anthony Collins is on his game as a freshman point guard, they can go far in the tournament. Q. Mick, I heard before you guys left, was it yesterday or whenever y'all get on the bus, you took the guys in the arena and had them look up and see the banners. Am I getting that wrong? COACH CRONIN: No, that's right. Q. What was the message there? COACH CRONIN: You've go got to believe you're capable of winning the tournament. The team that wins this tournament is going to be highly committed, if not the most committed, team willing to sacrifice for the month of March to stay focused. It's hard to win. It takes a lot of effort. Takes a lot of focus. It's easy to give in to your opponent when they're putting you in adverse situations. But I just think, with my team, my message to them is, if we don't win, it's our own fault. It's because we're not tough enough. We got enough talent. We've got more wins over ranked opponents than anybody in the country. I just think you got to believe that you can win it, and I think my guys need to realize that it's possible and it's happened at the University of Cincinnati. We got to believe that it's going to happen again. You got to take it one game at a time. I just don't want my guys thinking that let's go have fun. We're going to have fun. My guys are the funniest guys in the tournament probably. We have a lot of fun at practice and in the locker room. I think you got to believe you can win the tournament. THE MODERATOR: Any more questions? COACH CRONIN: Thanks guys. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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