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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: GREENSBOROMarch 16, 2012Jordan HamiltonGabe KnutsonC.J. McCollumMackey McKnightBrett ReedGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Lehigh – 75 THE MODERATOR: We'll start with an opening statement from coach and then take questions for the student‑athletes. COACH REED: I sit here today humbled, humbled by the opportunity to share this experience with wonderful student‑athletes, individuals who have invested so much of their time into their academic pursuits, building character, being unified as a team, and ultimately fighting through a great deal of adversity through an entire season to grow and learn together, ultimately to use this opportunity in the game of basketball to hopefully not only make meaningful memories, which I think they had tonight, but also to continue to grow and build and certainly help them as they continue to progress beyond basketball. The lessons that we learn through the game certainly help us out a great deal in life and I couldn't say that enough about these individuals to my left, a team full‑‑ our team that is in the locker room as well, how these young men have really pulled together. THE MODERATOR: Take questions for the student‑athletes. Q. C.J., can you explain why you were able to drive at will against them? What they were doing that opened things up for you? C.J. MCCOLLUM: They do a great job of hedging, but I felt like I could beat the big man one on one. I was getting one of the Plumlee brothers every time. And as a big man, once you pick up that first foul hedging, you kind of get tentative when you hedge. So we had the advantage once Gabe got one of those fouls on him. Q. C.J., just what was going you through your mind a lot of times when you had the ball? And how does it feel for this to be the first time sending Lehigh to the next round of the tournament? C.J. MCCOLLUM: When I get the ball, I try to clear my mind and just read the whole floor, the entire floor. But usually when I have the ball, I'm trying to make a play for my team or in scoring that I'm making the proper pass. But it means a lot to me to get this win. But credit that Duke team. They're a tremendous team. They were without one of their starters in Ryan Kelly, and I think he would have been a tremendous difference. Q. You did a great job of shutting down Seth Curry and Andre Dawkins, only letting them shoot 3‑18 from the field. What did you do defensively to disrupt their game today? MACKEY MCKNIGHT: Our coaches' praise was making them feeling us, getting up all in them, making sure that the feel comfortable with driving. Once they get comfortable and they hit one shot or two shots, then they can just get hot automatically. We know how great offensively they are, so we just try to maintain the pressure consistently throughout the game and just try to get them off of their game. Q. For any of the players, you guys seemed to really feed off the crowd and a lot of that was a lot of the Carolina fans that were holding over that kind of adopted you guys. Can you talk about that a little bit? JORDAN HAMILTON: Yeah, I'll take that one. Being a smaller school, we really appreciated the North Carolina fans and all the support we got from them. And we don't often play in these type of environments, so when there's a lot of energy and crowd behind us, I think we really feed off that. I really got to give credit to our fans and also the North Carolina fans who joined in to support us, and I think we were able to feed off that energy and that propelled to us to ‑‑ helped propel us to this win. Q. Gabe, what were you guys able to do inside? I know Mason was 9‑9 from the floor, but what were you guys able to do to limit the size advantage that Duke had? GABE KNUTSON: I think he finished 9‑9. I don't think that's limiting him too much. But yeah, I think that they're obviously tremendous players, and we just tried to get some help off Mackey there and just playing defense with five guys. And I think they played ‑‑ well, yeah, both of them played really well tonight, and it was a big challenge inside. Q. For all of you guys, your coach told you in the huddle to not celebrate, act like you've been here before. Is that sort of the business approach that y'all take into every game regardless of who it's against? C.J. MCCOLLUM: Yes, definitely. Duke is a tremendous team, and we didn't want to rub anything into their faces or anything like that. We got a lot of respect for them. And at the end of the day, it's just another game for us. But we want to continue to be humble and win like we have been here before. JORDAN HAMILTON: To add to that, we kind of came into this game expecting to win and that's kind of how we wanted to show it after we did achieve our goal. So I mean, give Duke a lot of credit; they're a great team. But we really believed in ourselves in this game. Q. Mackey, we talked the other day about how special playing here against Duke is for you. What does it mean to be here and then beat Duke? MACKEY MCKNIGHT: It's a dream come true. Right when we won the game and the clock hit zero, I just started crying and just thanking my friends and my brother for watching us and blessing us. I told the team thank you for being another family for me and accepting me into their brotherhood and being my new brothers. And hopefully they can just continue to just praise my‑‑ praise my friend. I'm sorry, I'm just‑‑ I just miss him so much, and I'm just so glad that he blessed us with this win and watching over us. I'm just grateful. Q. C.J., it wasn't quite the same stage, but how much did those games against Michigan State, Iowa State, and St. John's kind of help prepare you for this stage? C.J. MCCOLLUM: It helped a lot. Early on we were in some tough environments going to Michigan State, Iowa State for their season opener, they were definitely fired up. I think that gave our team confidence, not only myself but our younger guys. Mackey, he's getting used to the big stage and the bright lights. So that gave us confidence and showed us that we can play with anybody in the country. We were toe to toe with Michigan State for a while, and then they pulled away. But at the end of the day, they're a 1 seed, and we went in their gym and gave them a tough fight. So we feel like we can play with anybody in the country. Q. For all you guys, I'm curious because there were a lot of plays late in the game where you guys were the rebounder and Duke would miss and like go with the big outlet pass down the court, which is kind of unusual with a tight lead like that. Was that part of the game plan to be aggressive? Also C.J., you've gotten like 1,500 Twitter followers so far. C.J. MCCOLLUM: Yes, yes. (Laughter.) I'll start. That's huge for me. I told them, I said please give me some Twitter followers. But no, I think we just wanted to be aggressive going out, and transitioning, and try to get easy buckets. Because I know it's definitely easier for me when I'm in transition. It's kind of risky at times. I know I got a turnover down the stretch trying to hold the ball. But whenever you get it, you might as well push it. GABE KNUTSON: I think we were just trying to make the right play. I think he had a real nice pass to me full court, just making the right play. We worked on ‑‑ we work on that stuff in practice, and we just came together and made the right plays. Q. Question for Mackey. You hit the two free throws that basically closed it out. Can you describe what the feeling was like? MACKEY MCKNIGHT: It was a great feeling. Basically I just ‑‑ when I was at the free throw line, I remember missing my two free throws versus Bucknell in the championship game, and Hamilton just being so pissed at me. He was so angry at me. So when I stood up to the line, I said I'm not ready for this season to end, this journey for the seniors to be over with. I just felt like we needed to carry on. And I just stepped up to the line and just the same old thing, same routine every day. Q. C.J., I was just wondering, talk a little bit about how surreal this is that four years ago that you were six inches shorter than you are right now without a Division I scholarship on the table. C.J. MCCOLLUM: This is one of the best feelings in the world. I remember some tough times in high school where I wasn't sure if I wanted to play basketball because I was struggling. I was small. My brother was a starter in high school and I was just a little five‑six guy just tagging along shooting 3‑pointers. But this is definitely a great feeling, I've come a long way individually but that's just a credit to hard work and then the people around me that have been so helpful including my brother and my family and then my teammates now. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thanks. We'll take questions for coach. Q. Talk about how you guys defended their shooting guards particularly off the pick and roll? COACH REED: We knew that it was going to be a point of emphasis. Fortunately for our staff, we have some very talented assistant coaches that breakdown film very diligently. And I also took some advice from Billy Taylor, my predecessor here at Lehigh, to really try to simplify our defensive plan, particularly with ball screen coverage. To help to attempt to build a little bit more trust and confidence in what we do and because we have rehearsed our coverage so much, and we have seen it be successful, ultimately I think that all, I think that had fed into our confidence in being able to defend Duke, who put us in a number of difficult positions by bringing their posts out and then bringing them back in and looking to attack by the basket, also trying to open up very good perimeter players. We had a couple breakdowns, but I think our confidence as a team ultimately was hinged a little bit more on the fact that we try to understand what our coverage is and we rehearsed our coverage. We build faith in our coverage, and ultimately that ended up making a big difference to have our post players hedge, our guards continue to try to get over the top, play aggressively and pursue the ball. Q. I saw in the locker room it looked like there was a very miniature version of a bracket. Can you explain the significance of that? And I know LU was up in the white board. Can you‑‑ why you broke it down in such a small quadrant? COACH REED: Well, it's really interesting that through this journey even through the recruitment of our current student‑athletes, we have tried to identify what our goals and aspirations were. A lot of them had the goals and the ideals of winning championships. And fortunately for us, some of our players have had the opportunity to win multiple championships. But I wanted to even at that time setting a vision with them in the recruiting process to talk about what this really could be. And one of our goals beyond winning championships and just being a participant in the NCAA tournament was to actually win games in the NCAA tournament. The message and the reason that a bracket was up on the white board was I think this is a very special team. And I think this team has an opportunity especially now launching off of this win, to do something that's really special. And that is, win a small bracket to give us the opportunity to come potato in the Sweet 16. Obviously we played against a very, very good Duke team, a team that we have a tremendous amount of respect for. There's two opponents that are going to be battling right now that we'll have a tremendous amount of respect for as well. But one of the main concepts that I wanted to establish with our players on the onset of our journey to the NCAA tournament was to truly suspend disbelief, not listen to everybody as they picked Duke to advance and how the brackets are going to look, and actually believe in their own ability, believe in what we could do, and remember back to the vision that we had set. And ultimately this is a mini tournament and we would like to come out of this bracket with the true victories. Q. I talked to you in November about how team camaraderie was a critical factor in winning games for you guys this season. How important do you think that was today in the game and what are‑‑ what's another important factor and a couple other important factors that you think that led you here today? COACH REED: I think our unity is something that's really important to us. As a program we consistently talk about family and what family means. Family means sacrifice, family means staying with each other even through adversity, and family means having enough trust and confidence. If I look at our evolution from last year to this year, I think our trust, confidence and faith in each other had improved tremendously and that's brought us to this moment. Partially due to the continued growth and development of C.J. McCollum, a point guard who is now entered his sophomore year and has a year of college experience behind his belt. But I also think there are a number of contributors to this and that's our senior class. Young men who hadn't had a lot of game experience throughout the course of their career, but really understood the values that we were trying to promote for our program, supported and enhanced those values and promoted them within our team. And ultimately I think having a family atmosphere and being united, trusting each other and believing in what we're trying to do, and trying to play with a sense of urgency and importance for every possession were things that have been characteristic to our success this year. Q. In evaluating Duke before this game, were there specific strengths of Duke that you were targeting to neutralize or on the flip side, specific weaknesses that you as a team were hoping to exploit going into this game? COACH REED: It was easy to pick out strengths, because Duke has a number of them, to be honest with you. I thought they have some excellent guard play and they utilize that 3‑point line extremely well and we knew that we would have to be active on the perimeter to try to limit their 3‑point opportunities. Any time a team of our size is matched up to a team such as Duke, there's also a tremendous size disadvantage that we face and we have to neutralize. We asked our players to be as active as they possible could be, try to reduce the number of offensive rebounds that ultimately we gave up, and then try to find other areas where we could shrink the floor and make it a little bit more difficult for their post players to have one‑on‑one coverage and easier opportunities to score. It wasn't an easy task by any means, not everything that we did was perfect, but fortunately for us we had a team that was willing to put up a fight, a team that was willing to try to be unified in what we did and then it ended up producing some pretty positive results that our defense could maintain a relative strength. Q. Coach, were you or your kids aware of the Norfolk State‑Missouri game? If so, did that add anything to the confidence level? COACH REED: It wasn't something that we had talked about. Stephen Ott, one of our assistant coaches, had told me the result of that game. And it only fueled basically the message that I had for our players without the specifics. In that this is March Madness, upsets happen, it's why the general public and the nation really appreciate this tournament. Because anything can happen and games are played within the 40 minute realm. And if we play a very good game, we'll have an opportunity to potentially win. So the fact that it was done earlier today, I think it's a celebration for the tournament and what is great about this game in college sports. But it wasn't something that we necessarily addressed directly, although very much so indirectly with the type of message that we tried to convey to our players. Q. Did Coach Krzyzewski have anything specific to say to you after the game? COACH REED: It was pretty loud in there, so it was a little difficult to hear. I believe he said congratulations and well done. I shared my admiration and respect for him as an individual, as a coach, and for their program. I think it's very important to be respectful. They have been able to accomplish some things in the game of college basketball that are very significant. His leadership has been wonderful for that program and it was a wonderful opportunity for us to test ourselves against one of the best teams and one of the best programs in the country. To be able to share that moment of mutual respect I think is something that is something to be celebrated, because it is in the nature of sportsmanship and what we're really trying to espouse with college basketball. THE MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you. COACH REED: Thank you, everyone. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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