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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: NASHVILLEMarch 16, 2012Ivo BalticD.J. CooperJohn GroceWalter OffuttNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE Ohio – 65 THE MODERATOR: Coach Groce will giving an opening comment and open up questions for the student athletes, who will then head back to the locker room and then you can ask questions again for coach. Coach. COACH GROCE: Obviously a great win for our program, for the university and for the community in Athens. Really proud of our guys. Thought we -- it was fitting that we had to rely on our defense to get -- a couple times late in the game there to get stops to get it. That's been our calling card all year. We have obviously a lot of respect for Michigan. That's a good ball club. They were the co-Big Ten champs and they've got great personnel. I thought just to watch them on film, I told Coach Beilein how much I enjoy watching his team play, how unselfish they were, how well they executed. That's a really good basketball team. We had to play really well to beat them tonight. I thought our ability to defend the three was going to be critical coming into the game. Our ability to compete on the glass was going to be critical and out execution on offensive. They're number one in the Big Ten in Big Ten games in forcing turnovers. We wanted to take care of the ball. And other than just a real small lapse there at the end of the first half, I thought we did a great job of taking care of the ball and executing our offense at a really high level. I thought different guys made plays throughout. Every guy that played in the game for us contributed, which has been a real strength of our team all year with our depth. Hopefully we can continue to play even better basketball. This team has continued to play really well in February and March and have really bought into what we're doing on the defensive end. As long as we do that, then we always have a chance. THE MODERATOR: Okay. Q. Walter, what was it like standing there on the free throw line with two free throws to ice the game. You're an Ohio State transfer. What were the thoughts in your mind there? WALTER OFFUTT: Well, you know, me and Coop, we talk about it at home, like being in that situation, what would you do, what will you think about and stuff like that. We just like, man, you got to go up there and knock it down and have confidence. That's what I done. That's what I think about. Fortunately to get the win and step up and made the shot. Q. DJ, how important was it for you guys to maintain the lead there in the second half? They were getting close, but it seems like every time they knock down a shot, you guys would power punch. How important was that? D.J. COOPER: We knew we had to trust each other. We knew they would go on a run. Coach kept telling us good teams go on a run at some point in the game. We stayed together and believed in one another. Q. Talk about the way you exploited some matchups specifically designed for your skill set tonight. Being a big but knocking down a lot of those mid range jumpers and how were you able to take advantage of some of the matchups they gave you defensively. IVO BALTIC: Something we work on in practice and Coop does such a great job of finding guys open. Kind of real easy for me. I kind of sit there and let him go to work. Q. Walter, describe the defense on Smotrycz in the final ten seconds when you forced the steal on him. WALTER OFFUTT: Well, it was more of a team effort than anything. We were trying to limit their shot, 3-point shots. Obviously try to get one up. We know if we limit them to a tough 2, it will be fine. We ended up doing a good job of taking away the 3. I can't remember who that was, maybe T.J. Hall in the corner defending him. He tipped it out a little bit, and I was fortunate to come up with the steal and stop them. Q. DJ, two questions: First, did you feel like you had pretty good matchups with whoever was trying to guard you with Michigan? Second, when you made the first 3, did the basket seem to get a little bit bigger for you? D.J. COOPER: Whenever you make your first 3, it felt good, felt good to go in. Gave me a little confidence, you know, to keep shooting a little bit more. Q. Guys, you got off to a big run at the beginning, obviously a big lead. Got kind of hairy there going into the halftime. What did you guys kind of say to each other to hold them off as it got close there all the way to the end? WALTER OFFUTT: It really wasn't nothing we said to ourselves. Coach does a good job of throughout the whole season, not just this game, of keeping us prepared for what lays ahead. We knew it was going to be a tough battle all game, and we knew, like DJ just said, good teams make big runs. The teams that can weather that and stick together as a unit, that's what we did and came out with the win. Q. For DJ, you guys were in this position a couple years ago to defeat Georgetown. You guys came out red hot in this game as well. Did the experience help you guys kind of settle down and come out motivated? D.J. COOPER: Yeah. It gave us a little confidence, you know, knowing that we can play with a high major team that you always see on TV here and there. The guys being here, even Walt, just gave us a little confidence to come out and play our game. Q. Just compared to two years ago, does it feel any different pulling off this upset or is it still just as exhilarating? D.J. COOPER: Can you repeat that one more time? Q. Compared just to two years ago, is it just as exciting to be able to win a game in the tournament, having done it two years ago? Coop? D.J. COOPER: Yeah. It's exciting to be able to advance in the NCAA Tournament, but we kind got a different mindset this year. We try to take advantage -- one game at a time, knowing we can compete with any team in this tournament. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions? Q. DJ, you guys, what did y'all -- after Burke hit the couple ever 3's, what did y'all change up defensively? What was the mindset there in the last four minutes. They didn't score in the last four minutes? D.J. COOPER: Switched to ball screens. We put it in his left hand. We knew he was going to raise up and pull and we just did some scouting. We switched the ball screens and tried to make him drive. Q. Walt, for you talk about just how rewarding this is for you personally, the road that you've traveled to get here and buying into Coach Groce, buying into Ohio, and now reaping the benefits of the best season in Ohio history wins-wise and now on the brink of a great run for you guys. WALTER OFFUTT: Take me a good 10, 15 minutes to tell the you the process it took to get here. We have great teammates and having great coaches to be around makes it even better. Obviously, we have a good season. We still want to continue to advance in the tournament. It's been an amazing journey. Probably the best thing that ever happened in my life. Q. Ivo, talk about Trey gets going there and you're left one-on-one on the island with him. How did you guys adjusted as a team to account for that and how it worked out? IVO BALTIC: Just something that we worked on at practice, because we knew we were going to switch probably going into the game, switching one through four, so just something that we worked on in practice. Q. Follow-up. What is it about your skill set that allows the coaching staff to put confidence in you to come through in that kind of situation? IVO BALTIC: Probably just my athleticism and just doing in it practice, I'm real thankful for it, I'm grateful. Q. DJ, do you feel when you succeed on on a big stage like this, you're striking a blow for 59 guys, and are there any benefits to being a smaller player that we might not realize? D.J. COOPER: Not really. I'm just trying -- going out there, trying to win, do whatever it takes to succeed, make me and my teammates better and coaches help us win. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, guys. We'll take questions for coach. Just raise your hand. Q. John, you've talked about this a lot all year. Again, Walter offset what he's meant to your club defensively and we saw it tonight with the block and then the late steal. Can you put into words what he's meant precisely on that side of the ball? COACH GROCE: Probably not. You know, he's been through an awful lot to get to the situation he's in. He's earned it. It means and awful lot not only to our defense but to our program and how he handles himself as a student athlete, how he handles himself in practice. He competes everyday in practice. He just refuse to see let us have a bad practice. He's what I call a culture changer. You can't possibly put on a stat sheet how valuable he is. Obviously he made big plays late in the game, especially on the defensive end and knocked down two free throws, but Walt is one of those guys, I can assure you, he earns everything that he gets and means an awful lot to our team. Q. Coach, you mentioned defending the 3-point shot in your opening statement. How are you guys able to do that held them to 7 of 21. You're able to, at the end there especially, shut them down when they were looking for a 3. COACH GROCE: Well, the biggest thing it's not like I waved a magic wand for this game. We're top 15 in the country in 3-point defense all year for the most part, somewhere between 10 and 15. It's something we do well, and so that was good. We had a game plan put together where we were going to change different rotations. They're so good on offense and he's such a good coach, if you give them a steady diet of anything, then they're going to pick you apart. And so we changed up coverages during the game, guys knew we were going to do that ahead of time, they had to be alert, they had to communicate. And I'll be honest with you, over the course of 40 minutes, I don't know if we busted a coverage one time. They may have made a shot, but we knew what we were doing. We communicated it well, and I'm just thankful that our kids bought into the game plan. My assistant coaches did a tremendous job with scouting. Those guys who have been up every night since Sunday's draw and help put together the game plan, and so I'm very thankful that I have a great staff. Q. Can we get your thoughts on the ability for you guys really from the beginning of the game to stay poised, stay calm, calm and collected, and even in the final minutes when thing cut it down to 3 points there. COACH GROCE: I think it's important. Obviously kids want to play well, and we knew that they were going to make a run as the kids said earlier when they were up here. They're a good team. That's what good teams do. You can't lose your mind when they do that. You have to stay somewhere in the middle. We talked to them a lot about the game being 30 percent smooth and 70 percent stormy and, you got to be able to deal with stormy. If you want to deal with stormy, you're going to lose in college basketball. It's such a game of momentum. I thought our kids didn't flinch. I thought they were fairly up unflappable throughout the course of the game. Even in timeouts late in the game when they were making a run. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions? Q. Coach, couple years ago, you guys didn't even have a winning record in conference when you won that NCAA game. I'm just wondering, coming into this tournament is it different mindset, I don't know expecting to win, but being a bit more confident thinking that you have a good team as opposed to a hot team? COACH GROCE: Well, we're playing our best basketball of the year. No doubt about that. But I think it's a great point. We won 28 games. That team two years ago got on a run and was playing some really good basketball late in the year. Took us awhile to come together for a variety of reasons, and we started to play really well late. This team has been very consistent throughout. We thought that was the next step that our program needed to make and, you know, we haven't arrived yet. The guys in our locker room, we always believe we can do better. We're trying to find ways to get better, and that's kind of what our program is about. I haven't said that the guys graduated and played for us the last three years, our program wouldn't be in the situation it's in right now if it wasn't for them. I saw lot of those guys hanging over the railing out there as we were coming in. It says a lot about how they feel about Ohio University; that they would drive and fly to get here and be a part of the experience. I've coached some really good guys, guys that bought in from the moment we took the job in July 2008, and they're as big a part of this as the kids I have on the team now. Q. Coach, tonight you talk about the play of Cooper a little bit and how great he was. He made a lot of buckets when the team really needed him to, which is nothing new for this entire season, but what a player like him does for a team advancing this time of year? COACH GROCE: He's a spectacular talent. I'm so proud of how much he's grown up. He's matured more. His body has changed. He's worked at it. He weighed 148 pounds the week of the Georgetown game two years ago. He weighed 178 pounds this Monday. We always weigh in on Mondays. So he's 30 pounds heavier. And when he first got here, he was just a great talent, honestly with skill sets like vision and ball handling and passing that I can't sit up here and claim I taught him half that stuff. He had it. I think the one thing that's changed over three years is his maturity level to finish games, his understanding of who is hot, where to exploit the other team, understanding game plans, time and score and all of those different things. At the same time, he's a risk taker. I knew that when I recruited him, and, as I said last week, half jokingly and half serious, 80 to 90 percent of the time he makes me look good and 10 to 20 he makes me look like I don't know what I'm doing. I'm going to swallow that. You take away the kid's aggressiveness, that's his best asset. So you got to -- he made one pass tonight that I wish he wouldn't have made, it was a turnover, but he made three, four others that maybe other guys wouldn't have even be able to complete. So you got to take either the good -- the good with the bad and certainly been a lot of good with him over three years. He's obviously our quarterback and he makes us go. Q. Coach, with the couple of your players having played with Trey Burke in the past, the Ohio State ties for you and Walt, is this something you feed off of with a personal-type thing or try to ignore? COACH GROCE: Our guys, as I said on Sunday, they were excited to be in the tournament, understand what a special opportunity it is, and we would have taken a draw on the moon, you know, against whoever they want us to play. We can't control those things. Our job was to prepare for whoever they gave us to the best of our ability and play as well as we could play today. Obviously the kids executed the game plan well and, you know, there's some familiarity obviously with their personnel. As I mentioned yesterday, Walt knows Douglas and Novak well and Stevie and Nick and Schmiddy and Goff are Columbus kids, know Trey Burke very well and have a lot respect for him. He's a terrific player. It adds something to it probably. Kind of a neat thing. At the end of the day, they put a game plan together, we do. Who executes it the best, who makes the most plays, whose team plays the best on a given night in order to help them survive and advance and fortunately for us tonight, that was us. THE MODERATOR: Time for one more question. Q. John, what's different about you and your approach compared to two years ago that you think will serve the team well in the next 48 hours? COACH GROCE: Other than the fact I have less hair, Tim? It's going quickly. You know, maybe just the experience of going through the tournament. I was very blessed. I have, my, gosh I played for, worked with, worked under some of the greatest coaches in the business, and so I was fortunate when we went to the -- first time we went to the tournament that I was able to rely on that experience because we had been in it so much. So that was helpful. I think going through it the first time as a head coach, you know, two years ago, now that's helpful. I'm one of those guys that's always looking for ways to do things better. It's just my nature. And, you know, we've wrinkled a couple different things with the itinerary, but for the most part, we're going to do whether we do, Tim. And I think maybe the strength of what we do is we do just that, you know, we prepare the same way, show the same amount of film, practiced a little creatively with as many days in between the MAC tournament final and this one to make sure we were sharp, yet held the delicate balance of making sure we were ready physically and mentally to play and fresh, which is a hard balance. I've had some great teachers with that and mentors. So, you know, maybe this time around I've talked to the guys about, you know, getting ready to play. I thought last time around, we ran out of gas and certainly Tennessee had a lot to do with that. They were a really good team. We have to get our rest now. We have to eat, hydrate, take care of our bodies and minds, and I'm one of those guys that believes this time of year, Tim, that that's as or more important than Xs and Os. I know our staff will have our kids ready to play. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. COACH GROCE: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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