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NCAA MEN'S REGIONALS SEMIFINALS & FINALS: ST. LOUISMarch 22, 2012John HensonRoy WilliamsTyler ZellerST. LOUIS, MISSOURI THE MODERATOR: We'll start with questions for the student‑athletes from North Carolina. Q. Guys, when you take a look at Ohio on tape, what strikes you about them and from I guess a game‑planning standpoint, what do you guys need to do to win this ball game? TYLER ZELLER: I think their guard play extremely, extremely good. D.J. Cooper is somebody that we have seen that can create a lot for himself and his teammates. And then the rest of their guards, Walt Offutt had a great game last game. So it's something that I think our guard play's going to be very important to us. I think that we can attack them a little bit down low. So we're just going to try to play to our strengths. JOHN HENSON: That's pretty much sums up what we need to do. Also offensively I think we need to kind of take care of the ball because I think they are Top‑5 in the nation in steals, so that's something else we have to be aware of as well. Q. How is your family more going to handle the logistics, will Luke be involved in this? TYLER ZELLER: Luke will not be. He's actually playing in the D league in Austin, Texas, so he's got games and stuff so he can't get away. But my both my parents are going to come to the game. I got actually pretty much my whole family lives in the Midwest, so I got lots of ticket requests. But both my parents are coming here because of seniority, it is my last year, so they will both be here. Q. John, you may have been asked in Greensboro, but how's the wrist? JOHN HENSON: It's getting better every day. It feels a lot better than it did last week at this time. I'm resting it, icing it, and just getting it better. Q. Guys, is there anything dangerous playing a team that's playing with such a high level of confidence like Ohio is, obviously a 13 seed with playing with an extremely high level of confidence. Anything dangerous about that? JOHN HENSON: Yes, a lot dangerous about that. They're shooting better than they shot all year, 3‑point wise. Playing more confident. I mean even in practice when our guys are running their offense, it's tough to guard. So it's going to be a challenge and we're going to play hard and see what happens. Q. For both, any predictions on Kendall? TYLER ZELLER: We don't know anything yet. We have been at practice today, he did some dummy stuff, tried to do some shooting and stuff. So we don't know anything yet. It will be very interesting. I think tomorrow's shoot around is when we're really going to assess him and see if he's going to play or not. We would love to have him. He's the best point guard in the nation in my eyes, so I mean it would be great loss for us, but we also have a lot of great players who can step up and play for him. JOHN HENSON: U.S. Open. (Laughter.) Q. Ohio plays a unique style defensively, have you guys seen anything close to that kind of frenetic, try‑to‑force‑the‑turnover style in the ACC this year? TYLER ZELLER: I think we have seen a lot of different styles throughout the year. Even preconference we played a lot of teams that like to get into you. But I think Duke does a great job of trying to pressure their guards, get you out of your offense, and then they play this screen on the ball a little different. So them and then Florida State, I think Florida State's a fantastic defensive team. So it will be interesting to see how it is once you start playing against it, you never really know until you get into it, so it will be interesting. Q. John, kind of perceived as a bit of a down year for the ACC, but yet here you guys are in St. Louis and there are two ACC schools here. Can you just talk about that . JOHN HENSON: That's kind of something we want to do, ACC play, people say it's a down year, but I don't think so. I mean we played some tough games, NC State was one of our tougher games and they're here. So it's good to see the teams in your league do well and kind of show the nation that the ACC's a great league and that we have represented well. Q. Obviously another national story this week, but you guys play at North Carolina. You deal with that stuff positively or maybe a little negatively all the time. Does your experience with handling those types of deals on both sides of the spectrum help you tune that out a little bit more maybe in week in advance of another NCAA tournament game? JOHN HENSON: Yeah, we didn't want things bad things to happen over the past few years, but it has and we have over came it. And I think that's one great thing about this team is overcoming adversities. That's what we have been doing since we have been here. TYLER ZELLER: I think thankfully it happened on the second game of the weekend, so we had all week to try to prepare, try to change things. And it will be interesting how the dynamics play out tomorrow night. But it was nice to be able to have three or four days to be able to prepare and kind of change things. THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, you're free to go. We'll take an opening statement from coach. COACH WILLIAMS: We're happy to be here. Now ask if anybody's got any questions, I'll do my best. Or I can add something: I don't know. I can probably give you a little more than that. Q. I asked Coach Groce this because it's his first time head coaching in the Sweet 16. You guys started the season on an aircraft carrier and started in front of a president, you've been in the national spotlight all year. Ohio's kind of had to battle for the regional spotlight with a team like Ohio State right up the highway. How much does that difference play into things this far into the tournament? COACH WILLIAMS: Probably wouldn't give you a good answer because when you're asking me that question I'm thinking, the game's still going to start 0‑0. That's my thought process. John does a great job. Yeah, North Carolina's been in the limelight for a long time. Before Roy Williams came and after Roy Williams is gone, we'll still be that way and it's just because of our history and tradition that we have of college basketball. But at this stage, everybody's equal. You still have to go out there and you have to play on game day. John's a good friend and I have a lot of respect for what he's done. We have known each other for a long time. I jokingly say, but it's truthful, that his anniversary I told him the right restaurant to go to in Charleston, made friend with his wife forever. He's been to see me down in Charleston at our beach house. We have been down there at the same time. Worked for Thad. Thad's one of the guys that I really think he's a great guy in coaching. So I have followed his team more so than perhaps some other teams. But he's got a really, really good basketball team that's playing their best basketball at this time of year, and that's what every coach is trying to do. Q. Two things: Do you really not know whether Kendall will or most likely won't play? And two, is Stilman White really the guy that's going to play if doesn't? COACH WILLIAMS: Yes, I really don't know. I have a strong, strong inclination that he is not going to play. But at my press conference this week, I said I'll satisfy half of you by saying, okay, he's going to play and he's going to start and he's going to play every minute. And I'll satisfy the other half of you by saying there's no way in Hades that he's going to play. And that should tell you that I really don't know. If he comes in to my room tomorrow and says, My wrist feels great, and he drops down to the floor and does 10 right‑handed pushups on his right hand, then I'll say I'll probably play his rear end. But I don't expect that to happen. I mean, the guy can't brush his teeth right now. But we've had other doctors say in the Raleigh News and Services, Oh, yeah, he can play and all those kind of things. So that's what's caused in my opinion, all the interest or all the difference of opinion whether he can play or not. But the bottom line is, he has not participated in one play since last Sunday when I took him out of the game. He has not guarded one possession, he's not passed one ball, he's not shot one ball‑‑ well, that's a lie, because he's holding his hand up like this yesterday, and he's catching the ball, and he's shooting it like this holding his hand up in the air with his cast on. But he hasn't participated. And yet there are people that say that he can play. But there's only two people, three, four, five people that are going to make this decision: first one's Kendall, second one would be his mom and dad, and the third and fourth would be the doctors, and the fifth would be. Me and I think it's going to have to be unanimous and I just don't see that happening. Stilman, yeah, he really is. He's the guy that's going to play. Stilman and J. Watts. And as long as their heart is not beating so fast that they pass out before they get to the court, I think we'll still have five guys out there starting. Q. When the tournament bracket first came out, obviously you knew the possibility that North Carolina could play Kansas. Now you're only one game away from that if you get past Ohio and Kansas beats NC State. How special would that be for you to play Kansas for the right to go to the Final Four? COACH WILLIAMS: I'm really being truthful. I love the University of Kansas. My first chancellor at North Carolina said it's not immoral to love two institutions, and I think there's some truth to that. Okay. I love Kansas. This morning I was out on my walk, and this guy says, Rock Chalk Jayhawk. And you know what I said, Go K U. Okay. And he walked about three or four more steps and he says, Damn, that was Roy. You know, and that is the way I feel about it. But you know what? I'll be ecstatic if we're still playing on Sunday regardless of who we're playing. And I'm a Kansas fan. I'm a North Carolina fan first. For 15 years I was a North Carolina fan, but I was a Kansas fan first. And I'm interested in what's going to happen tomorrow. That is taking every ounce of my energy, every ounce of my concentration, and that's what we're trying to work on. Q. Similar note, but you're in here and the regional with Kansas and NC State, this is kind of pulling a couple of your personal friends together. COACH WILLIAMS: It's the smoothest thing going, that's for sure. Q. Are you dreading sharing the building with everybody or conflicted about having all these sort of personal things going on? COACH WILLIAMS: Well, look, there's no question that I would rather not have all the personal things going on.  I would just like it to be about the basketball game. There's no doubt, no question. And I'm not trying to be humble. I'm being truthful. I would like for it to just be about my team playing against somebody else's team. But I don't always get what I want or what I like kind of thing. But if it does cause a lot of other questions and different directions and feelings and emotions, but I just hope that we have that problem to be discussing on Saturday. Q. You guys are North Carolina, you guys have dealt with national stories. You dealt with national stories in your coaching career, positively and maybe injury‑wise or whatever else. Does your experience in handling that kind of stuff previously just make this kind of old hat of you just got to tune it out and just go play the ball game? COACH WILLIAMS: I don't think it ever gets to be old hat. I think you gain more experience the more you do things and understand what handles and what doesn't work. But the game of basketball, in college basketball, people are emotional about it. And I love that. That means they're enthusiastic about it and they love it, and all those kind of things. Steve was telling me about some website people are putting 5's on their wrists and writing five in some letters, and I'm not getting a dadgum tattoo. I love Kendall Marshall, but I'm not getting a tattoo. Let's get that straight. But it's part of it, it really is. But I love the games. I love the pageantry of the NCAA tournament. A lot of other things that go along with it. I'm not that excited about, you know, that kind of thing. But it is part of it. And to me, it's North Carolina playing Ohio, big school/little school, big guy/little guy, ugly guy/good looking guy, doesn't make any difference. We get to play each other out there on the court. Q. Roy, when you look at James Michael McAdoo and the way he has gotten so much more comfortable now that he's gotten more playing time, do you see something like that happening with Stilman or is it a personality thing as opposed to an amount of time out on the court? COACH WILLIAMS: I hope that it would happen with Stilman, but it took us three months to get James Michael that way and we don't have three months to get Stilman that way by tomorrow. You got to go through some adversity, James Michael did. He was discourage, he was mad, any emotions you want to pick in there at different times, but he always kept trying. He always had a tremendously positive attitude. He started getting better in practice a lot of time‑‑ a long time, excuse me, before his minutes started going up. Now which one comes first: the confidence or the good play or vice versa? But he has really done some good things for us. We really need him to continue to do that. John Henson is not a hundred percent. Q. Have you kind of seen since Stilman's been taking a lot of reps the last couple days. Have you seen him becoming more comfortable in that role? COACH WILLIAMS: Stilman is so wacko, I don't know what the crap to think when I watch him. We just try to make sure he has his ID with him so he can get in the building. I wish my players were here because they would think you guys are laughing and they would say, Coach, they think coach is teasing or something like that. We have a manager that's just responsible to make sure he gets his I D here. Q. What was it about Stilman that made you pull the trigger on offering him a scholarship and how has he met your expectations? COACH WILLIAMS: It's a unique situation what happened to us, a player leaving in the middle of the season. And in college basketball, pick a number, 85, 90 percent of the top players in the country sign in the fall. All right. Now then you're talking about late January, we're looking. We say, Okay. Now we have Kendall, who else do we have at point guard? Well, we have Dexter. Okay. And well next year that's all we have. So we're trying to look around for a point guard. There's not that many players, period, available in the spring because so many guys sign in the fall. So all of our staff, we're all keeping our eyes and ears open, following up. We're letting people know that we're looking, and I think it was Jerod Haase came in and said, I've heard something about a youngster down in Wilmington. I said, Well get a tape. And so we looked at the tape and said, Well, he's got a chance. And so I go down to Wilmington and watch him play in the three‑on‑three game, and a pick‑up game, and he starts getting cramps, you know, and I mean, he look fairly tough because his legs are cramping up and he's trying to walk and instead of laying there whining and crying and everything. But there were not a lot of choices out there, to say the least. But I really liked the kid. And he wants to go on a Mormon mission, he wants to play for us, and then go on a mission, so everything seemed to fit. He's really a nice kid. I mean he's a little wacko now. Okay. But I mean, no, he's a lot wacko. Okay. But he's really a good kid. And we have enjoyed the dickens out of him. And now all of a sudden he and J. Watts, and it's almost just as scary for J. Watts. If I said well J. Watts is a senior, I mean, he's played six or seven minutes at point guard this entire year in his college career, excuse me. So it's pretty a daunting task for both of them. Q. John Groce was talking about how one of his main concerns past Marshall is how big you guys are inside and the boards and stuff. What concerns you about Ohio University? COACH WILLIAMS: You almost screwed it up there. (Laughter.) They're a team, D.J. Cooper of course, because he's really a gifted kid who, the last couple games, has really been dominant for them. But they're really a good basketball team. They guard you, they take the ball away from you, they rebound the basketball, they played some big time opponents and haven't been concerned about the name on the front of the jersey. They have just played. John really does a nice job. I have a great deal of respect for him. So I guess the total package would be the answer to your question of what impresses me is it would be the total package. Q. When you say Kendall, when you say your inclination on Kendall is that he won't play, is that your thought for just the game tomorrow or does that encompass the rest of the tournament? COACH WILLIAMS: I have no idea. You know what my inclination is tomorrow, like say, if he comes running in and jumps down and does all those pushups or something, then my idea is going to change tomorrow. And I've got what our doctors are saying and I've got another orthopedic surgeon, sports medicine specialist says, Oh, yeah, he can play. But I'm thinking that guy hasn't even seen his X‑ray. So there's so much, such a broad expanse of ideas out there, and it hasn't been the answer that you wanted all week, but it's the truth. I do not know. I just know the kid tells me he can't brush his teeth yet, how the dickens can he play basketball game if he can't brush his teeth? I mean, he can go out there with bad breath, but you still got to be able to play the dadgum game. Q. Your NCAA record is unbelievable, obviously, and some of the things that you can boost, making the tournament 22 out of 24 years, you never been in a tournament where you haven't won at least a game. A lot of that is physical talent, but what do you do to get your players ready mentally for tournament games? COACH WILLIAMS: I would say 99.9 of it is what you said is talent. And I'm not being humble. I'm being truthful. I am comfortable with what I do. I'm confident with what I do. I guess there's a thin line between confident and cocky. But I try to coach my players like I would like to be coached. I would like a guy to push me. I would like a guy to make me understand this is a pretty big stage, let's elevate our play a little bit. I would like a guy to try to get us to focus on the team aspect of it. That's the one thing I love about coaching is trying to get 13 scholarship players, four walk‑ons, everybody aimed towards a common goal. To me, that's what I love. My entire life on Saturday mornings I never stay in bed. I can count on both hands the number of times I've been in bed past 9:30. 12 years old, 16, 21, it makes no difference. Saturday morning, I was the guy that was calling all the guys to tell them where we were going to play, in what gym and what time that afternoon. I got to be an older guy, and I'm a guy saying that we have a tee time at 8 o'clock. You got to be there in 55 minutes. Now, I have distractions from coaching because I set up golf trips, because to me, being on a team is the greatest thing I've ever been involved in. Everybody makes fun of little leaguers when they put on their uniform at noon for a nine o'clock game that night. Because everybody wants to be part of a team. There's no better feeling than that to Roy Williams. I mean when I was at Kansas and at North Carolina, we have guys that walk together and we used to sprint and then we jogged and now we walk. But you do it because you like to be on a team. We probably do it for all the BS we put up with each other and everybody hacks on each other, but it is. So to me what I love more than anything in the world is part of coaching, and that's being involved in a team for a common goal. I can't think of anything that I enjoy at all in my life other than my family other than that. Q. With the Final Four being back in New Orleans this year, I was wondering could you elaborate on what it was like 30 years ago having Jordan hit that shot and Coach Smith win his first championship? COACH WILLIAMS: I wasn't nearly as stressed out at that time. There was a guy named Dean Smith. I let him be stressed out. That's the thing I remember. That was a great thrill for me. Never forget the pressure that I did feel because I wanted to win that game for Coach Smith so people would stop talking about the greatest coach who had never won a National Championship. That was my biggest thought process. I remember hugging coach on the court in the Super Dome and I said I'm just so glad because now it will shut those people up. And his statement back to me, I'll never forget and I used it in this town in 2005, he said, I'm not that much of a better coach than I was two and a half hours ago. And so to me that was my process. Yeah, I wanted to be part of winning a National Championship, but I wanted it for Coach Smith. And that was a desperate kind of feeling for me. But it was a wonderful night, a wonderful game, Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Matt Doherty, Jimmy Black, Coach Smith, myself. It was truly one of the great moments of my life. Q. You may have touched on this before, but visually you can see the contrast between Kendall and Stilman. What's the contrast in the way they play and? COACH WILLIAMS: There really is a huge contrast. I think Kendall Marshall is the best point guard I've ever had in several areas. One is after the other team scores, he can attack with the basketball and pitch ahead and we can lay it up while everybody is still celebrating hoping their girlfriend is watching them run back down the court. He can attack you after you score better than anybody. He pitch's ahead better than anybody I ever had. He thinks past first, second, third, fourth, maybe not fifth, but at least the top four. And Stilman is like a little Colt running around out there. Kendall thinks three plays ahead. Stilman's trying to still trying to think he's got both shoes tied. It's the kind of thing that there's such a contrast. But Stilman's got a little toughness to him. I mean he really does. Like i say, he's wacko and maybe it's the wacko to the extent that he doesn't realize it, but I like the toughness. He's willing to try to make plays. And he's sort of, you know, faced by a lot of things, which in this moment I think that's good. You know, I don't worry any more about Stilman tomorrow than I would if he was going to play two minutes. Because he's still wacko. I worry about a lot of things with him, but I mean, he's a unique kid and a neat kid. But we have thrown him out there in a couple of minutes in some big games and he's done fine. And he comes back over to the bench and just sort of sits down and he's got this little grin on his face, and somebody will say, Good job. And he will say, What did I do? I mean he's kind of the youthful anyone's that I think will help him this week. THE MODERATOR: Coach thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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