|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOURMarch 30, 2012Rick PitinoChris SmithJared SwopshireNEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA THE MODERATOR: We'll start with questions for Coach Pitino. Q. I talked with one of your former assistants today. He said he doesn't know of any coach who is better than you are at using the underdog mentality to his advantage. Do you agree with that? How are you using the underdog mentality to your advantage this week? COACH PITINO: You know, I really haven't used it this week, to be honest. I have used it before in my life. I really haven't used it, mainly because I want my team to have confidence that they can play with Kentucky. I think at this level, if you take the underdog mentality, then I think they feel they don't belong and it works against you. I have used it, but in this case I haven't used it. I think it would work against us. Q. Can you speak to the intensity of Louisville/Kentucky, for those who don't know about it. Is there anything like it in college sports? COACH PITINO: You know, at this stage, with the national championship at stake, it really started with the dream game, which was I think for the Elite 8, now it's the right to play for a championship. The magnitude is so much greater than a regular season game where everybody kids around says jokes. It's both fun intensity and a lot of things that go with it. But it's so much more meaningful now because what's at stake. Certainly we hope we win a championship and bring it back to the state. If we can't bring it back, I hope they do. Q. Coach, playing off the rivalry thing, I can remember when you brought Kentucky here in 1993. Can you talk about your ties and your success here, and now to meet on this stage against one of your former teams? Then when Coach Calipari before the season said Kentucky was unique when he said it had only one program compared to other states, how did that add fire to the rivalry? COACH PITINO: We have to say so many things in life, every now and then you're going to say something that's not correct. At one time Eddie Sutton said, We like Louisville, we treat them like a little brother. John has only been in this state three years, so he doesn't know the magnitude of Louisville basketball, for that matter the history. You say so many things, you're going to make a mistake. I've made so many myself. He made a mistake probably in what he said. He was more speaking about the magnitude of Kentucky basketball. I don't think he meant disrespect toward Louisville. It comes out that way, like Eddie Sutton said, We treat them like a little brother. It doesn't light a fire under us any more. We want to beat them badly. They want to beat us badly. Not because it's Louisville, not because it's Kentucky, but because it's the right to play for the national championship. I was there. I always call it my time was like Camelot. A lot of coaches at Kentucky have their ups and downs, mostly towards the end of their tenure, they've had downs even from Rupp to hall to you name it. I never had any downs, I was very fortunate. Q. Coach Cal in describing how you guys play defense has talked about biting, scratching, clawing, gouging. How accurate is all of that in your mind? COACH PITINO: He's done that since the UMass days when he spoke about us in '96 in Kentucky. He thinks the referees read the newspapers. He thinks the referees stay up at night and listen to Coach Cal's comments. They really don't. I can play a tape back from Memphis when I was at Kentucky, pretty much the same thing as well. Pretty much the same operating procedure. You don't have to write it down because you heard it back in '96 (smiling). Q. Only one of the last top eight seeds has made it this far. COACH PITINO: Say it again. Q. Of the top seeds the last two years, only one has made it. It's Kentucky this year. None last year. Is that becoming more of a curse than a blessing and what does that do for college basketball? COACH PITINO: I just think there's no difference between a 1 seed and a 2 seed. That's pretty much it. It's a subjective thing. I was listening to the people this year, they talked about strength of schedule. How do you compare Missouri, Duke and the rest of them to the 1 seed. I think Kentucky and Carolina this year, with Carolina's point guard being healthy, were a notch above everybody else at the 1‑2 spot, but I think everybody else was pretty much equal. Q. When you get to this level, do the games change in terms of how important savvy play is versus how important the talent on your roster is? COACH PITINO: I think you never know, when the ball is thrown up in the Final Four, who is going to handle and overcome the nervousness of playing in a Final Four and who's going to be totally focused in and not bothered by it. You never know. There are some players I've coached in the past I thought would be really cool and calm, and they weren't, and others I thought wouldn't be were. You really can't tell by their demeanor before a game or how they act. Early on in the game if guys make shots, their confidence rises, it just becomes a basketball game. When they don't make shots, they start to press. So you really never know. Q. Rick, just from a coach's standpoint, what do you see as John's strength? COACH PITINO: You know, he probably coaches young players better than anybody in the game. I don't know if I would ever want to do it or ever could do it, to coach a new group of freshmen every year. Very difficult. Freshmen have a lot of emotional immaturity that you have to get them over before they start working on their physical maturity. He's probably done it better than anybody in the game. His guys get better. This group has handled themselves as well as any group. They act like veterans. They play like veterans. So real impressed with that. Q. I think last week I heard you say Kentucky has their mission, you have your mission. Can you expand on that, what you mean. COACH PITINO: Basically everybody has a destination. It's the methods to get to your destination. They recruit probably the best in the country. If you're a player that's thinking of going to the NBA right away, Kentucky's going to be on your immediate list. They've done a great job. There's back‑to‑back Final Fours. So his way is working. What it really boils down to is there's a lot of different ways to get there, a lot of different ways. And so the final destination is different but the way you go about it is also very different. Q. You've brought teams here that were considered prohibitive favorites and you've brought teams here on the other side of the fence. How do you balance those two expectations? COACH PITINO: You know, I was probably, in '96, in the shoes that John is in now, and a little bit different. We were sequestered away at a small hotel across the street from the Meadowlands. You don't walk around, there's nothing to do, you don't see any people. You see cars going across the highway. It was a bad night. You never felt the feeling of a Final Four except when you walked in that night. That was the last time it was held in a basketball facility. Really when you finally win it, it's an awful lot of fun and you feel relief not only for yourself, but you feel it for the players who are getting it the entire time. This team, their team and our team, was No.1 for a long period of time, and you expected to win it. Your expectations as a coaching staff were you have to win it. Not only would the fans be disappointed, but we would have been very, very disappointed. So it is a lot of pressure. It's good pressure because you've got the goods to deliver. But as we all know, anything can happen in a basketball game. Q. You mentioned Jerry earlier. What do you remember about when he covered you? What do you think it would be like to cover that team for 30 years? COACH PITINO: Who covered me? Q. Jerry Tipton. COACH PITINO: I think Jerry is fair and objective. He's a good guy. I'm not patronizing you guys. I respect the media very much because you're underpaid, overworked, and you do your job the right way. I respect him. He didn't always write good things about me, but I wasn't bothered by it. I respect anybody who works hard. Anybody who doesn't work hard to me is not doing their job, and I don't have a great deal of respect. But the media, I've had a great deal of respect for because of their work ethic. Wouldn't want to do your job at all because you have to deal with coaches. Wouldn't want to deal with them (smiling). Q. You said you didn't want your team to have that underdog mentality because you want them to feel they belong at this level. What is it about your team that you want them to keep in mind about what their strengths are as they come into this game that will have them feeling like they belong? COACH PITINO: Well, I think when we lost the four out of six games, you know, I always say, Look, I don't read it, I don't listen to it, but invariably people come up to you and say things. You can't even stop them and say, Look, I don't want to hear it. Somebody said that we lost four out of six, we're going the wrong way, we're not going to go far in the tournament. If I'm hearing it secondhand, I know my players are hearing it. We went into the tournament. I sort of told them, Look, guys, the last two losses were on me. I was the reason we lost. I held you guys back. We didn't press, we didn't run Syracuse, I didn't feel we could do it at that time, we're going to do it in the Big East tournament. Now your season's beginning. There wasn't a whole lot of confidence on the basketball team going into Madison Square Garden. We had to build that. We did really play four terrific teams. Could have lost to Davidson, New Mexico, Michigan State or Florida. All four teams could flat‑out play and were extremely well coached. We went through four tough games in the Garden. We've cut the nets down twice and I don't want my guys to feel they're inferior. It's easy to feel inferior to Kentucky because they go on the draft board all the time. You see the one pick in the draft, two pick in the draft. You won't want that feeling going into it because you'll play like inferior players. We don't want that underdog mentality. Q. When you look at the obvious NBA draft picks in this Final Four, Sullinger, Robinson, all the Kentucky players, who on your team do you feel is a prospective first‑round pick, and what effect do you think it's having on the college game that so many of these guys are leaving before four years? COACH PITINO: I don't have a problem with the right guys leaving. About half the guys that have come out now and say they're going pro, it's silly. It almost hurts them when they put their name in, they pull their name out. It hurts their marketability. I don't know who they listen to, but silly. But Sullinger and these guys at Kentucky, they belong. You don't have a problem with that. The guys that get hurt when they come out is a problem. My guys, I have Gorgui Dieng, will be a pro someday. Peyton Siva has a chance. I think Chane Behanan will be a pro someday. The other guys, you never know. But those three guys I think will get a good look at the NBA level. Q. How different a coach are you now as opposed to your previous Final Four trips going back to Providence? How different a coach are you from your times with the Knicks and the Celtics? COACH PITINO: I'm not too much a different coach. I mean, I may have mellowed a little bit. I handle losing a lot better today. I don't like it still, but no coach does. I'm a much different person today than I was back then. That's the only way I've changed. I haven't changed coaching too much. We're still doing the things we've always done. But I'm a much better person today, as everybody should be when they finally grow up. Q. (No microphone.) COACH PITINO: It changes you, but really off the court more than on the court. In other words, it's much more meaningful for me to see people I haven't seen and not just say hello before it's time to say good‑bye. I really want to see them for longer periods of time feeling I would not see them again. So give you an example. We have a 25th reunion coming up at Providence College. In my younger days I would look forward to it. I look forward to it almost every single day, spending time with the guys. I saw them briefly for halftime as we were getting blown out. I spent the night before the game with them. But I can't wait to spend two days with them and see how they're all doing, see how their families are doing, hear about their stories. I'm really looking forward to that. That's what happens later on in your life. You kind of sort of want to listen more than talk. Q. What does coaching at Kentucky and coaching at Louisville have in common and what is different? Is Louisville kind of like Camelot, as well? COACH PITINO: Louisville is different and it's the same. They both have rabid fan bases. We sleep with the enemy in Louisville. In Lexington, we did not sleep with the enemy. We have many Louisville men and women that marry into Kentucky families. It's very difficult for us to swallow, to see that happen. But we live in a town where they have half a million fans. So wherever you travel, there will be Kentucky fans. So you live amongst them. You'll here Kentucky stories as well as Louisville stories. When you're in Lexington, you never hear anybody bring up Louisville. Nobody talks about, I love Louisville, so on. But the lifestyles are different. When you're the Kentucky coach, John last Kentucky Derby told me he had seven troopers following him. I had seven gumbas from New York with me. It's a lot different (laughter). You go out, nobody ever comes up to you, bothering you. In Lexington, if you went out to Rafferty's, within half an hour, somebody would go to Dick's, get a ball, sign the ball. You're much more a public figure at UK than you are at Louisville. You have much more of a lifestyle outside of the lines. The basketball is the same. It's been great. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. COACH PITINO: Thank you. THE MODERATOR: We'll get started with the Louisville student‑athletes. Q. Chris, could you talk about the impact of your point guard, what he especially brings to the team. CHRIS SMITH: Peyton Siva, brings a lot of energy to our team, he brings his unselfishness to our team. When he was hurt early in the season, everybody on the team was not really getting enough shots, not finding their spots on the floor. When Peyton came back healthy, you know, we kind of got in our flow and got our rhythm back. Q. Chris, you're in the Final Four, but it's also Kentucky. Can you talk about what that means to you and the program. CHRIS SMITH: Well, for us being in the Final Four, it's a great accomplishment. It means a lot to us. For us two sitting up here it means a lot because we're seniors and we're going out on a high note. For, you know, playing Kentucky, it doesn't really mean anything to us because, I mean, it's just another basketball team really. Q. You are the closest thing to an underdog here at the Final Four. What have you done as players and what maybe has Coach Pitino said to you guys to make you feel less like underdogs and more like you can go out there and beat anybody out there? CHRIS SMITH: Well, I feel that we're not really underdogs, but everybody will call us underdogs. We don't think we're underdogs. We're expecting to win this game tomorrow. We're not going to let our confidence down and let our fans down, you know, even ourselves. We're just going to go out there, play hard, play our style of basketball. JARED SWOPSHIRE: Yeah, like Chris said, you know, we're expecting to win this game. Since the Big East, we've been on a great run. We just feel like we're prepared, you know, to play and win this game. Q. What did coach say to you at the start of the Big East tournament as a team that made the turnaround? Did he say anything in particular that stuck with you? What changes did he to bring about the turnaround? CHRIS SMITH: He told us, Your legacy lies in your own hands right now. You want to be remembered as a team that gets knocked out in the first round of the tournaments and you want to lose on a Senior Night? So after the game, when we lost on Senior Night, everybody came together and just talked about winning, winning the Big East tournament. That was our main focus, winning the Big East tournament, game by game, then an NCAA tournament. After we won the Big East, we were on a high horse really. We just wanted to continue our streak. JARED SWOPSHIRE: I feel like the turning point for us was coach, he met with us, he basically said, New season. That kind of stuck with us going into the Big East play. We just got back to playing our style of basketball, which is pressing, up‑tempo, just playing faster. I think that was the turning point for us. Q. Jared, we've heard from Coach Pitino and you guys that you're not the underdogs. As seniors, where do you get that confidence? JARED SWOPSHIRE: Uhm, I believe it just comes from, you know, the off‑season, you know, work we put in. Going to the Bahamas we started practicing. Guys have been competing this whole season. We just didn't want to go out early. Especially in the Big East play, we didn't want to lose in the first round like we did the past two seasons. I just feel it's been the hard work we put in and guys just competing. Q. Can you talk maybe about UConn's run last year made it easier for you to do it this year? CHRIS SMITH: I don't think their run made it easier for us to do it this year. I feel we put in our hard work. Everybody compares the two. But I think it's a little different because we have, you know, a complete team. They had a great pair in Kemba Walker really. For us, our team unity is what drives our winning streak. JARED SWOPSHIRE: Yeah, I mean, I'd say Chris said it perfectly. I feel like people compare us to them because they were in the Big East as well. People looked at them as an underdog. I feel like we have a more complete team all around. Q. I know you just talked about how this is a complete team. Is that how you will handle Anthony Davis or do you even look at him as a person that you need to stop? CHRIS SMITH: I put it like this: I would say as of right now, Anthony Davis, he should be worried about Gorgui Dieng really. For us as a team, we're going to try to stop him cold really, not feed into his shot blocking. We got to get him in foul trouble, and that will pretty much give us the game. JARED SWOPSHIRE: Yeah, I mean, Anthony Davis, you know, he's a great player. But Gorgui Dieng is also a great player in our eyes. He works very hard. We know what he can do. We've seen what he can do all season. We're excited for this game. Q. Chris, you said playing Kentucky is just another game. How do you think the Louisville fans and the Kentucky fans think about that? CHRIS SMITH: I would say the fans take it as, you know, whoever loses, it's their funeral really. They take it as pretty much like any rivalry school would take it in the same state. Like, you know, it's not the same, but it's really cut‑throat, I would say. JARED SWOPSHIRE: Yeah, I mean, you know, we don't have any players‑‑ we have a few from Kentucky, but for the most part, none of us have grown up in states where the rivalry is like Louisville with Kentucky. I guess for the fans I can understand that it's more than just a game. But for us, we've been playing this game for so many years that it's just another basketball game, just a bigger stage. THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|