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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 13, 2013Kedren JohnsonRod OdomKevin StallingsNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE THE MODERATOR: All right. We're ready to begin with Vanderbilt. We will begin with Coach Stallings, ask him for his general thoughts on the Vanderbilt team headed into the tournament, then we'll take your questions just for the two student athletes and then excuse them to the locker room and finish up with Coach Stallings. Coach, you're ready to begin? COACH STALLINGS: Well, probably like the other 13 teams that are here, we're very excited about the tournament. Tournament play is fun, it's exciting. I know our guys are excited to start the post-season aspect of this campaign, and we feel good about our team. We feel good about the way we've been playing the last few weeks, and we're certainly hopeful of being able to keep that going starting tomorrow night against a very good Arkansas team. We've had a number of guys play better as of late on our team. When I say "late," lately, talking about the last two, three weeks and I think that's been a big reason for our improved play and -- but, again, you have to execute, you have to play well, and you have to certainly execute at the end of games in order to win in tournaments and hopefully we'll be able to do that. THE MODERATOR: We'll take your questions for either of the student athletes. Q. This is for both guys. I'm just curious, with the tournament being here, did you go to class today, do you go to class tomorrow? What's your routine when the tournament is in your home town? ROD ODOM: Lot of people say it's home advantage-type team. We're in class, we have to go about our regular day and then go to the game as if we do on home game. So, I think it kind of evens out with other guys having free time before the game, we're in class. It's kind of evens the playing field. KEDREN JOHNSON: I'd say the same thing as Rod. We kind of stay on the same routine. We went to class today and handled business. Try to come out and do the same thing tomorrow night. COACH STALLINGS: If we're in Nashville they will go to class, that is correct. If you wanted to ask me that, I could have answered that one for you. Yes, they will be in class. THE MODERATOR: Other questions for the student athletes? Q. This is for both guys, what were the differences in the two games? Obviously in Arkansas they won real handily and in your place you won pretty handily. What were the differences? KEDREN JOHNSON: Well, at their place they did a great job of getting us sped up and we kind of had whole bunch of turnovers and a lot them were in the half court and we came back to our place we did a better job of taking care of the ball, and over that stretch between the games, we had started talking about competitive character and we started playing like the team we wanted to be. ROD ODOM: Yeah. I pretty much say the same thing as Kedren. We went and played them down there, they got us real sped up, kind of hit us in the mouth. They got us pretty good. We came back and just tried to be more composed with the ball and take care of the ball in the half court and things went a little better for us. Q. Rod, can you talk about this arena? How many times have you played or shot around in here? Is there really a home court advantage for you because you're in Nashville? ROD ODOM: To my knowledge, I think the first time we played here was -- the first time I played here was this season against MTSU. So, you know, I mean it's good to be in Nashville, and I don't think it's too much of an advantage but it's definitely good to sleep in your own bed and that part of things is good, not having to travel. Q. For both guys, both games were so lopsided for the home team. Do you guys expect a close game tomorrow or just what do you make of those first two games and how that might play into this game? THE MODERATOR: They're a really good team. Anytime you play a team in this league, you're going to expect it to come down to the wire and be a close game. That's our mindset, we're going to have to make plays at the end to try and win. KEDREN JOHNSON: I think both teams are just going to come out battling. We'll both come out battling. Whoever can be persistent and give that effort will come out with a victory. Q. This is for both guys, just curious with how well you guys have played or how much more you've improved towards the end of the season. What kind of momentum does that give you going into this tournament? KEDREN JOHNSON: Well, it's huge. It's a goal of ours to finish the season strong and try to get out of playing tonight, and we accomplished that goal and we've had a lot of momentum going since we've accomplished what we set out to do. ROD ODOM: Yeah, I'd say the same thing. Guys have lot of confidence. That helps when you got guys playing with confidence. Moving forward I think that will definitely do a lot for us. Q. For both y'all, Arkansas is 1-11 outside the State of Arkansas this year. Only place they've won last two years is Auburn. Does that give you added confidence since obviously it's out of town game for them? COACH STALLINGS: Be careful with that one. ROD ODOM: We play every game the same. That's why you play the game. You can't play it by the numbers. I'm sure they're going to come out and play hard like they do every game. Just why you play the game. KEDREN JOHNSON: Yeah, I wouldn't think about that too much. It's SEC Tournament. You really don't know what's going to happen. We got to go out and battle. Q. You guys won this thing last year. Going into the tournament, what's it going to take to do it again? ROD ODOM: We're really just trying to take it one game at a time and worry today about playing tomorrow and then we'll think about the next day after that. That's the biggest thing is worrying about trying to make it to the next day. THE MODERATOR: One more for either student athletes? Anybody? COACH ANDERSON: Thank you, fellas. You can return to the locker room. We'll continue on with Coach Stallings. If you'll raise your hand if you have a question. Q. This is for Kevin, is it really home court advantage when you guys couldn't even find your locker room tonight? COACH STALLINGS: They didn't have a locker room for us. I've got a feeling there's going to be more people in blue even than in black and gold. I'll still bet on more people in blew. There's two teams in black and gold. We don't -- we wish this was a home court advantage for us. We wish that it would be and we hope that it is. We'll see. I don't know that it will be, but we'll just have to wait and see. I think that the tournament was in New Orleans last year and there were about -- we were talking about this as a staff today, there was about 19,000 Kentucky fans and about 500 from Vanderbilt. You know, it doesn't -- I don't think you get into a home court advantage so much in a conference tournament, because again, aside from Kentucky, it's not going to be overwhelming by any fan base in my opinion, ours included. So, I think it will be like a neutral court game for just about everyone, and I understand it's here in Nashville and it would make sense to ask that question, but I don't anticipate it being a tremendous home court advantage for us. Q. Kevin, what sort of an effect or what sort of benefit is it for Kentucky to have so many fans at a so-called neutral site? COACH STALLINGS: You feel you're playing them on a home court. You feel they've -- a lot of times you feel it's just Rupp Arena transferred to a different city. You have to admire the way their fans support and travel and do those things. So -- but even at that, the other team can still win, which fortunately we were able to prove last year and so I don't know. I don't think you can make too much of a conference tournament venue in terms of who is it an advantage to? Last time I checked, Kentucky had won more conference tournaments than all the rest of us put together. So it's probably the quality of your teams more than the number of your fans. Q. Coach, I think you guys are shooting -- I know your last in the league in free throw shooting looks like about the worst Vanderbilt has done since the '50s. What's going on this year with the free throw shooting? It books like it's been better of late. COACH STALLINGS: I let one of my assistants be in charge of foul shooting this year. I started taking it over back a few games ago and we started shooting them better, but we just got off to a bad start, the season. We just started off poorly and it kind of snowballed on our young team and we've gotten a lot better lately. We've actually won some games the last two, three weeks because of our foul shooting, and so I don't think that -- it can certainly rear its ugly head in any game, but I don't think that -- I don't anticipate that being the problem that it was earlier in the season. If you took us the last probably ten, 12 games, I would imagine it's significantly better. I'm not sure, I don't know this for sure, but I'm not sure that we're last in the league in SEC games only. We may be, but I don't think we are. Not that that matters, but it's sad when you're talking about whether or not you're last in the league or not. There was one point during the season after several games that we were second from the bottom in the entire country, second from the bottom. So, we've fixed that. That's been one of things that we've kind of fixed and made better and we actually expect to make them now, which is really a far cry different than the way we felt earlier in the season. Q. Kevin, I think it's amazing you've been at the same school in this league for 14 years, Billy Donovan, 16, and Andy Kennedy seven, and everybody else in the league has been in their job four years or less. To what do you attribute your ability to survive such a grind and such a monster league for 14 years at the only private school in the league? COACH STALLINGS: It's funny you ask that, Joe. I told my wife this morning that we probably ought to do a study, we ought to figure out how many coaches have been in the same job for 14 or 15 years in the country that hasn't been to a Final Four, which we have not been, obviously. I doubt if there were very many. I would say that a good administration is one thing. I think that we've had success. Obviously, if you don't have success, then you don't last very long. And we've had a lot of good players. I've had a lot of good assistant coaches. And so we've built a program that we're very proud of and this season hasn't been what we're used to and what we like, but I'm still very proud of my team, because I think our team has gotten significantly better since the beginning of the season. And, so, I would say there are a number of things, but those things that I mentioned are probably of the most important and probably the most important. Q. Kevin, in the first two games with Arkansas pretty lopsided scores. Besides the change in venue, what were the differences in those games and then maybe what maybe factor to either of them play into tomorrow's game? COACH STALLINGS: I think the players were pretty spot on in the game over there, they just smacked us at the beginning and knocked us back on our heels and we didn't react very well. I think it was in the second league game and we turned it over a ton. And so I think that -- and in both games the thing that's been consistent in both games is their half court pressure has been a lot more damaging to us than their full court pressure. Everybody thinks about the pressure as being their press. Their press hasn't bothered us, knock on wood, as -- I mean, we've had some turnovers against it. I think we only had one turnover against it in the second game, but that was just throwing the ball in-bounds and it was kind of a silly communication error, but the half court, they turned us over in the half court. So, we did a better job of dealing with the pressure better in the second game. I mean, I thought our defense actually in both games was very good. I mean, we held them to 56 in the first game and we held them to 49 in the second game. So our defense in both games -- especially when you consider we turned it over 26 times in the first game, for them to only get 56 is really kind of amazing. We were so bad on offense we only got 33. And so the second game we made shots, we were crisper, we were better, we were stronger with the ball. We had a better plan of attack, our guys knew more what they were getting into. Obviously we were playing at home and so we functioned much better in the second game and how that plays into this game, I think the team that can execute the best and exhibit the most consistent effort for 40 minutes will be the team that wins. I certainly think both teams are capable of winning this game. This is not a game that looks lopsided on paper to me, and so it's a matter of going out and playing to the best of your ability and probably having to be able to execute at the end, because as Rod said, we anticipate these being close games. Q. Coach, you got a chance at a fourth straight NCAA Tournament for the school. Obviously this tournament is difficult to win.  You were here last year. How hard is it to get through this thing? Is there any one thing you can take from last year's run and apply to it to this year? COACH STALLINGS: There are so many difference in this year and last year. Last year we didn't play until Friday. Last year we had five seniors and leading scorer in the conference who was a junior. So we had an entirely different proposition last year to this year. I think that guys like Kedren and Rod, maybe Kyle a little bit, Dai-Jon a little bit, those guys might be able to draw some from what occurred in last year's tournament. But the truth is, none of those guys were in a role in any way similar to the roles that they're in now. So, as much as I would like to say yeah, that will be a big help and great benefit and give us a lot of confidence, I don't really believe that to be the case. Q. This is for Kevin, I wanted to ask about Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. I don't know if you're willing to -- COACH STALLINGS: I voted for him. Q. I know coaches usually have tended to go with guys that finish near the top of the standings or their team does. What made this year different with Kentavious? COACH STALLINGS: Quite honestly, it was an easy vote for me. I think he's the best player in the league. I think he's the best player in the league. He's great on offense, he's great on defense. He's a very, very, very, underrated defender in my opinion. I don't know if he made the all defensive team or no. I voted him for that. I feel strongly he should have been on it if he wasn't. I just think that he -- Mark might get mad at me for saying, this, he looks like a pro when he plays. He just -- he can jump up and shoot jump shots off the dribble, he can get to the basket, he shoots it from deep. He guards you. He just -- there's nothing that kid is not good at on a basketball court in my opinion, and there are some really great scorers in this league and some really great rebounders and some really great defenders. He's one of the few guys in this league that is good at everything that goes on on a basketball court, in my opinion. There are some others, but I think -- and it would have been a harder vote if -- for me, if Nerlens Noel would have stayed healthy. Probably the impact he was having could have continued to have, but when -- with what happened in his injury, I just thought that Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was the most impactful player in our league. Q. Along those same lines, were you surprised that the leading scorer in the SEC did not make first team All SEC, Marshall Henderson? COACH STALLINGS: Yeah, that surprises me, yes. I was surprised at a number of things. I voted for guys that were on the first team -- I voted for guys that were on the first team -- I won't tell you who -- that didn't make either team. So, just goes to show, what do I know, I'm just a coach. Q. Kevin, Arkansas is 1-11 outside the State of Arkansas? COACH STALLINGS: I heard you say that a little while ago. I'm not going write on that one either, Bob. Q. What do you make of that? Does it give you little extra comfort level because the tournament is outside Arkansas? COACH STALLINGS: If you know and understand anything about coaches, we know no such thing as comfort level, and I don't know what -- I don't know what the deal is with our games outside of Bud Walton Arena. It's really hard to play them and win. We played much better the second time. When I got to Vanderbilt, that was the thing people said then was they can win at home, but they can't win on the road. Sometimes I think it just takes time to get the mentality on your team the way you need it to be when you take over a program. I can't say that I had it established by my second year, and I think we do a little better job of winning on the road now, but I don't think that that's something that, if it's been going the other direction as it was when I took over the Vanderbilt program and perhaps when Mike took over the Arkansas program, I don't think that's something that you snap your finger and change over night and -- he would be a much better judge of the answer to that question than I would be. I have my own worries about trying to get Vanderbilt to win outside of our building, and so he would be a much better judge of that than me. THE MODERATOR: Couple more. Q. Kevin, can you talk about the double bye? This is the first year we'll see it. They're not anticipating an enormous crowd tonight. Having a double bye and all 14 teaming coming to this tournament, how you feel about that? COACH STALLINGS: I like the tournament format. I like the fact that all 14 teams are included. I mean, again I think you can go and take a look at the Big East. If I'm not mistaken, both Syracuse and Connecticut won their tournament having to win five games, isn't that correct? Is that not right? And as a matter of fact, didn't Connecticut go on to win the national championship after they did it? Obviously their regular season didn't go the way that it could have and yet they were given another opportunity and took full advantage of it. And so I think I like our format. Certainly the teams that don't have to play until Friday have an advantage, but they have earned that advantage. That 18 game marathon that they call the conference schedule, when you get through that and you're one of those top four teams or top four seeds, doggone it, you have earned the right to get that point. I don't begrudge anyone I got to play on Thursday. That's what we earned. We earned playing on Thursday. That's what we deserve. So, to do what those four teams have done, Florida and Kentucky and Alabama and Mississippi, they earned the right to not play until Friday. They deserve an advantage. If one of the rest of us is going to win this thing, then we're going to have to do something pretty special and pretty strong. But I'm good with the format and I'm glad that all 14 teams are here, because you never know what's going to happen. THE MODERATOR: Last question. Q. At a risk of going back into the danger zone, I'm going to take you back to Bob's question. When you scout Arkansas, what do you see that causes such drastic statistical differences home and away? COACH STALLINGS: You know, when you're scouting -- and you're not going to like my answer, but when you're scouting, you don't sit there and say -- you just look at what they do. You don't look necessarily at how they do it. You know, we're not sitting there evaluating well, gosh, they shoot the ball like at this percentage at home and shoot like this -- you don't really -- it's not really what you're doing. You're saying okay, here is what they're doing. They're running motion offense and they're pressing and they're pressuring you in the half court and they're very good at getting the ball out of the net and getting it to the other end. So you have to get back in conversion. You're looking at the what's as opposed to the how manys. Does that make sense? And so it's not something that really comes into play or into your thought process, because at this juncture of the season, if you're a zone team, you're probably going to zone them, but if you're man to man, you're probably going to play man to man. It doesn't really make any difference what the numbers say at this point after 30 games, or however many we've played, then you are who you are and you're going to go to the dance, if you will, you're going to come to the tournament and do what you do the best and you hope that what you do the best is good enough to help you win that particular game, and then you take a team like Florida, and maybe this is why Florida is a little better than everybody else. Florida has two, three ways they can beat you, where a lot of the rest of us might only have one or one second half. I think that that's some of Billy's brilliance as a coach, he has more than one way to beat you. And so that's kind of what I would say to that, it doesn't really -- you don't evaluate when you're scouting what they do on the road as opposed to what they do at home. You're really just evaluating what they do and what you have to do in order to be successful against it. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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