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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 13, 2013Rick BarnesMyck KabongoJulien LewisSheldon McClellanKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI Texas – 70 MODERATOR: We're now joined by the Texas Longhorns and Coach Rick Barnes and student‑athletes Sheldon McClellan, Myck Kabongo, and Julien Lewis. Coach, we'll call on you first for an opening statement. Congratulations on tonight's victory. COACH BARNES: Really good win for us. Start of the game I thought our defense was outstanding. We really came out and created some offense. Our defense got stymied on offensive a little, on the offensive end. We knew it was going to be a hard‑fought game from the beginning. But second half our zone was really good for us. And got aggressive. Started driving the ball, making some shots. Did a great job at the free‑throw line. But I thought in the last five minutes we came out of a timeout, we called timeout, took a quick shot that wasn't a good one, but after that point I thought we really executed and worked the end of the game the way we needed to. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Julien, you feel this was just a carry‑over from the Texas State game and getting more aggressive in the second half? SHELDON MCCLELLAN: I would say Coach wants to be aggressive take shots that we know we can make. That's what we did the second half. And I played kind of passive the first half, so I want to be more aggressive in the second half. Q. Sheldon and Julien, seems like the bench got an identity the last four or five games. I wonder if you could describe the confidence you guys are playing coming off and giving them lift and getting a lot of points? JULIEN LEWIS: I think we're coming out with a lot of confidence. Coach asked us to be aggressive when we come in. We gotta go in and do our jobs. But most importantly it's the first half. The starters, they're going in, they need to do their job for us, it's got to carry over to the team. The bench has got to come in and do what the starters do. SHELDON MCCLELLAN: I would say just bring the same energy, no let down from the bench. We know the score. That's something that we do day in, day out. Just want to be aggressive coming off the bench. Q. Can you talk about all three of your guards driving to the paint like you did today? MYCK KABONGO: Being aggressive, that's all it is, is being aggressive and staying in attack mode and knowing that when we're in the bonus, just take care of the ball and trying to be aggressive. Just being aggressive. Q. Sheldon, what did you feel like going to the 2‑3 zone? TCU couldn't hit much once you went to that. SHELDON MCCLELLAN: It was very effective. Got in foul trouble early. Went zone. And with our length and quickness, we can disturb a lot of teams' offense. That's what we wanted to do. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach. Q. Coach, it's been nine games I think since Myck's been back now. Was there some rust there that maybe between him and the team, maybe they just had to get used to playing with each other now and you've got those things worked out? COACH BARNES: I do think it was rust‑‑ there's no doubt. You want to put it rust or feel or whatever. He's played nine games this year. He sat for a long time, but he's worked hard. And throughout practice, the question about our bench, I don't know ifwe've got a bench. We've got 11 starters. Every guy I started at some point in time because of different circumstances throughout the year. But I do think that we're figuring some things out with a full rotation. We never got to do that in practice with Myck because he was always with one group, and his group could change every day. But I do think more and more we're starting‑‑ they're starting to understand more of a rotation that we may have to go to. Q. Myck had a little struggle in Lubbock shooting the ball. Did you have to say anything to him special to get his confidence back? Looked like he had a pretty good game tonight. COACH BARNES:  I don't know about anything special. We just talked about that he got outside of himself. He's such a competitive person that when things aren't going well, he wants to fix it. And he continued to get himself in trouble by doing that. And tonight I thought he really let the game come to him as opposed to really trying to early have some turnovers where again he was trying to force it a little bit too much. But I thought he really settled down and really did some really good things and things that you would like to see your leader point guard do, whereas in Lubbock he didn't. He kept trying to fight it, fight it. Sometimes he can become his own worst enemy because he's so competitive. I thought he settled down tonight. I thought he was engaged really from the beginning with his teammates and with the bench. Q. Kansas State played you guys pretty good twice this year. Quick rundown on tomorrow? COACH BARNES: Well, I'm not sure they're not the best team, one of the best teams in the country. They're the conference champion. And that's for a reason, because this is a team that they know how to win. They know each other. I think it's a team that really understands their roles extremely well, that they stay together. And it's a group of guys that, again‑‑ I mean, what can you say? They're the conference champ. And Bruce has done a great job with them. They defend you. They don't give you anything easy. On the offensive end, they really, really play well together. Q. With as well as Sheldon, Julien, and Myck are playing, can you talk about Demarcus and what he's doing at the beginning of games with his hustle and setting the tone defensively? COACH BARNES: He and Myck set the tone on the defensive end. Demarcus, he's a guy that we just love what he's about. And we think he's going to be really terrific. And he's not a guy that we're asking to score. He can probably score better than he does sometimes. He's so quick, but he gets himself in trouble. If he just settled in, take shots, as opposed to really trying to overpenetrate. But he's an everyday guy. Every coach in the country would love a guy with his attitude. What you see in games, he and Myck really get after it like that every day in practice. And I think he's helped Sheldon and really Julien because they watched what he's doing and they're even doing a better job on the defensive end. But every guy‑‑ I thought Jaylen Bond's minutes tonight were really important. We were struggling to rebound in the zone. We're getting things that we wanted done out of it. But Jaylen came up with a couple of really big rebounds. Q. Having played K‑State twice then, what needs to change? What needs to improve for you guys to get a win? COACH BARNES: I think there's a lot of things. I think we're going to have to be a lot better from start to finish tomorrow than we were tonight. We have to rebound the ball better. I don't care who we play. We gave up, oh, 15 offensive rebounds. Seemed like a whole lot more than that. But we've got to rebound the ball. We have to do that. And they played‑‑ we're going to have to match‑‑ we can't just match their effort. We're going to have to play harder than we've ever played because they play hard. They do all the little things, and that's what it's going to take from us. It's going to be a game where I think it's going to get down to competing and finishing possessions and just fighting. This time of year is hard. Every game's going to be hard. You want to keep playing. So just doing the little things. I mean, whether it's blocking out, whether it's passing the ball, pass the ball well against them. Screen, if we don't do that, you don't get many looks because they work hard defensively. Q. TCU hadn't been a great 3‑point team or free throw, but they were hitting them for the first two‑thirds of the game. You wonder if you just couldn't catch a break on stuff like that? COACH BARNES: Well, we knew we were going to mix it up a little bit. We really thought about more zone earlier in the game because we wanted to do that. And it's my fault. We're a good zone team. Earlier in the year we were playing really, really well. We used it a lot early. I think with some of the young guys we weren't moving ahead offensively, defensively man‑to‑man like we needed to, when we needed to come out of it and play. So we really spent a lot of time trying to get better with our man defense and got away from it a little bit. And we weren't really‑‑ we made a couple of mistakes at the guard position. And tonight we cleaned that up, and it got better at what we wanted to do. But they rebounded. That's what they do. They really attack the lane hard. And what we wanted to do against the zone, because they pass the ball to the middle, they're looking to pass from there more than they were looking to shoot it. When we use it up there, at their place, our middle guy in the zone is coming up way too quick. Prince Ibeh made one of the great plays of the game tonight. He left the middle of the lane and actually blocked a jump shot from the corner. That length is really important. We like playing it with he and Cam in there as much as we can. But we wanted from the beginning to force them to shoot jump shots. And somebody‑‑ they're going to make some, but overall you gotta play the numbers. And the only ones that we talked about was knowing who the shooters were when we're getting too deep and giving up too much separation, because we definitely wanted to keep the ball out of the middle of the lane, and a couple times guys got sucked in too much. Q. The win streak, since the end of November, December1st, what are your thoughts about that? COACH BARNES: Like I told you at Lubbock, I guess winning two in a row is a winning streak. So three adds to it. You know, I think our guys know that we're capable of winning. I do think that we're going to have to do it. And we have to change some things, and I thought we did in the last six minutes. I thought we executed and did what we needed to do, make free throws. But we got the balls to the right people and we got everybody. Couple of guys didn't have particularly great nights out. But that's why we have a team and that's where maybe guys playing all year. We'll see what happens. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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