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BIG EAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 14, 2013Rick PitinoPeyton SivaRuss SmithNEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK LOUISVILLE- 74 JOHN PAQUETTE: We'll start with questions for Russ or Peyton. Q. I was wondering, did you hear about Jack Curran passing and just your thoughts on it? RUSS SMITH: I found out, and it was really hard for me for about 45 minutes when I was on the bus crying and stuff. A few guys I knew who were very close with him, and I called the athletic director, and I found out. It was really hard on me. It was almost heartbreaking to think about it. Q. Did you dedicate‑‑ I know you write on your sneakers a lot. Did you have any message for him? RUSS SMITH: It was more internal because everybody knew about it. I just wanted to win and do anything I could to win. Today was definitely Coach Cary day for me, and it will be the rest of my life. Q. Ankle, did you just kind of twist it there? Did you get it retaped? RUSS SMITH: I twisted it pretty bad, and coach taped it. I went back out there and put everything aside. We've got a Big East game going on. Just tried to finish out strong. JOHN PAQUETTE: Welcome to Coach Pitino. COACH PITINO: Our guys had a big treat. President Clinton came back to say hello. We got the chance to take a lot of pictures. It was a big treat for our guys. Mayor of Providence and everybody. It was a lot of fun. These two guys did a tremendous job tonight. I told Russ‑‑ Russ had a heavy heart tonight, as I'm sure he mentioned. A good friend of mine and obviously Russ' mentor, Coach Curran, one of the legendary high school coaches of all time, for two sports, not only for basketball but for baseball, and I just told Russ we have to play this tournament in the NCAA for Coach Curran. Coach Curran really enjoyed coaching Russ, and I really enjoyed coaching Russ, but we both knew what he was all about. So it's very exciting that Russ could have that type of game and honor his coach like that. This young man to my left is one of the best leaders in college basketball. These guys did a tremendous job. We lost last time around for three reasons. We missed free throws, didn't guard the three‑point line, and didn't cause enough havoc. Tonight we did all three. We wanted to keep them from shooting free throws. We wanted to keep them from shooting threes, and we did a very good job of doing that. Q. Rick, 18 turnovers in the first half. Was there anything you would have done differently, or is this just a higher level? COACH PITINO: I think we were just very intense. We were really quick. We're fast. It was an all time high, including the deflection chart. We keep a chart that, if we get 35 to 40 deflections and we don't give up an inordinate amount of threes, we're going to win a number of games. To get 40 is what I'm saying. We had 58 tonight. Q. What did you have at halftime? COACH PITINO: 38. And that's never happened in my 80 years of coaching. So it was an incredible thing to witness. Very, very active. Q. Can you guys just share a little bit about what Bill Clinton said in there and what were your thoughts again? COACH PITINO: He was just telling a lot of stories. I knew him back at Kentucky, when he came to the University of Kentucky, I was able to introduce him on campus. At that time, Republicans were going to win the state and overturned it, and he got elected by, I think, two percentage points. Since that point, we've been very friendly toward each other. He was telling a lot of stories not only about basketball, but Senegal where Gorgui is from. He's a walking encyclopedia. It was very enjoyable for the guys. Q. You had a lot of forced turnovers and a lot of misses. What did you tell the guys before the game defense‑wise? COACH PITINO: We've been a good defensive team. We know we have to win. We shot the ball well tonight. We did a lot of good things. When we went down there, it was our poorest game of the season. That's because Villanova made it the poorest game of the season with the way they played. So we studied that film, and we knew where we made our mistakes. A backcourt played tremendous, and we got a tremendous lift from Stephan Van Treese because it wasn't Gorgui's night. He's very fresh going into tomorrow. Q. You had seven guys with at least one steal. Talk about the contribution from those other guys besides these two. COACH PITINO: I think we win with our defense. We're a good offensive team, and tonight‑‑ we're not a great three‑point shooting team. That's probably‑‑ I know you pick up the stat sheet tonight and say, well, you shot the three. We took all good threes. Any time you can drive and you can step into the shot, they're all good threes. Our offense has gradually caught up to our defense. Guys like Luke Hancock, and certainly Russ is one of the prolific scorers in college basketball right now. Peyton has got his jump shot online. He's a very, very confident young man as well. Q. Russ, even before the emotions that came with the news today, were you feeling like you wanted to have a better game at Madison Square Garden than you had the last time that you were here or in the championship game last year? RUSS SMITH: Me and Coach talk a lot about performing on the road since I've been home and made‑‑ I don't know. I can't remember the games. I haven't really played too well on the road. Coach talked to me, and we go over scouting, and I have to look at the open sections. We watched the Villanova game, and I've seen all the mistakes I made. Tonight I just tried to correct them and look for my teammates on the drive and just improve. I think that was the main focus tonight. It wasn't so much the guard just playing good or anything, it was so much the win and what I got to do from a scouting standpoint to help the team win. Q. Peyton, can you talk about the defensive effort. It was 38 deflections in the first half, especially the first half, how good you guys were. PEYTON SIVA: The whole thing tonight was just to be aggressive on offense and defense. Last time they bullied us around, and Coach Pit told us we've got to stop learning from our losses and learn the first time. Tonight we came out with a great intensity. We took away their 3‑point shot and that's what hurt us last time. We just tried to pick up from our deflections. When we guard deflections, 20‑plus, 30‑plus in a game, that's when we feel like we can win. Tonight everybody did a great job. V.T. came off the bench and got eight rebounds for us, and everybody just played great tonight. Q. I was just wondering to share your thoughts on Jack and what do you think his legacy will be. COACH PITINO: Well, I got a chance in my life, one of the great thrills was spending time with Coach Wooden on a number of occasions, and I played golf with Jack about four or five times. I knew a lot of his players back from the Bobby Carver days and those guys. I went to his camp, friendship farm, I think it was called back then in New York. I went to his camp for three years. He was just‑‑ he had all the great traits of a great leader. Very humble, great teacher, very wise man. It was always about the players with him. He had a lot of what I witnessed with Coach Wooden. They were very similar personalities. They were great teachers. Although he was a great basketball and baseball coach, he probably was even a better gym teacher. He was just a great teacher and a great person. Never lost his passion and love. I don't know how he did it. He led a blessed life, and a lot of people are going to miss him greatly. Q. Peyton, when you're creating as much havoc as you were tonight, beyond the stats, is there anything that tells you the other team is feeling the pressure the way that they handled the ball, et cetera? PEYTON SIVA: I think we just did a good job of really trapping and communicating. It was a couple of possessions where our communication was really on point, where we would switch to ball screens. We made the right rotations, and I think scouting and watching on film, we made the right rotations of going inside and playing that. So I think from that point, scouting and watching film really helped us out a lot and knowing what they were going to do and the pressure that Russ and other guys put on them and really helped us out. Q. Coach, earlier, Coach Boeheim mentioned the final four teams in this tournament starting tomorrow is the best in the country and felt that any one of the four teams could really go far to the national title. Do you feel that way too? COACH PITINO: I don't know who the fourth team is going to be. The way I look at the NCAA Tournament is a lot different than everybody. We had three times in the Final Four where it was totally unexpected. There's only been one time in my life where I thought we could go to a final four and win it all. The other five times, I never thought about getting there. Just played it one game at a time. I think the Big East has three or four teams. I think Gonzaga, I watched them play‑‑ I have a lot of respect for Davidson. I watched them really, really beat Davidson bad in a lot of phases of the game, and you don't do that to a Bob McKillop team too often. There's a lot of teams that could do it, and certainly Jim's right in that regard. When we shoot the ball like we do tonight and share the basketball like that, we're a pretty tough team because of our defense, but it's not always the case. What I got on the guys at halftime is don't let your scoring dictate how you play this game because Russ the other night against the last game we played, they made up their mind they were going to stop Russ Smith. I said, Russ, that's scouting. You've got to make up your mind that night to get other people the ball. There's only been a few players in my lifetime like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, after the scouting was over, who could still score. I said, you've got to understand. It wasn't you having a bad game. They decided to stop Russ Smith. And tonight he was brilliant because he passed the ball, he played awesome defense, he got after them, and he shot the ball well, made great decisions, even when a couple of his turnovers were pivoting and trying to get people the ball. Q. Russ, you said that you learned about Coach Curran's death this morning. Could you tell us a little bit about who told you, where they told you, how they told you. RUSS SMITH: Every time I'm in town, I'm an alumni of Archbishop Malloy, and I always love to go back there, communicate with the guys. I was giving them a call, calling Coach McCleary and how is he doing. What's the schedule looking like, and maybe him, Coach, and a few others could make the game. Then he told me, and I paused for a second. It was really hard for me to take it all in because a guy like Coach, obviously, he's old age, but you just wouldn't think twice of him ever passing. It was really, really hard for me to like just focus ahead and to just put it all together. I really have no words, but I miss him a lot. I'm going to miss him. He was everything to me, and to my mom, my family. He treated everyone with respect. He taught me a lot of things, phrases, quotes, and one of the main ones was the road to success is always under construction, and I'll keep that. I always say that, and I'll always keep that to myself, and I always work around that little quote. He's just a great guy. JOHN PAQUETTE: Louisville, thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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