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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 15, 2013Shane LarkinJim LarranagaDurand ScottGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Miami: 69 COACH LARRANAGA: This was a terrific win for us. Boston College is a difficult team for us to match up with. We're big with Kenny Julian, and they're kind of smaller and skilled and they spread you out and share the ball about as good as any team in the country. We knew we would be in for a dog fight. We had a hard time guarding it even in practice yesterday. Thank goodness we were able to go small in the last five minutes. We don't have a lot of perimeter subs so we couldn't have done it earlier, even though we know that's probably the best way to guard them. We were able to do that in the last five minutes and pull away and get a nice win and move on to the semifinals. Q. Coach, the last three minutes, you outscored them and limited them to one field goal. Talk about the defense in the last three minutes and what you were able to do to negate what they wanted to do, and as you said, use your perimeter defense and make plays and get baskets. COACH LARRANAGA: The whole key in guarding Boston College, they do such a great job with ball screens and hitting the role man and hitting or finding another open man. When you're bigger you're slower in your rotation so the last 5 minutes we went to the small lineup and we switched most of them so there is no open man and we trapped with our big guy to be the aggressor at the end of the floor, both ends of the floor and both of those things worked at that time in the game. Q. Shane, if your team is going to play eight good minute of basketball how important is it for five of those to be the start of the game and three of them to be the finish? SHANE LARKIN: We wanted to play 40 good minutes of basketball but you always want to close a game good and tonight we did a good job, beat 'em 14‑3 in the end of the game and we have seniors and experience so we didn't wilt, we stayed together, Coach brought us in, it was like pull together now, three minutes, and we did and they only had one field goal the rest of the game. Defense is going to win us a championship and if we lock in I think we have a good chance. Q. What specifically did you guys do to hold Olivier Hanlan to only five baskets? COACH LARRANAGA: I would say the first thing is we have two of the best perimeter defenders in the league, Durand Scott was the defensive player of the year and Shane was second in the vote getting. They take great pride in their defense. They're grit competitors, they love the challenge. They obviously watched the game yesterday and saw Olivier Hanlan set an ACC record for a freshman with 41 points and that motivates them. They like those challenges, but you can't do it by yourself because he gets a lot of screens so you need your team mates to help you and the guys did a good job of that tonight. Q. Shane, was there any point during the game where you thought, "Oh no, this could be it? This could be a short run?" What kept you going when the momentum shifted? SHANE LARKIN: My teammates were encouraging. We just stayed together. We never‑‑ when something goes bad we don't get down on ourselves, we're always positive I go trying to encourage each other and it's easy to get down, we were up 13 points, 21‑8 and they tied it up 23‑23. We could have easily got down on ourselves and fussed between each other but we stuck together and that's something I think we have been taught over the year is to stay together, and Coach has preached that all year and "together" is the last thing we say to each other in the huddle, so if we do something wrong we don't let it get us down. We just stay together. Q. Shane, the last three minutes there in that stretch you had a couple of big plays with the big three and a steal, do you feel some responsibility to take over and show leadership and make plays to get that separation? SHANE LARKIN: I wanted to make a big play for the team and it actually wasn't just me that got the steal ‑‑ jumped in the air. I jumped, put my hands on the ball, we do a drill everyday in practice of saving the ball with great effort. We trapped. Rion Brown came out of nowhere and saved the ball to Kenny, and we came down and got another basket so that was a huge play. Kenny and Ryan had a big part in that so it wasn't just me, it was me and my teammates, and Trey cut hard off the play and we ran. It was pretty much all of us that had a big part in that, so I had to get to the spot, so everybody was doing a great job of working together. Q. I would like to ask Durand Scott and Shane the challenge of taking on Olivier Halan and the motivation there, both of you, please? DURAND SCOTT: Well, like Coach said he did a great job yesterday scoring 41 points so we put a bit more focus on him than anybody else because we knew we couldn't let him come in and get a good start and get his team going. Like Coach said it was a teach effort and I think Shane did a great job individually and we helped as much as we could to hold him so as few points as we could. SHANE LARKIN: It was a team effort, they set a lot of ball screens for him and in the scouting report he likes to refuse the ball screens and we liked to make him take those. He did a good job of hedging and trapping on those. So it was a great team effort, 14 today, and I'm glad we held him to what we did today. Q. Durand, you have had good performances in this tournament but always in an underdog role. How is it different going forward as a favorite? DURAND SCOTT: It's not a one‑man sport, so I don't look to try to match anything, I'm just trying to win the tournament. We need to do what it takes to win the tournament. Right now I know one thing I can definitely do 100% of, and that's play defense, and that's what I'm going to put my heart on the line for and help my teammates as much as I can in the defensive end. I will try to motivate them to play better and I think I did that to my best ability tonight and that's part of us getting a "W." Q.Coach, looked like they went to a match‑up zone at the end of the first half that threw you out of your rhythm and what was the key to getting back into the rhythm in the second half? COACH LARRANAGA: Halftime. What happened is they started out man‑to‑man and we were playing well and sharing the ball, getting it inside, outside, running on fast breaks and doing a great job defensively. I think they had two or four points in that first few minutes and we got a lead, up to 13, they switched to the three‑quarter press and the 2‑3 zone and we got passive. We didn't push ‑‑ turn the ball over, which was good, but we didn't attack like we wanted to, and at halftime we put Kenny in the high post and telling Shane and Durand to get it quicker into the offensive set and attack more off the dribble. Both guys did that, Shane was able to get threes that way and Durand was able to get to the basket as well. They found Julian in early, Kenny got a basket and then Trey hit an opportunity 3, it was not like a play or anything but the ball bounced loose to him. We shot well in the second half, almost 70%. Q. Coach, not to be redundant but I wanted to get your take, it was a 2‑point game with a couple of minutes to go. Talk about those back‑to‑back steals and how huge that was. COACH LARRANAGA: Well, one of the problems with (Phone ringing.) I'm sorry, that was one of my players! One of the problems you have defensively when you have guys who are very quick is they will often look for steals and miss, gamble and compromise your defense and you end up giving easy baskets. We did that a couple of games ago and it hurt us. Tonight we stuck with fundamental defense and we got the steals off of the traps when we are organized to look for steals. Shane and Kenny did a great job of double teaming the ball and making it hard on Olivier Halan. When you do a good job of handling the ball and you have two or three men in the trap who are active and anticipating what the next pass might be, it works much better and that's part of our scramble defense and we work on it regularly. Q. Durand, just wondering the second half, they go up 4, answer everything and you guys keep‑‑ how frustrating it was out there when they keep answering everything? DURAND SCOTT: It was definitely frustrating because I knew my team wanted the game really bad but I was trying to preach to them it's not going to come to us, we have to do it. They're not going to miss shots and layups and things like that, we have to play as hard as we can and make stops on the defensive end. We needed to push the ball and get good shots at the offensive end and I think my team did a good job of that. There was one point I tried to motivate them, have everybody talking on the defensive end and that sparked a trigger on everybody and that got us rolling and we didn't look back. Q. Coach, Shane had 10 points in the first 10 minutes of the second half. Back‑to‑back driving layups and the 3‑pointer. Can you talk about how important he is to this time and in moments like that where the game is close and he always seems to do something to put the team ahead and get 'em fired up? COACH LARRANAGA: I think everybody knows we have five seniors, they're basically like five starters and they do a fantastic job together, but by adding Shane to that group, he added an element that allows all of them to play better. He's so good at what he does. A lot of times you'll see him in the first half try to get the ball to Kenny or Durand or Trey or Ryan and then in the second half he starts to pick his spots to attack and score or find the open man. We absolutely needed that because I thought in the first half we were settling for basically perimeter shots and we needed more balance. So we told both Shane and Durand to attack more off the dribble and get to the basket and he did that. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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