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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 15, 2013Marshall HendersonAndy KennedyDerrick MillinghausNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE OLE MISS – 64 THE MODERATOR: We're ready to begin with Ole Miss. We'll ask Coach Kennedy for some opening comments and thoughts on the game. Then we'll take your questions just for the two student athletes and send them back to the locker room and finish up with Coach Kennedy. All right, Coach. COACH KENNEDY: I know the NCAA Tournament doesn't officially start until next Thursday, but we just gave you a precursor. That was a first round NCAA game between two NCAA Tournament teams. Missouri is an outstanding team. Really came out and I thought early put us on our heels with their execution. Phil Pressey was tremendous off the bounce, but our guys continued to fight and continued to grind which has been our mantra all year. Keep yourself in a position to make a play at the end and Derrick Millinghaus came in under adverse circumstances, Jarvis Summers is out with what we believe is a concussion, they're going through tests right now. So he comes in and makes huge plays for us down the stretch. THE MODERATOR: Take questions for student athletes. Q. Derrick, it looked like they were denying the ball from Marshall. He wasn't going to be able to get that last shot. Did you feel like you needed to be the guy to take that shot? DERRICK MILLINGHAUS: It was just -- I just wanted to win. That's what I wanted to do. Q. Marshall, you guys were down 13 with 13 minutes to go. I seemed like you guys were down and you just -- seemed like you decided you just weren't done yet and -- COACH KENNEDY: You guys think we've been done. They've never quit. MARSHALL HENDERSON: We were down by 13 to Vandy with 8 minutes to go. That was a worse situation than this one. Q. Were you just, I just got to shoot, I got to go, I got to score? MARSHALL HENDERSON: We got to win. I just got some open shots and shot them. Derrick came in, did a great job off the bench. Scored buckets. That's why he's sitting here next to me. We knew -- we watched -- we're not dumb. We were watching ESPN all day. We saw every -- we saw every single team in the bubble lost. Even though we were down, we knew what we had to do, get this one win. We want to win the tournament obviously, but to win the tournament, you got to win your first game. After we saw what happened today, we had to take what was ours. Didn't matter how much we were down or how much time was left. We had to go get it. Q. Derrick, talk about the runner to win it, the last possession there. What was going through your mind? What did coach say in the timeout? DERRICK MILLINGHAUS: We drew up a play for Marshall at the timeout, but I seen I had the lane. I just went in, threw it up and hoped it went in. Q. Marshall, what did you see there at the end before you passed off? Why did you pass off at that time in? MARSHALL HENDERSON: Well, me and Derrick have a really good relationship. We love playing with each other all the time. When he first got here in the summer, we got real cool. That helps with chemistry and stuff. The play was for me to come off a couple screens, see if I could make a place. When I got the ball, the play that needed to be made was Derrick's man came and helped off. I put it in the player's hands. Players make plays, as coach says. He did just that. Q. Marshall, was there a moment today when you felt the momentum shifted for you? Was there a specific play or a specific shot that you thought this game is changing? MARSHALL HENDERSON: I know I hit a 3, put us down 6, but they went up 13. I think I got a fast break 3. It felt like we kept making runs and then they would hit a big shot, just go back. Dang, just go back on offense and score again. But I know when we cut it down, ran a play for Reggie Buckner, when got the lay up and tied it up, we're in business now. I think after he scored and tied it up, we pretty much knew we weren't going to lose this game. Q. Marshall, did Missouri shake hands after the game? MARSHALL HENDERSON: No. No. Four of them did. We don't expect them to shake hands, so -- that was good support. DERRICK MILLINGHAUS: It's an emotional game. man, emotional game. MARSHALL HENDERSON: I'm not going to sit here and say we probably didn't say a couple things to them in the ear when the final buzzer sounded, but you can come shake our hands. We'll shake their hands. You know what, it's whatever. We get the last layoff in the end, you know. We came out on top. Q. This is for Derrick and for Marshall. Do you think this win was enough to get you in? DERRICK MILLINGHAUS: Yeah, I believe so. MARSHALL HENDERSON: I mean, we just beat Missouri. That's an NCAA Tournament team. We beat them two times out of three. Every other team lost. They're done, we're still playing. We just got to go ahead and take what's ours. Control what we control, come back tomorrow and play Vanderbilt, might as well go ahead and win that game, too. Q. Marshall, last time were you in Nashville you hit that shot, now this. What's it mean to you? MARSHALL HENDERSON: Well, that shot earlier at Vanderbilt, that was moreso we actually won the game. That was the big thing because we really be digging out of a big hole. But, you know, this one was huge. It just shows a lot about our team. We're a second half team. You can go back to every single one of our games. Even games we've won by big margin, we played better in the second half. So, you know, we go back and look at film of Vanderbilt, see how they played lately. We know they're going to be a tough team. The home town behind them. They're good. So just be ready to play tomorrow. THE MODERATOR: One more question. Q. Question for both players, you know, you have 14, 15 hours before you play again after an emotional game like this, how difficult will that be and also what do you remember specifically about the challenges that Vanderbilt presented to you the last time you played? DERRICK MILLINGHAUS: I'm used to this. I'm from New York, play a lot of basketball tournaments. We have ten games in one day. This will be nothing to me. MARSHALL HENDERSON: Yeah. We played AAU not too long ago. Like I was telling Coach Kennedy, he's like no, get some sleep. Coach, we use to play four games in one day and turn around and play an 8:00 a.m. game, we're good. COACH KENNEDY: Sometimes he thinks it's AAU, that's the problem. He doesn't know this is the SEC Tournament. MARSHALL HENDERSON: I got to remind him I'm crazy in the head. I can play another game right now. Let's go. I'm crazy. THE MODERATOR: We'll excuse you back to the locker room. We'll continue on with Coach Kennedy. If you'll raise your hand, we'll get a floor microphone to you. Q. Andy, falling behind, couple times in the second half in double digits, you get it back to 7, 6 a couple times. What was the turning point do you think that really helped you out? COACH KENNEDY: I don't think there was one play. I can't off the top of my head reflect back on one play. We finally got some stops. We were killing awe us off the bounce. They beat us on the boards by 12, 17 offensive rebounds. We finally were able to secure some balls. Derrick gave us a great push in the open floor. For the first time in the whole game we were able to score in a broken floor. Marshall alluded to the fact he hit a big 3. Derrick made a couple pushes in the open floor that got us to the basket. We had no rhythm offensively the entire game. It wasn't an efficient game with us. These are the two highest scoring teams in the league, us at around 80 and them around 77. It was a slugfest, but that's what you get in March basketball with so much on the line. What's that you get in the NCAA Tournament, it's a slugfest. And I just wanted our guys to fight. I was really proud of their fight. Obviously, I'm excited that Derrick made the shot and we lived to fight another day, but I was just proud of the way they continued to battle under adverse circumstances, you know. Jarvis goes down and what we believe initial indication is it's probably a concussion, which would mean can he play tomorrow, we don't know, you probably won't know until game time. You throw Derrick Millinghaus in there, a kid who is a spot player, asking him to lead us back. We're struggling. We've got foul trouble all over the board and the guys found a way. As a coach that's rewarding because you realize how badly they wanted it and they went and got it. Q. Can you kind of walk us -- expand on that last shot, that last possession that Derrick talked about and the play that was supposed to be drawn up for Henderson? COACH KENNEDY: There's a timeout called. I think there's 20-some odd seconds on the clock and we try to pick them up a little bit in full court. We wanted to try to deny Pressey the ball. Make somebody else bring the ball up because he's such an integral part of everything they do. I've certainly never coached against a team where one player dominates the ball for the amount of time he does. We thought if we can keep him from getting it, it may throw off the rhythm of their last shot. We were trying to get a stop. We thought the best case scenario we may be able to get something in the open floor at the end of the game to try to get this thing into overtime. We put a little pressure on them. I don't know what really happened. It had to be some kind miscommunication because he just threw it to us. We then get a timeout at about 20 seconds to play. I wanted to run some baseline screening action for Marshall. We talked about hey, the slip will be open, meaning the screener coming to the ball, and what I really wanted Marshall to do he did, which he does about one out of every ten times I ask him; that is, he had the momentum. They're chasing him off that screen. Dribble penetrate to the middle of the floor. Get it to the middle of the floor. Don't settle for a jump shot. He got it to the middle of the floor, and as he said, as is the case with most everybody, the passer, in this case Derrick, his man helps over. We get it to the open man, Derrick then had an opportunity to crack him off the dribble and get to the floater. Q. Andy, they had a huge advantage on the boards, 17 offensive rebounds, 47/35 overall. Murph and Reg, they kind of have to pull back a lot of times because of foul trouble?  What were they doing? COACH KENNEDY: No. That's a pro front line. Missouri, Alex Oriakhi is going to play in the NBA for a long time. Those guys are good. Keion Bell, athletic, athletic off that offensive glass. You don't put a body on him, he hurts you. That's a very good basketball team. You know, Murph got 13, Reg got 6. He's battling Oriakhi trying to keep him off the glass. We've got to get more from our guards. In the last two games, we averaged 16 rebounds a game out of our backcourt. We didn't get that game. As a result, we gave up way too many possessions and we were fortunate to survive. We made that up with turnovers. We play a possessions game. We gave them a bunch of offensive rebounds, but we turned them over, which gave us a chance. Q. Andy, as you alluded to, Marshall was fearless about taking shots and when Derrick hit the 3 to tie it, it looked like there was a play for Marshall but he kind of went up in the air and then passed off and the ball went to Derrick. What about that sequence and decision? COACH KENNEDY: It was very similar, Jerry, to the game winning play simply because when the ball goes to Marshall, the entire team, the other team guards him, whether it be a big guy extending too far on the screen, whether it be the opponent, the other guard, Millinghaus guard, coming over and trying to limit his space. Marshall just made the right play. You and I talked about this because I know you've done a feature on him, as everybody has, and I tell him every day, Marshall, I want you to shoot it, too. Let me help you get shots. Sometimes I think he kind of gets out of it and is trying to hit home runs. But again, tonight he made the right plays down the stretch. That's why we want the ball in his hands. Q. Yeah, so Vanderbilt against Kentucky got out really quickly and never looked back. As Marshall alluded to, you guys are a second-half team. What do you think your guys are going to have to do tomorrow to really limit Vanderbilt's success early? COACH KENNEDY: We're going to have to play equally as hard. Vanderbilt is a good team. There is no coach in America I have more respect for than Kevin Stallings. He's done a terrific job with his team. We played them I think the third game of the SEC season. They made 17 3's, which was a Memorial Gymnasium record. We were able to survive it. Marshall hits that 30-footer, we get to overtime, they gave us fits in the ball screen. They space you. We've had trouble all year with face 4s. Rod Odom played his tail off tonight. They're a good basketball team. Tonight's game against Kentucky did not surprise me. We're going to have to play equally as hard. I hope we got the one bad game out of us as it related to missing some shots that we typically make. I hope we can be a little more efficient offensively. It's going to take an equal effort for us to have an opportunity to play again on Sunday. Q. Andy, you've talked a number of times with us about quality wins instead of quantity of wins. Do you think this is enough for the resume? COACH KENNEDY: I don't know. I hate getting asked the question, make your own case. I've always said this, you are what your numbers say you are. As a coach, you are what your record says you are. We're 24 and 8. There has never been a BCS team in the history of NCAA Tournament with 24 wins that didn't get in. We just won 13 games in the SEC. We beat a team who is solidly in. Missouri is a team that's in the NCAA Tournament, and we needed an opportunity coming into Nashville, as we were driving up from Oxford in our bus on Bridgestone tires, nonetheless, as we were coming up, there were only two teams here that didn't need do anything else to get one. One was Florida and the other one was Missouri. Ourselves, along with Tennessee, along with Kentucky, along with Alabama, along with whoever, all knew we needed to come here and help ourselves. As Marshall alluded to, there's a lot of things you can't control. Some of the teams that are in that same pod with us lost today. We didn't. We just beat an NCAA Tournament team on neutral site and a NCAA Tournament quality game. Our numbers I think reflect the fact that hopefully we can get our name called on Sunday. Q. Coach, Missouri had struggled early on in the season with having games where they led late but blew the game. Did that give you guys confidence going in knowing that Mizzou had blown leads earlier this season? COACH KENNEDY: When I watch Missouri I've got so much respect for Frank and his team. I think this is a Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four team. When I look at the pieces they have, they don't have any weaknesses. And so as I was looking for a weakness or trying to find some faint hope it was really about us. It was about our will, our will had to be strong enough to put ourselves in position to make a play, and that's what happened. It wasn't really anything Missouri did. We got a gift at the end when they threw us the ball, but our effort and our tenacity simply because we were on death row and we knew that, and in order to get off death row, you've got to make a play and we were fortunate to make one at the end. THE MODERATOR: That you have very much. COACH KENNEDY: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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