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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 17, 2013Shane LarkinJim LarranagaTrey McKinney JonesDurand ScottGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA Miami: 87 COACH LARRANAGA: While we're waiting for Durand Scott, I will make an opening statement about the game. I thought the first half was about as high a level of basketball as I've seen all year long. I thought we played great, I thought Carolina was great. That's what I told the team at halftime, I said we're playing great, they're playing great, it's a great game. We got to keep playing great. The guys did. We had to make some adjustments because Carolina is so good at shooting the three we went to a small lineup and between Durand, Shane, Trey and Rion Brown we were able to match up a little bit better and do some switching. That didn't seem to really cause them many problems but it ended up we were scoring so effectively at our end as well. We were shooting the three about as well as they were, so just a tremendous college basketball game and we're thrilled to be the ACC Tournament Champions for 2013. Q. Durand and Trey, it's your fourth year, two years with the previous regime, your second year with Coach Jim Larranaga, what is it about him that brought this out of you guys? TREY McKINNEY JONES: He's an extremely good coach, by far the best coach that I have ever played for. He knows how to get to us. If we're down he knows house to pick us up, very good X's and O's and I couldn't ask for a better coach. DURAND SCOTT: I agree with Trey. He just is afantastic person before he's a fantastic coach. He knows how to talk to us. He just knows how to be a friend first and that's the best way to get so somebody, I believe. It just makes it so much easier for us on the court. It makes you want to do anything for him because he's, like, a part of your family. He created a bond between us teammates that just can't be broken. I think that's helped us down the stretch and that's created the team that you see today. Q. Jim, talked to you Wednesday about the team losing a little focus in the last week or so of the season. You talked about wanting to put the "foot" back on the accelerator. Do you think you accomplished that in the tournament here? COACH LARRANAGA: I thought I saw that in the second half of the Clemson game where we quit playing conservatively and picked up our aggressiveness at both ends of the floor. Our defense was very good we held them to 49 points, we scored the ball well. Against Boston College, they're a tough match‑up because of how they can spread your defense out, they share the ball very well and our guys I thought rose to the occasion. It was tied with five minutes to go in the game, and we were able to come away with an 11‑point win. Yesterday, playing against a high octane offensive team like N.C. State, we put the pedal to the metal in both halves. I think we had 41 in the first half and 40‑something in the second. 44, maybe? And today, again, very high‑level of play at both ends of the court. Against teams like Carolina and N.C. State and Duke, those teams in particular score the ball so well you have to be a good‑scoring team. You can't go through seriousdroughts against them because they're likely to go on runs of 10 and 12 points in just a two‑minute period of time, so I thought the guys played great for three days. Q. Durand and Shane, how important is this win for you guys, what does it do for y'all going you into the NCAA Tournament? SHANE LARKIN: It was a very important win, gave us a lot of momentum going into the NCAA Tournament. A lot of people are saying we peeked early in the year when we won 14 games in a row and we dropped three out of our last five so a lot of people said we peaked too early, we weren't going to have any chance in the tournament. But we stayed together as a group and stayed together and believed in ourselves and came out here and got three wins in a row against three very tough teams and it gave us a lot of momentum so it was a big win for us. DURAND SCOTT: I agree, it was very big for us. I think it gives us a lot of confidence and a lot of belief in ourselves but at the same time we know we got to prepare for the teams in this tournament because everybody is going to come ready to go and everybody is going to be‑‑ everybody is a great team. So we just got to be led by this guy next to me, Coach Jim Larranaga and I think we will be fine. Q. Durand, was it your back that you hurt? Would you discuss your injury and how it might have affected your performance today? DURAND SCOTT: Um, when I tried to go for the rebound I couldn't see who did it but I got elbowed in my back, and it was like a sharp pain in my lower back. I already had back problems in previous games so once I tried to take a step, it tightened up even more and got a shock to me so I dropped to the floor and I knew I had to take a seat. When I got to the locker room, my trainer, he took care of me, did whatever he did, so I don't know what he put on it. He gave me some pills and stuff and all of that, but, um, I think I would have overcame the injury without those pills or whatever. (Laughter). I just‑‑ what really made me come back for my team was when I got to the locker room I thought about North Carolina and P.J. Hairston. The moment when he got hurt and his finger was bleeding and he came back ‑‑ and it was just an outstanding play. He came back and shot lights out today as well, and in my mind I was like, if he can do that I can do it. I think my team really needs me, just to be a leader out there and get everybody on the right track, and that's what I tried my best to do. And I think that was part of our win tonight. It was kind of hard for me to run as fast and move as fast as I wanted, but I just‑‑ I just let my motivation take over, you know, I didn't really think about it too much. Just tried to talk to my teammates and make things easier on defense and tried to pick my times of offense, put down a few shots and I forget how much we won by, by 6 points, I think that was very important to my team. Q. For a long time now the perception of the ACC is that it's Duke, Carolina and everybody else. The last two years now Florida State won the title and now you have won the title. How important is it for the perception of the ACC of others that teams like Florida State and Miami have now come out and showed that they can win championships? COACH LARRANAGA: First of all you got to give North Carolina and Duke an awful lot of credit. That reputation is we will deserved; they've earned it. They have won more championships than any other school in the league. What we're trying to do is emulate them. They're the teams that are kind of the role model for other college basketball programs across the country. In fact, my first meeting at George Mason in 1997, I asked our players who were the best teams, best programs in the country and who should be our role model and they mentioned Duke and Carolina. When I got to Miami I asked the players who are the best teams in the league and they said Duke and North Carolina, so what we have tried to do is use them as a shining example of how things can be done. Through the recruiting process, through the community, in trying to draw fans and get support for our program, and I think Florida State has done a great job with that, and I think we've got a lot of very, very good teams who haven't won as many championships, but they're also very, very competitive in the league. There is a lot of great, young players in this conference right now, and it could be any of those teams sitting here next year at this time. DURAND SCOTT: I'm excited to be with coach. Coach, I'll second that answer. COACH LARRANAGA: Did you want to repeat the question? Q. He did a good job answering it. DURAND SCOTT: Okay. Q. Shane, you said earlier that people were telling you guys you peeked too early. What kind of incentive was that today and leading into the tournament? SHANE LARKIN: Um, I don't know about the other guys on the team, but I do a lot of research online, seeing what people are saying about us, individual players on our team, saying, and I just kept seeing that everywhere, "They peeked too early. They're not going to do anything. They're finished." And that motivated me to go out there and play as hard as I could, and usually I'm the first person to bring the ball up on offense, or the first person on defense, and everybody accuse me because I'm in front of the team, so I just try to play with a lot of energy and just try to lead by example. Durand is the heart and soul of the team, he's the vocal leader, and I just try to lead by example. People saying that just gave me a lot of motivation to go out there and play hard. We did a great job all week of everybody playing hard and that got us a victory. Q. I'm curious which each of you will do with your piece of the net, including you, Coach. TREY McKINNEY JONES: I haven't thought about it actually, probably give it to my mom. I gave her my plaque already. She has been here supporting me through it all so I will probably give it to her. SHANE LARKIN: I'm going to sleep with it for the next two weeks. DURAND SCOTT: I think I'm going to bring it home, add it to a few of my collections. COACH LARRANAGA: Yeah, before the tournament began‑‑ I played high school basketball in New York City at Archbishop Molloy High School, and my high school coach, Jack Kern was my inspiration for wanting to get into coaching. He coached at Molloy for, like, 56 years. He's the winningest coach in both basketball and baseball in the history of the state of NewYork. And just kind of quietly in my own way and in my prayers, I dedicated this tournament to him. Now that we've won it, I know that he's looking down on us and happy that we were able to accomplish what we did this weekend. I'm going to put that net in my office on display like we have some other nets, but that one would be very, very special to me. Q. Shane, North Carolina had so many neat things going in their favor today in that they had the big crowd, they had the tradition, they're used to being here. They had the motivation of how you guys beat them down in Miami, they said they were fired up about that, and they got to play against you without Durand Scott at 100% most of the game. Is that something you recognized they had in their favor and how were you able to overcome that as a team? SHANE LARKIN: They had a lot of things in their favor but we had a lot of things in our favor. We had a lot of fans here, too, we could hear our fans as loud as their fans and we just stayed together. It doesn't matter where we play, Coach always says it doesn't matter where we play, who we play, we just got to do what we do, and we could have played them at Carolina. And we have to stick together and stay poised and not get down on each other and stay as close together as a group as we can. I think we did that tonight, and they did a great job of shooting the ball. We could have got on each other and started yelling at each other and had bad vibes on the court but we stayed together, and it's just a big thing with us, we always stay together. "Together" is the last word we say when we break every huddle, and we're just a family. We're a family on the court. We have great chemistry and we have a lot of momentum right now so we're playing great. Q. Trey, in the second half after P.J. Hairston hit one of his threes, I swear it looked like you were laughing to yourself when you were running down the court. Is that right? TREY McKINNEY JONES: Yeah, I was, just the way both teams were shooting at that time was lights out, it was crazy, so, yeah, all I could do is laugh at that point, nobody was really missing. Q. (No microphone.) TREY McKINNEY JONES: That's what he has been doing this whole tournament and so we just had tried our best to get a hand in his face, and at times it didn't really matter, and he was still knocking 'em down, but we just had to do it on both ends. Q. When Bobby Cremins won the championship in 1985 he talked about how he felt somewhat responsible for South Carolina losing in 1970 and it was his chance to finally get even. You were part of two teams that got to the finals at Virginia 30 years ago. Do you have any sense of completing something that was incomplete before? COACH LARRANAGA: I'm glad you brought that up, Barry. (Laughter.) So what you're trying to say is I'm 1 for 9 in the ACC Tournaments? You know, it's what I tell these guys all the time. You got to live in the moment. I don't live in the past very much, I don't live in the future. I try to live in the moment and the present, and help these guys as much as I can. When a team wins it's really the players that executed. Shane makes the shots, Trey makes the shots, Durand gets the defensive stops and steals. It's Julian Gamble dunking the ball, it's not me. This is all about these guys dedicating themselves and having a very clear focus of what they want to accomplish and making all the necessity sacrifices. We have guys on the bench who were dying to play, Tonye Jekiri who is 6‑11 said to me at one of the timeouts, "Put me in. I can stop P.J. Hairston" and I was like, "Okay, Tonye. Thanks for the suggestion." They all want to contribute. But whatever suggestions I've made, I think Durand said this earlier, they try to make the decisions work. So what we did at Virginia was great when I was there, and what we have done at Miami this season is great for these guys as well, and I'm just enjoying it I'm along for the ride. Q. Shane, obviously a long list of quality and big‑time ACC guards. What's it like to add your name to that list and are there any particular players that you have tried to pattern or model your game after? SHANE LARKIN: It means a lot! My coaches have done a great job in helping me to become the player I am from last year to this season. If I had to say one player I try to model my game after it would be Chris Paul. He doesn't always look to score the ball, he just knows when to pick his spots. He's always trying to get others involved early in the game, trying to get his teammates going and seeing if somebody can get hot and keep feeding them, like Trey did early today, he got hot so I was trying to find him everywhere. And Chris Paul is the best point guard in the league in my eyes, and I tried to model my game as closely as I can to his. Q. Durand, I know Shane mentioned you could hear y'all's fans as well as the others, but last two games were more or less road‑type atmospheres with N.C. State and UNC having more fans. What does that do to prepare this team for wherever you go in this tournament where you might have to be in a situation where you go into an environment and they have a lot more fans than you do on what is a "neutral" court? DURAND SCOTT: Well, Coach always told us before these game, these are the types of games you want to play in. It will prepare us for the tournament, test our toughness, mentally and physically, and I think we succeeded in that test. Um, as you can see, we won the ACC Championship, which I'm so proud of my guys. The main thing, like Shane said, we just stay together. There is nothing that can beat us‑‑ that will beat that if we just stay together, and that's what we did tonight and came up with a victory and we will continue doing that. Q. Coach referenced earlier going to a small lineup. I wanted to ask the players how comfortable are you guys playing that style of basketball and what does that say about your versatility? SHANE LARKIN: We couldn't much have a four‑guard rotation.  Only one guard really comes off the bench for us, and we always play together at practice, so it's comfortable playing with each other. We all know who we're capable of. We all believe in each other. We never get down on each other. We go against each other every day in practice, so we know what type of competitors we are. We just believe in each other. Going small, it's fun out there. It gives us more opportunity to spread the court out, spread people out, get easier drives and kicks. When Trey is shooting the way he's shooting tonight, even though Durand was hurt a little bit, he still had great drives to the basket that opened up open shots for other people. Whether it's the first pass or second pass out of that drive, his drives, were key, late in the game, driving to the basket, getting other people open. Rion Brown hit several big shots tonight, he's always up for the big shot and just‑‑ they just spread the court and everybody did a great job tonight. We went small, we had to, because they played small. We answered the bell, so this was a great game for us. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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