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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: LEXINGTONMarch 21, 2013Rotnei ClarkeAndrew SmithBrad StevensLEXINGTON, KENTUCKY Butler – 68 THE MODERATOR: We have the Butler coach and student-athletes. We have Andrew Smith and Rotnei Clarke and Butler coach, Brad Stevens. And, Coach, if you would, with an opening statement, please. Thank you. COACH STEVENS: It may not have been esthetic the entire game, you know, missing our first 13 3s, but our defense was really good in the first half. It was just okay for a ten-minute stretch in the second half. I thought our lack of ability to attack their triangle and 2 hurt us and hurt our attack defensively as well and then turned it back around. I told them in the locker room there's a lot of teams in this tournament that wouldn't be able to withstand a 16-point swing and then have a 16-point swing of their own. So, I'm really proud of the way that they stuck together. I'm proud of the way they played. We were led by our seniors but everybody played pretty well and our defensive focus today was as high a level as it's been for a long time. THE MODERATOR: All right. Q. Rotnei, you've had a pretty wild season first year at Butler, that really scary injury. To be able to come out in your first NCAA Tournament game, hit some big shots in the second half after a tough first half, what does that mean to you? Is it emotional at all? ROTNEI CLARKE: Just feel extremely blessed to be able to play in this tournament. That's why I made the decision to come to Butler. I knew I would have the opportunity to play in a lot of big games and a lot of huge atmospheres. This is as big as it gets. Just excited to be here. Q. Andrew, talk about your defense on Mike Muscala, what were you expecting out of him and do you feel like were you able to frustrate him at all? ANDREW SMITH: Well, he's a really good player, obviously, and I can't really take a whole lot of credit for it. Khyle started on him and it was just a whole team effort. Whenever he got the ball, all five guys were watching him and making sure they were helping me. It was a great team effort, and, yeah, we were able to contain him a little bit, which is obviously very tough because he's a great player. Q. Rotnei, I know you've had some games this season in which you missed some early 3s and made some late ones, but I guess -- this is your first NCAA Tournament game. How jittery or how frustrating was it for you to not have some of those looks go down and how much of a relief was it when they finally did? ROTNEI CLARKE: I mean, I wouldn't say frustrating because I have a lot of support from the coaching staff and my teammates, they continued to tell me to shoot the ball, and when you can play free like that and not have worries, it feels pretty good. But, you know, we were up I think it was 7 at halftime, so we're doing what we could to get a lead anyways, and to see a couple go down the second half was a good feeling. It's all about my teammates and about the coaches and just keep telling me to shoot it and it's good to have encouragement like that. Q. Andrew, this is your fourth year, you've been through an awful lot of tough games, and the coach of the other team said that's one of the hallmarks he felt of Butler. Do you feel like in some ways you've kind of seen it all and that when they came back, it was like something you hadn't seen again? Excuse me, that you had seen? ANDREW SMITH: We knew they were going the make a run. They're a great team. The coach even told us at halftime they're going to make a run. We were prepared for something like that, and fortunately we were able to fight back and, yeah, I mean, being in big games and having four years of experience definitely helps. But, I mean, they're not a whole lot different. Their seniors played really well and they've had great careers and played in big games as well. Q. This is for Rotnei. You come to Butler and you have a reputation as a shooter and a scorer, right? Can you explain what it's like, the defensive mentality there, what you have to buy into, how much stress particularly for a guy who is quote/unquote an offensive guy, to bye into that? ROTNEI CLARKE: It's tough, and I've gotten a lot better and learned a lot, especially the first year that I had to sit out is when I kind of got a grasp of what we wanted to do systematic-wise. I can't explain it. It's just -- it's pretty complex. It's something I've never seen before and things that we do defensively, and it takes a little bit to understand, and, you know, I think I've gotten better defensively. Obviously I'm not the greatest defensive player, not the quickest guy. I tried to do what I can and be in the right spots at certain times. And I mess up sometimes, but guys, you know, we have defensive guys like Barlow and Drew and Roose that are there to help us and that's been good for me throughout the whole season. So I've learned a lot, and I'm really appreciative of coming here and being able to understand the different things, especially on defense. THE MODERATOR: One or two more for the student-athletes. Q. In what ways is this team similar and in what ways is this team different from the teams that went to those national title games? ANDREW SMITH: Well, I mean, the way we're similar is we got to focus on the defensive end. And, I mean, you saw in the first half we only had, what, 21 points, but they only had 14. We feel like even if you're having a bad night, you're going to be able to play the game if you focus on defense. That's the main similarity. I mean, I don't really see a whole lot of differences. Obviously the personnel is different, but we have the same coaching staff and similar game plans for each game, and if we just execute, we have a good chance of winning. THE MODERATOR: One more for the student-athletes. Q. The job that you guys did on Muscala was impressive. What was the game plan and how difficult was facing another guy with your size? ANDREW SMITH: Just watching film on him, you always try and look for tendencies of certain players. With him you couldn't really find one. You can go either shoulder, step out and hit the jump shot. He's a great player. Like I said earlier, the mindset was team defense and we understand that one person can't stop him. He's too good for that. We had to have everybody buy into the system, and fortunately we did. THE MODERATOR: One more hand here and that's it for the student-athletes. Q. This one is for Rotnei. There was a possession that the shot clock had almost drained all the way away and you made a 3 and ended up sort of sprawled out beyond the arc. Can you describe what you're feeling when you see that ball go through and what it does for you guys in that game? ROTNEI CLARKE: It was just a good feeling because it extended the lead a little bit. You know, it got us ready to go back on defense, because we knew if we had a couple more stops, it could seal the game. It's all about my teammates. It took probably two, three screens for me to even get open because Bucknell did a great job all game in trailing screens. They're a tough, physical team. It takes a pass or two. Like I said earlier, the coaches set good plays-up. My teammates get the ball to me when I'm open and it's a team effort. THE MODERATOR: Thank you fellas, Andrew and Rotnei. Thank you. We'll continue with the Coach. Q. Do you guys -- do you think you've developed a reputation as a team that makes your opponents play its worse game? So many teams come in, shoot lower percentages against you, they come off of winning streaks and then suddenly they can't hit a shot, that kind of thing. It seems like so many times the last few years you've prevailed that way. COACH STEVENS: If you're a good basketball team, people won't always play well against you. I always kind of laugh when people say if Team A plays their A Game and Team B plays their A Game, which one will win? Well, if Team A is playing their A Game, Team B is not playing theirs. That's just the way that works, because there's two sides of the ball. Our guys did a great job on the defensive side of the ball today, and it took us awhile to get comfortable offensively. The free throw line was a huge, huge separator for us. I thought we were physical on our drives. I thought we got to the line. Obviously we shot a lot late, probably shot about half of them late, but made them throughout the whole day. The two guys sitting next to me helped separate that thing, but, you know, we spent a lot of time in preparation. I would hope we would be able to take something away. Q. Coach, when it was 37-31 you called a timeout. You had Michael Lewis sitting beside you and you and he were talking a lot and getting input from him. First of all, I thought that was a bit unusual to have an assistant sitting in on the huddle like that, what was that conversation about? COACH STEVENS: The bottom line was we were drawing up some different ways to attack the triangle and 2. What do you spend your time on? Do you spend your time preparing for their offensive stuff, do you prepare for their defensive stuff, or do you prepare for something they probably played 30 possessions all year? I saw them. We had it on our film, but when they went triangle and 2, which they call "double fist," we missed a couple early and then it kind of put us on our heels. We attacked it really well late and then they got them out of it. We were just talking about different ways to attack it. You know, Kellen Dunham was getting ready to go to the free throw line during that huddle and then, you know, our next bucket came on an out-of-bounds play with the ball underneath the basket. Andrew Smith hit a huge 3. That kind of settled us down. Once you see that ball go in, you feel a little different against -- when people trick defense you and those type of things. Q. Brad, you made the choice to start Barlow again today after putting Dunham in there. Can you talk about that a little bit? And then beyond that, his ability to read passes defensively. He kind of talks about his football background and the way he reads those. COACH STEVENS: Both guys were very focused. Barlow was dialed into a different level than pretty much any other guy we had on our team the last couple of days with his study, with getting into the film room, with his ability to read actions. I thought if we started well on Johnson, it would be a hard day for Johnson, and until the end of the game, it was. And so that was just kind of a -- one of those initial gut feelings and I ran it by my numbers guy and got the approval and so we did it. Q. You started this by saying esthetically it wasn't beautiful. I know you're talking about the shooting. Is there a beauty to the way you guys play defense? Can people appreciate it? COACH STEVENS: I think coaches do. I appreciate it, any good defensive team. Bucknell is the third or fourth effective field goal percentage defensive team in the country and I really appreciated the way they play. People think they're going to get shots on them because they don't hard-hedge the ball screens. What they do is they sink the big back in the lane but they really get up under your guards. So you end up having to make those 16-foot runners or 16-foot pull-ups that Rotnei missed a bunch of in the first half. That's hard. It's really hard. So they do it a completely different way than we do it. We do it more of a full rotate and everybody can guard everybody type of deal. And it is -- it takes a long time to get good at it. There's plenty of days where I say, man, there's probably easier ways to do this. If you can get into March and you start to understand things, then you can become pretty good defensively. Q. Andrew kind of touched on this, the lessons that your guys have learned over the last four, five years, how big was that today and how much of a difference do you think that makes the fact that they've been here? COACH STEVENS: Five of our top seven have never played an NCAA Tournament game. I would say for the two of them, probably meant something. Beyond that, I didn't know how they would react, either. I thought Rotnei's first shot would probably hit the backboard and bounce back to half court, to be candid (laughter). And I knew Kellen would be the same way. I sat here a few years ago with Hayward, Mack, and Nored, and we started out down 9-0 before the tournament even officially started. That was their first tournament as freshman. That's hard. That's why if you can get to the second game, the experience starts to help, but it's not real experience that those guys have with the exception of Andrew. And, you know, I think Muscala is terrific, but I think Andrew Smith is terrific, too, and, you know, all week I didn't answer very many questions about Andrew Smith. Q. Muscala ended up trying to shoot over Andrew a lot. What influenced you to start Khyle Marshall on Muscala, because he's really not -- COACH STEVENS: Quickness. Khyle's very good at fronting the post. They run a lot of action where this goes back to the defensive stuff that we were talking about, they run a lot of action where we're going to hedge a ball screen and Andrew is going to return to Khyle's guy and Khyle is going return to Andrew's guy. So it was almost like we preswitched to guard the switch later on, and we do that a lot. I know that sounds -- it's a lot less complimented than it sounds, but we wanted Andrew rotating to Muscala, we wanted Andrew in the middle of the paint. It's one of the reasons why we were late to Willman quite a bit, but you got to give up something. Q. Coach, on a day when the outside shots weren't going down, how important was Rosy Jones to your offense? COACH STEVENS: He was really good, and, you know, Rose is an interesting offensive player because he doesn't shoot jump shots ever and -- he's great at floaters. He's obviously able to score in the post. You know, I thought getting Johnson a couple fouls by posting Rose was a big key for us. You know, we don't run into many 3 men that are as strong as Rose. We talked about that last week with St. Louis. They have one, but, you know, most everybody else, Rose has a physical advantage on. Q. For those of us who were watching courtside and didn't know what we were seeing, who were they triangle and 2 on? COACH STEVENS: Our point guard and 2 guards. They basically played Ayers at the top of a triangle. They played Muscala on the right block and played Willman on the left block. We tried everything in posting Willman on the left block with our bigs, we tried to get Roosevelt in ball screen, we tried to get our guards that were being guarded setting ball screens. We tried a bunch of different stuff. Q. You said you mentioned 30 possessions all year they may have done something. Were you talking about the triangle and 2, they barely did that? COACH STEVENS: The percentage of possessions that I watched were very limited. They played it for six possessions against LaSalle, when, November, December, and then they played it one other time in one other game that I can remember. Maybe they play it more than that, but it wasn't a big part of what they've done in the last couple of weeks. Q. Finally had anybody done that to you this year? COACH STEVENS: They have. They have. We've handled it really well. A lot of times it's really hard to do it against us because we still run our shooters off action. You're still going to have to guard those guys off all that stuff. When we have 3 shooters in, you can't do it. You can, but it's not going to work. But, you know, you're going to have to space the floor and play it better. It allows you to pick a block for a big to post on. So Andrew Smith wouldn't be matched up with Muscala on that. Willman did a great job of guarding him. They did a terrific job. Kept us off balance. It spurred that run. And then once we got settled down, we were fine, but it took a little bit of time.  There's nothing better than playing against it in a game, it's so much better than practicing against it. If we see it again, we'll be a lot better. Q. You just listed off the top of your head when they played the triangle 2 against LaSalle. Can you do that, do you have that recall, with your next two opponents, if I threw a defense at you, you'd able to say -- COACH STEVENS: I don't have it yet. Q. So this is my question: Is it harder to prepare with those shorter lead time for the next round than it was for this round? COACH STEVENS: The amount of preparation is about the same. The amount of sleep is less. I've got a great staff. We got the draw, we got on synergy, went to work. Michael Lewis stayed you up until 3:30 in the morning and slept on a couch that doesn't connect in our team room and then at 8:00 a.m. showed our guys a personnel clip tape that he had created. The staff worked diligently to create all that stuff, and we just feed each other information until we feel comfortable. THE MODERATOR: Last question. Q. I asked Andrew the same question. In what ways is this team similar to the teams that made deep runs and in what ways is it different? You mentioned five out of seven guys this is their first time. COACH STEVENS: The similarity is they're Butler. The similarity is that they can go on a minus 16 run and turn around and win the game. They have some mettle they have some intestinal fortitude that is built up over time, but also a big hopefully core part of our program. The difference are just the people. We have to play a little bit different with who we have on both ends of the floor. But it is a -- truly is a Butler team, which I feel really good about, and I think that never showed itself more true than after we got blasted at VCU and came back and won at UMass. That was kind of telltale moment for me that this is a pretty darn good basketball team. THE MODERATOR: All right. Thank you very much Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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