|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: KANSAS CITYMarch 21, 2013Reggie BullockDexter StricklandRoy WilliamsKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI JOE DALFONSO: We're joined by North Carolina student‑athletes. Questions, please. Q. Dexter, y'all had some struggles this year getting things going. What has it been about the last couple weeks where you seem to put things a little bit more together? DEXTER STRICKLAND: I would say just confidence and our experience, just growing as a team. I think we all, you know, have an understanding of what we supposed to do on the floor. The freshmen, them having more experience game after game, them having more confidence, like I said. You know, we're just playing well together. Q. Do you feel right now you're playing as well as you've played all year? REGGIE BULLOCK: We're playing our best basketball right now as a team. Everybody have confidence in each other. We've grown as a team by every game. We just listening and doing the things that coach want us to do. So we're growing as a team right now. We're playing our best basketball. DEXTER STRICKLAND: The same thing. I think now we are playing at our potential. I think we can do better, though. I think the losses against Duke made us better. The second loss against Duke also made us better. The loss to Miami I think was going to motivate everybody on our team to even play harder. We're just ready to play tomorrow night. Q. Reggie, you really did a much better job on the boards against Miami than you did against Maryland the day before. What did you do to offset their size advantage? What do you have to do tomorrow? REGGIE BULLOCK: Not get away from the things we've been doing to win games. Stick to continuing to hit the boards, sharing the ball well, and just playing tremendous defense on the defensive end. They got some big guys, so we have to rebound as a team and get out in transition and run. Q. Villanova has had some trouble defending the three‑pointer. That's something you do well. Can we expect a lot of three‑pointers from you guys? DEXTER STRICKLAND: I think you can. With us having a small lineup, it allows the floor to be more spaced out, allowing myself, Marcus, to drop to the basket, find our great shooters who are Reggie, Leslie, and P.J. I think we're going to do a great job as far as shooting and attacking on offense. Q. Reggie, it sounded like you take that as a challenge when you're playing a team with a lot of big guys, rebounding. Is that something you relish? REGGIE BULLOCK: Every day in practice coach always tell us at the backboards with us going small, sticking P.J. at the 4. I know it's tough for us to get a lot of rebounds, so I try to live on the backboard and do whatever it takes to get opportunities and extra plays for my team. So I just try to live on the backboards. Q. Dexter, Carolina traditionally plays big men, post inside out. This is a departure for your program. Have people taken to it around the program, fans and whatnot? DEXTER STRICKLAND: I think so. I think everybody's now accepted the fact that we're going small. I think we're playing well at it. I think the first time we switched up the lineup was the Duke game. Even though we lost that game, I think it brung us together as a team. I think we won six games in a row after that. We just saw what type of team we could be with that lineup and we stuck with it. To this day, I think we're still playing, you know, better with that lineup. Q. Some people are saying that because of the history that Coach Williams has with this area, he may get booed tomorrow when you are introduced. Was that something you would pay a bit of attention to? Might that motivate you? Have you talked about that? DEXTER STRICKLAND: Absolutely not. We have not talked about it at all. I don't think coach cares about getting booed. I'm pretty sure he's experienced that throughout his whole career of coaching. That's probably the least of his worries. But we're not focused on that at all. We're not focused on the fans and them booing us or them booing Coach Williams. That's not what we thinking about. Q. Reggie, what do y'all know about Villanova in terms of their style of play? What kind of challenges will they present for you? COACH WILLIAMS: They try to play physical. They got some good guards. James Bell, the Hilliard kid. They can shoot the ball, they're very aggressive. We've been hearing a lot of things about them being tougher than us as a team. I know my guys going to be ready to come out and battle tomorrow. We're going to have to be able to solve those type of problems on the court. JOE DALFONSO: Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. Good luck tomorrow. We're joined by head Coach Roy Williams. We'll ask him to make a statement on his club being here in Kansas City, then go to questions. COACH WILLIAMS: We're excited to be here. You know you've been coaching too long when one of your former players is in the media and looks older than you do (laughter). We're excited to be here. There were times early in the season when people wondered if we were going to be in any tournament. Right now you have the post‑season NIT and 13 other tournaments. We didn't know if we would be in any of them. We have a great group of guys that throughout the course of the year tried to get better in each and every practice. It was our goal when we started, when we went to practice over at Rockhurst, was to try to get better. Down the stretch we won eight of our last 10, and nine of those games we played pretty well. Last home game against Duke, didn't play well. They whacked us pretty good. Our team is excited about being here. They've never really been in this position where they're major contributors for a team in the NCAA tournament. Reggie started for us last year after Dexter got hurt, but everybody else, this is a first‑time experience for them. We're excited about being here and hopefully we'll play well. Q. All the years you were at Kemper, what do you think of this place? First time here? COACH WILLIAMS: I've never been out on the court. I hope it looks a helluva lot better than this part does. There's not very many great media rooms in the world, but there's some beautiful facilities. I've heard great things about it, but I literally have not walked out on the court yet. Watching the tournament on TV, some things that have happened the last two or three years, everybody says it's a great venue. The locker room looks great. My guess is it will be fantastic when we get out there. Q. I'm sure for a coach it's a privilege to get here, whatever the path. You did take a different path this year. Normally in your career you've coached a lot of inside out, big men. Has it been an interesting challenge to coach this way with the four guards, more much a perimeter team? COACH WILLIAMS: That's a good way to put it. It's been interesting and it's also been scary because it's not something I have been comfortable with. Most coaches develop a philosophy, a style that they stick with most of the time. If you've done it for 25 years as a head coach, you're probably not going to change very much because you dance with who brung you kind of thing. It was a major change for us, it was something I was not comfortable with. I'm still not comfortable with it. Your job as a coach is to just not let things go. You have to keep trying things to become more successful. At Miami, they whacked us about 150 points or something like that. We spent a lot of time in the locker room when the guys were in with the media, the next day on Sunday. We felt like we needed to do something because it wasn't working. P.J. has really added a great deal to us offensively. He's a good defensive player as well. He's just not as big. Our rebound numbers early were good, but the most important, Ws and Ls, were not very good. But going small, we've been able to spread the floor a little bit more, open up some things offensively. Other teams have turned it over a few more times than we were earlier. That's helped us getting the break going. We have not done a very good job of rebounding the basketball last 10 or 12 games, however many it's been. We added some things in one area, but gave up some in another area. It has been interesting, but scary, too. It's probably been good for all of us, including the coaching staff. Q. Does it become easier in college basketball to win with a freshman point guard than it used to be? COACH WILLIAMS: I don't know that it's ever easy to win, period. I know it's not easy to win with a freshman point guard because there's so many things he hasn't seen. Last year halfway through our season we knew we would have Marcus, Kendall Marshall, it was going to be a great scenario. Marcus would learn from him. Be able to do some things, be able to avoid the extreme highs and lows that a freshman goes through so much more than anyone else. I've played a lot of freshman point guards. Greg played with us at Kansas. Jacque Vaughn, coach for the Orlando Magic, played a heck of a lot and started as a freshman; Aaron Miles started as a freshman; Jeff Boschee started freshman; Kirk Hinrich started as a freshman; Ty Lawson started after the first five games as a freshman for us at North Carolina. It's been done, but it's not easy by any means. We're a little more complicated than other people. I give the point guard more responsibilities than other people. I knew with Marcus that I had a kid who was very intelligent to begin with, but had great basketball savvy. It was probably easier for him than it would be a lot of other people. Q. You mentioned a couple familiar faces that you've seen. Have you given any thoughts to what kind of reception you expect tomorrow? COACH WILLIAMS: I really haven't. We've been a little busy trying to win a game. For me, University of Kansas and Lawrence was a great 15 years of my life. I've said it this way before: I gave my heart, body, and soul for 15 years, and I loved it. When I went back to North Carolina, it was a very emotional thing. It's a very emotional thing when I didn't go the first time, and it was when I did go the second time. I'll use this analogy. A guy stopped me in the airport, said, Coach, I just wanted to say hello, but I wanted to tell you I'm a big time Jayhawk fan. I said, I am, too. He walked off. Went down a couple gates, came back a few moments later and said, You surprised me. I said, I was there 15 years, had wonderful players that I loved, it was family and always will be. It's not immoral to love two institutions. When I was a coach at Kansas, it was my favorite school. North Carolina was my second favorite school. I happen to be coaching at North Carolina now, and it's my favorite school and Kansas is my second favorite school. I realize some people were upset when I left. Hopefully time is going to cure a lot of those problems. College basketball, we got enough to worry about without worrying about whether they're going to clap or boo when I come out. 19,000, I'm all right then. First time we went and played at Kentucky, I was booed by 24,000. Regardless of how bad it is, it's not going to outnumber that. Q. You had pretty good luck for quite a while in your career having guys stay around maybe an extra year. That has not been as much the case recently. How hard an adjustment has that been for you? COACH WILLIAMS: It has changed the whole culture of college basketball. We lost 11 guys to the NBA draft in the last eight years, early, not counting some of the seniors. It's very difficult. In 2005, we lost basically the entire starting club. Won the national championship, came back the next year, we were still okay. In 2009, we lost four of the five starters. The next year we were not very good. We kept getting guys hurt that year, too. So it added to it. The landscape has really changed. You almost have to recruit like you're a junior college and understand you're lucky if you have a guy more than one year. I think we understand that. It's still been difficult. Last year mid‑season I thought we were going to lose two guys, we ended up losing four. There's no way you can replace that at the end of the year. It's what it is. It's sad to me because I'm a college basketball fan. I'm a college basketball guy. In some ways college basketball has become just a bus stop for a lot of people. The worst thing is, it's become a bus stop for a lot of families and everybody else that think their son should be leaving. So it has made it difficult, yeah. Q. You briefly referenced the '05 game with Villanova. Villanova fans still remember that call at the end of the game. What do you remember about it? Was that your closest call on your way to that '05 national championship? COACH WILLIAMS: I just remember I thought it was the greatest call I'd ever seen, that kind of thing. No. I remember there was one a couple before that that I almost lost it myself. It's typical of what goes on in college basketball. I remember they played great. We got our point guard in foul trouble. He fouled out. We had our backup point guard that made two big free throws for us. That was a big‑time game. You know, that year in '05, I was trying to think quickly here, we had a big‑time game with Wisconsin, as well, big‑time game with Villanova, Michigan State we were down at halftime, Illinois in the national championship game it was tied with four minutes to go. All of our games that year down the stretch were pretty difficult. '09 when we won it, we didn't have any close games. Won every game by 12 points. I like that part better, to be honest with you. Villanova has been successful. I may miss this, I hope not, eight of the last nine years they've been to the NCAA. Jay does a great job. I tried to call him yesterday, trying to get on his good side. I was going to try to give him a real good restaurant here in Kansas City to eat. But that game was a big‑time game for us, no question. Q. Could you talk when you went to the four guards, you shoot the three very well, rebounding has been affected a little bit. What are a couple strengths with this team with this lineup, and a couple things this team has struggled with, as well? COACH WILLIAMS: Well, the positives: we do have a lineup a lot of times where we have three really good three‑point shooters out there. James Michael is not a low‑post player. He's a guy that drives us to the basket and gets the 12‑ to 15‑foot shots. If you have guys that can stretch the defense, you help James. Dexter is the guy who puts the ball on the floor and drives the ball to the basket. I think we've also defensively been able to get a few more turnovers with this lineup, and that's enabled us to get our fast break going. On the negative side, we don't block any shots. We block the same number of shots that I would block, that's about it. We do a terrible job rebounding the basketball. It has been good for us. We made the decision to try something to see if the positives outweigh the negatives. So far we think they have. But there's no question that it's give‑and‑take. But that's what coaching is. What you're trying to do is put the puzzle together. Sometimes the pieces don't actually fit completely, so you have to change the puzzle a little bit or change the pieces a little bit. We tried to get our best five basketball players on the court, and thought that would give us the best chance to win. Q. Looking at the minutes, could you comment on your bench. I see a lot of games you play 11 guys. Outside of Leslie McDonald, those minutes are limited. Describe what your bench gives you right now. COACH WILLIAMS: It depends from game to game. If they give us something when they get in, they get another chance. I always felt like when you make substitutions, you can help us if you don't hurt us. So give us something positive. I picked on Greg there when Greg played for us at Kansas. Greg didn't start, but he could shoot the dickens out of the basketball. As a matter of fact, I said something like that the other day. My players never even heard that. They didn't know what the dickens it was. When Greg came in the game, he gave us something. If he made a shot, I let him play some more. If he missed a shot, Greg, come over and sit beside me a little more. Leslie's gonna play. One of the big guys is going to play because we need to go big at some point during the game. I made this statement the other day. I do not care about you personally during the game; I care about our team. I am not going to do something just to please you and not be fair to everybody else. I'm going to play the guys who I think is going to give us the best chance to win. After the game, off the court, I do care about you personally. If you go out there and screw it up twice in a row, expect for your rear‑end to come out. I think I'd be unfair to the other kids if I keep putting you out there and you keep screwing it up. I'm not the smartest guy, but I'm sure not the dumbest guy either. Q. You've downplayed your role in this late‑season turnaround. This is the second year in three years that you've made a switch mid‑season that was significant and really helped the trajectory of the team. How do you think you've seen your coaching style and philosophy evolve over the years, if you think it has? COACH WILLIAMS: I think it's changed all the time because players change. There's things I believe in that I got from Coach Smith. There's no question about that. But players change, so you got to change your style a little bit. Hopefully in college you can recruit guys that you can believe that play the style you want to play, but sometimes you're surprised, or sometimes guys get hurt, or sometimes it just doesn't work. I think you have to be willing to make changes. It's not comfortable for me.  I like to pick five guys and say, You're my guys, these other two or three are going to play a lot. If you want to change that, you got to beat those guys out. But sometimes you do have to make changes. I'm one of the most stubborn guys you've ever known, but sometimes you need to be a little more intelligent than that. Q. In your study of Villanova, what impresses you most about them? COACH WILLIAMS: It's strange, I watched the St. John's game, Marquette game. Steve Robinson's watched five or six so far. We still have some time before 6:00 tomorrow. They're a balanced team. They can shoot the ball, but they can also score inside. They can drive the ball to the basket. They can rebound it. The first part of the Marquette game, they were so good defensively it was ridiculous. That's the thing that jumped out about that right there, how good they were defensively. In the St. John's game, they would turn it over. I would say, All right, we have a chance. Then they would make St. John's turn it over as well. I think the balance of their team, there's not one thing that you can take away that will make a major effect on the outcome of the game. You can't say, I've got to do this to Pinkston or this to Bell, if I do that, the game is going to be ours. I think they're a difficult team to guard, and I think that's part of it, too. JOE DALFONSO: Thank you very much. Good luck. COACH WILLIAMS: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|