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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: SALT LAKE CITYMarch 22, 2013Tommy AmakerLaurent RivardWesley SaundersChristian WebsterSALT LAKE CITY, UTAH THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by Harvard student‑athletes, Laurent Rivard, Christian Webster and Wesley Saunders. Questions for our student‑athletes? Q. Laurent, after your performance last night and also your performance against Vanderbilt, I think it's fair to say that the Arizona is really going to be looking to contain you. Does this affect how you play at all? LAURENT RIVARD: No, I don't think it will affect our style of offense. We play off penetration. So if they don't help off me, that means Wesley, Siyani, Christian will have more room to drive. The big men inside will have more room to work. So I don't think it will change anything. Q. Your coach was complimentary about your shooting and also about your work ethic. Tell me about how you became such a good shooter? And then maybe Wesley and Christian can comment on why you are such a great shooter. LAURENT RIVARD: I think it's all about repetition and getting good reps in, just not shooting lightly, going at game speed all the time. We have that rebounding machine that we call the "gun" at the gym. I use it a lot. It allows me to get more shots up than if I had someone rebounding and shoot with a partner. So it's all about repetition and getting shots up at game speed. WESLEY SAUNDERS: Honestly, whenever I go to the gym I always see Laurent in there. He's the first one in there, the last one to leave, always getting shots up. It's not really a mystery why he's such a great shooter. CHRISTIAN WEBSTER: His work ethic is tremendous. He puts a lot into it, that's why he gets so much out of it. Q. Christian, how tough has it been to refocus after last night's game? CHRISTIAN WEBSTER: It's been tough, but I think the celebration ended this morning. We had a meeting and Coach was like, now it's time to focus on Arizona in today's practice and prepare for Arizona. Like Coach said earlier in our meeting, we're used to this in Ivy League Friday, Saturday games back‑to‑back. So it's nothing new for us. Q. Following up on the 24 hours and what it's been like since skipping off the court having beat New Mexico? What have you heard about the reaction back home? And have you heard from anybody in particular, tweet messages, e‑mails? LAURENT RIVARD: Yeah, we definitely heard from a lot of people back home, offensively our phones were blowing up, friends, family, everything. But personally I talked to Jeremy a little bit. I talked to Keith Wright yesterday in the locker room. Talked to McNally and Drew (Indiscernible), recent alumni. Keith had a game tonight and he was up and it was about 6 in the morning for him when we finished our game because he's in Sweden. So it was nice to know that they kept following us. WESLEY SAUNDERS: Everybody has just been tweeting, Facebook, everything. People from my family, people I didn't know about just everybody is excited and they were congratulating us on the great victory, so it's been great. CHRISTIAN WEBSTER: Yeah, the same. It's been a crazy twelve hours, just trying to refocus now and get back to the task at hand. But it's been pretty overwhelming. Q. Guys, why did you choose Harvard? What were your other one or two schools that you were looking at? CHRISTIAN WEBSTER: For me, the reason why I chose Harvard was a division that Coach Amaker had for the program and Harvard being a world class institution, and the basketball team wasn't a world class institution when I got here. Just the vision that Coach Amaker had and wanted to make that. And being here in this position now is something I believed in and him being from Washington, D.C., from where I'm from, it made me believe in it that much more. Two other schools that I was interested in were American, Richmond and a couple of other Ivy League schools, and I chose Harvard. WESLEY SAUNDERS: Similar to Christian, I thought Harvard was the best of both worlds. It had the academics, and the athletics were on the uprise and I saw the vision, like Christian said. Two of the other schools I was looking at were Colorado and USC. LAURENT RIVARD: Just like they said, the vision that Coach Amaker had about the program. The program was on the rise when I committed, and I knew it would only get better. I was interested in Bucknell, that was pretty much my last two choices. Bucknell is in the NCAA Tournament, too. Q. Along those lines, a lot of talk about Coach Tommy Amaker's recruiting. Can you talk about what kind of a recruiter he is and his involvement with you? LAURENT RIVARD: If he really wants a player, he goes hard after a player. But I think he kinda let us the program and the success of the team talk for the recruiting, I guess. For me, I saw that it was on the rise, there was notable alumni, Jeremy Lin was there, as I was committing, and we knew the program was getting better every year. He uses what he's been building as a strong point of emphasis. WESLEY SAUNDERS: He definitely lets the program speak for itself. He's honest in his recruiting. He doesn't sugar coat anything. He tells you everything the way it is. I've been really happy, and Coach Amaker is a great coach. I couldn't ask to be in a better program. Q. It's been interesting reading the national coverage of your victory. It's sort of these cute, intelligent kids that can also play basketball now. I wonder how it feels to get that attention? CHRISTIAN WEBSTER: Well, I don't know about us being cute. But, yeah, like I said, it's been overwhelming. It's been unbelievable for us to receive this kind of attention, and we're just grateful to be in this position and be here on this stage and to be able to play this game that we love on this stage. It's an amazing feeling. WESLEY SAUNDERS: It feels great. It's kinda nice to break the stereotype that we're the nerdy kids and show people that we can play basketball as well. It's great to finally show on a big stage what we can do on the court as well. LAURENT RIVARD: Yeah, just like Wesley said, it's nice that people don't think of us as nerds. Now everybody at Harvard, not just the basketball team, but everybody has other talents other than being smart. So it's just fun to get that kind of attention. Q. Wesley, what makes a guy go from LosAngeles?  And what were you looking for leaving there to go to Harvard? Secondly, did you know when you left that you might be back for the Regional next week? WESLEY SAUNDERS: Man, well, for me the decision to go out to the east coast to Harvard, it was just honestly when I went on my visit I fell in love with it. Just the whole atmosphere and everybody was so nice and it felt like home to me. The program, like I said before, was on the uprise and the academics speak for themselves. Leaving, I knew it was a possibility, but it's just crazy how everything has lined up for this to all be possible. It's great. Q. Last night you guys didn't shoot a free‑throw in the first half and part of the second half. And Wes, seemed like you started going at Kirk and trying to get to the line. Was that deliberate? And is it attacking the basket something you are going to do tomorrow? WESLEY SAUNDERS: Definitely we didn't shoot a free‑throw in the first half, so that was a point of emphasis at halftime, trying to get to the free‑throw line. That's something we have tried to do all year is get to the free‑throw line. So it's something that moving forward we will definitely want to try to do. Q. Obviously last night was a history‑making turn of events for the program and beating a top‑10 opponent for the first time. How do you turn the page now and prepare to face an even bigger challenge against Arizona? And to what extent has your experience in the regular season playing back‑to‑backs prepared you for this format? LAURENT RIVARD: I think the back‑to‑back games in the Ivy League is going to help us a lot. It's a little different here now. I guess we have a day off in between. But during the Ivy League season we would win or lose on Friday night and we had to turn the page whether we felt good about how we played or not, but we had to turn the page and focus on the next opponent. That's what we're doing today. We have practice right now. We're going to start focusing on Arizona, and I think it's going to help us. WESLEY SAUNDERS: It definitely prepares us. Like Laurent said, we have to turn the page and get on to the next opponent. So I think the Ivy League season has really prepared us for situations like this. CHRISTIAN WEBSTER: The Ivy League has definitely prepared us. Yesterday gave us a lot of confidence, too. So I feel like both this tournament and the Ivy League have helped us a lot. Q. Wesley, you mentioned Colorado and USC, you went to an elite camp or something in Arizona. Did you have any interest in them early on in your recruiting, and did you follow them or anything? WESLEY SAUNDERS: Arizona was a school I was interested in. They never offered me or anything like that, but I went to the elite camp. I liked the school. I liked the coaches as well. They were great guys. It was a nice school. Q. Just following that up, were you a fan of any particular Pac‑12 team growing up? Watch any of the conference at all? WESLEY SAUNDERS: Not really. I live 5 minutes from USC, so I guess that would be the school that I kept up with the most; and obviously, one of my high school teammates, Anthony Stover went to UCLA. So I kinda kept up with them, but I wasn't a fan of any Pac‑12 schools. Q. Laurent, how would you describe your practice facilities? Do you have your own strength training center and your own practicing facility for basketball? LAURENT RIVARD: At Harvard we actually just have one main gym. We have six baskets, plenty of baskets. We only share it with the women, so it's pretty much available all day except for their practice time. So that's what's good about it. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, gentlemen. We are now joined by Coach Amaker. Questions for Coach? Q. Tommy, just curious to find out what the ensuing 12, 24 hours were like for you, soaking up that win last night. And who did you hear from? Did you hear from Coach K.? Any other colleagues? The president? Anybody like that? COACH AMAKER: Obviously, having the victory last night was very thrilling for our team and our program and for anybody associated with Harvard. It's obvious that we had a great contingency of Harvard folks here and alums. So it was really neat to get back to the hotel, a lot of folks were there to cheer us on as we got off the bus and walked into the hotel. But certainly we had a bite to eat with our kids and you try to get some semblance of calm at some point to be able to start the process of turning the page. One of the neat things about that for us is that we're pretty used to that, because in the Ivy League we play on Friday and Saturday nights. We talked about that as something that will hopefully serve us well while we're here. I did get a lot of, as all of our players and the rest of our staff did, got a lot of calls. I tried to leave the phone where it was and it was too much to deal with. I did get a call from the president, the president of Harvard. I should have left it like that and let you run with it. But President Faust did call from Korea. She was there and traveling, but it was neat to get a call from her and a message from her that the news had traveled fast and she had been able to find out about our score and our game and wanted to say congratulations. We wanted to make sure that I mentioned that to our players that she was so very proud of our team and our program. Q. I'm curious what this year has been like and what this win did for you in the context of the academic scandal that had gone on. What was it like to cope with that as a team and now is this some good PR out of that? Does this help the image of everything? COACH AMAKER: You know, it happened a while ago, and we've dealt with it throughout, as you can imagine. We've been able to have this team focus on this year and that's been what we have done as a coaching staff and that's the right thing to do. I think the guys have been able to adjust and to adapt incredibly well as evidenced by where we are right now and I think that's the main thing. We haven't tried to structure anything from a PR standpoint. The facts are what they are, and it wasn't anything that any of us would prefer to have happen at our school across the board with so many kids and families and folks involved in something like that which is somewhat from what I've seen. But I think our guys have been able to adjust just like I would expect most young kids to be able to do. They've done it exceptionally well. I've been very impressed with how they have been able to do that. Q. Asking the players about why they chose Harvard, I think each one of them talked about your vision. I guess the big question I had was, what things did you have to overcome when you came to Harvard to make your vision a reality? COACH AMAKER: You know, it's funny, to me that's‑‑ I love the word "vision", first of all, and we use that a lot because that was real and truthful from day one of what I felt in my heart about Harvard. It's an incredible brand. It's a magical name, and that's not a knock to any other wonderful place or institution or university. I just think that it speaks for itself in so many ways of being considered the very best. I didn't have to overcome, or we didn't have to try and feel like we were overcoming anything. What we tried to do is present a vision and present Harvard as an option, as an opportunity. I never used the word "sell" maybe‑‑ I don't know who else you've talked to, but we have never used that to "sell" anything. We want to present Harvard. We think it can be an opportunity of a lifetime and that's what we talked about. It wasn't overcoming anything. It had to do with us presenting who we are and what we have. I thought if you get a chance to do that with an opportunity like Harvard, for the right kids, the right situation, it can be something meaningful. We have been fortunate to get these kids to see that, to look at that, and I think to fall in love with that. Q. Have you been in anymore imposing underdog situations than maybe you were at the World Championship games a few years ago? COACH AMAKER: You remember that? That's a while ago, not a few! You know, I don't know how much we look at it as "imposing." You don't get to this point if you aren't pretty good. We've shown that we can be pretty good at times. This tournament can be magical because it's a one‑shot deal, a one‑day situation and all you have to do is play better that day. So we're not looking at it as anything imposing. We're looking at it as an incredible opportunity. That's how we like to approach things and look at things and we're going against, we think, a terrific and talented basketball team, as we won against that ball club yesterday. We're hopeful we can play well and get a little help from them to not play as well, so I don't look at it in that manner to be very honest. Q. In talking with Chambers, you talked about the opportunity of a lifetime, but he said it wasn't ‑‑ he said you were the first recruiting letter that he got, but that wasn't why he chose Harvard. It wasn't what you were doing on the court. He said it was you, the relationship that he built with you. Could you expand on that just a little bit? COACH AMAKER: It's nice to hear that. He's very special to me, personally. He's been a special player in our program, and he's becoming an incredibly special kid on our campus. If you ever get a chance to talk to other people about this kid not from a basketball standpoint of his ball skills or behind the back dribble or those things, I mean, how do you view him on Harvard yard or walking into one of the houses or dormitories or dining halls? I think people are attracted‑‑ he has a spirit about him, and I love that about Siyani. He's a special kid and he certainly plays basketball in a way that I think you get excited when you watch him play. I know when we recruited him we wanted him to play in that manner. Sometimes I thought he held himself back a little bit and I told him if you ever come to play for us or play for me, we want you to be dazzling because you're capable of it. I love that about him. He plays with a spirit and an energy that becomes contagious and I fell in love with that watching him to play and then you get to know him as a person and it's hard not to feel close to him in so many different ways. Q. What is your routine on that Friday‑Saturday thing? What do you do as far as getting rest and protecting guys? If I'm reading the schedule right, you had one on a Sunday and lost. Did that make any difference? Was it throwing you out of that rhythm? COACH AMAKER: No, with our routine in our conference you have all week to try to prepare for two games. So we need to incorporate things in our practice to get us ready for both ball clubs. But we only talk about the one on Friday. We don't talk about the second one until the first one is over. Then we start that process for the second one, in terms of communication, scouting report, words or names or any of those things for our second opponent after the game on Friday. Then we begin that process for the second game on Saturday, and we usually don't like to have‑‑ if we're on the road, we don't like to have a shootaround. But I like to see if we can do things with our guys in the hotel to keep 'em off their legs and keep 'em fresh, and it's worked well for us in our conference as well. Q. Could you take Miller in a game of one‑on‑one? And what is it about guards that make them good coaches? COACH AMAKER: I probably could not take Sean in the game of one‑on‑one, so that's the first part. I think in terms of guards and point guards, I like to think of that as a quarterback on a football team, you're responsible for a lot more than just yourself, and that might be the only position on the team that is viewed that way. So maybe as you get a little older and if you get in the coaching position you can see things from a lot of different perspectives, and I think that's‑‑ you have to be outside of yourself a lot. So I think that's important for those two positions, the point guard and also a quarterback on the football team. Q. As you prepare to face Arizona coming off that win last night, in what way did you see your team gain in confidence, specifically your front court guys who are now going to have a huge challenge tomorrow? COACH AMAKER: Huge challenge. Arizona is talented and big and athletic across the board, but certainly up front. We're young up front. You look at our guys that are playing the bulk of the minutes for us; they're big and they're sophomores. This is a first go‑round and the roles that they're having in our program and for our team. They have come through nicely for us in certain moments. We don't need them to do a lot. We just need them to be solid in a few areas. I think if you break it down and simplify it like that, it gives them a chance to be confident in just a few things. As the game went on for us yesterday you could see the confidence growing in our young big guys up front. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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