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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: KANSAS CITYMarch 24, 2013Tyreek DurenRamon GallowayTyrone GarlandJohn GianniniKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI LaSalle – 76 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by LaSalle head coach John Giannini and student‑athletes. We'll start with an opening comment by Coach Giannini. COACH GIANNINI: What a great win. What a great weekend over here. We couldn't be more proud. I know LaSalle is very proud of these guys. We talked all week about the great LaSalle tradition. When you come in, you want to bring that back. These guys are doing it right before our eyes. Tyreek and I were talking about what's just happened, and we're all a little bit numb because it's such a close game, such a great accomplishment. What I told them, all the clichés that coaches talk about, about toughness, getting stops, sharing the ball the way Tyreek hit Tyrone on that play, sticking together, staying positive. Those things are all true. A lot of teams do 'em, a lot of teams don't. But this team has great intangibles. They are tough, they are together. Frankly, that's why we're here. THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Coach, I know you don't like the term 'Cinderella,' but you better get used to that. Can you talk about your expectations moving forward. COACH GIANNINI: We expect to have another tough game and have a chance to win if we prepare well. No more or less than that. We were talking earlier, what people label us, we really try not to acknowledge it. If going into next year people talk about how great we're going to be, we're not going to listen. If people going into the tournament questioned should someone else... We just don't listen. We care about basketball and we care about preparing, and that's how we'll go into this weekend, next year. The external stuff really doesn't matter to us. Winning games matters a lot. What someone writes or says doesn't mean a lot quite frankly. Q. Tyrone, could you take us through that last play? TYRONE GARLAND: Before that play, we was in a timeout. I asked Tyreek, Is the drive from the left wing open? He said, Yeah. When the time was running down, it was flat. I had a feeling I could make the drive, so I told Ramon, Switch. It wasn't even in the plans, I just told him to switch. And when Tyreek drove, like coach always said, Cut behind him. I saw the opening, I laid the ball in. Q. You had to lay it over a 6'9" guy. Did you notice that? TYRONE GARLAND: Yeah, blocked my shot a couple times during the game. I ain't scared of nobody. I just went in there, knew if I had a clear shot, I probably had a chance of making it. Q. Talk about y'all's confidence of beating them off the dribble. RAMON GALLOWAY: Well, that's our game. Playing through the guards, playing out the dribble, each other creating shots for each other. Even when they went zone, coach told us to keep being aggressive. We didn't want to settle. That's pretty much our game, drive and kick, get each other shots. TYREEK DUREN: Like Ramon said, that's pretty much our game plan. Any team that we play, no matter if they big or small, we try to beat them off the dribble, create opportunities for our teammates or finish at the cup if we got our opportunity. That's our everyday game plan, try to beat people off the dribble. Q. Tyrone, talk about the true definition, South Philly Floater? Have you been working on that since high school? TYRONE GARLAND: It's actually the Southwest Floater, not South Floater. They call it on the playground, when you see a big defender, just lay the ball up and they call it a Southwest Floater. I just was hearing that as I was growing up playing in the playgrounds. Q. John, you didn't take them over to the auditorium. COACH GIANNINI: No, but we did go to the Hall of Fame. Q. Three games, five days, two time zones, now to another two time zones. How can you keep this up? RAMON GALLOWAY: You know, we pretty young. It just feel like AAU all over again. We play a game, go to sleep, wake up, play another game. I mean, we pretty excited, I mean, for the whole trip. We in the Sweet 16 now. I mean, we lovin' it. TYREEK DUREN: At this point you're too young to be getting tired. You don't really have time to go tired at this point. You got to wake up and win games. Simple as that. AAU we used to play three games a day. COACH GIANNINI: By regular‑season standards, four days off between games is a lot, so I think we'll be well rested. Q. Tyrone, on the last possession when you spread the floor, besides looking at the spacing, were you watching the clock much? TYRONE GARLAND: Coach said go at 5, so that's what 'Reek did. I just wanted to go behind him if he needed help. When he kicked it back, I saw the open, I just went for it. Q. You were down 69‑64. They had the lead up to four minutes left. Talk about keeping your composure in that situation. RAMON GALLOWAY: I mean, since we got here, coach been preaching, Finish strong. 'Finish strong' has a lot to do with it, those two words. You got to have the will. You got to be poised. You got to have confidence in all your teammates from the first guy on the bench to the last guy in the game. You just got to finish, find a way. We was up. It been like that every game we played, we was up, feeling good. They come back. We found a way. So, I mean, I think we just right now we're peaking just because we mentally strong. We stand poised and have great will. COACH GIANNINI: Well, these guys have been talking about finishing strong. The reason that's so meaningful to us is, number one, it's an important lesson and it's something we emphasize going back to last off‑season. Every conditioning, off‑season conditioning workout when they're tired, we talk about that we have to finish strong. At the end of weeks on Fridays with conditioning and the two hours of skill work we get, they're tired, we talk about finishing strong. At the end of practices, we like to lift at the end of practices when we're tired, we just talk about finishing strong. The wonderful thing about these kids is they're great kids and they listen. There's a lot to be said for listening. They've been great to coach and they've made themselves better mentally and physically. They're terrific. Q. Coach, if I told you the beginning of the season that you'd be standing here now, that Elite 8 is the next goal, but it would say beat Wichita State, what would you have told me? COACH GIANNINI: That it could happen. Q. What does it say about the parity in college basketball? COACH GIANNINI: There's no parity. Parity makes it sound like everyone is average. Everyone's good. You know what Wichita State's budget and facility is like and tradition. Why wouldn't they be terrific? It's not parity. Everyone's good. Maybe no one is great the way Jordan, Perkins and Worthy were, Patrick Ewing's teams, but everybody is good. There's teams not in this tournament that could advance quite easily. Q. What do you know about them? COACH GIANNINI: Don't have any clue. When you're playing the SEC tournament champs, you tend not to look ahead. Q. Could you talk about guarding, how difficult it was guarding Henderson. TYREEK DUREN: I didn't really guard him too much. I give a lot of that praise to Ramon and Sam. Coach pretty much gave them the responsibility from the beginning, like as soon as we found out who we was playing. He's a great player. We knew he was going to shoot a lot of shots. We tried not to give him easy shots. We made every shot he took pretty hard. As a result, we ended up coming out winning. TYRONE GARLAND: The times I was guarding him, I ain't worrying nothing else going on in the play, I just stay close to him. Sometimes I might have went to sleep on a help. I just knew he wasn't going to shoot that ball when I was on him. RAMON GALLOWAY: I mean, I didn't know how good of a player he was until you actually on the floor playing against him. I thought Rotnei Clarke come off a lot of screens. Every one of his shots he's coming off a screen. It was tough at first talking a switch. He had a couple open looks at first, I was kind of getting not down on myself, but I knew I could have played better defense. Me and Sam just talking to each other, Make every shot tough, make every catch tough. At the end of the game, I was guarding the majority.  Then at the end of the game I'm not going to say he took the weight off of me, but he gave Sam the defensive assignment to lock him down. I mean, everybody had great confidence in Sam. That's what he did. At the end of the game, Sam made every shot for him tough. Without Sam playing that great defense, we wouldn't have won the game. COACH GIANNINI: He moves without the ball as well as anyone anywhere. He sets you up and he sprints off of screens. Their offense is really well designed for him. He's really hard to guard before he gets the ball much less after he gets it. RAMON GALLOWAY: He catches and shoots from anywhere. You just got to be prepared. I think Coach G did a great job of always telling us that. Q. I know you were totally focused on Ole Miss, but you had to see the Wichita game. Did you watch it? COACH GIANNINI: No, not me. I'm watching Mississippi. You try to beat them and see if you watch other teams. Q. The fact they beat the No.1 seed, what do you glean from that? TYRONE GARLAND: I watched the game. We was at the movies. I was watching the first half on my phone. When we got back, I watched the last five minutes. I think Wichita State plays very hard. I think if any team play hard, they can beat anybody. I think we just have to play harder than them and I think we got a chance of winning. Q. Ty, when you got the ball on the last play from Tyreek, you had a decent look at the foul line. There was no part of you that said you were going to get the shot off? TYRONE GARLAND: I just knew I wasn't going to settle for a jump shot, I was going to get to the rim because I ain't made that many jump shots during the game. Coach told me to attack the rim. When I got the ball, I looked at the clock when I followed behind Tyreek. When I got it, I just knew I was going to try to go for a layup either to get fouled or make the shot like I did. COACH GIANNINI: He'll know what the right thing to do is when he has the ball in his hands most of the time. Even when the defense does a great job, there was a jump shot right in front of our bench, if it's a great defender, he can make tough shots on top of it. He's a terrific scorer. He passes it well. Q. When you saw the open look, what did you think? COACH GIANNINI: I just watched the play develop. I wanted him to do what he thought was best. I mean, I wasn't going to call timeout and make sure he got a jump shot, that's for sure. Q. Ramon, talk about right now in this moment, how do you feel coming through your personal struggles heading to the Sweet 16? RAMON GALLOWAY: As far as the game, us winning, I don't know how to feel 'cause I never been here. I can say it's the greatest feeling, but I don't know right now. I'm happy. As far as family, I'm glad I can do this. I'm glad I had teammates like Ty that can win a game and Tyreek that can lead us. It's just wonderful. It's a wonderful story. It's just great to play for LaSalle, uplift the LaSalle community again. Q. Obviously like last time, foul shots ended up helping you. How much emphasis did you place on that coming into this game? TYRONE GARLAND: Coach don't really talk about offense that much. He just says we got to play defense and be tough. Going into the game he say he trust us with the ball, he trust our decisions we gonna make on the floor. All he said is we got to get stops and we gonna win the game. COACH GIANNINI: About free throws, no different than anything else. No greater or less emphasis than usual. We're a good free‑throw shooting team all year. We had some bad games. Over the whole body of work, we've been one of the better free‑throw shooting teams in our conference. Q. What's the best advice you received from people around Philadelphia, former players? RAMON GALLOWAY: I'm not listening to everybody else. I'm listening to Coach G and my teammates. I'm thankful that everybody supporting us. But right now at this point, I can't get caught up into what the world is saying about LaSalle. Just happy that everybody is rooting for us. I'm happy that we getting new fans. That's it. TYRONE GARLAND: Kind of what Ramon said. But I listen to my family. They just tell us they proud of me and they proud of us. They want us to keep going. They just happy about the whole situation that we going through. Basically just listen to our teammates and coach and say we can play with anybody, and that toughness can beat anybody as well. TYREEK DUREN: I just listen to people closest to me. They tell me y'all are just as good as any other team in the tournament, in the country. If y'all play tough, you can beat anybody. I listen to coach mainly and know that you can beat anybody on any given day. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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