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NCAA MEN'S REGIONALS SEMIFINALS & FINALS: WASHINGTONMarch 27, 2013Julian GambleShane LarkinJim LarranagaDurand ScottWASHINGTON, D.C. THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by the Miami student‑athletes, Durand Scott, Shane Larkin and Julian Gamble. Questions for our student‑athletes. Q. Coach L shows up, we got used to him here with his quotes for the day and references at Mason. When he shows up, what did you make of him? How long did it take to get used to him? JULIAN GAMBLE: I think his approach to the game is different, it's very different to the coaching staff that we had previous to him arriving, but his charisma and the energy he brought, we knew it was going to be a really good thing for us and it was easy for us to by in to that. DURAND SCOTT: I agree with Julian, he was very welcome, easy going, easy to get along with and we just followed his philosophy and kept it rollin' from there. Q. When you watch Marquette on film, if you watch the first two tournament games, what impresses you most? What jumps out about their team? SHANE LARKIN: They are a very physical team. They are always putting a hand on you on the defensive side of the ball and he they attack the rim. They can shoot the 3 ball, but they love gettin' to the rack and they love offensive rebounds, so playin' defense and keeping them out of the lane is going to be a huge key for us and defensively they put a lot of pressure on you so we just gotta stay poised and stay ball tough. So I think those are the two most important keys when it comes to Marquette. JULIAN GAMBLE: I think the physicality and the fact that they shoot a lot of layups, and the margin of victory in two games combined is 3 points, jumps out at you that they can win close games and they're not trying to blow you out but they can win at the last second and they have that great poise and they have seniors and that great coach well. Q. Julian, Reggie Johnson being hurt, how does that change the way you approach this as a team and how does it change the way you approach the game in the low post? JULIAN GAMBLE: Our game plan isn't going to change. A lot of guys have to step up. I don't think it's going to come from one guy, the amount of production that Reggie was giving us and the presence he has in the paint. We have to do it by committee, every guy doing more than they were before, just help fill that void. Not having him with us is a blow for us, psychologically and him being around us, because we love him and that's our brother and we feel for him but that's motivation for us as well, to play our best basketball, so we can make it to Atlanta so he can be with us again. Q. Can you talk about how that affects your play specifically? JULIAN GAMBLE: Me specifically, just staying out of foul trouble is important and to be relentless on the boards and try to be more aggressive and hold the interior down like Reggie did, that's going to be important for me. To be able to help my guards in, setting screens and doing anything they need me to do. Q. Did any of you guys see their games last week? You mentioned a 3‑point margin. Seems like they're a team that doesn't get befuddled by end of game situations. Did you notice that? Did you see something in them that explains why they're so able to handle tough spots at the end of games? DURAND SCOTT: Well, they're very poised down the stretch and I believe they have a great coaching staff who puts their players in the right position to make the right plays. When people have been playing basketball for this amount of time, they're confident in one another so when it comes down to big plays I think players like Vander Blue, just come up big, just try to make big plays and make big stops and that's what they try to do every game. Q. Can you guys talk about Vander Blue and what kind of challenges he poses and does he remind you of anything in the ACC that you've played this year? SHANE LARKIN: Well he's a very good player. He leads their team in scoring and he's an attacker off the dribble. He likes to get it into his left hand and get all the way to the basket. He has a quick first step, he can shoot the 3‑ball, he is a quick player on the court, he plays the passing lanes well on the defensive side of the ball. He affects the game in every way and when it comes down to a late‑clock situation the ball is going to be in his hands and he's more than capable of making a big play like he did against Davis. He's a great player, I wouldn't say he reminds me of anybody in the ACC because nobody attacks the rim like he does in the ACC. He's just a very great player, and we got to do a good job in trying to prevent him from getting to the rim. DURAND SCOTT: I pretty much agree with Shane, he's a talented player on both ends of the floor. Takes great pride in offense and defense as well and I think his defense dictates his offense. When you do that, that creates a great, well‑rounded player. That's the type of player you see today. Q. Have you guys seen a team like Marquette in the ACC or any team you played this year that substitutes in waves like they do, running their point guards for offense, defense, and their big men as well and how do you think that will affect the game tomorrow? JULIAN GAMBLE: No, I haven't seen anything like that, as a matter of fact. We were just watching personnel yesterday and they have ten guys that play, and that's something that's different, you don't see that with a lot of other college teams and they have a 7 or 8‑man rotation. So really having to know their personnel well is a huge key for us and I think they can use that to their advantage to try to speed the game up, but in terms of our game plan, really just knowing their personnel and focusing on that is going to be key for us. SHANE LARKIN: Just what Julian said. You don't see that a lot in college basketball where a team can go 10 deep. Normally they can go 7 to 8 deep but when they have 10 guys that can come out on the floor and contribute is something new and that allows them to apply the defensive pressure and they have guys that can come in and do what the guy ahead of him did and that's what makes them a special team and what's got them this far in the tournament so we have to be ready for the pressure and match their intensity in every way. Q. One of the Marquette players was up here a few minutes ago, said you guys were one of the biggest Cinderella stories in college basketball this year. Do you guys consider yourselves Cinderellas now and did you during the course of the season? DURAND SCOTT: That's not something I think about, I came here prepared to play basketball and that's what we do, night in and night out, and I guess our performances and our victories will call us a Cinderella team, but that's not something I gave a lot of thought to. JULIAN GAMBLE: That's not something I would describe us as at all. This is not something that we just started doing. We play in one of the best conferences in the country, we had to win these games, we won the ACC regular season and the ACC Tournament championship, so I don't understand how you can be a Cinderella team with having that longevity of success throughout the season and how much of a grind the season is. Maybe our rise to the top‑10 was fast but we sustained that once we got that, so I wouldn't describe it as a Cinderella story. Q. When did you find out about Reggie's injury? I heard he was limping on Monday getting off the bus and stuff. When did you find out that he was injured and how you think he's copying. Have you guys talked? SHANE LARKIN: Well, we found out before practice yesterday, before we left about his injury. Coach told us what happened with Reggie, and that was the end of that, we had to move on. We had practice and we had to focus on Marquette, so that's what we did. We feel for him, I texted him last night and asked him how he was and said he's doing good and he wants to play against this season, he said he wants to play in the Final Four so that gives us added motivation to get these two wins for him so he can play again this season and show case his talent on the big stage. DURAND SCOTT: I agree with Shane. We didn't know until our meeting yesterday at practice. Like Shane said, we feel for him and we definitely put out a reaching hand for him and try to give him a little motivation, tell him how much we love him, things like that. He's motivated as well. He was telling us we got to go out there and get these wins for him and that will help us go out and play as hard as we can. Q. I was curious if Coach L talked to you guys about his run here at the Verizon center in 2006 to the Final Four and if he didn't, did he talk generally about what it takes to be successful on this weekend? JULIAN GAMBLE: He didn't tell us that specific story, but he constantly tells us the things we need to do to be successful and they're not very much different than what he's always told us. Sticking to the things that we've done to get us to this point, to be successful, to play that lock down defense that we've been doing and stay fundamentally sound and be poised down the stretch. Those are things that regardless of the stage you're playing on you need to be able to be successful and get wins. SHANE LARKIN: He didn't talk to us much about his run here. We have seen the highlights of it, it was a great run, it was magical. Hopefully he still has some left in him, not saying that we need luck but hopefully he still has a winning touch and it's going to be fun playing out here in this arena. He has experience here and past history here and hopefully we can keep this as a good memory in his mind and we can go out and win these two games. Q. Curious, do any of you have coaching aspirations? If so, has Coach Jim Larranaga encouraged that or dissuaded you, watching him, from the profession? DURAND SCOTT: He's a great coach. I'm pretty sure he's inspired somebody on this team to be a great coach but right now we're just aspiring to be great basketball players and win basketball games and hopefully that's what we continue doing and that can be on our resume when we do want to coach someday. JULIAN GAMBLE: I had coaching aspirations before he came here but him being here, and I've learned so many things from him, this year and especially sitting out with my ACL injury made me look at the game from a different perspective and I think that made the coaching thing more realistic to me post basketball. Q. Durand, what is it like for you to be at the Sweet 16, to have this amazing high school career and you come to Miami, and the team struggles when you're a freshman and a sophomore and now you win the ACC championship and you're here, what is it like to be here after having the team rise the way it did after four years? DURAND SCOTT: It's only something you dream of, you don't necessarily think you're going to get this point but when you put in the work over the summer and the spring you think all that work would get you to this point. I think it has, especially with these group of guys I've been with my whole career and I couldn't want to do it with anybody else. I'm finally here, we are enjoying the moment and we want to continue winning games. Q. Has Coach given you a quote of the day or thought of the day for today or for tomorrow's game yet? JULIAN GAMBLE: No, we haven't gotten it yet today. We're getting it when we go out to start practice. Every day he gives us a thought and something that sticks with us and it's not something that's complicated, just something that's very simple and just to let you know that we have to enjoy these moments. Q. Do you have favorite quote of the day that Coach has given you? JULIAN GAMBLE: Can't think of one, know one? SHANE LARKIN: I can't think of one. JULIAN GAMBLE: The one for this game is keep 'em out the paint and block out on rebounds so that will be my favorite one for now. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, gentlemen. Good luck. Coach, welcome back to the Verizon center. COACH LARRANAGA: It's very exciting for me and my staff to bring our Miami team here to a place that has incredible memories for me and my coaches. Our run to the Final Four in '06 went through the Verizon center. We've shared a lot of the stories with our players over the last two years and now looking forward to hopefully continuing this journey. We have a great respect for Buzz Williams, his staff and the Marquette team, the successful season they have had, co‑champions of the Big East and now in the Sweet 16. Q. Coach, not having Reggie how much does that change your game plan for tomorrow night? COACH LARRANAGA: Well it doesn't change our game plan but Reggie Johnson is our best rebounder at both ends of the court and we're going to need other guys to step up and do a great job especially on the defensive back boards because Marquette is such a powerful, offensively rebounding team so we will is ask Julian Gamble, Kenny Kadji, and Erik Swoope and Raphael Akpejiori to step up and do a great job and we're going to need Shane and Durand Scott to do a great job, because they have great rebounding guards. Q.When is the last time you saw a team that can go up to 10 deep and substitute in waves like they do for offense and defense? COACH LARRANAGA: I think every coach has his own method of getting the most out of his players. I think when you are able to recruit at a very high level you often have talented benches, and the Marquette bench is third in the country in producing points. That's very, very impressive. I think it's impressive for a number of reasons. One that the coach has confidence that he can go to the bench and, two, that the players have adapted to that role. I'm sure every one of them feels like, hey, I'm good enough to start, but they have adapted to the role of coming in off the bench and have produced tremendously at the offensive end. It's a little bit unusual but I think it's part of Buzz's approach to the game. Q. Welcome back! Players were in here saying your coaching style is different than what they have had before. I hear you still do the quotes of the day and so forth. How long do you think it took for them to buy into your style once you arrived at Miami and can you give us a preview of the thought for the day? COACH LARRANAGA: The first thing I would say is the players embraced the change immediately, but it doesn't mean they learned the change immediately. It's like anything in education, you go through a period of teaching fundamentals a certain way, and I compare it to a math class, where you've got to teach addition and subtraction before you can get to multiplication and division. Because we use numbers so much and that was so foreign to them, it took a while for them to understand and then for us to motivate them through those numbers. So when we give them information now, they're really able to decipher what it means, the point we're trying to get across to them. That gets them excited. We tell them that Marquette was number one in points per possession in the Big East this year, they now understand what that means and the importance of how our defense is going to be a major part of who wins and who loses. Q. Thought of the date? COACH LARRANAGA: I can't share that with you yet. Gotta have some privacy, come on! Q. Is there any feeling when you walk back in here or when you get down to it is it just another arena where‑‑ COACH LARRANAGA: This is not just any other, this is the Verizon Center. I spent many a night watching the Wizards play and Georgetown play here but my greatest memory is when I got a chance to attend games here, especially getting a chance to coach here in the BB&T in Decemberand then in the NCAA Tournament and the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight. John Feinstein told me my life would never be the same, and he was right. We have had a lot of new things occur and all as a direct result of our performance here in the Verizon Center. Those memories last a lifetime. Q. You were saying that you've been, for the last two years, telling your team about what you experienced and what your staff went through in '06. What do you think it's like for them to be in the same building and hear you say those words? Does it mean anymore or‑‑ COACH LARRANAGA: No, I don't think it does. To them I'm kind of whacky, you know? I say a lot of things to them and initially they don't understand. I use quotes and our thought of the day. I ask them to explain it, they have no idea, and I have to then educate them of what we're trying to get across. Coming into this building to them it's just another venue, but to me and my staff it's not because we have the memory, they don't.  They want to create those memories for themselves and for this team. Q. When did you find out about Reggie's injury and is there any chance that‑‑ the guys were saying they would like for him to be back for the Final Four, this and that. Is there any chance he can travel to watch the team or anything? COACH LARRANAGA: I have no idea. I found out about his injury, I think, on the plane is when I was told he got hurt. When we got back to Miami they were takin' him for a doctor's appointment. We got back on Monday afternoon, and we had a ton of things to do to get ready for Marquette so we left it in the capable hands of Wes Brown, our trainer and he took him to Dr.Lesniak, who evaluated him and late Monday night I was told what the options were and Reggie had to choose one of those and the options were to wait and the option 2 was to do a minor surgery to try to repair it right away with the hopes that he could heal quickly enough that he could still play this season if our season continued. I don't look down the road like that, I try to stay in the present and try to get ready for Marquette. We will deal with the circumstances that we are faced with after that game. Q. Coach, it seems like every week you guys have somebody else step up, whether it was Durand Scott in the Pacific game, or Rion Brown in the game against‑‑ COACH LARRANAGA: Illinois. Q. Illinois. What can you attribute to that? COACH LARRANAGA: We've got a lot of good players. The teams we play have a certain strategy and they're going to try to take certain things away from us. But the moment you take one thing away, something else opens up. In the Illinois game, Rion Brown was the recipient of a lot of terrific passes, based on ball movement and finding the right guy at the right time. That could have been Durand Scott, it could have been Kenny Kadji, it's a different guy almost every night. Q. Coach, I know last week obviously was a very busy week, but you were able to get back to Coach Curran's wake, what was that like for you and what did he mean to you? COACH LARRANAGA: Coach Jack Curran of Archbishop Malloy High School began his coaching career as the baseball and basketball coach in 1957 and he recruited me to Malloy in 1963, I accepted the scholarship and the 1.5 hour ride out to Malloy each direction, I passed St. Helena's, which would have been my natural stop, my brothers and sisters all went to St. Helena's, so I passed this in the first 15 minutes, went over the white stone bridge and out to Flushing, Queens and Jamaica to get to Malloy and it was the best decision of my life and had an opportunity for me to spend time with the man who I wanted to be just like. In fact, when I graduated from college I got married and Coach Curran knew I had accepted a high school coaching job and teaching job at mount St. Charles in Woonsocket, Rhode Island but he left my wedding to go to Davidson college with his seniors to get them exposure and while he was down there he recommended me to Terry Holland for an assistant coaching job and I ended up getting that job and starting my college coaching career at age 21, all as a direct result of Mr.Curran's influence. He's been a tremendous friend and mentor to me throughout my life. I loved every time he would visit my wife and I and our family in our home and I spoke to him regularly. The last time we had a basketball conversation was after my Miami team lost to Duke on national television we lost by 3 at Cameron indoor stadium and he called me Larry throughout my life, short for Larranaga and when he called him he said "Larry, I watched your Duke game, you guys don't play any defense. Didn't you tell your players Kelly can shoot? Kelly can shoot I'm yelling at the TV, Kelly can shoot, how come you didn't know that?" I laughed with him the whole time I was on the phone with him, he used to take me home after practice some nights and drop me off in the Bronx. He was just an incredible human being, a friend who has a private jet flew me up with my wife and Chris Caputo, flew us up and back, and he meant a lot to me. Q. About 15 minutes ago we talked to your players and they had a common theme that described your "loose" approach that keeps them relaxed, the Ali Shuffle is an Internet sensation. COACH LARRANAGA: When I was walking to the locker room from the court and I asked them to fight, they weren't fighting hard enough for loose balls and rebounds we need to pick up our mentality and fight to the bitter end. That's what it was going to take to win the game, and when they did, I was walking into the locker room I thought, well the team is fighting, the theme was fighting, what do I say? And the first name that popped into my head, was one of my childhood heros, the greatest, Muhammad Ali, I don't know if my players know who has, but I said to them, I asked you guys to fight and what I saw out there was Muhammad Ali and I broke into the Ali shuffle, I have no idea why I did that. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you, good luck tomorrow. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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