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NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOURApril 1, 2013Rick PitinoATLANTA, GEORGIA DAVE WORLOCK: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today's teleconference featuring the four coaches that have led their teams to the 2013 Final Four in Atlanta which will begin Saturday with our national semifinals, our first coach will be from the Midwest champion Louisville Cardinals, Coach Rick Pitino. We'll turn it over to you, coach, for an opening remark. COACH PITINO: Well, we're excited to be part of a Final Four. Four universities right now that are just playing great basketball, and we're all very excited to be part of such a special event. DAVE WORLOCK: Thank you, coach. We'll now take questions from the media. Q. You mentioned yesterday you had Wichita State in the Final Four. Did you actually fill out a bracket? COACH PITINO: No, we just thought of coaches who we thought who would move on. I was talking with my son, and I said I thought Wichita State has a great chance of being a surprise team to the Final Four. He asked me which teams would you think. I said VCU and Wichita State. I just happened to watch the VCU game. They're mentally and physically tough. I was very impressed with them. Each game, they looked better and better. Q. In 1987 you took Providence, nothing is exactly the same, but can you talk about the similarities. COACH PITINO: Well, I guess you would consider both Cinderella teams, but Wichita State had much more talent than we had at Providence. We had Donovan and some other really good players. He was sort of carrying us on our back, amazing young player. I think Wichita State is a much better defensive team than we were. He was a better guy making everybody better. Like some teams we just caught offensive fire at the right time. Q. Do you think it's an advantage when a Cinderella comes in? COACH PITINO: I think people look for motivational keys, but it's really all about execution. When Michigan was going against VCU's trap, they played tremendous. It really is offensive and defensive execution. We all look for all those motivational keys, but it really is about execution. Q. Rick, I was wondering if you could give us an update, did you get to go by and visit with Kevin this morning? COACH PITINO: I did. I visited with him last night. I was there when he came out of surgery. He was very groggy. This morning he's terrific. He's in great spirits. He got some phone calls from Joe Theismann, who went through the same type of injury. He got a call from Frank Anthony. A lot of really positive calls that are making him feel good. He's up and about. He's on crutches walking. They want his blood flowing. The only thing they're concerned about at this point in the next 48 hours, because the bone comes out of the skin, they're concerned of a chance of infection. If no infection takes place, he'll be very excited. It will be a long recovery, but we expect him to make a full recovery in a matter of time. It will take lengthy time, but we expect him to make a full recovery. He'll be with us in Atlanta. Q. Can you gauge, was he surprised at all the outreach that has come about? Have you been surprised, as well? COACH PITINO: Well, I think it was such a tough thing to look at. I think you witnessed all the players' emotions who had a look at it. It was pretty gruesome and pretty difficult to handle at that time. He'd have to speak for himself which he probably will do on Wednesday. Q. Has Kevin's family been able to get to him yet, how they're holding up. COACH PITINO: They arrived this morning. When I was there, they came in. His mom Lisa and her husband Wes, they're there. Kevin's girlfriend stayed overnight. Kevin had a good night. He's not in a whole lot of pain. I know right before the surgery, when he was able to watch the players at the press conference, the nurses and doctors told me that was the first time he broke down and cried, when the players were talking about him. He went into surgery. Now he's in very good spirits and anxious to get out of the hospital and get back with the guys. Q. Do you have an idea for a timetable for the hospital? COACH PITINO: As long as nothing happens infection‑wise, we expect him to come home tomorrow to Louisville. We're going to leave Wednesday night. Kevin will be with us. As you know, he is from Atlanta. He gets to go home and be with his family and be with us on the bench. Q. Can you share a little bit about what the night was like for you, how long you were in the hospital, what did you talk to Kevin about? COACH PITINO: Kevin was really groggy. When you come out of surgery, groggy. Gave him a hug, spent a little time with him. He was a little in and out. Told me he was going to be great. I really didn't sleep too much just from the highs and lows of that game. My son and I just stayed up for two, three hours and talked. We went to bed about 1:30, got up about 5. Got Kevin something to eat about 11, spent a couple hours with him. Now we're in the car on the way back to Louisville. Q. Rick, now that you've played four games in the tournament, seen who is who, what is your take on the famous idea of parity in the tournament? COACH PITINO: Well, I tell you, the other guys can speak for themselves, our bracket was a death bracket. I've experienced quite a few NCAAs. I've never played the likes of a Colorado State in the second round. They're a team that was very much capable of getting to a Final Four. Then Oregon was just absolutely terrific. Then certainly CoachK and Duke, you know, Mike is a special guy. He called me this morning. He tried to get to me to see how Kevin was doing. He's just a special man, special coach. To play Duke in an Elite 8, never mind a Final Four, it was a death bracket. We're excited to be there and we know there are four teams in that Final Four all capable of winning a national championship. They're all playing great. Just so impressed with all of them. Obviously Jim is a close friend of mine. I know what his defense is all about, the way his players are playing. We have faced them. And certainly any team that can beat Florida by 20 and dominate a game the way Wichita State has done is amazing. Four teams playing terrific basketball right now. We've gone through a very difficult bracket. It's been a very emotional ride for us. We're glad we have a day off and we'll regroup tomorrow. Q. You see the numbers about how Louisville is the top‑rated basketball market TV‑wise. Before you took over the program, were you aware of how feverish the fan base was? COACH PITINO: It always picks up when you're winning. According to Forbes magazine, nine years in a row now we've been the number one revenue producer in college basketball. As a matter of fact, we made $44 million, which was more than the Green Bay Packers and $15 million more than our second‑place finisher, North Carolina. So basketball in our state, a small state, we are in the top three in attendance every year. Kentucky is always one or two, then Syracuse. There's states like Kentucky, Indiana, Kansas, that are so much into basketball. We don't have professional sports, so we are the professional team. The fervor is incredible. We must have had 20,000 Louisville fans there yesterday. It means an awful lot to them because we do not have professional sports. If the Jets are doing poorly, you go to the Giants. If the Mets are doing poorly, you go to the Yankees. Or you pick up hockey. It's picked up now with back‑to‑back Final Fours, Kentucky winning the national championship last year. It means a lot in our state. Q. I was wondering Kevin's reaction to you bringing the trophy to him in the hospital? COACH PITINO: He was real excited about it. I said to him, You want me to bring it back or stay with you? He said, It's staying with me. I said, All right, just make sure you don't lose it. He's very excited. But, you know, the sight of it was very difficult. But in all my years of coaching, which is probably too long, I've never seen someone just keep yelling to the players. I had to bring them all over, listen to him. He said, Just win the basketball game, I'll be fine, and get me home to Atlanta. He kept repeating it over and over. That was the only words coming out of his mouth to the players: Just win the game. He kept repeating it over and over. That was on my mind all night, how valiant he was with that type of injury. Q. You mentioned today is your day off. Do you feel you need it after the emotions of yesterday? COACH PITINO: Well, the players definitely need it. I didn't need to do a whole lot. I need to watch film, along with the staff. But they definitely need it. When you win the Big East tournament, you play in an emotional background, then you have to play this death bracket, they're tired right now mentally and physically. Emotionally it was very difficult. If it wasn't for Kevin, I don't know if we could have got through last night. Q. In basketball you really never expect to have to make a call to a parent like that for an injury like that. Was that something that even took more out of you than you thought? What was that whole process like? COACH PITINO: Well, I think all the coaches, watching so much film, up all night, by the time you get to an Elite 8 game, you're really kind of spent, you're moving on adrenaline. Kevin, well, it was right in front of me. I literally went to help him up. As I looked down to help him up, I witnessed what happened. He didn't see it. Then he looked down. Both of our eyes caught the injury. That's when we all started looking and just felt emotionally distraught. That being said, I went up to Mike and told him what happened. The referee said, Do you want to warm up? Mike said to me, I think you're better off just getting out there and playing. That speaks volumes to what type of guy he is. Q. Did you have to call his parents at all? COACH PITINO: Well, immediately I said to Fred, Get Lisa out of the stands. I thought she was at the game, but she wasn't. She was waiting back home. We got ahold of his mom. I got ahold of her, He's going to be fine. She just needed to see him this morning. She was crying all night. Once she gave him a hug this morning, she was fine. Everything is good right now. Q. Did the doctors have any sense that there was a preexisting condition that might have caused this? Can you give us a sense of what the ripple effect is strategically, how you're going to use your manpower without Kevin? COACH PITINO: No, there's nothing prior. What happens with this type of injury, basically he got up in the air and he landed and basically his leg went one way and his shoe went another and the bone split. There's no preexisting thing that makes it do that. As far as strategy is concerned, I'm going to work on Wichita State. Kevin really, really hurts our basketball team not being there because we were short on backcourt substitutions. Our fourth guard is a walk‑on, Tim Henderson. As you all watched, Kevin has great speed and length. He was playing the best basketball. Now you don't have any backcourt rotations. You only have two backcourt players, Russ and Peyton. You can't play them all those minutes. So Tim Henderson is going to have to step up. Probably going to move Luke Hancock into the backcourt a little bit. Maybe we'll move Wayne Blackshear defensively into the backcourt, apply some pressure. We're just going to have to mix up. We have a lot of front‑court depth, but we don't have a lot of back‑court depth. That's pretty much it. We know we're playing a great basketball team in Wichita State, so we'll just have to see how deep they are in the backcourt. If they're deep, we'll have to make some adjustments. Q. Rick, Gregg Marshall and John Beilein are not overnight successes. I ran some numbers, it's kind of amazing twice as often a guy gets to the Final Four, they never get back. You must understand how hard it is to get back there, even though you've done it seven times. How did you feel in 1987 in Providence, did you feel you would be back there as many times as you have, or did you realize how hard it was going to be? COACH PITINO: It's very hard. There's a lot of great coaches out there a lot better than me who have never been there. It's very difficult to get to a Final Four because along the way, you may need a little luck, along the way you may need a shot at the buzzer or a free throw. Our women's team last night beat Baylor. We were watching the last two minutes of the game. So nothing's ever given. There's only one time in my life I said, if we stay together, no ego comes into play, in 1996, I had eight NBA players on my team, and I thought we had a shot to get to a Final Four. I didn't even take it for granted. I knew we had to play very well. Outside of that, I only thought about the next game we were playing, and hoped we could survive and advance. You never expect it. When it does happen, you feel really blessed that you're getting there. You know, there's no doubt in my mind, I know John Beilein for a long time, competed against him many times, I'm sure he'll be back there many times. And Gregg, a young coach, impressed with him. Jim will be back there 10 more times because he's going to out‑live every one of us (laughter). DAVE WORLOCK: Thank you, Coach Pitino. Safe travels. COACH PITINO: Thank you, so much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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