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NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOURApril 4, 2013Rick PitinoATLANTA, GEORGIA THE MODERATOR: We're joined by head coach Rick Pitino from Louisville. Coach will begin with an opening statement and then take questions. COACH PITINO: Well, we're very excited to be part of a Final Four. For basketball players, it's the ultimate, the best thing to put on a uniform and play in this type of event, and the second best thing is to be able to help prepare the guys play in this event. So we're really excited at Louisville. It's been an unbelievable week for both our women's team and our men's team both reaching the Final Four. Very excited for them and very excited for ourselves. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach Pitino. Q. Is it more exciting this week for your son to be named youngest coach in the Big Ten or for you to be in a Final Four? COACH PITINO: They're both exciting. They're both very exciting. Very proud and happy for Richard, coach at Minnesota. So it's been a great week in our family. Q. Just talk about practices, some of the adjustments that you're making with Kevin no longer being able to play. COACH PITINO: Well, we don't have a backcourt substitute. We had a great rotation. All three guards were playing well. Obviously when you press and run as much as we do, it becomes a great concern when you don't have a substitute. We substitute every game and give those guys breaks. Now we can't change our style of play because we won't win or have a chance of winning, so now we have to play a walk‑on. He's got to do the best job he can do. Q. Can you talk about Kevin Ware's recruitment a little bit? Did you follow him when he was in New York or just once he got to Georgia? COACH PITINO: I believe he moved to Georgia when he was eight years old, so I definitely didn't follow him then (laughter). Q. (No microphone.) COACH PITINO: No, I don't believe so. I could be wrong, though. No, I got on Kevin late in the recruiting process. Didn't really follow him that closely during that process. Q. You've always talked about how perspective has changed for you. In 2006, you got more joy out of watching Billy Donovan win the national championship than maybe your own national championship 10 years prior. Now that you've been back to this point a couple of times, has the perspective changed in terms of winning another title because you're here for the second time in as many years? COACH PITINO: You know, you always want to win a title. When you have children, and I do consider Billy like a son to me, you'd much rather see your children go through great things than anything else. This is a great moment for us because we were there last year and we got a chance to come back. Last year we had a lot of fun and now the guys are really honed in on winning it. But it's going to take a great effort without Kevin to win this thing. We know that. I would have said we probably were offensively and defensively one of the better teams in the country. Now I think we've got some problems that we've got to overcome in a game to win. If we can do that, we can win, but we've got some problems. Q. Coach, the Rutgers practice video, how do you think that will change the coaching profession going forward? COACH PITINO: You know, I think, look, we feel bad in the coaching profession for Mike Rice, for the kids that had to go through that, for his family that's going to have to endure the embarrassment now. That being said, this is an isolated incident that doesn't happen in college basketball. Those things do not happen. As a pro coach, I would go to every city and go see a college practice. You know, I've seen some coaches that may use rough language. But that just doesn't go on. It's just an aberration that just doesn't go on in college basketball. Q. Rick, you've talked at some point about being able to switch in the middle of an offensive possession your defense from zone to man‑to‑man. How can you do that seamlessly and how long does it take the players to understand how it works? COACH PITINO: It takes a few months. You get better at it, better at it as it goes along. Usually by the time February rolls around, they've been through enough scouting games, because it does change game to game, predicated on what the other team does. Q. Coach, Jim Boeheim gave you your first job. What were you doing back there in the '70s? COACH PITINO: He didn't really give me my first job. Hawaii was my first job. He gave me‑‑ actually he probably did give me my first job. I don't think you consider Hawaii a job. So I did go to Syracuse from Hawaii, that was a job (laughter). So your question was? Q. What were you doing back there in the '70s? COACH PITINO: Well, Jim hired me back then because I was working the five‑star basketball camp and had a good connection with all the best high school basketball players from working that camp. He also wanted to play more man‑to‑man defense. He was under Roy Danforth, who was strictly zone. Back then we played a lot of man‑to‑man. I was fortunate, I got to learn the zone. So we played probably about 60/40 back then. Q. You have a guard in Russ Smith who is tremendous at getting to the basket and finishing. How do you compare Malcolm Armstead? COACH PITINO: I think Malcolm Armstead is one of the best guards in the country. I think Russ Smith is one of the best guards in the country. Trey Burke. Michael Carter‑Williams. The reason we're all here is we have great guards. But he gets in the lane. He's very quick. Got a great hesitation step. They've got a great backcourt, great front court, very deep. Q. You're here in Atlanta, SEC country. There's a perception in this part of the country that basketball, SEC is struggling with basketball. Could you talk on that and whether that perception is real or not? COACH PITINO: Well, they're struggling the last few years. Back when I was at Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, LSU, were all great. I think my first LSU basketball game was against Shaquille O'Neal.  Back then, SEC basketball was great. It's down. It's cyclical. You know, new coaches take over. They've got to recruit and so on. But it is a little down the last few years. But it will change. Those things are cyclical. Q. Rick, you've often mentioned Nazr Mohammed as a big project to get him from PointA to PointB. Where would you say that Russ and Gorgui rank in terms of the way they had to develop? COACH PITINO: Well, Nazr was 24% body fat, he had to lose like 80 to 100 pounds. That was a major project. Russ and Gorgui didn't have those things they had to overcome. Russ was 147 pounds when he first came in. He really didn't understand the game very well, even though he played for an awesome high school coach. Russ was just happy. He wanted to score 30‑something points a game. That's all he cared about. They were a .500 team in high school. He had to learn to play the game the right way, then he had to get stronger. Russ is one of the strongest people on our basketball team right now. You know, Peyton and Russ had a contest of doing pull‑ups, and Peyton said, You got to wear sand weights on your neck because I have you by 15 pounds. He put it on. Peyton did 38 slow pull‑ups. Russ did 39. Russ bench presses 185, 18 to 20 times. So he's very strong now. He got physically and mentally stronger. Gorgui didn't really understand the game of basketball too well because of the language and terminology. Physically he came in at 190 pounds to this country, 187 pounds to this country. He had to get stronger and learn the game. They both were similar cases, where Nazr, you had to take off a person. Q. By no means does Coach Marshall consider his team a Cinderella. What is it about his approach to this game coming up that you've seen that makes them a dangerous team? COACH PITINO: I'll say this without any exaggeration. They're the best team we will have faced this year at the defensive end. They are Marquette on steroids in terms of the way they play defense. If you grab an offensive rebound, they slap it away. They don't let you go into the paint without four guys attacking you. They are the toughest team to score against. Listen to what they've done in this tournament and who they've beaten. But they haven't just beaten Pittsburgh, like we did, by 3 points, they beat Pittsburgh by 25 points. They're up 20 against Ohio State. They pound Gonzaga. They pound LaSalle. They're not just winning, they're pounding teams. You can't do that unless you're a great basketball team, and they are. They're ranked in the top 15 for most of the year. But they are a team that can make a lot of threes. But I'm really impressed with what they do defensively. Q. Russ Smith, a guy who is second in the conference in scoring, usually when you see scorers, it's kind of at the expense of the team's success. What is it about the way you guys play that allows Russ to get his points and for you to get your wins as well? COACH PITINO: I think we know what Russ is all about. The one great thing, he gets to the foul line, shoots at a high percentage. Russ, when he first came, annoyed a lot of people because of his bad shot selection. He doesn't do that anymore. Now he's a big‑time winner, plays to win. The only problem is he needs a sub, he plays so hard. Peyton needs a sub. We have to use those TV timeouts, steal 30 seconds here and there, because they're going to have to play a lot of minutes tomorrow. Q. As you said, you worked with Boeheim early in your career, in his career. What is it about him that makes him unique that he has stayed in one place for so long, and does it surprise you? COACH PITINO: Well, I set him up with his wife, and that was the greatest accomplishment that I've ever done, if that is true. How that could happen, I don't know. Jim is coaching a long time because he's extremely frugal. He's just a cheap guy that money means everything to him and he's going to coach till he's 90 and hoard away every penny he's ever made (smiling). Q. Rick, it's been an emotional week for you guys, the disappointment on Sunday, then seeing Kevin come back. How do you keep your guys in check and get them refocused, knowing you have a big game still to play? COACH PITINO: You know, I don't think I've ever been more proud of a basketball team. Obviously I was frightened at the moment, what I saw. Then when I went to the hospital, got the great news that surgery went well, he came back, there was no infection, because that's what they're most concerned about for the first 48 hours. When that was all past, I don't think I've ever been more proud of a group of young men the way they acted and cried their brains out for Kevin, and then the way Kevin got them together and the way he reacted. I don't think I could be any prouder of young men, the outward emotion of love that they showed each other was, for me, just a great thing as a basketball coach to witness. Now we are refocused. Kevin's with us. We know we have to play a great team. We know we have to have a great night to win. Q. With Kevin with you, how amazing is it that he was able to travel with you after what you witnessed on Sunday? Secondly, what is his role this week? How much of an inspiration can he be to your guys? COACH PITINO: I don't know. He's such a celebrity right now, he's doing David Letterman's top 10. I don't know if he has time for us (laughter). I think it's going to be a great motivator for us. We found out a lot about Kevin that we didn't know. We really did. When he went up, I think he was almost thinking that he was going to fall off the stage or something, and he got up really high, was trying to back off a little bit. When that happened with him, we all witnessed a different side of Kevin, something we haven't seen. It's just incredible how adversity brings out the best in people. It certainly brought out the best in Kevin, as well as his teammates. Q. I know you called what happened at Rutgers this week an aberration. But do you think in any way it may cause coaches to reexamine the concept of the practice tape, who has access to it? COACH PITINO: I don't think coaches do that. I don't think there's a coach alive that does that, what you witnessed. I don't think you have to worry about that. I've never seen it in my life. As I've said, for eight years I went around and watched college practices. I've seen guys who were very tough on their players, but they don't physically throw balls at them, they don't physically do those things. I think that it's an isolated incident. It was a very serious isolated incident. Q. Do you remember the Loyola/Cincinnati game that occurred exactly 50 years ago? If so, what do you remember about watching it? COACH PITINO: Was it on TV? Q. I think it was. COACH PITINO: You know, I didn't own a television set until I was like 12. I don't know if that's true or not. No, back then, when I was a kid, we didn't watch really college basketball too much. The only good team back then was St. John's. We were all Knicks fans growing up. It was all professional basketball. Coach Wooden was going to win it, that was the only thing we knew back then. Q. It was the year before UCLA got really good. Have you had a chance to read anything about it since? A lot of people think Loyola started four black players that year, and Cincinnati had three and basically started a fourth. A lot of people wonder if that wasn't the start of the change in course, where coaches weren't afraid to play as many black kids as they had. COACH PITINO: I'm old, but probably not old enough to remember that. And I followed basketball for a long time, but I don't remember those days, being 10 years old. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, coach. COACH PITINO: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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