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NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOURApril 5, 2013Luke HancockRick PitinoPeyton SivaATLANTA, GEORGIA THE MODERATOR: At this time we're joined by head coach of the Louisville Cardinals Rick Pitino and student‑athletes. Coach Pitino will begin with an opening statement, then we'll take questions for the student‑athletes. COACH PITINO: Well, for us, we're 24 hours away, a little bit more, from playing our first game. We are super excited, very. Our players totally understand the challenge that lies ahead with this Wichita State team. I've got all the faith in the world in them. We understand with Kevin out that we not only have to play very hard, we have to play very, very smart. But here are two of the smartest players I've ever coached. So we're thrilled to be here. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for our student‑athletes. Q. Peyton, can you talk about how Gorgui has improved since the first time you saw him? PEYTON SIVA: Well, Gorgui always been great offensively. He's always been skilled. A lot of people don't really know that. Just he's improved so much this year. He's mastered the 15‑footer. He can shoot threes, but coach said just relax off of those. He's improved so much that his jump shot is really great, his passing has always been phenomenal. He's just a great all‑around player. Not even the little things he does, his passes, his screens have gotten better since he stepped on campus from day one. Q. Luke, you've been described by teammates as a big‑brother figure, yet you grew up as the youngest brother. How do you see yourself? LUKE HANCOCK: As a big brother. I don't know. I just try to take care of some of the little things, try to let people know kind of where we need to be, what we need to be doing, try to be a leader in practice, stuff like that. I guess my brothers beating up on me growing up has helped a little bit. But I just try to be a leader and help our team wherever I can. It's easy with this group of guys. But just try to help out where I can. Q. Luke, to go from fighting for playing time with Kevin Ware to the moment that everyone's talking about when you kind of ran out there, he calls you now a brother for life. What is that relationship like now compared to where it was? Why did you react so quickly? LUKE HANCOCK: I mean, our relationship hasn't changed too much. You know, we were really close before, and we're really close now. It's a very tough injury and a tough situation. But, like you say, we're brothers for life. I have that guy's back in any situation. I know he has mine. You know, I don't really know why I went out there. But, you know, just didn't want him to be alone out there, I don't know. Definitely we're close now and we were close before, so... It's definitely brought the team together, though. Q. Peyton, can you describe the difference in your approach or your feeling about this year's Final Four as opposed to last year. Is there more of a feeling of needing to go further this year? PEYTON SIVA: Last year, you know, nobody really expected us to be there in the Final Four besides us. This year, quite frankly, a lot of people counted us out during the regular season also. Our whole mindset was that we had to stay together and we had to play on that chip that we believe in each other, no matter what anybody else says. Come together as a team and win. Just like last year, we're trying to win this year. That's pretty much it. LUKE HANCOCK: It's obviously different for me. I wasn't playing last year as a redshirt. But we're just excited for the situation, excited to be in the Final Four, just hoping to win. Q. Peyton, how are you dealing with the pressure that must be there to avoid getting into foul trouble in this game and what are you guys working on to compensate for that? PEYTON SIVA: I try to avoid foul trouble every game. Sometimes it finds me, I don't know how (smiling). I just got to play a lot smarter. But Coach P doesn't want me to lose my aggressiveness, I got to continue to play hard no matter what. Got to be even more careful of my slap‑downs, more careful of the way I move my feet. Coach P always tells me when I try to stay out of foul trouble, I get into foul trouble, but I just got to play hard. Q. Is the pressure more intense with the shortened rotation that you guys will have? PEYTON SIVA: I don't feel so. I think Tim Henderson, I think Luke playing more, too, they're more than capable guys of, you know, playing the role. Tim Henderson, a lot of people talk about he's a walk‑on, everything, but he's been guarding Russ Smith the whole year. I feel like he can come in and spell anybody. If you guard Russ Smith the whole year, you can pretty much guard anybody, especially in practice. Q. Peyton, you're one of the premiere guards in the country, but your coach said yesterday Malcolm Armstead is also one of the better guards in the country. How are you going to attack them, the guards that they have? PEYTON SIVA: Well, they're a great group of guards. They're playing really terrific. They wouldn't be here right now if they weren't. So we got to go out there and continue to play our game, continue with our game plan, our scouting report. They're both tough guards, all of them are tough. But their whole team is tough. It's not just one guy. Malcolm Armstead, of course, makes them go. But on any given night, anybody on the team can have a big night. It's up to us to play collective defense, hit the glass, continue to play how we've been playing. Q. Peyton, you obviously had a very strong emotional response last week to Kevin under the circumstances in the moment. As the week has gone on, there's been all this focus on his injury. Has that been emotionally taxing on this team? Do you worry about how you're going to come out in this game on Saturday? PEYTON SIVA: I don't think so. I mean, we've pretty much been within ourselves, with our team. I don't think the attention has really been taxing on anybody. I think, you know, if anything, I'm just glad to know Kevin Ware now even more because he's probably the most famous person I know. You know, when you have Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama call you, it's pretty good to say I know that person. It's pretty amazing, I think it's more taxing on Kevin than any of us. THE MODERATOR: We'll excuse our student‑athletes and continue with questions for Coach Pitino. Q. Rick, you took over a storied program that you're at now. The polls are not made by the sport that you coach. How would basketball people characterize all the conference shifting and moving around that is really for football's sake? COACH PITINO: Well, we would give you diplomatic answers. But inside we're not happy about it. And I personally am not happy about it, not because of basketball, because most basketball programs at BCS schools charter, football programs charter. I'm more concerned about women's sports, track and field, swimming and diving. You take a school like West Virginia. The closest school is 800 miles away. Basketball and football benefit certainly, but what about all those other sports that have to make three connections to get to all those schools and miss all that class time and everything else? The one thing I will say that's different today than it was 10, 15 years ago, you'd get some BS answer from the administrations. They are being very transparent in saying, It's about money. We can't run all those other programs unless we generate more money. So at least the transparency is there. But that doesn't make it any less. For me personally, leaving the Big East, for Jim Boeheim, not to speak for him, it's very, very difficult. We love Dave Gavitt, we love the fact that he put something special together, and me personally growing up on 26th Street on the Eastside of Manhattan, being a New York Knicks assistant and head coach, leave the Garden, is a big loss personally for all the great memories we've had. We don't like it, but we understand it. The one thing you can't do is complain about it. Sometimes you have to move. Moving into the Atlantic Coast Conference is not the most difficult thing in the world in terms of competition. It will probably be one of the greatest conferences I've seen basketball‑wise. I think you probably have to look at CoachK. I think he's a little responsible for these basketball schools coming in, at least that's what I hear, so... Q. Teams like the team you're playing tomorrow, the non‑power conference teams, have been making runs in the tournament over the past few years. Is that a trend you saw developing or is it a surprise to you? COACH PITINO: When I watched Wichita State beat VCU at VCU, I'm a big VCU, I'm a fan of the way they play, Shaka worked for Billy. When I saw them win in that environment against that style, I called my son Rich and said, Watch out for that team, back then. Little did I know we'd be playing them in a Final Four. So today the great thing about college basketball is there's no difference between Butler, VCU, Wichita State, than UCLA, Louisville, North Carolina, Duke. There's absolutely no difference. If you play them 10 times, they're going to win a few of those games, and sometimes they're going to win more than their share. That's what the one‑and‑done has done for college basketball in a positive way. You see teams grow together. We played a team that I was up all night, didn't get an ounce of sleep getting ready for, Colorado State with five seniors and two fifth‑year seniors, as good a team as we've played against in the tournament. So, you know, it's great. It really is great for college basketball to see us all join. I go back a long, long time ago where you could pencil in Coach Wooden, Coach Smith, pencil in Kansas or Kentucky, whoever that may be, and now you can't do that. It's a lot of fun for all of us. Q. Rick, what led you to go ahead and develop the full‑court style that you did at BU? How much of what you did then do you do now in terms of pretty much everything? COACH PITINO: I played for a great college basketball coach named Jack Leaman. He was Dr. J's high school coach. His assistant Ray Wilson was Julius' high school coach who recruited me. When I left UMass, I was a frustrated basketball player with our style. But look back on it today, he made me a man. He made me to think team first. He made me understand the fundamentals that you can't win without all the fundamentals offensively and defensively of the game. Even Dr. J played in that system. It wasn't a running system. It wasn't a pressing system. It wasn't a trapping system. So when I finally became a head coach, we never had any coverage. We were on page 7 and page 15 of the Herald and Globe, never had any coverage at all. There was only one cub reporter at that time that knew nothing about basketball. They said, You've got the bad job tonight, you're covering BU and Northeastern. That was Lesley Visser. We remember the days of having 250 in the stands. Today she knows more basketball than I do. It was my own laboratory. I could make all those mistakes trying to put a pressing, running style at the age of 24, and nobody would notice what I was doing wrong. So for five years I got to tinker, tinker. By the time I got to be assistant coach of the Knicks, head coach of Providence, I had a system I believed in. It was due to some frustrations as a player. It takes everybody to get involved to win. So I've been doing it ever since. Q. Will you be remembered more by your fellow coaches for the press or the early embrace of the three? Is it harder to win with the one‑and‑done rule or being at the mercy of the ping‑pong balls? COACH PITINO: If I had Tim Duncan, I may still be in Boston (laughter). For me, sometimes ping‑pong balls can change your life in the NBA. If you're as shrewd as the Red Auerbachs, the Pat Rileys of the world that can pull off these incredible trades, that does it. In college basketball, it's all about recruiting. My son recruited Peyton Siva, and Kevin Keatts got Luke Hancock because he coached him at Hargraves Military. So recruiting is our game. But you got to recruit the right people, evaluate the right talent. Russ Smith and Gorgui Dieng I don't think were rated. Russ Smith from New York City at a famous high school was not recruited by one Big East school, not one. If it wasn't for those two guys, we don't play in two Final Fours. So there's no science to it. As far as being known by pressing and three‑point shooting, it was the only way we could go from dead last place in the Big East to having the chance of winning. I knew one thing, I knew not only we were going to shoot it, I knew Rollie, John, Louis, the guys I consider were legends in our game were not going to shoot it. I knew it was going to help us win and it carried us to a Final Four. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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