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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: SAN DIEGOMarch 20, 2014Danny ManningTim PeeteJames WoodardSAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA THE MODERATOR: We have with us James Woodard and Tim Peete. Q. For both guys, the nonconference schedule that you played prepared you for situations on the floor and in games and in the conference tournament last week, but did it also prepare you in preparation for a game like this against an opponent like this? Not only in the games but in how you prepare for it. TIM PEETE: This group has been together for two years now, played over 60 games together. The last two years we played at Wichita State, we played at Creighton and tough places to play. I think a moment like this, it won't be that much different for us, as in where we are playing. I think that will be good for us. It will be a great experience but the moment for us is right now and worrying about right now and that's how our team will take the approach every game. JAMES WOODARD: Same thing what Tim said, in our nonconference we play some tough teams, top‑25 such as Creighton and Wichita State but, yes, it has prepared us for a game like this. UCLA say great team. We're trying to take this approach as great as possible by watching numerous amount of film and scouting, but I think the nonconference did prepare us for this moment because we are pretty much locked in, we are still on a winning streak and I believe it has prepared us for this moment. Q. Have you guys‑‑ have you been able to say to yourself, this is great, we made the tournament, but we are not satisfied, I know it's been a long time, since you've been in the tournament but have y'all been able to say, just getting here isn't enough, we want to win here, too? JAMES WOODARD: Yes, obviously we want to win, that's our competitive nature. Getting here was our goal, but we want to extend that and win games and put Tulsa back on the map because we are competitive and we want to win and we want to make a name for Tulsa. Like we said earlier, we are just here to prepare to win a game. Q. You guys were babies when this game was played 20 years ago, Tulsa, UCLA game, but there has been so much said and written about it in the last few weeks, even before you knew you were going to play UCLA there was a lot said and written about it being the 20th an verse. Is it just a cool thing for you to learn about or is it inspirational for you to see what happened 20 years ago? TIM PEETE: I don't think James was born 20 years ago. To hear the history about Tulsa, it's cool, and we trying to do our own thing but it's good to have a guy like Coach Seale who played in that game and he talks about times when he played in the NBA and right now it's about embracing the moment. That's what he did and he wants us to do the same thing. Q. From a size standpoint this is as big of a discrepancy as you guys have seen in two years. There any concern for either or both of you just the difference in size between UCLA and Tulsa? JAMES WOODARD: Yes, they have great length on their team, but the size‑‑ I think we have played close to that, but this is probably the biggest team we've played. Everything stays the same for us, though, we just gotta lock in defensively and just‑‑ and also on the rebounding end, we got to win the rebounding margin for us to give us a chance to win. We can't let that bother us. We gotta play hard and lock in defensively and don't let that bother us and play our tempo and I think that's going to give us a chance by wearing them down. Q. Go ahead, Tim. TIM PEETE: About the size, that's the one thing about this tournament, you never know who you're going to play and that's the card we draw, so they have big size and we're going to try to use our advantages that we have as well against them. It's‑‑ it should be a good match‑up. Q. The difference for you guys, the difference between one and 6 and winning 11 straight that's the difference between those two times? TIM PEETE: Practice. For me, a senior, this is probably the most competitive the practice has been, the trash talk we talk in practice, the coaches pushing us, the players pushing you, that's probably the biggest thing. I can't say enough, TK Edogi, Marquel Curtis, Barrett Hunter and Rashad, Kemmer, they have pushed us and prepared us for that 11‑game winning streak, even when we was 1‑6 those guys pushed us and pushed us to our limit and made us that much better! THE MODERATOR: Thank you, gentlemen. We are now joined by Coach Danny manning of Tulsa. Comments, Coach? COACH MANNING: Good afternoon. We're excited to be here and looking forward to the experience of playing in the NCAA Tournament. Had a couple of good days of practice. I feel our guys are prepared and looking forward to a great opportunity. Q. There have been from a seed standpoint, Danny, three upsets today. I'm sure your guys get scores on their phones like everybody else but do you stress that to them, do you make sure you discuss with them that the seeds don't reflect necessarily‑‑ COACH MANNING: No, I don't. But, Bill, everybody watches the NCAA Tournament, everybody sees what's going on, everybody knows that‑‑ from my experience with NCAA Tournament, you go out there and the team that place best for that particular game wins. That's the beauty of the NCAA Tournament, and we're going to go out and try to put our best foot forward no different than UCLA, no different than any other team in this league. It's just a matter of how things fall, trying to impose your will and hopefully getting a couple of fortunate breaks to go your way. A lot of things go into winning games in this tournament. But the first thing you have to do is make sure that your team goes out and you play hard and with effort and energy. Q. Coach, I believe you guys lost 6 of your first 7 and now you're in a situation where I don't think you've lost since February6th. How did you turn that corner? What happened? COACH MANNING: To be honest with you we got beat up on in the nonconference schedule. We went and played some really good teams and we weren't good enough to win early on, on the road. We learned from our lessons and hardships and fortunately we were able to put a nice stretch together once we got into conference play but our nonconference schedule as frustrating as it was, it ended up being good for us, because at no point did I think we would be at 0‑4 or 1‑6 when we made that schedule, but that's what we were. To our guys' credit, they came into practice each and every game hungry and wanting to get better and little by little we started to put it together and piece it together and now these guys go out and we have a little bit of swagger about us in terms of how we play. Our guys understand what they need to do for us to be successful, that's why we're on the run that we're on right now. Q. I know that you and Steve Alford go way back, I think he said the Olympic Trials, what do you see in him as a Coach? COACH MANNING: Steve was a great competitor, a great shooter. He's someone if you're a college basketball fan and you understand the game and him playing at Indiana and winning the championship in 1987 and the history there and the legacy of Coach Knight and the state of Indiana and their love for basketball is a very special plays. He's made stops on the coaching circuit and been very successful at offensive stops and he's doing a very good job with UCLA especially this year when them coming off their tournament title win. I've known him for a while and he's always been someone that gets out and as a player. He worked hard and had great command of his team and great understanding of the game as a player. Q. You know, coming into any situation you guys have had a quick turn‑around, just two seasons and you're in the NCAA Tournament. You coming in with a background as a player do you feel maybe that helped ease the transition and gained some instant respect with the players? COACH MANNING: Well, I hope so. Basketball has been very good to me. I've had a chance to go places and experience things I never thought I would be able to, and, you know, I try to share my experiences with all the players on the team. There is not one guy on any team that I can't relate to. I've been a starter, I've been a sixth man, I've been a role player, I've been an injured guy, I've been a guy just on the roster, I might not know how each player feels but I've got a pretty good idea. And for me I just try to share my stories and experiences with our guys and hopefully it makes their path and their journey a little bit better. Q. So you take this job. Did you see success at this stage? Did you see yourself getting into the tournament and being able to do what you've accomplished thus far? COACH MANNING: I thought it was a great job. You know, Conference USA in my opinion it is one of the upper echelon jobs in Conference USA and at the time I accepted the job, I had a pretty good nucleus of guys coming back and that did not turn out to be the case once we stayed there for a while because guys come in and they want to play for certain coaches and they want certain things and I understand that, but the guys that stayed and the kids that we brought in, they bought in wholeheartedly and they work extremely hard and, you know, we're a young team were the majority of the meat and potatoes of our team are all sophomores. We have had some hard, tough lessons together because as freshmen, went through it all. We jumped in the fire together and said let's figure it out. At the end of our conference play, guys had locked in to who we are as a team. We hang our hat on the defensive side of the ball. We try to make multiple effort plays and we try to push tempo off into it. Q. Danny, the difference in size and length between the two teams tomorrow night, is the way you guard 35 feet from the basket, 25, 15, does that off‑set some of that? COACH MANNING: I don't know, to be honest with you. I know that UCLA is a very talented team. They have multiple guys that can handle the ball. All their guys are shooters and can step out and make shots, so I think for us it's going to be a little bit of ebb and flow, see how the game goes, flow, but we're going to play the way we play, Bill, and nothing is going to change in terms of how we play defensively, we want to go out and be sound defensively, we want to make all catches contested and all shots contested and we want to try to limit them to one shot. Q. Danny, when Steve Alford was in here earlier he said the difference in parity from when you guys were playing to now is pretty huge, there is sophomore parity in college basketball now, do you agree with that? COACH MANNING: I do. I do agree. Basketball junkies most coaches are so you stay up late at night watching games on TV or watching replays and, you know, every team has players and every team has guys that can go out there and make things happen. I enjoy watching college basketball but I agree, I think there is a lot of parity, a lot of talented players in the game of basketball that don't receive a lot of attention just because of the situation or maybe the league that they play in but, you know, there are a lot of guys. Stephen F. Austin, they have had an unbelievable season. They've got a kid from Tulsa on their team, the Parker kid who was conference player of the year. But not a lot of people know about him and he's having a fantastic season, so there are players everywhere. Q. As you know, Coach, the lights get much brighter in March Madness the spotlight gets bigger. How have you prepared your team for what they're about to face tomorrow night? COACH MANNING: We talk about all the time, do what you do. Don't forget what you did to get here. That's been our MO all the way through. I tell our guys in practice we need to practice like we're 0‑4, we need to practice like we're 1‑6, remember what that felt like? Let's not go back there, let's make sure we don't go back there and that's our process in preparing not only now but in conference season, we talked about that as well, don't forget the tough days, the hard days and remember how we got here and why we got here and we did it together and we did it on the back of hard work. Q. Danny, what is the status of Steve Repichowski? COACH MANNING: Has not been turned, he's going to get some shots up today and we'll see. Hopefully he will be able to give us some minutes tomorrow. Q. Danny, to what degree do use advanced statistical analysis if at all. If you do, what ways do you find it useful? COACH MANNING: I'm a numbers guy. I crunch numbers. We use Kenpom a lot and Synergy. I like Synergy a lot but we go to those two sites and we look at the numbers and the individual breakdown from each player and when we are forming our scouting report, the numbers do play a role in that. You know, we have a different formula we use for different guys to determine how we're going to guard them but I think numbers are very important. Hopefully when you're in a game I try not to make too many decisions based upon, we're playing this one guy and scouting report says he's a capable shooter, he's made five in a row, do we need to change how we're guarding, well maybe just a little bit but you're hoping that the averages do play out a little bit later down the line. Q. You mentioned that you share your experiences with your players. Have you shared any specific NCAA Tournament experiences with them? COACH MANNING: Not really. You know, it's‑‑ I'll take that back. I have, too. We talked about when I was on the staff at Kansas and we came out and played UCLA and San Jose and it was a home game for UCLA so I've definitely shared that with our guys, that this is‑‑ in our minds this is a road game and we're just playing UCLA a few hours away from their campus and we know that they're going to be a lot of UCLA chants and tee shirts and things of that nature and the we're prepared for that. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions for Coach Manning? Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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