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PUERTO RICO TIP-OFF MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 7, 2012Dan ShoemakerQ. Talk about this year's field. DAN SHOEMAKER: You hit the nail on the head, NC State, a lot of preseason publicity, Mark Gottfried did an outstanding job there last year and a lot of people picked them as a potential Final Four team and it's going to be exciting to watch NC State over the course of the year. Here is a little known trivia piece for you: Mark was the analyst on the Puerto Rico Tip‑Off two years ago for ESPN. So this is Mark's second trip to Puerto Rico and a very short turnaround and he was very excited to do this event. Similar (audio feedback) his second Puerto Rican ‑‑ just a couple of years just with Boston College, with Fairfield a couple of years ago when they played in the tip off. Akron, who is a native of Bayamón, played at Bayamón Military Academy, which will be a great side story, as well, particularly this year since the tournament moves to Bayamón, a suburb of San Juan. Q. Last year's tournament was a pretty good field, six of the eight teams winning over 20 games and six got to the NCAA Tournament led by Alabama, our champion, we have Purdue, Wichita State, Temple, Iona and Colorado which was a surprise winner in the Pac 12. Last year was kind of a special year for us. DAN SHOEMAKER: It was. We had I think a history of really good fields in this event. Villanova, the year after they went to the Final Four and Memphis the year after, I believe, or maybe the year that they finished second in the country, North Carolina, West Virginia, a really strong Minnesota team a couple of years ago. We have had great teams in this event and I think that tradition continues this year. To be honest with you when we announced next year's field, you'll be incredibly excited with the group that we have got coming to Puerto Rico next year. Q. Can you talk about the format, obviously ESPN does five of these tournaments, we'll also have the Charleston Classic going on at the same time as ours next week. Talk about the format, playing Thursday, Friday, off Saturday, playing Sunday. DAN SHOEMAKER: Formats are a little bit unique as it relates to these multi‑team events, teams do have the option of playing a fourth game, not all of the teams decide to do that. But we do that as a non‑bracketed part of this event. The whole idea behind our multi‑team tournament was to try to recapture some of the old holiday tournament spirit that you don't find much in college basketball today. Most of these events are kind of pre‑determined in terms of who is getting to the finals or they are not real tournament atmospheres. And what we have tried to do and I think one of the things that's really resonated with the coaches is to give them the opportunity to come in in a bracketed tournament and walk out with the trophy. There are true winners of our event, and we have seen the teams that have participated in our events over the years have fared very well in terms of the RPI throughout the year and their selection in the NCAA Tournament. Iona, coming out of the Puerto Rico Tip‑Off last year, they will tell you they believe that tournament was responsible for their RPI, much of the rest of the season and their selection as the first at‑large team ever out of the MAAC. I think the format really works. The coaches like it because they play Thursday, Friday and then get a day off on Saturday where they can work on some of the things that they saw out of their teams on Thursday and Friday. Gives them a little chance to scout and prepare for Sunday's match‑ups; and at the same time, it gives the kids and the families an opportunity to enjoy the venue, which is an incredibly beautiful island in Puerto Rico. Q. Can you talk about the TV coverage, what you have planned for it, and obviously we have John Shamby (ph) and Doug Sherman as our lead commentators, and then we have Dan Dekkitch and Dino Gaudio as our color commentators. DAN SHOEMAKER: Dan, who has done a great job for us at ESPN; former coach at Indiana, Bobby Knight, very successful head coach at Bowling Green State University. Dan is a long‑time good friend and I'm excited to have him on and see him down there. The other analyst, Dino Gaudio, Skip Prosser protege, former head coach at Wake Forest. He's also a great friend and he'll do a terrific job for us and has played or coached actually in our MTE events. He had his Wake Forest team in the Anaheim event a few years ago. It's a matter of which of the ESPN networks the games will be on and we also have the Charleston tournament going on concurrently. It's a little bit of a puzzle to which game goes where, but every game in both events ends up on TV. Q. Can you go into why you guys changed arenas? I was there the last time Providence was there, four or five years ago and do not remember the name of that building but I thought it was excellent. DAN SHOEMAKER: It was the Coliseo de Puerto Rico in San Juan, great facility. We expect to be back there next year. The truth was that‑‑ or the truth is, that there was a scheduling conflict between this event and Cirque du Soleil; and they ask us if we would for a year move to another facility, the Cirque du Soleil, which I would tell you was mistakenly booked in, there but was a multi‑day event as well, draws huge crowds for them. We have had a long‑term relationship there, a relationship that we expect to extend, and you know, the facility in Bayamón is a great area. At one point, and you'll relate to this, Ricky Ladow (ph), we thought would be coming, an incredibly popular player in Puerto Rico, and unfortunately he won't play this year for Providence and that's kind of a shame for this event. Certainly a shame for the young man. But also with Alex Abreu, having played in Bayamón, we were excited about the opportunity to move the event to Bayamón. We have toyed with over the years moving this event around the island. There are some great facilities in Puerto Rico. We looked at a facility near Fajardo, which is where the Conquistador Resort is, brand new facility, seats 10,000. Unfortunately it was not close enough to the hotels that we already had contracted with for this. So the Bayamón facility is only about two miles away from the facility in San Juan. And it's a 9,000‑seat building. It's housed a number of big vents in Puerto Rico over the years, good basketball facility, one of the local teams plays there and it's a chance for people to get a little bit different cultural look at the area. We are excited about the opportunity there. The mayor of Bayamón and the people in Bayamón I think are excited about it. So it will be a good opportunity for the kids to see a little different slice of the island, even though it's still very, very close to San Juan. Q. Any comments on how you put the first round pairings and bracket together? DAN SHOEMAKER: I could lie to you and tell you we flipped a coin and saw how it came out. But in reality, you take a look at a lot of factors and we as a group project what we think the matchups will be. You take a look at who you think has the‑‑ we would do this like any other tournament. You take a look at who you think is going to have the better teams coming in based on how they did last year, who they got back, who they recruited. We are like everybody else and we like to pretend we are experts in the field and kind of project it out a little bit on a‑‑ maybe a ranking system or a seeding system. We also take into consideration who plays who in the regular season. We like to not do rematches of games as much as possible, or slot teams in that will see each other again in the regular season. So we take that into consideration. To tell you it's a scientific process, it's not. But we try to look at it and build the best tournament that we can in terms of the matchups with a little bit of an eye toward who should get to the final round. You don't want to create a matchup on day one that should take place in the championship game. So we try to look at a lot of factors. Q. Can you explain about the non‑bracketed game in the tournament, Asheville at North Carolina State on November 23. DAN SHOEMAKER: Good example of a non‑bracketed game and good example, too, of a first round matchup situation where once those two decide to play each other in the non‑bracketed game, we don't want‑‑ we try to separate them so that they won't meet again unless they meet in the championship game or in the 0‑2 game. The non‑bracketed game does not count towards the Championship because we want that to be a neutral floor scenario in terms of how you get to the championship game. So only the games that are played on neutral floor count toward the Championship. But the NCAA regulation or legislation that allows multi‑team events allows four games. That only count as one on the regular season schedule. So a lot of teams over the years have requested the opportunity to play a fourth game. We think it's good for them from a scheduling standpoint, so we helped facilitate that fourth game if they want to. We don't ask anybody to play one if they don't want to; but we make the opportunity available and it's led to some really good‑home‑at‑homes. It's led to opportunities like this one where NC State and UNC Asheville were going to play each other anyway during the regular season, so we were able to move this under the umbrella of the event since both teams were in the event and they can fit it into the correct window and that then opens up their schedule to play another game which is good for both of them. You know, we are a little different than the other tournaments. We don't schedule that fourth game but we facilitate the scheduling of the fourth game. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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