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NCAA MEN'S 1ST AND 2ND ROUNDS: PROVIDENCEMarch 18, 2016James JonesMakai MasonJustin SearsBrandon SherrodProvidence, Rhode Island Q. Justin, outside of playing on a neutral court, what do you think makes the NCAA Tournament such a great equalizer? JUSTIN SEARS: It's March, and anything can happen. It doesn't matter what you did in the past. It's one game right now, and every team is focused. It's a neutral court, like you said, and we're hungry. This could be my last game, I don't know, so I'm going to play like it is my last game. So everyone has a big sense of urgency. We're going to play like everything is on the line right now. Q. Justin and Makai, it's obviously a neutral court, but you guys were definitely feeding off the energy in the building yesterday, gesturing towards the crowd, and getting into it. The crowd was very loud. How much did that help you guys yesterday, and how much of a role do you think that's going to play tomorrow? MAKAI MASON: Yeah, I think it helped a lot. I think over the course of the game even, we picked up some more fans, which was kind of cool. But obviously Baylor being from Texas, they didn't have the biggest fan support just because of the travel. And just to have all of our alumni and family be able to go to the game I think was pretty huge. Q. Brandon, you guys obviously played Duke in November. How much are you looking back at that game to try to take something from that? BRANDON SHERROD: Yeah, obviously it helps being able to know some of the scouting reports from before. We essentially just recycled the one that we had used earlier on, so we're familiar with the personnel. I think this time around it'll be good because we don't have Amile Jefferson, obviously, that's different. But they're very, very talented, and we know what we have to do. Obviously the zone gave us a little bit of trouble in November, so we'll be prepping for that in case they pull that out. But it's nice to have some familiarity with the team that you're playing in the NCAA Tournament before you're going into it. Q. Justin, just in general terms, aside from height and strength and timing, how does a player or a program in your case become a good rebounding team and a good rebounding program? JUSTIN SEARS: It's a testament to Coach Jones. Rebounding is a mindset. So when he's recruiting kids, he's looking at how they're playing during a high school game or an AAU game, so if they're chasing a ball, if they're diving on the floor, we're going to compete. So once guys have the mindset or the lengthiness to chase the ball, you just drill it in them every day. We have two to three rebounding drills every day, and eventually it just becomes natural. So if someone doesn't run in for a rebound, Brandon is just in there watching, the coaches are going to yell at them, I'm going to yell at them, and Makai is going to yell at them. Someone is going to yell at them because our goal is to get every offensive rebound, get a second chance, a third chance, maybe even a fourth chance to put the ball in the basket. It's just a team's mindset when you go out there. Q. Brandon, how was Dave & Busters? I'm kidding. In celebrating the first win, what sort of response did you hear from alums, dignitaries, past players? What was the response there? BRANDON SHERROD: Yeah. So unfortunately we didn't make it to Dave & Busters last night, but we had a nice dinner. It was awesome having responses from the alums, family members, friends, people that you haven't talked to in a while, got a few Twitter followers. I'm starting a Twitter for Makai Mason actually, so be on the lookout for that. It was really awesome. It was nice to see that Yale was the top trending thing on Twitter for a while, too. You don't see that happening, Yale basketball. So we're just very blessed and fortunate. But it was really awesome to see people reaching out from all over the place to show their support and love, but it was awesome. Q. Duke has won a million tournament games. I know there's no fear going into a tournament game, but how much respect do you have for that program? BRANDON SHERROD: Yeah. So I guess the first question was who reached out. We talked to the class of 1962 before the game, and they reached out to us, as well. We had a bunch of guys from previous years who were present for the game as well, and then also other teams from outside of the -- inside the Ivy League who reached out, so that was really, really cool. Could you repeat the second half of the question? Q. This is your first win. How much respect do you have for a program like Duke? BRANDON SHERROD: Yeah, a ton of respect. Duke is a storied program, and it would be wrong for us to go into this game not thinking about that. But obviously, like Justin said before, it's March, and anything can happen, and we're just looking to go in and compete and play hard. And, again, being familiar with a team like that, we know what we need to do to be successful, and hopefully we'll be able to execute on Saturday. Q. You're used to the back to back during the Ivy League season. How nice is it to have a day off in between? JUSTIN SEARS: Yeah, it's super nice. I kind of woke up -- I was like, okay, let's get the Duke scout going, we get to play Duke today. And then I realized we had the day off and everything. I kind of put everything that happened yesterday in the back of my mind. It's nice to enjoy it, but I'm ready to play basketball right now. It's nice we've had four years of this back-to-back schedule to prepare us. You don't get too high, you don't get too low. And especially with all the tournament and all the craziness around it, I can see how teams could be content after winning one game. But the back-to-back schedule after having some big wins and big losses over the course of my career, you learn how to stay steady throughout the whole season. Q. Makai, stepping into the role you did this year, could you just tell me about what you've learned along the way, what's enabled you to be productive throughout the season, and what kind of led you toward that breakthrough performance yesterday. MAKAI MASON: You know, I guess in the preseason, there was definitely a void left by Javier's absence, and I guess I just -- through the trust of my teammates, I've been able to step into that role fairly well. And then through the course of the year, progressing through the Ivy League, I was able to hit a couple big shots. I guess that's helped me get some momentum going into this game, and I was able to play pretty well the other day. Q. Makai, Coach K just talked a little bit about Duke recruiting you early on, and I guess this is a two-part question. Could you take us through that process a little bit, and also does this light a fire for you going into the game tomorrow? MAKAI MASON: Yeah. I think it does a little bit. You know, whenever you're not recruited by a team or you think you should be, it obviously gives you a little bit of an edge, I think. I think I can say that for most of our team. But, yeah, I was a freshman going into my sophomore year, and I went down to the camp, and they had liked me. And Coach K came to one of my AAU tournaments and I didn't play that well. It's easy for him to move on, which I definitely understand. But, yeah, they ended up getting Tyus Jones, who was a pretty good player as well, so I can't really argue. Q. This question is for Justin. What is it about the advantage you guys bring to the rebounding game? It's not like you have the extreme size like Baylor had yesterday, but you out-willed them, you out-hustled them. Is that the secret ingredient to why you guys are so successful on the rebounds? JUSTIN SEARS: Yeah, it's a mindset. It's all effort, and that's what you can control. A lot of people are asking, what are you guys going to do for Baylor? Who's going to guard this guy? Who's going to guard that guy? I was telling them X's and O's don't matter, it's going to be who chases the ball and who gives the most effort forth. Baylor made their late run at the end, and it came down to one stop at the end, and Brandon was fortunate enough to get the steal. It was just playing defense and playing hard, and that's all basketball really is for us right now. That's Yale basketball. We're a blue-collar team. Q. Justin, over the last couple years, you guys have been right there with Harvard each of the last couple of years. How envious have you guys been to see them in the NCAA Tournament and the success that they've had? JUSTIN SEARS: Yeah, it's kind of tough. We've played Harvard close over my four-year career. At the same time, when you send an Ivy League representative to the tournament, you want them to lose, but at the same time you want them to represent the league well, just because they beat us. It's kind of hard to say your true feelings on it. But Harvard has done a great job of showing everyone that the Ivy League can play at this level, and we're in Harvard's position where we're playing hard now. So I'm sure they're in the same boat I have been in the past three years, where they don't want us to win, but at the same time they want us to represent the league well. Q. Speaking of the Ivy League, do you think the Ivy League is underrated, especially playing Baylor yesterday, a major conference team, and with the success of Harvard and the other teams in the past in the tournament? BRANDON SHERROD: Yeah, I do think the league is a bit underrated. I think one thing we talked about before is that we don't get a lot of nationally televised games, so people just really don't know what we're about. But we have seen success in the last few years in the league, and I think that's a testament to the type of play and the level of competition that's there. I mean, guys are just coming in to compete. I think one thing that is special about March Madness and basketball in general is that each team is very unique in their skill sets, in their personnel. And sometimes people don't take that into consideration when thinking about who's going to be ranked or where they're going to be playing. It was also really sad to see Princeton this year -- who had an RPI of 39 I think -- not even get considered to be a bubble team. Hopefully in the future the Selection Committee and other people will take that into consideration as well. But I think the league is a force to be reckoned with, and hopefully in the future, we can see a two-bid coming out of the conference. Q. Justin, yesterday you and Baylor were both very strong rebounding teams. Do you see any similarities between Yale and this Duke team tomorrow? JUSTIN SEARS: No. I really can't. I could give you a joke, but no similarities besides we're strong academic schools. But I think we have the stronger front court. We're going to go out there and try and rebound the ball. That's really all I can say. Sorry about that. BRANDON SHERROD: I can speak to one thing. I think they're very similar to some of the teams we've played, especially Princeton. Coach talked about that in scout and just the way they're able to spread guys out, and they really like to penetrate in the middle and kick it out for threes. So similar to us. We also like to penetrate the ball and get open threes. I think every team in the country likes to do that. Yeah, so we'll see. We're going to have fun. JAMES JONES: Well, I'm really happy to be back for day number two here and have an opportunity to continue to play. Our guys played really well last night. I felt really good the entire game. It got dicey a little late with a turnover, but I felt comfortable that we were going to be able to pull it out and make the right plays down the stretch. And fortunately for us, it went our way, and just extremely happy to continue to be here. Q. Of all the great players Coach Krzyzewski has had, the word he used was "unique" to describe Brandon Ingram. What you've seen of Brandon, was that the right word? JAMES JONES: Unique? He's really good. I don't know how unique he is. He's just really good. He does a lot of different things. I guess that's why you can say he's unique. But he can post you up, he can take you off the dribble, he can shoot a three. I guess there aren't too many guys who can do all those, the trifecta, so to speak. But to me, he's just a really good basketball player. Q. James, outside of the neutral court, because if these games were played earlier in the season, Duke-Yale, Purdue-Little Rock, what makes the NCAA such a great equalizer? JAMES JONES: Well, it's just that. You don't have to go on the road and play in somebody else's building where they're so familiar with what goes on. This is new for everybody. As a matter of fact, it's a little easier for us because our guys have played in this building. I think Makai Mason when he was a freshman had 20 on Providence, and Justin Sears had 30 as a freshman or a sophomore when he played against them. You know, there's some familiarity there for us. Being so close to home, it's more like a home game for us in a lot of respects. It's a neutral-site game in terms of the venue, but the fact that -- I'm hoping that it's 90 percent Yale in the crowd tomorrow. Should be a good thing in our favor, I'm hoping. Q. Coach Krzyzewski and his players mentioned the benefits of playing a lot of Saturday-Mondays during the season, being used to the day off in between. Obviously you guys play back to back in the Ivy League. How do you think that helps prepare you? JAMES JONES: Well, we're ready to go today. Normally we'd have to play a game right now, so we're ready to go today. But we will take this day off and rest a little bit and get ourselves ready to go. It's a great turnaround for us, and at this time of year there's so much energy going around, so much adrenaline, it doesn't much matter. The ball is going to get thrown up, our guys are going to get ready to go. We're just looking forward to it. Q. Not to get nostalgic so soon, but how did the first few hours after the first win in school history go? Who were some of the people you heard from? JAMES JONES: It went great. I mean, it was wonderful. I just did an interview on Westwood One, and I was asked about the joy of the game and the emotions of it all and being able to turn around and play again. When we were on a bus coming down from Cornell to New York, we had our phones and our laptops out, and the guys were watching the Harvard-Princeton game. I tried to watch it, but my computer went out, so that made me mad, so I stopped watching it. So I went back to watching our game against Cornell. So in my periphery, I could see kind of what was going on. The feed was bad, and it went out on some guys. And when Harvard finally won, there was an outpouring of this joyous yelp by my team. It was something that you do when you're a little kid and find some great excitement. And we turned around the next day and played some of the best basketball I've ever seen against Columbia the next night. The first five minutes, we were just awesome. So I'm hoping that this joy that we've had -- our locker room celebration was wonderful. I'm sure some of you have seen it online somewhere. So I'm hoping that we have the same energy going into tomorrow night's game after having such a high from Thursday night. Q. You mentioned Justin Sears was kind of an interesting guy. Can this be kind of a proving ground game for him? Does he have another notch he can take it to? JAMES JONES: Well, okay, he is unique. Justin Sears is unique. There is no one like him on this planet. I assure you of that. If you watch us closely, he will never roll the right way. He will go off the wrong foot to shoot a lay-up like I was taught when I was in fourth grade. But he is uniquely good. In terms of his best game, you did not see it last night, for example. I've seen it out of him. And we were in Australia, and we played four games over there, and the talent level wasn't great, but he put on a show where he -- I think the last three games he averaged like 28 or 30 points a game. He was unbelievable. Sometimes he gets in his own head, and when he's really good, he's shooting a 15-foot jump shot and then you can't stop him because he's going to drive around you. Sometimes he gets reluctant to take that. But he is a tremendous player, and he is going to make a lot of money playing basketball somewhere. Q. Obviously rebounding has been a strength of this team, not just this year, but the last several years. Personnel clearly matters. But what have you done over that time to make it so much of a focus of what you guys do? JAMES JONES: We get in practice, and I've got this big stick -- no. We work on rebounding every day. It's what we do. It's part of our DNA, and we talk about the importance of it every day. If you were to interview any one of my guys and you asked them what is our principle on our team, they're going to tell you that we really play hard defensively, we rebound the ball, and we share it. But rebounding is something that gives you extra opportunities. Because, coming from a guy who was never a great scorer, I had to get second-chance opportunities on the glass. It's a product to more who I am as a player, understanding the importance of rebounding the ball. And we've been doing that for years. Our first practice every year is a rebounding drill of some sort. It gets a little crazy now, but it's a rebounding drill early in the season that we kind of get our guys in the right mindset of understanding that we have to chase it. And the best example of that is Sam Downey. Sam Downey is not the biggest, not the strongest, not the fastest, not the most athletic guy on our team, but he got seven rebounds last night because he's a product of our program. And he's gotten better through it and he chases the ball because that's what the guys ahead of him does. If he doesn't chase the ball, Brandon Sherrod and Justin Sears are going to kill him in practice, and no one wants to get killed in practice. Q. One of the problems earlier this year in the loss to Duke was that the bigs got into foul trouble. How important is it after yesterday's performance to know that you can trust the underclassmen to come in and give you valuable minutes off the bench? JAMES JONES: Well, it was everything last night, right. I think that Sam and Blake came in and did a yeoman's job. To step up in the biggest game of the year and for Blake to knock down a three when we called his number, and for Sam to finish and rebound the way he did around the rim was wonderful. They have a great deal of confidence in each other. I think the fact that Makai was playing so well, he took a lot of attention off everybody else and made it a little bit easier for those guys. And hopefully we can have the same kind of opportunities tomorrow if called upon. Q. The Ivy League really has had a lot of success in the postseason the past six or so years. You see Cornell winning two games in 2010, Harvard winning two games really close against UNC. Can you talk first about how the Ivy League compares on the bigger stage, especially as of late? And also just how the Yale program, a couple second-place finishes and now a first-place finish, has there been maybe a program you've looked up to in the process of getting to this stage, as well? JAMES JONES: Well, our league is really good, and I guess I can say that, right? And it doesn't get the credit it's due, mainly because we're not on TV, mainly because we don't have McDonald's All-Americans. But our league is well-coached. We have a lot of good players there. And as I said, the coaches do a really good job of getting the most out of them. You know, in our league you have to coach every possession. There aren't any guys that you just give the ball to and just let them go. You're coaching every possession. Our coaches have done a great job of that, and our players have responded quite well. The national media and the attention that we get from the NCAA doesn't do us justice in terms of who I think we are. A great example -- I said this the other night -- Princeton had an RPI in the 30s, and they were not anywhere for bubble contention. I didn't see anybody say, hey, they're a bubble team. You look at last night. I don't think anybody picked us really to beat Baylor. I think it was nice for some people in their brackets to do it. But none of the people, Seth Greenberg or any of these people, Charles Barkley -- they all thought Yale was going to lose by 1,000, couldn't possibly rebound with Baylor, because they had never seen us play. Had no idea how good we are. So until you see us play, it's hard to understand. And the fact that we don't have any of these high major games at home where we have a partisan crowd, and we have to have all these games on the road, it skews our RPI somewhat because of that. We don't have that signature win, so to speak, which makes a huge difference in the Selection Committee making decisions. But even looking at the brackets the way they came out, you can see the seeding was done by high major to low major for the most part. Q. You've put your heart and soul into this program over the last 17 years. You've had many teams that could have been in this position and won a game. What has it meant to you that your team was on great display yesterday, embraced the moment, and won a game to advance? JAMES JONES: Well, I talked to Mike Lupica today. He gave me a call, he's writing an article, and he said to me, he goes, "You didn't need this win to give you vindication. You didn't need this win to be a good coach." I wasn't any better yesterday or Wednesday than I am today, right? But sometimes through other people's eyes it has to be so. With me, I understand who I am. I understand what we do. I understand how good our league is, and I understand college basketball better than most people on this planet. It was great for us to be able to do what we did yesterday, but at the same time, we're not much different than we were the day before. Q. You've talked in the past about the difficulty of recruiting the Ivy League, the high academic standards just limits the pool of players you can take a look at. I think you'd agree with that, a limited pool. Duke is known as a tough academic school. How often has there been an overlap in players you maybe took a look at early on that you see go to a school like Duke or vice versa? JAMES JONES: Yeah, there are several guys on Duke's roster that we took a look at. Stanford, Northwestern, Notre Dame, most of the high major great academic schools, we've been involved with some kids to that extent. Justin Sears took an official visit out to Stanford. Makai took a visit down, although -- albeit unofficially -- down to Duke, when he was a sophomore. So we do have some overlap when that happens. And the scholarship thing is a huge difference for us. We can't offer those, so that makes a difference for those families. And the level of play sometimes makes a difference to some kids, as well, and being able to play on national TV most every game. Q. What did it mean to share the moment yesterday with your dad there celebrating? He was there in the doorway shouting. What did it mean to have him there? I know the history of the family there with the basketball runs deep, obviously. JAMES JONES: Yeah. My dad is also unique. He's a wonderful man and loves his son, sons, and children deeply. He's gotten to the point where he's learned how to text, so I get texts from him all the time. For the most part, over the years, he's told me, "Hey, hang in there. You're going to do it. You're going to do it." He's had this great belief in himself, and that's kind of worn off on me. He's a presser in a dry cleaners. And I don't know if anybody knows what that is, but it's kind of the hardest work that you'll ever do. I used to be with him most every day in the summer and every weekend I spent with my dad, and it gave me life lessons every day. And one of the things he always talked about was how good he is. He don't believe in second place, my dad. He would talk about how he's the best presser in the world. "I'm the best. Look at this, I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best." So he kind of wore that into my head as a kid, that you always want to be the best at whatever you do. It's something that you think about and try to emulate as much as possible. But it was great to be able to be around him and have him be around my team and see what I do. Like, he's in the hotel right now. I got him a hotel room, and he's there and he's enjoying every second of this. I told him, a guy from the local news wanted to have him on, and I sent him a text so -- before he left Tennessee to come up here. So when he got in town, the first thing, "Hey, when am I meeting the guy from the news? When is he taking my picture? When am I going to be on, and when am I going to get a copy of it? I want to see it." It's like, "Dad, it's okay, I'm going to get you." So he's going to be on the news tonight, so I've got to make sure he's around the TV so he can see it. Q. How old is he? JAMES JONES: He's 76. Q. Can you talk about the importance of the experience on your starting five? You start three seniors and kind of comparing that to Duke's starting five who starts three freshmen. JAMES JONES: Yeah, experience is everything here. When you have seniors -- and I was really surprised, Baylor has three seniors in their starting lineup, so that makes a huge difference, and that's one of the reasons why they're really good. As a coach, I don't know that there have been four games this year that we've used all our timeouts. And the reason for that is because I have great confidence in the men on the floor and the leadership that we have. They're great outstanding young men and young leaders. They know exactly what we need to do, and most often they get to that point. So having that kind of leadership on the floor, in a guy like Makai Mason, who's really built himself into that role where the upperclassmen trust him and he trusts the upperclassmen, that's been a huge change for us over the course of this year -- his growth within that group -- and it's been wonderful for us, and one of the reasons we're successful, and we've won, I think, 18 out of our last 19 games. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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