NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 26, 1999

Jim O'Brien

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: Thank you, Chris. The obvious is that we are very pleased to be here. I think that we've played very well throughout the tournament, and the fact that we were able to beat two good teams, our last two games against Auburn and against St. John's speaks a little bit to how we've been playing. I'm very pleased with the effort that our guys have been playing with all season long, but certainly these last couple of days that have made it more special. We know that this is not going to be easy, and we have the highest regard for Connecticut, not only because they're a good team right now but because of my personal experience with working at the University of Connecticut. I have to share a funny story with you. I know somebody is going to ask about 18 straight losses to Jim Calhoun, we might as well talk about it right this minute. (Laughter) Jim Calhoun is obviously a wonderful guy, we've become friendly down through the years. But last night, we were together. There was the four coaches and it was Mike and Tom, Jim and myself. And when he sees all of us, he sees Tom and he says Tom, it's nice to see you. Mike, it's nice to see you. Jim, it's really nice to see you. (Laughter) So he's probably feeling pretty good that he's playing against me, maybe not so much against our team, but hopefully we'll be able to get a little bit lucky and end some of what has gone on in the past. That's it.

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: Our approach is just to play the whole team collectively. We are very concerned about Kevin Freeman on the blocks because I think that's where you can tend to spend so much time worried about Khalid and worried about Hamilton that you forget about the abilities of some of the other guys, Ricky Moore, somebody that you can't fall asleep on. But they have the strengths of Jake Voskuhl and Kevin Freeman, who are the areas that we are probably most efficient in and that is in the rebounding areas. So we've had these problems throughout the tournament. We had a similar situation when we played Auburn. They beat us on the glass by only a couple, I thought we did a good job in that regard. We did not do as good a job on St. John's, they worked us on the glass pretty good. I think Voskuhl and Freeman together are two guys that we're really going to have to make sure we don't give them second opportunities if we can.

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: Well, the thing I really liked about Scoonie is his competitiveness. Every single game we played he never seemed to take -- or that we watched him play, he never seemed to take any time off from the game. And then since he's been with us, I've been connected with Scoonie now for four years. And every single day, he treats any basketball related thing as a competitive situation. Whenever we have shooting drills, he wants to win all the drills; he wants to win all the games; he wants to win all the time. So I think his attention to detail, I think he's very meticulous in his approach to getting better and his competitive spirit is something that I think is tremendous.

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: I really don't know too much about all of them. I know that Avery and Langdon are good players that can do a little bit of everything. Langdon can shoot and Avery seems to be getting better and better the more you watch him play. We know that Khalid is a very good player. We're very familiar with Mateen Cleaves, he's the type of kid that wants the ball in his hands at the end of the games. There's been a lot of question about his ability to be an outstanding shooter, but he's a big game shotmaker. When it's on the line, he seems to be the guy that they have no problem with him taking shots. I liken him a little bit to Scoonie. He has a tremendous drive. He's the guy that pushes all of those guys. He has the ability, like most point guards do, to make the other players on your team a little bit better. And I think Khalid does that, and I don't know as much about Avery, but I'm sure he has some of those qualities as well.

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: Well, I think it was probably a combination of the two. I think it was obvious that the people in Columbus and at Ohio State University in particular were just antsy to get something going in basketball. I think starved for a little bit more success might be a good way of putting it, but you could just tell that there was a lot of interest in trying to get the thing turned around. It didn't take me very long to appreciate the fact that they were patient with me my first year, and it didn't take very long to see the passion that surrounds not only basketball but all the teams, the entire athletic programs at Ohio State. The support of the football team is legendary, but when you consider the fact that we were -- we had eight wins and we were one and fifteen in the conference and we were getting 10 or 11,000 people a game, I thought that that was terrific. It could have been a lot worse. I think coming from the Northeast sometimes it's not always that way, but certainly in Columbus the people came out and supported us in great fashion last year, and then the natural thing is when we became a little bit better this year they came out in droves and we enjoyed tremendous fan support throughout the entire season.

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: Well, I think the thing that has always impressed me about playing in the Big Ten was the fan support throughout the entire conference. You don't go any place in this conference and not play in front of a full house. And it makes it that much more difficult to win games in the conference on the road. Is there a trend? I think that the Big Ten has been -- somebody who's looking at it from the outside for years, I think that the Big Ten has always been recognized as one of the premiere leagues. I think it does go in cycles, you know, there's been a lot of discussion with the Big Ten getting five, six or seven teams in a tournament in years past. A lot of teams getting beat early. Then there's been some criticism about maybe the league is overrated and that was then; this is now. I think that the success of our teams in the conference this year speaks towards how good the league was. Is there a trend? Hopefully. I think the trend is that the conference will always be as good as most conferences here and in Europe.

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: Michael has maybe been a little bit overshadowed by the arrival of Scoonie. I think having Scoonie is probably the reason for that. His contributions have not gone unnoticed by any of us nor by the people in Columbus. I do think that Michael should have been on the first team All Conference this year. I was a little bit surprised a year ago. I think you'd be hard breasted and I've said this before to find any conference in America where the leading scorer in the conference at this level only gets 13. I was a little bit surprised at that. But I also think and recognize that when you see who he joined on the second team, all Big Ten, I think as a sophomore he has to be very happy with what. When you think about A.J., Shaun and all outstanding guards, have had outstanding seasons. Mike was in that category as a sophomore. I think that still is very good for him.

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: The thing we talked about throughout the entire tournament is don't settle. It would be very easy for us to just walk in and say you know fellas, this has been great and so if you lose, hey, it's been great. You know, nobody's gonna have anything but nice things to say about you. We've achieved more than anything or anyone or anyone could have thought we would have. Is this what we want to have? Or do we want to try to get a little bit more? So for the idea for us on that has been don't settle for something when maybe you can get a little bit more. Maybe we can't. But let's see and find out. I think that's the way they've approached this throughout the entire tournament. Let's not be happy with where we are, let's see if we can get something a little bit more.

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: I think that Michigan State is a real good opponent for Duke. They've had obviously a wonderful season. The things that make them special is their toughness. I think they're a real tough team. I think you have to be a physically and mentally tough team to be able to play against a team like Duke. I think Michigan State is all of that. If you take their game the other day against Kentucky, it would have been very easy for them to fold it up and go home when Kentucky got off to the great start. But you just knew that somehow that these guys were not going to go away; that they were going to make a game of it. Cleaves has an awful lot to do with that. I think that they have the ability to score because they love to push the ball. They're like Connecticut in that they go from defense to offense very quickly. And I think that their defense is very underrated. And I think that Tom Izzo has done a great job just playing against them. I think they do a fantastic job of breaking down the things that you do and doing a real good job of scouting your stuff. And I don't know if Duke is all that complicated, but they're going to have to do a good job of containing Duke's individuals. But I think if there's a team in the country that can give Duke a run for it, it is Michigan State.

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: I really have no idea of why we should. I'm hoping that our guys play better. For a while there, I was a big believer in the law of averages. I totally have forgotten about that at this point. But I think this is two totally different situations. I do think that there may have been something with the kids at BC, that it was in their heads about we're just going to wait for something bad to happen because it seemed like it happened a number of times. But the kids on our team, they really don't know anything about that. They don't know anything about Connecticut other than what we're telling them. It's two totally, drastically different situations. As I said before, this is of no consequence to the kids on our team. The only one that has really had to sit through all of them has been me. So I don't think that this is a factor. They don't care about this game at all.

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: We play a little bit of zone. Zone is not our best defense. But we've watched a lot of different tapes. I've been a little bit more impressed with what they've done with zone than I thought I was going to be. You know, we are going to play a little bit of zone. I don't think we're going to play all that much quite frankly. I think we have to go for what our best defense is, and that's men-to-men .

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: I'm always concerned about his ability to stay in the game. What we've started to do with the last ten games or so is when he picks up a foul, we're a little bit quicker to take him out, to try to make sure that he stays available for us at the end. Along those lines, I think he has matured a little bit. He's gotten a little bit more experience and understands, I hope, that he doesn't have to block every single shot; that sometimes it's okay if they score, and the tradeoff is, let them have a basket occasionally without picking up a foul. So we really need to keep him in the game. He's a very, very valuable player for us. So we have to really kind of manage his foul situation as well as we can. So I think he's improving in that area.

COACH JIM O'BRIEN: Okay. Well I'll take the second part first. Last year, we created a little bit of a monster I think with Michael. We take blame for how he was perceived last year. We had a real hard time scoring points a year ago, and Michael got away with murder because he was allowed to take a lot of shots, a lot of poor shots, and we talked to him about the need for him to score a bundle of points. We played a lot of zone. We didn't demand as much from him defensively. He had to play 38 minutes a game. This year, it's all changed. So there are more demands on him. Defending, we're on him about rebounding. I think he's come a long way in his development. He's a much better player than he was a year ago, even though he hasn't scored on average as many points. The other part of it, I think, has to do with two wonderful kids who has each had to accept the other. Michael accepting Scoonie a little bit more. There was the obvious potential problem of one budding star not being able to accept the arrival of somebody else, and if it had been for two lesser personalties, maybe that could have happened. But Michael has shown tremendous maturity in accepting Scoonie and intelligence in knowing that Scoonie was only going to help him as opposed to hurt him. And Scoonie has handled it very well. He doesn't throw his new-found notoriety up in anybody's face. That's why they're both very good teammates and all the other kids on the team really like him.