NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOUR

March 31, 2000

Bill Guthridge

COACH GUTHRIDGE: It's been a great week, we had a nice celebration of my mom's life on Monday. That went well. Of course we were thrilled to win on Sunday against a very good Tulsa team in Austin. To be here in the Final Four, it's a real thrill. It doesn't get old, that's for sure.

COACH GUTHRIDGE: Ed Cota has had a fantastic career. This is his third Final Four. His second one here. And he's just -- he's been tremendous. He's our all-time assist leader, and we've had some pretty fair country point guards as well. So that's outstanding. I think it is his leadership has been very good this year, especially as we've gotten towards the end of the season, and I don't know where we would be without him. He's just been fantastic.

COACH GUTHRIDGE: I thought Joseph Forte was an ingredient our team really needed. He's got a lot of basketball savvy, a good feel for the game and I just thought he would certainly fit in. As far as him leading the team in scoring, I think he certainly owes that to Brendan Haywood and the other teams the way they play Brendan, and to Ed Cota for getting him the ball. I think we've had a lot of freshmen that would have led us in scoring under similar circumstances. The thing I like most about Joseph is his defensive potential, and he's starting to fulfill that. He's become a very good defensive player.

COACH GUTHRIDGE: I think you have to do both. I think -- and I'm relying a lot on Ed Cota and I have a lot of confidence that Ed will make the right decisions, along with Joseph and Jason. But I know that Florida wants to play a 94-foot game. We like to play that, too, under certain situations. We're going to play it, but there will be times when one of our strengths is the ability to get the ball in to Brendan Haywood or Kris Lang or Julius Peppers and we still want to do that, too.

COACH GUTHRIDGE: Kris Lang went through most of the practice today. We practiced about 25 minutes before we came here to go over some strategic things that you can't do in an environment like this. And he went through that, and then we came over here and he did some of the up-and-down work. But it's been a day-to-day thing, but I would guess that he'll play tomorrow. We certainly need him.

COACH GUTHRIDGE: They're much better. All those freshmen that were there, they played one game prior to coming to Maui against Florida State, so they really were two freshmen then. I think now they're sophomores and juniors instead of freshmen and sophomores. They're a lot better. I think Harvey is probably the best offensive rebounder we have played this year, one of the best we've ever played against. He's -- he's amazing, his relentlessness. And -- so he's a whole lot better then. And Nelson's a lot better. I think Billy Donovan has done a tremendous job of assembling the type of players he wants and then coaching them, too. I think they're very good.

COACH GUTHRIDGE: I think it's gotten better. We've worked all year at different ways to get the ball to Brendan, and I think it's -- Brendan's improvement on getting open and Ed's ability to get him the ball, as well as Jason and Joseph. And I think it's been tougher on Ed and tougher on the fellas that Ed passes the ball to. Ed for two years was used to passing to Antawn Jamison and Vince Carter. There was an adjustment last year and this year, it probably took a little longer than I thought it would, but we've gotten better and that certainly is one of the areas where we've improved. I think we've also improved our defense and just our overall improvement, individual improvement, which equals team improvement.

COACH GUTHRIDGE: Very much like the Kentucky teams and Providence the team that Billy played on. I think they have the same general philosophy and Billy's made some additions and probably some subtractions from it, too. I think it's definitely his team but he certainly has the background of Rick, and has done a tremendous job. And they do throw ten people at you, and we hope that we can counter with our six or seven players. We've played against teams with depth, but that's certainly a factor that we'll have to be aware of.

COACH GUTHRIDGE: That's right, it was 1958, I was on the team, I didn't play in the game. That was Tex Winters' fault for not putting me in. We might have won that game. (Laughter.) But I wasn't very good, and obviously, he made the right decision. But it was of course there wasn't the hype and the media attention and that type of thing then. But it was a thrill then. It's a thrill now.

COACH GUTHRIDGE: I think Billy's done a fantastic job in that. I think it's hard to get ten players to be happy in that type of situation, and obviously, he's done that. Their style of play certainly dictates that you can use -- need to and can use more players and get more playing time. But I think that Billy's done a good job of convincing his team that way.

COACH GUTHRIDGE: Well we have this game we play, quite often. It's -- and we raise the bar. It used to be 100 points or 120. We raised the bar to 105, we go for two minutes and if the players don't get 105 points, then they have to run it down and back. Between 105 and 125, then nobody runs. If it's over 125, then the coaches run. If you can call what we did running today. We got 128 points. We've got Phil Ford with a bad hip, Dave Hanners with hardly any knees. Pat Sullivan had back surgery a couple years ago and I'm old. (Laughter.) So it's an untimed down and back for the coaches.

COACH GUTHRIDGE: Probably the closest would be Virginia. Maryland, to some extent. And Duke somewhat. But no one's quite like them, but I think the closest would probably be Virginia.

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