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NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOURApril 1, 2006Lamar ButlerJim LarranagaJai LewisTony SkinnINDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, congratulations on a great season. Coach Larranaga, we'll ask that you make an opening statement first, please. COACH JIM LARRANAGA: Well, my congratulations goes to Billy Donovan and his outstanding basketball team, University of Florida, for the job they did not only today but throughout the tournament. I think they're playing at a very high level. We came into the game feeling very good about ourselves, feeling very good about our chances. For some reason, we were never able to really establish our rhythm either offensively or defensively. And Florida's ability to get so many second shots I thought really hurt us. It took away opportunities. Those missed shots, normally fast breaks for us. We'd been beating people on the boards throughout the tournament. Florida's ability to keep us from getting fast breaks because of their offensive rebounding I think really was a significant difference in the first half, then their great start took over the game in the second half. My hat's off to them. They did a great job. I'm sure they'll play very well on Monday night. THE MODERATOR: Questions first for Tony, Lamar or Jai. Q. Obviously you haven't digested everything yet, but what do you think the legacy of this team may be? TONY SKINN: I think we've done something tremendous for college basketball, for the teams that are out there that watched us play, you know, just to show them that all you need is opportunity and a chance. You just got to go out there and play great basketball. I'm definitely happy I was a part of something special. JAI LEWIS: I mean, I think this is something that's going to go down in history, you know. A lot of teams don't get the opportunity to even make it into the tournament. Like Tony said, all you need is the opportunity. Once you get the opportunity, to do something with it. Fortunately, we was able to make it to the Final Four. I'm happy we made it this far. LAMAR BUTLER: I'm going to piggyback on those guys. Just to be a part of something great. You know, this is history we're living right now. Whenever we talk about the Final Four, you have to mention us making it to the Final Four. This is history. We changed the face of college basketball. It was an amazing run. Unfortunately it had to come to an end. It's definitely history. Q. Jai, you had been able to make your run by containing some prominent big men. How was Florida's inside game any different from theirs? How were they able to get an advantage, particularly in rebounding? JAI LEWIS: I mean, you know, in the previous games, we did a great job boxing out. This game, we didn't get a body on people like we should have. It wasn't really that their big men were getting all the boards. A lot of rebounds went long, so it was going over me and Willie's head and we were boxing out again. When a rebound goes long, Florida has the advantage because they're on the outside. Q. When they came out and Humphrey hit those three-pointers, how did that maybe change things? LAMAR BUTLER: Didn't change anything. I don't know if you watched the North Carolina game, we were down 16-2. We came back in about five minutes playing. It didn't change anything. We just had to regroup, you know, keep our poise, fight and claw our way back. TONY SKINN: Yeah, I mean, that kind of hurt us a little bit. We've been playing behind for a while in this tournament. We didn't put our heads down. We wanted to go out there and keep fighting. Fortunately for them, you know, they won the game. Q. Tony, two plays. When you got it to nine, the block/charge call. Do you think you had position? The play a couple minutes later when you fouled Green, he got -- TONY SKINN: There was a few times I tried to get the charge call in the first half. The referee didn't call it. He was initiating contact. I was trying to do something that we could gain momentum for. The ref called the right call, that was pretty much it. The technical -- I don't even know what the technical was for. I know they called a foul. He must have said something to me. The referee called a tech. Q. Could you just talk about what it was like at the start of the game, what it felt like to be out there playing in a Final Four. JAI LEWIS: I mean, it's a lifetime experience, you know, going out and playing in front of almost 60,000 people. Something you can keep with you for a lifetime. Something you can tell your children and grandchildren. Just a great experience. LAMAR BUTLER: I was just out there having fun. I was taking pictures with my family. Nothing had changed. I was ready and focused to play against Florida. Nothing felt different for me at all. TONY SKINN: Yeah, pretty much same thing. Once you step out on that floor, you're not worried about the crowd or anything that's out there. You just want to go out there and play basketball. THE MODERATOR: Gentlemen, congratulations on a great season. Coach Larranaga will remain for questions. Q. Speaking about legacy, when you go on, you reflect on this, you'll coach for many years yet, what do you think you personally take away from it for what you may have done for little people in the country? I'm pushing the envelope a lot. Do you have feelings about that? COACH JIM LARRANAGA: I guess the way I look at is, I don't know how many times I've been to the Final Four as a head coach of a Division I program that was labeled "mid-major," sat there and wondered if I'd ever have the opportunity to coach a team to the Final Four. My thoughts were, first you have to get to a high-major level to accomplish that goal. I think by what these players at George Mason have done, they've probably opened up the eyes of many people, including myself, that you don't have to have seven-footers on your team or be the biggest and strongest team to have a great basketball team. There are a lot of great coaches out there that don't coach at the highest level that have accomplished an awful lot during their career and maybe are not totally appreciated because they were not able to get to the Final Four. We set such high standards in terms of winning. But I think there's so much more to the game than that. I'm very proud of these young men. I'm very proud to be representing George Mason University and the Colonial Athletic Association. I'm especially proud to represent, if we do, all those mid-majors and low-majors who aspire to get here one day. But I am still very concerned that rather than this be something that everyone can look at and enjoy and get excited about, I don't think it's something that you want to create the expectation now that George Mason has done it, they've broken the barrier, so to speak, now everybody else should be expected to do that. That would be definitely the wrong message. When Jim Ryan broke the four-minute mile, everyone thought they could do it. That's great, but there's a lot of great runners that ran before him and probably after him that never reached that milestone. I would just hope that our guys in future years would be able to look back and say they did something great rather than something happened where the expectation for guys just like themselves grows so much that nobody, nobody can enjoy the ride like we did. One of the greatest parts about this trip was we didn't put any pressure on ourselves. No one created the expectation except us, that we were going to continue to play the best basketball we could no matter who we played. Q. The three ball was so big for you against UConn. Tonight you were outscored 36-6 beyond the perimeter. Talk to me about their perimeter game, your perimeter defense, how you had a tough time finding that three ball. COACH JIM LARRANAGA: Well, the first thing is I thought we were going to play a great game today. We were in the perfect mental frame of mind. Our shoot-around this afternoon, I had to stop it. The energy level was so high. When we took the floor, I was still feeling that way. But a few minutes into the game we did not show that natural rhythm that we had the last few weeks at both ends of the floor. Part of it was their offensive rebounding. We didn't get the long rebounds that led to break-outs where we got started well. We fell behind. We dug ourselves a hole. We worked our way back into the game. But at no point did we get the inside-outside play, the sharing of the ball. Some of the credit has to go to Florida and how they were able to defend our post men individually, not needing as much help. The other thing is I think a dome is a factor, for a team that never played in it. Lamar Butler was quoted yesterday as he'd never even been in a dome. There had to be some lack of familiarity with how you really get in a good rhythm in a building like this, this size, with the problem of developing the proper depth perception. If I'm not mistaken, Florida's team played in this kind of arena last week. I think had we had that experience, maybe that would have eased that burden. But we never did get it going on the perimeter. They certainly did, far better than anybody else we've defended throughout the tournament and probably throughout the year. Not many teams shoot 48% against us. A lot of the credit I think has to go to Lee Humphrey. Q. I imagine there's going to be some debate about whether this particular achievement, for George Mason basketball, is possible to replicate, particularly given the fact you have three seniors and a team that really has grown up together. Can you speak to what a realistic expectation is for George Mason? COACH JIM LARRANAGA: I'm sure everyone in that locker room who is returning wants to be back here. I'm certainly not going to be the one to tell them, "No, it's not possible because Tony, Will and Jai are graduating" -- I'm sorry, "Tony, Lamar, and Jai are graduating." I think Will and Folarin will step it up big time, work very hard. I think the underclassmen will return with a determination to be as good as we can be next year. Whether that takes us to the Final Four, who knows. As I said earlier, the greater the expectation, the greater the pressure, more likely you fall short. We'll just continue to be who we are and believe in the things we do, try to be the best we can. Q. Much has been made about the sense of fun and being relaxed, how well that served you in this whole run through the NCAAs. Did that fail you tonight, particularly in the second half? COACH JIM LARRANAGA: Oh, no. Q. When you were digging yourselves out of the hole, it didn't seem to be there. COACH JIM LARRANAGA: No. The game itself has issues that you have to deal with. I mean, certainly being happy and loose didn't keep us from rebounding. You know, this is a team that has rebounded very well. But you don't play the same every single night. You don't shoot the ball the same, you don't defend the same, you don't rebound the same. Basically, human nature comes into it. And these kids are human. They've played as consistently and as well as they're capable of playing for an extremely long time. I am shocked that we were not in the game in the last three or four minutes because we hadn't played a game the entire year where we weren't in it down the stretch. We lost seven times, today was the eighth. But five times for sure the ball was in our hands with a chance to win with one minute or less. We lost a couple of games by more than just two or three. More than anything, I'm very proud of these guys, but I'm surprised we didn't play a great game. We were in the perfect mental frame of mind to do it. Q. 64-55 after Folarin makes the three, what is in your mind? What did you think when the block was called on the next possession? COACH JIM LARRANAGA: Well, the calls don't make a difference. You just got to play. Had it gone our way, it obviously could have created some momentum for us, but it didn't. One of the things we had emphasized so strongly to the team all through the season and through the tournament was keeping guys off the foul line. Taurean Green is like a 90% free-throw shooter. It gave them points without ever taking a shot. It was difficult 'cause our guys were instructed to start turning up the heat defensively, so Tony was following instructions, but Taurean Green is also a smart player who you probably saw him four or five times stumbling around looking to draw fouls, looking to get the referee's attention. In that particular case, the foul goes against us, he makes the free-throws. But, as I said, we never the entire game found our offensive rhythm. Although I think Florida deserves some of the credit, I think that's just -- sometimes that happens. Maybe it's the environment. But I think maybe it was -- I mean, you know, Folarin Campbell dribble off his heel. He's never done that his entire season. Lamar Butler dribbled off his foot the first half with two seconds to go in regulation. Q. Even 64-55 you weren't thinking, "We've got one run in us," or you were? COACH JIM LARRANAGA: I was. Not until I looked up at the clock and there was under two minutes and it was at 15, 14 or 15, did I realize, "Gee, we're not going to have a shot at this." All through the second half, I thought at some point we'd start going into a nice offensive rhythm of inside-outside, taking the ball to the basket. But they were so inconsistent for a team that plays so consistently. You can see 2 for 11 from three, didn't shoot the ball well from the outside. How many layups did we miss? I mean, Lamar Butler had a left-hand finger roll miss. Tony Skinn had one. This is all in the first half. If we just made three uncontested layups, we're ahead at halftime. Or if we had gotten a couple of defensive rebounds, we would have been ahead at halftime, then it's a different game. Q. Since the pregame theme you had with the CAA against Connecticut got so much attention, I was hoping you could comment on the poem you read to the players before the game. COACH JIM LARRANAGA: I'm sorry, could you repeat? The poem I read to the players? Q. Yes. COACH JIM LARRANAGA: Throughout the tournament, I felt it was my responsibility to keep our mental frame of mind in the right place, the right attitude, because we believe everything begins with attitude. If you feel good about yourself, if you're excited, if you're loose, if you're confident, then the other things kind of flow. So the poem was directly related to that. We had used the Kryptonite, the CAA, felt like this was an appropriate time to do something a little different that I thought would, again, put us all on the same page. Q. You mentioned how you weren't able to get that inside-outside rhythm. Was there anything that I guess Florida was doing on the interior that didn't allow you to get any of that rhythm going? COACH JIM LARRANAGA: I'd have to look closely at the tape. I loved the shots that Will and Jai got. Some of them were point-blank range. You know, during the game, at the very first timeout, as I said this many times, Jai and Will are very smart, at the very first timeout, the two big guys talked amongst each other and Jai said to the team, "They're playing me on the high side, I'm going to use the baseline, we need somebody in the opposite corner." Will understood that, too. So we would work our way towards the middle of the floor, spin back to the baseline trying to score or pass out of the low post that way. The very next possession, Jai went baseline, scored. Next time, went baseline, kicked it out to Tony, who shot-faked, got the guy, stepped up underneath, hit the 15-footer. I think that cut it to like 16-11 or 18-15, in that range. That was the best offensive segment we had, where the guys were recognizing what they were looking for and either scoring or finding the open man. But we never really did get to that in the second half. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you very much. Congratulations on a great season. COACH JIM LARRANAGA: Thank you.
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