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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 11, 2009Billy GillispieJodie MeeksPatrick PattersonTAMPA, FLORIDA CLAUDE FELTON: Coach, some thoughts on the Kentucky team heading into the tournament. COACH GILLISPIE: Just excited about coming down here. Looks like Tampa's really excited to have us. All 12 teams are coming in with a lot to play for. Should be a very, very exciting tournament. And we're definitely looking forward to being here. CLAUDE FELTON: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Looking back to the first game against Ole Miss, can you talk about the defense collectively that they played against you, but specifically Zach Graham? JODIE MEEKS: I thought they did a great job with defending me. But our main focus is just to come out, play hard, listen to the scouting report, and listen to all the coaches, so, you know, we're looking forward to playing hard tomorrow and hopefully getting the win. Q. Just overall, you've played a lot of the teams this year in the SEC, could you assess just the play from the teams this year? It seems a lot of people feel it's down this year, the overall play? JODIE MEEKS: I think this league is great. I think we have a lot of good players, guards and post players. You know, people say what they want to say. But my opinion, this league is very competitive. And each and every night it's going to be a battle, so. PATRICK PATTERSON: Same thing with Jodie, pretty much. You know, people say that this league is down, there's no really good teams in the SEC. Every school is down this year. But we know each individual on the team, each person that loves SEC basketball, this he know that the tradition is still here. They know that the basketball is still well known, still tough. And we play great basketball here in the SEC. If you look at all the teams down the stretch, they beat out of conference teams. So if the SEC was down, how could we do that. We all believe in each other, have faith in each other. Each individual and each team knows the SEC is a pretty good basketball conference. Q. We always here the cliche everybody's 0-0 in the tournament. But is it kind of a fresh start for you guys coming off the four losses? PATRICK PATTERSON: Pretty much. You know, the SEC Tournament's pretty much a new season. It's a new beginning, pretty much. Basketball is winding down, and you just get pretty much a clean slate when you come to an SEC Tournament. So you just concentrate on basketball. There's not that much left in the tourney, you know, it's just four games. You want to go out and play your heart out every night and get that W. JODIE MEEKS: Same with Patrick. It's a new season, everybody's 0-0. You know, we didn't finish the way we wanted to finish at the end of the regular season, but put that behind us and it's a fresh start for everybody. Q. 17 straight years you've gone on to the NCAA Tournament. Just your thoughts about the importance of this SEC Championship to win this thing? Do you feel you need to reach that point to get a bid? JODIE MEEKS: Our main focus like I said is to come out each and every night and play hard. So that's everybody's dream to make the NCAA Tournament. We have a fresh start. Everybody's 0-0. So I think looking at it tomorrow is the first thought that we have, and that's Ole Miss. That's all we're worried about. PATRICK PATTERSON: Pretty much we don't know what it takes to the get to the NCAA Tournament. We're just worried about right now, the SEC Tournament. One game at a time like we always preach. We have Ole Miss next, and we've just got to concentrate on that, and win that. Hopefully we can make it to the championship game in the SEC Tournament and take care of that. CLAUDE FELTON: Thank you, fellows, for coming. We'll continue with Coach GILLISPIE. Q. 17 straight years, Kentucky, the tradition there is very well known. Just the thoughts about the pressure coming into this venue and having to have a lot of success to kind of secure a spot, if you're able to do that? COACH GILLISPIE: No one knows what we need to do. But what we can, we're not worried about things that we can't control. All we're worried about is, like Jodie and Patrick said, our next opponent is Ole Miss. And everyone's coming to play for high stakes. As far as pressure, I don't think the players feel it. I don't feel any pressure. We know that every single game is a high stakes game in the Southeastern Conference, and that's the way we've always taken them. That's the way we'll continue to take them. If you're lucky enough to advance, you focus on your next time. Q. Have you in your career seen a conference tournament as wide open, top to bottom where it seems like a mystery who is the favorite? There is no favorite. COACH GILLISPIE: When you look at conference tournaments, tell me who is supposed to win any conference tournament? You know, there's so many things, so many teams that have so many different mindsets. You look at the Big East, you look at the ACC, the Big 12, Pac 10, you look at every team every single conference and tell me who is maybe out of one conference tournament, there is probably an overriding favorite in most of the conferences around the country. When you talk about the ones that are the absolute most exposed. That's why March Madness has been made from. That's what it's all about. You never know what's going to happen as we saw there were some games that started yesterday in conference tournaments in the BCS type conference tournaments, and a lot of upsets already. So I think they've been wide open forever. It's a different format. You played 16 games over about a nine or ten week period, and now you're trying to play three or four games over a two, three, four day period. So I think that there's a lot of teams that could definitely win this conference tournament. But I don't think it's much different than it is normally all around the country at any of the tournaments. Q. Have you ever experienced anything as crazy as last year's tournament? COACH GILLISPIE: You're talking about basketball-wise? Q. Yeah, everything. Playing it where you played it. Playing it in a venue where there were only a few thousand fans there? COACH GILLISPIE: Well, I was married once. So are you talking about basketball or what? No, I don't think anyone could predict an act of nature affecting something as drastically as it did. But, you know, those things happen. I thought that the Southeastern Conference did a fantastic job. I thought, I don't know what everyone could probably say you should have done this, you should have done that. But I thought it turned on out very well. I thought it was very, very fair. I thought it was properly done. I wish the results had been different for us. But who could ever predict anything like that was going to happen? Life's about 10% of what happens to you, 90% of how you handle it. And I thought everyone handled it well, and Georgia came out on top. And that is just another chapter in the March Madness situation. I would think that would be a very, very big chapter as far as if you're writing a book about unlikely things happening winning four games in three days. I thought that was a fantastic accomplishment by their team. Q. I know you've talked about this before. Can you talk about the league at large and the season it had, which was viewed by most of us as being a down year for this league? COACH GILLISPIE: Yeah, I totally disagree with that. I think that it's been a fairly balanced year. I think there are a lot of teams that are very good. I've said this many times and I've been around a little bit and been in two or three different leagues of the BCS type. I think that the Southeastern Conference plays a little bit different brand of basketball. I think there are more teams in this league that have more good three-point shooters. Most teams put at least four guys out there that you have to guard beyond the three-point arc. So I don't think it may be typical looking teams that have two 6' 10", 265 pound centers playing. It may not be quite as physical, even though it's a physical league. I think the brand of basketball is outstanding. I think the coaches are great. I think the home-court advantages are great. I think the players are fantastic and really athletic. Like I mentioned before, I've not seen a group of shooters over the last two years that can really make you guard every single player on the court all the time. That is very, very difficult to do. So I think it may be a little bit different, but I don't think it's down. I think in my opinion there's been too many things. You know, where we are in college basketball, there are so many avenues for people to express their opinion. So by the second week of November or the third week of November, especially after the first wave of the exempt events, and those usually happen right at the start of the season. Also right around the Thanksgiving weekend, you've already deemed that it's a great year in the Southeastern Conference or it's a down year in the Southeastern Conference two or three weeks into your season. I don't think that's good for the game, and I don't really think it's a fair assessment. Next year it will be some other league that's deemed the same way. At that point I won't think it's fair to that particular league. So I don't think it's down at all. I think that once postseason begins and we get outside our league, I think that you'll probably see that the Southeastern Conference teams will do very well. I was looking back last night at some of the SEC notes, I believe, and it was talking about non-conference percentage of wins over the last 10 or 15 years, and our percentage of wins outside the conference was pretty consistent with what it has been for the last 10 or 15 years. Now maybe the games that were exposed more on a national TV basis or whatever, maybe those are the games that we didn't do as well in, I don't know. But if you look back, I think that the league has been really good for a long time, and I think it's going to continue to be. I think it's really good right now. Q. Could you describe the development of Jodie Meeks since you've had him? And also of late, what you've seen from other teams as they try to defend him and your team, what you've seen from them? COACH GILLISPIE: Well, all I did was I was lucky enough to inherit him when I came here as coach. And Jodie was destined to be a really good player. He had a good freshman year. Last year was unfortunate for him, he was injured and only played in 11 games. But he worked extremely hard once he had his surgery and was able to recover. He's had one of the best years of any of the players I've been around on any of the teams I've been associated with, and it's all because of how hard he's worked. As far as what other people have tried to do to him, it's been tough. It's been really tough. That is usually dictated by how much help we give him. Some nights we have one guy has a really great night but a couple of other guys don't play as well. Then the next night a different guy has a good one, but the other two or three guys don't play as well. That's really probably hurt him because teams aren't going to continue to focus all their attention on one or two players if other guys prove consistently that they're going to beat them. So we have to do a better job of helping him. When he struggles it's not because he struggles so much, it's really because we've struggled. And we have to do a better job as we move forward. End of FastScripts |
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