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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT


March 11, 2009


Rick Stansbury

Barry Stewart

Jarvis Varnado


TAMPA, FLORIDA

CLAUDE FELTON: Coach Stansbury, your comments.
COACH STANSBURY: As always, we're excited to be here and be a part of the SEC Tournament. This is always an exciting time of the year when you bring all the teams together. More importantly when you bring all the fans together.
It gives everybody an opportunity over a four-day period to have a chance to compete for another championship. So we're excited about that.
Our team coming into this is always, it's a small margin for air force, but I like the way we're playing. I like our energy, I like our confidence. I think this tournament is as wide open as it's ever been.
We're playing a very good Georgia team. A Georgia team that's probably playing about as well as anybody. They've won 3 of their 7, wins against Florida, wins against a Vanderbilt team who's only loss in the last four games. Then a road win at Rupp, which doesn't happen very often. So we know we'll have our hands full with a very good Georgia team.
CLAUDE FELTON: Questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Why do you guys think this tournament is as wide open as everybody says it is?
JARVIS VARNADO: Anybody can beat anybody on any given day, you know. Take Georgia last year. That was the last place seed and they won the tournament, you know. And this year, I mean there's no predominant team in the SEC right now. Everybody's at an equal balance right now. So I think it's wide open for anybody here?
BARRY STEWART: I believe there's a lot of balance in the league. You go down through the SEC season, a lot of teams have beaten each other on multiple occasions. So I think there's a lot of balance.

Q. About Ravern, I guess you could make this case about every player. But how critical is it that his shots fall for you to be successful tomorrow, but have been successful all year long based on his shot?
BARRY STEWART: It's critical, but I think this team's got to take defense more pride on defense. So, you know, shots fall and sometimes they don't. So I think Ravern, he's got his confidence, and we're going to let him shoot. But we're going to have to take pride on defense to win tomorrow.
CLAUDE FELTON: Fellows, we'll excuse you. Thank you very much.

Q. Your thoughts on being in Tampa and making the trip down?
COACH STANSBURY: Well, you ask me after it's over I might answer you a little bit better. One thick, it's a beautiful place to come to, so far, I guess. It's warm. Hadn't been out much in town. But it seems to be a very nice arena. I guess from a standpoint we're right in the middle of a lot of things happening for the fans, the fans that are able to make it. So it will be interesting. It will be interesting to see how the ticket sales go.
The one thing that stands out right now about Tampa, again, maybe versus Atlanta, Atlanta's been kind of a central location for all the teams. I think where a lot of people can drive to. It will be interesting after this tournament's over when you do that final head count, how the ticket sales went. How the fan base was able to show up and support this tournament. I think that's probably - we'll have to wait and see about that.
But it is a beautiful town and very warm weather.

Q. When I asked Barry about Ravern's shot, he talked about the defense?
COACH STANSBURY: I liked that answer, it was good. It was good.

Q. I figured you would, first off. Is it something that's been a focal point with Ravern specifically or with the team or anything new with that?
COACH STANSBURY: I think it's the whole team, number one. In particular, Ray for sure. It's very obvious. Ray's strengths haven't been his ability to shut people down and rebound a basketball. Those are areas he's got to continue to get better at. And he's gotten better at it.
But there's been games you've seen when you've got to have them stops that maybe he wasn't as good as we need to be consistently. He's gotten better.
But our whole team from a standpoint, a little bit of that. The way our team is put together, you know we're not very physical until you get one guy who is over 200 pounds that's going to outmuscle people. Particularly on the road. At home you survive a little easier, but on the road it's tough.
But I do think you look over the last few games, one thing we've done better is rebound that basketball. We're not getting beat as bad. Or we've gotten rebounds on those people on the boards. Defensively we're better. We're not the best defensive teams that I've ever had. But we've made steady improvement.
When you knock off three or four points a game and you continue to score, it makes a difference in a lot of games. As you look back on our goods and bads, I mean, two or three points in several games, you know where we'd be.
Again, we're 9-7, and those three or four games it's two double overtime games and a couple of other games that are two or three-point games. So again, one more stop here. One more rebound here makes a total difference in winning and losing. We've narrowed that gap some. We haven't closed it by no means.

Q. Looking back at the game Ravern had against Georgia and coming in here with a different environment, do you worry about your shooters in a place like this?
COACH STANSBURY: Oh, this place, this arena, we play in big arenas all year long. Rupp Arena, there are a lot of big arenas, Tennessee's 20-something thousand, and Rupp. So this is not like a dome. This will not be a dome here.
So the factors shooting may be in a dome that maybe if it may be something you think about a little bit. But you don't think about that nowadays. Kids, you know, they've played in things through the years. In particular this. This won't be any adjustment from any standpoint.
Whether we shoot the ball or don't shoot it, it won't be because we're playing in just a huge, huge arena that affects on our ability to shoot the basketball, no.

Q. To follow-up on the Tampa question. The tournament's been in New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis. It's moved all around. I mean, you won in New Orleans, and that wasn't necessarily a place that was convenient for everybody to go to. Should it be in one place, though? Is that what you'd rather see, the tournament in one place every year in Atlanta?
COACH STANSBURY: Well, I'm not going to answer that. First off, I learned a long time ago things you have no control over, don't worry about it. That's one of them. I have no control over that. I can say this though, I think Atlanta has really been good for all 12 teams.
I don't know if there's another spot that consistently is centrally located that's any better for all 12 teams or all 12 fan bases. I think our fans have gotten accustomed to being there. Atlanta is a good city.
But to answer your question about we've been in New Orleans, we've been in Memphis, we've been in Nashville. Nashville was a good arena. It was pretty good location. But I think once you get used to doing something, your fans look forward to being in one place.
I know just talking to our fans how much they like Atlanta. And again, for us, it's a four-hour drive like it is for so many teams. In today's economy, I mean, that's even more of a factor, probably for people being able to get where they drive.
I'm like all you guys. If y'all want to know about Tampa, how it's going to go, I think everybody's sitting back like you to wait and anticipate and see how the ticket sales are going to go. And how these fan bases are going to show up. I don't think anybody really knows right now.

Q. From the Mississippi State point of view, how have you seen the economy affect the fans' interest or intention of coming here?
COACH STANSBURY: Well, I think it's, you know, in Atlanta, I'm not so sure we had anybody from the Mississippi area and Memphis area, Delta area that had to get on a plane to go to Atlanta. They were all able to drive.
To come to Tampa now, it's not quite as easy. It's a longer haul, be more expensive and more time. There's a lot of factors. Again, if you were to try to fly, you know the expense of trying to fly a family. A family. And those tickets are not discounted because he's 4 or 5 years old, either. It's all the same.
In Atlanta, again, you can jump in the back of a car or pick-up truck and you're there in four hours. So, again, I'm speaking for Mississippi State, there's no question Atlanta is much more convenient for our fans.
I don't know how many coaches, when you just talk about convenience and what your fans are like, I don't know how many coaches that wouldn't tell you the convenience of Atlanta. Have you asked the Kentucky coach yet?
COACH STANSBURY: Have they been in here yet?

Q. Yes.
COACH STANSBURY: How did they answer that?

Q. I was in the locker room.
COACH STANSBURY: I can't imagine you not being in here for a press conference for Kentucky. I gotcha.

Q. What do you remember most about the game with Alabama and last year's tournament with the tornado? Have you even been through anything quite like those 24 hours?
COACH STANSBURY: I don't know if anybody's ever been through something like that. We were probably going through it at a time not realizing for sure what it was.
As a coach, to tell you how messed up I was, and how it kind of shook me a little bit when it started happening and everybody started hollering tornado, I didn't realize I lost track of where my family was too, at the time. I'm trying to find my two boys, and all my boys. Two of them was on my bench and I forgot all about that.
It was a situation that you're playing a game, and it's a close game and you're down to the last two, two and a half minutes whatever it was. You're absolutely focused in that game and all of a sudden you start seeing things falling from the roof and the building's shaking, you don't know what to think for a minute.
Then our concern was making sure we got our players off that court and got them back to whatever they were saying was a safe place. I guess that was back underneath that tunnel. That was a very unique situation.
The way it turned out, I think we were all blessed. You look at the timing of that tornado for that game to have gone into overtime. This happened in overtime. If that game hadn't been in overtime, and, again, you can look at the timing of it, it could have been a bad situation for a lot of people.
So looking back, we all were blessed that game went into overtime.

Q. When you're faced with having to win four in four days, does that affect how you approach anything as far as like substitutions or anything like that? But then, also your bench play as well as it's been in the past two games, I guess, how good is that for you?
COACH STANSBURY: You're going to hear the generic answer to that question. We're going to play them one at a time. We will not be saving anybody for the next one. First off, we're not good enough to do that. We'll do whatever we have to do to win that first game. If it takes playing everybody 40 minutes, that's what we'll do.
Now if we're able to get a lead, either coach, able to get a big lead, I'm sure they'll look at that as a factor to maybe rest some people. But we're not going into it thinking we've got to rest these guys. We're going into it number one with our hands full against Georgia. A team playing exceptionally well. That's all our focus is.
Only thing we know if we're able to beat Georgia, we have South Carolina, after that everything's up in the air. But all of our focus is totally through Georgia, and we'll play accordingly to what we have to do to try to win a game.

Q. In your opening statement you said this tournament's as wide open as it's ever been. Why do you think that? And do you think that it's partly because everybody views it or do you think it's a bit of a down year for the SEC?
COACH STANSBURY: No, being open and being down had nothing to do with it. It could be open because everybody's good instead of being down.
I think that's one thing that's happened to the SEC that's been unfair. Maybe because we don't have the media hasn't voted for anybody in this league to be a Top 10 team. That doesn't mean it's down. We didn't have that one team like that.
But we've got six, seven, eight, nine teams in this league that compete with a lot of people anywhere on a given night. So when you say down, I don't look at us as down. I think it has the most balance that it's had in a long time.
Probably just like you guys when you start going on that bracket. There's been years in the past you can kind of fill out your bracket a little bit.
Right now if ten of you were to get in a room and try to fill that bracket out, probably five of you would disagree on every game. And you guys are the experts. And if y'all disagree, then you know we know nothing about it. That's what makes it as wide open as it's ever been.
Again, there always seems to be one or two teams that's come to this that's a ranked, highly ranked opponent. That doesn't always mean that team wins it either. So there is a lot of balance.
I think when you look at how many road wins there's been in this league this year, and I know on our side, for instance. Everybody, and it's okay. Everybody talks about the east. And that's okay.
Florida's very good, and Tennessee and Kentucky and South Carolina. You've got some teams over there that, you know, bring that national publicity every year. But there's a lot of teams in the West that's had as much successor more that be the teams in the east.
I know ourselves and we're not sitting on top of the west. We're at 5-1 against the east and we're not at the top. There's LSU and Auburn that are 1-2 seeds. So I look at it as a lot of balance, lot of parody.
Again, last year was a different situation. You had a team come in not expecting to win with a bad record and was able to walk through and win that thing. Well, this year for sure there's a lot more balance and parody in those teams trying to compete to win that championship.

End of FastScripts




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