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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: DAYTONMarch 19, 2009Murray BartowGreg HamlinTommy HubbardCourtney PigramMike SmithKevin TiggsDAYTON, OHIO THE MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Courtney, what are you seeing on tape when you watch Pittsburgh, what do you think is going to give you guys the biggest problems? COURTNEY PIGRAM: We haven't got to the tape yet. But there's some things we're going to have to cover today. Basically, we just worrying about us right now. Q. Mike, there was an East Tennessee State team back in the early '90s that almost pulled an upset. Wonder if you talked to any of their former players or coaches about that and maybe what it takes to pull off an upset. MIKE SMITH: No, some of the older guys always hanging around the gym and they're always telling us how great it is to be here. And just we're feeding off their energy, and hopefully these guys -- we can play well and hopefully compete tonight and hopefully get an upset. Q. Kevin, what do you think the reaction would be across the country if you guys knocked off Pitt? KEVIN TIGGS: A lot of people mad. 99, what was it? 99.4? That's a lot of people. Q. Greg and Kevin, can you address your relationship going to Flint Michigan and going to community college and go the way and now being in the NCAA Tournament being a No. 1 ranked team. GREG HAMLIN: Grew up pretty much just different ends, but we was always around each other. Going from high school to junior college, now here. It's a great experience. KEVIN TIGGS: I enjoyed it, every minute of it. I'm still enjoying it. He forever will be my friend. Probably be my best man at my wedding. It's been fun. Q. Who is going to be checking Blair tomorrow? Whose responsibility is that going to be? GREG HAMLIN: That would be me. Q. Have you faced anybody of his size and what have you seen on him the little bit of tape you've seen? GREG HAMLIN: We faced a couple of people around his size. Not just the individual thing. We'll do it as a team, pretty much. So we just go out and play them the best we can. TOMMY HUBBARD: All of us will be guarding him. Q. You said you haven't seen tape, what do you guys know about Pitt and what do you guys need to be able to pull off this upset? MIKE SMITH: We know they're a great team, they're the No. 1 seed. That pretty much explains it all. They're a physical team. They've got some great athletes. But in practice, mostly we've been worrying about ourselves trying to improve what we need to do to win the game. So basically just come out and play hard and compete. TOMMY HUBBARD: Yeah, they're a great rebounding team. So we know we definitely have to play hard and try to compete with them on the boards so they won't outrebound us in tomorrow's game. That's one thing we know. Q. Speaking of rebounding, you guys have a situation with a center where it's kind of a rebounding-by-committee type of thing. Tommy and Greg, especially, do you think some of the intangibles, hustle, hard work on and off are going to be a really big part to give you a chance to compete against their big guys? GREG HAMLIN: That's the main thing we need to do. If we outhustle them and outrebound them, it's going to be great for us. TOMMY HUBBARD: Exactly. Q. Courtney, I was reading about that e-mail campaign, that grassroots campaign at school to show the support for you. What did that mean to you and how much did that help get your game turned around? COURTNEY PIGRAM: It meant a lot coming from the fans, the outsiders. They gave me a standing ovation and chanted my name in the crowd to get me going again. It made me feel real good just to know I had people behind me 100 percent. Q. What did it mean to the rest of you guys to have a player get that kind of support from everyone? KEVIN TIGGS: It means a whole lot. You see we won our tournament. I don't think we could have done it without him. MIKE SMITH: I remember the game. Everybody was chanting his name, saying hit 10 or 11 3s. He broke the school record. TOMMY HUBBARD: Broke the school record. MIKE SMITH: It was pretty exciting for all of us. Q. How much do you guys typically press in a game and do you expect to do that tomorrow against Pitt? COURTNEY PIGRAM: Expect to press a lot during the game. It's something we've been working on the last couple of games. We've been doing real good pressing teams, starting out early I think coach called it throwing the first punch. So it won't hurt us to throw the first punch out there. KEVIN TIGGS: Basically I just say we just gotta come ready to play. They're a good team. We're a good team. But I guess from your point of view they're better. So we just gotta come ready to play. Q. Courtney and Kevin, what have you learned in your career when you're the underdog and you're going up against a team that most people don't think you're going to beat, how do you guys handle that in terms of mentally and just being prepared when you get out there? COURTNEY PIGRAM: It's just a game. We all have been playing the game for a long time. The only difference is the name on your jersey. So just got to go out there with a lot of confidence and just play your game, just do what you know you can do. KEVIN TIGGS: Best said. I can't say no better. Q. Mike, will it be tough to fight the urge that you've already accomplished something already to be here and that there isn't more to accomplish? MIKE SMITH: Coach has been talking to us all the time. We're here now. We're here to win some games. We're not just happy to be here, but we're trying to look forward and win a couple of games here, two or three. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Coach, welcome and congratulations making it to the tournament. If you would please begin with an opening statement. MURRY BARTOW: I just say we're excited, obviously, to be in the tournament. And we've had a fun year. I've got a great bunch of guys that I love coaching. And we didn't win the regular season in our league, but fortunately, we got hot at the right time and played really, really well down the stretch. And, really, over the last couple of weeks we've played our best basketball of the season. So I really, really like our team. I'm not sure I love the matchup, but I love our team. We've really got what we call the Big 3 that are playing incredibly well for us. And, obviously, they'll have to play great tomorrow for us to have a chance. And very impressed with Pittsburgh. Coach Dixon does a great job, and we've obviously got some matchup problems in the game that hopefully we can overcome. But we're excited. We're looking forward -- I've got some very confident kids, some tough kids, some kids that compete very hard. So we're not going to back away from the game, I can tell you that. We'll come out and compete hard and play hard and just see what happens. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach. Q. Murry, the team had said that they hadn't watched any tape yet on Pittsburgh. A, is that on purpose? And B, what are you and the coaches seeing in terms of what's going to give you guys the biggest matchup problems? MURRY BARTOW: Obviously DeJuan Blair inside is an incredibly hard matchup for us. When you look at the stats, their plus 10 rebounding margin on the glass in the Big East jumps out at you. We'll have to try to hold our own there if we can. Sam Young's a pro. He's a great player. Levance Fields is one of the best point guards in the country. We'll watch more tape tonight, but it's going to be more tape on what we can do to hurt them. Try to take tape from the Providence game, the West Virginia game, and other games where people have fared well and say these are some things we can do to be successful. We're not going to show them a 15-minute highlight tape of Sam Young. I'm not sure we want them to see that. But they've seen Pittsburgh play. These guys watch ESPN. They've seen Pitt play. They know DeJuan Blair and they know Levance Fields and Sam Young, and I don't think they're a three-man team. I think Dixon is very good and they've got good players. But I've got an interesting group here. Kevin Tiggs, he could care less who we're playing, and Courtney, he's a fighter, and Mike is a fighter and Tommy is a fighter. They know it's a hard matchup but they know we're a pretty good team. Q. Do you subscribe to a theory, any point of view that Pitt, over the last decade or so, started with Ben Hallen, stand for something artistically in a style on the court as any major team in the country? MURRY BARTOW: I think it started with Ben Hallen and the way he coaches and his philosophy, and obviously that's gone on to UCLA, and Jamie right behind him. They're just -- if you look at their record over the last 8, 9, 10 years, 30 wins, 29 wins, 28 wins, they've been incredibly consistent. And they've got a consistent style of play, very physical brand of basketball, very tough, very aggressive. People think they don't run, but they average, I think, 78 a game. So they're a team that can move the ball down the floor. And, again, when you think of Pitt basketball across the country, you think of a very tough-minded, physical, aggressive defensive team. And I think they've got that same team again this year. Q. You referenced the Pitt game against West Virginia and Providence, what did you see in those games that gave Pitt some trouble? MURRY BARTOW: Obviously two good teams. Some zone. Some zone defense, some pressure in the full court a little bit. Some skilled offensive teams that spread them out a little bit. So there were some consistent things in those games that we saw. Q. I was reading about how the fan base got behind Courtney when he was struggling there for a few weeks, can you just talk about that a little bit. It's pretty unusual to see something like that. MURRY BARTOW: He's a heck of a player, had a great score. Scored 2,000 points, and he went I call it a slump, call it whatever you want. He wasn't making shots. But it was really more than that. Just not the fact that he was making shots, but it was really kind of his demeanor and his look and his body language, and he went through a spurt of really about 10 games where he really was down, and we struggled as a team because of it. But late in the year, in the last two games at home, there was kind of a ground swell of support, chanting his name and doing different things. We've got great fans in Johnson City, and he's done a lot. They've seen him play well. And I think they felt for him, really. And so, anyway, that was neat to see. And that one game where it really all started against Kennesaw, I guess, he had 37 in that game and played a great game in our last regular season game and he played really well in the tournament. So we're a pretty good team when he's playing well, and for a while he was struggling. And he's a great kid. He's a super kid. I'm glad right now he's playing well. You know he had 30 in this building a year ago. We played Dayton in here a year ago, and he had 30. So I think he'll at least feel good coming into this building. Q. You were just referencing Courtney. You also talked earlier about how the beauty of this tournament is that anything can happen. What about the idea of the beauty being as well that kids like Courtney and Kevin get the opportunity and the platform to get some national exposure playing in a game of this magnitude? MURRY BARTOW: It's great for them. I'm excited for them. They're great kids, and certainly when you recruit a Courtney or a Kevin, you tell them they're going to have a chance to play in the tournament. And you want to follow through on that hope and that promise. And we've got a good league and some other good teams, obviously. But I'm happy for them. Kevin Tiggs is the most amazing kid I've ever been around probably in my coaching career. So I could go on and on about him. But what an incredible story, and just a great kid. So I'm really happy for all of our seniors. Courtney and Kevin and Greg. Q. I wanted to ask you about Kevin, can you elaborate more on what a remarkable story he is? MURRY BARTOW: I could go on and on. Heck of a player. Shot over 50 percent. He could play at a lot of places anywhere in the country. He's a hard matchup. Really not a 3. He's really not a 4. He's just what we call a baller. You just gotta throw him out there and shut your eyes and let him go. And he's just a phenomenal kid. He's got everything in the world to be unhappy about, sour about. Mom and dad both passed away, and he's the most incredible kid I've ever been around. Never has a bad day. We could practice at four in the morning and he's going to have the biggest smile on his face you've ever seen. He's just an incredible kid. Plus he's an awfully good player. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. End of FastScripts |
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