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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: CHARLOTTEMarch 18, 2011Melvin GoinsTobias HarrisBruce PearlCHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA Michigan – 75 THE MODERATOR: We'll start with the student athletes first while we wait for coach. Questions for student athletes. Q. Tobias, how do you explain the meltdown at the beginning of the second half? TOBIAS HARRIS: Well, we just didn't play with no heart out there. I mean, Michigan came out, made shots, and we just did a terrible job of trying to cover them and on the offensive end we rushed too many shots and, you know, basically you just quit. Q. This is for Tobias. You had an excellent, excellent first half. What were you able to do in the first half you were not able to do in the second half? TOBIAS HARRIS: You know, first half I was getting the ball in my positions and just, you know, making plays from there. The second half they started to double down in the post. You know, I tried to do what I could from them and kick out and try get other guys shots and plays, but it was more of them on their offensive end making plays and really breaking us down which caused us to force shots on our offensive end and create turnovers. So, you know, we just didn't do a good job of that. Q. Melvin, what did Coach Pearl have to say to you in the locker room after the game? MELVIN GOINS: Number of things and he just told us to learn, learn from this, and that was basically it, you know, just learn from it and the attitude of the team and just stick together as men and as players. Q. Did he say anything about the future? MELVIN GOINS: He doesn't know the future, so he didn't really speak too much about that. He just said he doesn't know what the future might hold. Q. Melvin, one of the topics is going to be big about this is what your Athletic Director said going into this tournament. Do you think that impacted the team him bringing up Bruce Pearl's future and the way y'all played today? MELVIN GOINS: I mean, I don't think it had anything to do with us on the court, but, of course, it was a distraction off the court, but, I mean, as players we have to step up and take the responsibility on the court, and we didn't come to play today. Q. Melvin, can you in your wildest dreams have imagined that your last game would end up like this one did? MELVIN GOINS: Never. Never would I have imagined that this type of game happening, and it's just an empty feeling right now. Q. Melvin, for both players, what words come to your mind in terms of your description of this season? MELVIN GOINS: Man, it was tough, tough season, up and down, lot of adversities we had to face. Just tough, man. It was a real tough season. TOBIAS HARRIS: I'd say very inconsistent, and, you know, there's a lot of up and downs this season from the way we started off the season and now and how we just finished, you know. It's just tough to go down like that, especially for senior guys like Melvin and Steven Pearl and the rest of the seniors and John Fields, that, you know, put all they could into this program and, you know, all they could to win the game, Brian Williams, Josh Bone, seeing them in the locker room is just real disappointing. Q. Tobias, how will Bruce Pearl's future impact your decision to come back or go pro, and would you come back if Bruce Pearl wasn't here? TOBIAS HARRIS: Well, it's definitely something that I'm going to have to consider and, you know, go from there and, you know, see how it plays out. So, you know, I can't really control what's going on right now, you know. I wasn't really thinking about none of that stuff throughout this whole season but, you know, when we end like that, now the season is done with, it's definitely a question for me now. Q. In preparation for this game, you guys probably looked a lot at Darius Morris, Tim Hardaway, Jr. Did Matt Vogrich kind of slip under the radar at all? MELVIN GOINS: We went over every position. We just didn't guard them well. We didn't execute our game plan and they beat us. THE MODERATOR: Any more questions for Melvin or Tobias? Okay, thanks, guys. Congratulations on a great year. COACH BRUCE PEARL: This was a very difficult loss. Give Michigan credit. They played exceptionally, particularly in the second half and we obviously unraveled. This game today was not indicative of our season in the sense that even when we were struggling down the stretch, we were right there in virtually every game. The questions are going to be asked whether or not there was a distraction on the team. We tried really hard to have it be just about just about basketball and the business at hand. And I thought we played like it in the first half, and then -- but some of our challenges this year were making each other better as a team. I didn't make the players this, this group -- I didn't make them better enough. They didn't make each other better enough, and we didn't grow through the season. And so specifically the game today was hard to score in the second half and we could never get ourselves in any kind of flow. I was able to play call and get Tobias the ball inside and in the zone. They've not played much zone this year. It was very difficult in the second half. THE MODERATOR: First question for the coach, please. Q. Bruce, when Tobias first came up in reference to the second half, he said that they played with no heart and he thought they quit. What's your reaction to those kind of comments? COACH BRUCE PEARL: Well, when you get beat 42-16 in a half of basketball, we didn't play with heart and obviously we were terribly discouraged by the margin, the quality of Michigan's play, the poorness of our own play and we did let down. We unraveled. Q. Is there a direct line between that performance and all the off-the-court things that are going on? COACH BRUCE PEARL: You don't use that as an excuse, you just don't. This game was not characteristic of any other game all season long. We had 18 games this year against the field. We lost 14 games prior to this, but we were the exception. Maybe at Rupp we were right there. Lost a lot of close games. Our two worst losses of the year were here in this building at Charlotte, which was a last possession game, but at the time we were playing pretty well and we had to go on the road and take care of business, and we didn't, and this game here. This was not at all representative of our season. Q. Coach, you said this is not representative of the season and this was a discrepancy. For most people that's going the mean that those comments on Wednesday were what changed the way that your team played. You don't think that's a fair characterization or you don't believe that? COACH BRUCE PEARL: No, I don't believe it was. I do know that, you know, obviously there's a lot of stress in coaching, there are challenges we know. We know the importance of playing well. I'm proud of this basketball team for making the NCAA Tournament. I thought we had a couple of very talented players. Tobias was a tremendous player, Scotty Hopson was a tremendous talent, and we had some good pieces around them and we had a lot of depth, but those good pieces didn't grow through the season, and Tobias and Scotty never did jell together. When one played well, the other one didn't or versus versa. I couldn't get those guys to play well together. I think you put all that stuff on the coach and you said, okay, well, what kind year was it? We were picked fourth in the East. Teams picked fourth in the East generally don't make the NCAA Tournament. The SEC East was very good this year, and we managed to claw and fight and scrap through all the adversity all season long to put ourselves in the position where one of the top 68 teams in the country, and for that I'm very, very proud. So, no, I don't believe that anything particular. Certainly when your coaching staff and the kids find out that you're being -- there's some chance that you might not be back, when you hear that for the first time, it gets you, and I know it's on Mike's heart, too. I know he's apologized for saying that. But don't put the loss on that. Q. Coach, about 12 minutes in, things were going where you had about a 6-point lead. What caused it to change so rapidly? COACH BRUCE PEARL: Well, they got a few -- made a few energy plays. They got a few 50/50 balls, they got a couple of offensive rebounds. They took a couple balls away from us. We could have extended that lead, I thought. They came down and knocked a couple shots down that they had missed earlier, and then, of course, in the second half they just -- they drilled us. They were 6 for 11 from 3, and we just had no answer. Once you had to extend and it was spread out on that Princeton stuff, they had us at their mercy. Q. Coach, yesterday you said were you able to not think about the possibility that this would be your last game. Have those thoughts crept in yet, or are you still able to put that aside? COACH BRUCE PEARL: I'm going to be able to put that aside because I'm going to go -- we're going to be evaluated just like Mike Hamilton said, and I'm going to be able to go there and say we went to the NCAA Tournament six times and three Sweet 16s and Elite 8. I want to tell you, I'm very, very proud to maybe announce that we will have six seniors graduating this year and three of them already have their degrees and three of them are on time and on target, and actually one or two guys that left received their degrees are going to come back. I know the Secretary of Education is going to be proud of that, and that's something I'm very, very proud of and I'm -- he has my full support in a very challenging job. And I hope they'll be they'll be able to point to my basketball team as that guys from different backgrounds can come in and get a great education. So, I feel like -- I feel there's so many positives. We're fifth in the nation in attendance at Tennessee. The kids have been very well received in the community. I think our program is in very solid footing. We've got to go before the Committee on Infractions in June, and it's going to be difficult. And we made mistakes. We're going to try to be accountable for those mistakes, but my goal and desire is to be the basketball coach at Tennessee next year and for a long time. Q. You spoke to this just now a little bit, but does it worry you that going into an evaluation you have such a debilitating loss? COACH BRUCE PEARL: Obviously it didn't help that, didn't help myself in that regard. But I hope that the body of work -- I don't think the people at Tennessee are evaluating me based on whether or not we won or lost this game. I think there's a lot more to it than that. And I have great trust and faith in our leadership. We have very, very good people in these positions that I hope they still have great confidence in their coach. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions? Q. Coach, can you tell us what the next couple of weeks will be like for you? Do you have any scheduled meetings? Do you know action have you even set out a road map now that the season is over what will happen as you go forward and get -- COACH BRUCE PEARL: We were planning to go back to the hotel and work on Duke. When coaches tell you they take it one at a time, they truly do. And so we'll get back with our team. One of the things that will be a focus for us will be, you know, when the season is over now, we went on spring break this week, so the guys will get back into class on Monday and then probably a number of individual meetings with each player and begin to map out for those seniors graduating where are we going to go from here with jobs and who is going to get a chance to go to Port Smith and who's going to want to continue to play ball and start to go there. With the underclassmen, guys returning, what are their plans and their goals for the future and their off-season, their training. And certainly I think with Tobias and Scotty I think they're both in very good position to work out and test the waters. Scotty being a senior next year, this would be his only opportunity to do that, and there will be nothing harmed at all by him going to do that, and with Tobias he would have to make a decision whether or not he would look at -- you only work out one time, whether he would do it at the end of this year, obviously, or do it at the end of the next year. It would be more along of lines of let's get back and see where we're at and we'll move forward. THE MODERATOR: Take one more question. Anyone? Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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