March 12, 2011
Recap | Final Stats | Notes | Photo Gallery 1 | Photo Gallery 2
LAS VEGAS -
SAN DIEGO STATE COACH Steve Fisher OPENING STATEMENT: I want to first of all congratulate Dave Rose and his BYU squad on a phenomenal season, seasons plural. I told Jackson Emery and Jimmer as they were walking back that it's been a privilege to compete against them. We haven't had too many times to be able to do this: celebrate after competing against them. They're good. They're well coached.
I think they have represented the league, themselves, the school the right way. So we're hoping that both of us can go a long way in the NCAA tournament.
With our club, we know that we're good. How good we still don't know. But we had a thought that if we came and competed, we would have a chance to back to back cut down nets. Doesn't happen often. It doesn't happen unless you have talented players with character that will give to get. They've done that to the 10th degree.
The three who are up here now, our two seniors, D.J. and Billy, have been with us for four years. They have been such a backbone to the program that words can't describe how much we owe them. And Kawhi is Kawhi. Every day he delivers more than is expected, and we expect a lot.
So this is a wonderful feeling. It's a well deserved feeling for our kids. 32 2, back to back championships, and now the anticipation of the next tournament. So we're excited. We're proud to represent our league as the tournament champs. We look forward to the NCAA tournament.
Q. Kawhi, what was your reaction when you just heard that Fredette was named tournament MVP?
Kawhi Leonard: I just thought it would go to the winning team. But, you know, he played a great tournament, so I'm not doubting him at all. I don't know what he averaged, but he had 52 in the semifinal game. That deserved the MVP.
Q. D.J., you played 40 minutes last night, short turnaround, yet you had remarkable energy today. How do you explain that? Do you think your depth may have been the telling factor of three days in three games?
D.J. Gay: Absolutely. This game was won by more than just us three and Coach Fisher. James Rahon, Chase Tapley, Malcolm Thomas and BC. They came oft the bench and played great for us tonight. They played key plays, knocked down big shots for us. It was an all around effort from everybody. Everybody was on the same page. We knew exactly what the game plan was. We stuck to it.
Q. Billy, today was your first time playing BYU without Davies. How much of a factor do you think that was?
Billy White: It's a big factor. He's a key player on that team, too. We took advantage of that and crashed the boards, just played San Diego State basketball. We knew if we just tried to contain Jimmer and tried to make everybody else shoot, we knew that we had the game.
Q. Billy, what was your plan of attack in trying to contain Jimmer and why were you able to execute it so successfully?
Billy White: Our game plan was just try to force the middle. I knew that I had help in the middle. We just executed that. Sometimes he made hard shots. That's Jimmer. He's going to make shots. Like I said, you know, he's a hard person to stop. You can't technically just stop him. You knew he was going to score.
Like I said, we just tried to contain him.
Q. Kawhi, during the course of the regular season there was a lot of mutual respect with these two teams. At the end of the game you and Jimmer were talking. Was that more respect or other stuff?
Kawhi Leonard: More respect. Just telling him that they played hard, both teams played hard.
Q. With BYU beating you twice in the regular season, how does it feel to come out in the biggest game of the year and play so well and beat them?
D.J. Gay: It feels great. I can't tell you that those two losses weren't on our mind, because it definitely was. It was another thing that we can use as motivation on our end.
They're a very good team. You know, we haven't really beaten them a lot in my career here. Just to go out with that win is huge for the team and myself personally.
Q. Most of the projections have you as either a 2 or a 3 seed. Do you think today's game makes a statement to the selection committee that maybe you deserve a 1?
D.J. Gay: Honestly, the whole 2, 3 or 1 isn't really a big deal. We're just happy to be playing in it and have the opportunity to be playing in the NCAA tournament once again. If we get a 2 seed, great. If we get a 3 seed, great. At the end of the day, we just want to have the opportunity to compete in the NCAA tournament again.
Q. Billy, you've had a great season as a team all year long. Can you tell me how you think you are peaking right now at the best time?
Billy White: I think we always come together at this time of year. Last year we started to find ourselves at the end of the year. We just bonded together and, you know, just competed. We knew this was a big game for us. We lost to them two times in a row. Everybody knew that we needed this game.
I think we just played hard. Both teams played hard. I think we just played a little bit harder and it showed today.
Q. Billy, after the game you were up on the shoulders of some people. Did you know any of those people?
Billy White: I knew a couple, but not all of them.
Q. Is that a first for you?
Billy White: Yeah. You know, it just feels good, to win on my floor, just to be in my hometown with the people I love.
Q. How much of your strategy, particularly defensively, was dictated by three games in three days and fatigue?
COACH FISHER: Well, our strategy was make sure we don't give up easy baskets, because this is the best running team we will play all season. Jimmer Fredette is the key to their team. We wanted to make him take hard shots. We tried to keep him off of the free throw line. Didn't do a great job of that.
The number one thing that we said that we did not do a good enough job of was rebounding the ball. This team rebounds better than most people realize, BYU does. I thought we were a little better on all of those fronts.
But I thought collectively our defensive energy, in all three games, has been really outstanding. We are long and we plug holes and gaps, turn easy shots into really hard, contested shots. We did that once again.
I do think that Billy White has played his most consistent, effective, productive basketball for us. And when he does that, obviously that elevates everything else about our team.
But we've got good players. We got a lot of ways we can win. We felt like we needed to play a lot of people early and then see what it's like in the second half. We tried to do that from the beginning.
Q. Is Billy's performance even more impressive considering what you asked him to do defensively, and a little bit about the freshman, Franklin?
COACH FISHER: Billy is a phenomenal athlete. He never gets tired. When he's hurt, he's not hurt. So he needs maybe 20 seconds to regain his breath and he's ready to go again.
I never worried about Billy being fatigued and not being able to do whatever we asked. He was more focused on how to do things, I thought, in these three games, this three game stint.
Jamaal, if we said, Who is most improved from October to March? Probably Jamaal. I said this Thursday, I think. He's revamped his shot to now he can shoot the ball. Very good athlete. I think he's been chomping at the bit, got a little opportunity. I know our fans are looking forward to having him for three more years with us.
Q. Can you talk about how your approach was different this time facing BYU without Davies and the smaller lineup they put out there.
COACH FISHER: It really wasn't a whole lot different. We went back and looked at our last game. We showed them things that we failed to do against their zone. We were much better at it today, I thought. I'm coming back to Billy. We said, You got to post the body inside. Don't float out to the short corner. Don't let them push you out to the three point line. We were better at that.
Obviously, a 6'8", 6'9" really good player no longer there affects you. But we played well. We played very good basketball at both ends.
Q. You've had the opportunity to coach a national championship team, the Fab Five, terrific teams at Michigan and San Diego State. Where would you rank this particular team as far as possible national championship goals and perhaps the team that won in Michigan?
COACH FISHER: I don't want to get too far ahead of anything. Our goal and our fans' goals are, Let's win a game. We have never done that. I've had the privilege to go to three at San Diego State. I haven't won one yet. So we need to find a way to win one.
We'll talk on that. We'll talk on what we have to do to do that. That's our focus. We're not looking too far ahead. We're not going to tell people how good we think we are. We know we're a good team. But there are a lot of good teams that will be in this NCAA tournament.
Q. What do you think this victory, given how you won it, how dominant you were, what does this say about your program heading into the final stretch here?
COACH FISHER: I know that we've got the tenacity and resiliency to stick with it. You have to stay healthy. Right now we're healthy. You have to be confident. We've won 32 games, so we're very confident.
We're a good defensive team. It's the best defensive team we've had at San Diego State. And you can win when you are as athletic as we are and you guard as hard as we do. You might not be making a lot of shots, but you find ways to get easy shots that eventually will turn into making a lot of shots.
So we've got a nice team that right now we feel good about ourselves.
Q. For a good portion of the game it almost looked like you were substituting like a hockey coach on Jimmer. Is this a different strategy than you've used before? Is it maybe more aggressive in that regard?
COACH FISHER: You know, I don't think it's too much different than our last game with them at our place. It is different from when we played at BYU. We had a guy guard him for a long stretch at BYU. In this game, that was the plan. Our thought was, we wanted to switch every ball screen. We said, Let's start Billy, length on him, then we'll go to Kawhi or Chase, then we'll go to the other one. That would be our three man rotation who would guard him as he brought the ball up the floor. We were switching everybody except the guy guarding the post player if he would use a screen.
He's hard to guard. And I think that you wear down a little bit when you try to really say, I'm not going to give you those 35 footers that you make with regularity. That was the focus, to make sure that we kept a relatively fresh body on him.
Q. With your record and your RPI, what will your initial reaction be tomorrow if you're not a 1 seed?
COACH FISHER: I'm like D.J. I'm not going to get caught up too much in seed, where we go. Does no good. We knew before the tournament started we were going to be in the tournament. We know we're going to have now a high seed. What that is, I don't know. But we've been a double digit seed the three times we've been in. So I know we're going to be a single digit, lower single digit. So I'm not going to worry about that.
Q. You talked a lot this season about shared burden, offense, defense, leadership. When D.J. was speaking earlier, you seemed to smile almost with a father's pride. Talk about the difference that D.J. has in terms of leadership on this team.
COACH FISHER: D.J. is a quiet leader. He leads by example. Businesslike approach. Doesn't like to mess around. Doesn't like to boast about what he's done. But he, more than anybody we had, worked between seasons to get better. And because of him doing it, it pulled everybody into doing it.
He's a wonderful, wonderful example of what you can do if you put your mind to it. D.J. Gay, when he came out of high school, people weren't sure he was a Division I player. He's proved that and then some, that he's not only a Division I player, but he's a winner at the highest level.
Q. What is the most satisfying thing about this run, being where you are right now?
COACH FISHER: It feels good anytime you work as hard as you do. We're not the only one that did that. All eight of the teams who came here have worked, and probably worked as hard as we have.
I've done it long enough to know that to do what we're doing now, be last up at the podium, have the nets when you go home, you need to be good, you need to be a little bit lucky, you need to do it together. When you do it, and as you're doing it, you need to savor it.
We've really all done that, myself included. We haven't said, We have to win this tournament, we have to win this conference. We've enjoyed every step along the way. I think that's helped us win the conference and win the tournament.
Q. More so than earlier in your career?
COACH FISHER: I think when you get a little age and experience about you, you're a little more wise in terms of stepping back, taking a deep breath. Everybody talks about it. But most people in my profession, they're worried about keeping their job. Fact. I'm not worried about that. I got my job. I'll leave when I want to leave.
So those worries you don't have. I think that helps you. I think when you got a good family, I'm 36 years, got my son on the bench, it's fun to be a part of that. And I know that that doesn't happen to many families. To work with your son or daughter every day, you can't beat it. I'm living a dream.
I tell our players, Dream big. And I'm doing that, too.
BYU HEAD COACH DAVE ROSE OPENING STATEMENT: I'm really impressed with San Diego State. I thought that they, you know, just played with a lot of passion, a lot of emotion. They caused us a lot of problems. In transition, you know, they got the ball out and scored in transition. They got a lot of second chance points controlling the boards early in the game.
I was really pleased with how our guys competed. I was pleased with how we fought. We had a hard time making shots, open shots. That's what our team really depends on, is being able to score in space.
Credit goes to San Diego State. Wish them the very best in the NCAA tournament.
Q. Jimmer, looks like there were some words exchanged between you and Kawhi Leonard. Could you tell us what was said?
JIMMER FREDETTE: You know, he just said some things. I'm not going to repeat anything that he said. But he was excited that they won. Decided to say some things. I'm not going to back down. I said a couple things as well, then we were done. We went forward.
Q. How much of the loss depended on being tired from yesterday and how much do you think depended on missing Davies today?
JACKSON EMERY: I mean, the thing with Davies is we moved on. That was last week. We're a different team now. We're not going to make excuses anymore. We're a different team. We have a lot of confidence in the guys we have.
We believe we could have beat them with these guys. We're not going to put anything on not having Brandon.
We weren't tired; we were beat up. It's been a long couple days. We never played three games before right in a row. It was tough on us.
But I think we had stretches, like coach said, where we just didn't hit shots. When we're not hitting shots and they're hitting shots, it's really tough to beat them.
Q. It appeared that you had to work a little harder for your shot today. Their length may have been an issue. Was that true? If not, was fatigue at all a problem?
JIMMER FREDETTE: I played against them two times this year already, so I've seen what they were going to do and everything. But I think the main thing is we just weren't shooting real well. Sometimes that happens. They played good defense. They're long, they're athletic. They caused us some problems.
But at the end, you know, we just didn't really make shots that sometimes we normally make to keep us in the game.
Q. Jimmer, would you have rather had your 52 points today or yesterday?
JIMMER FREDETTE: I mean, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yesterday was yesterday. That's over. We're talking about today. We lost. That's what happened.
Q. How long do you dwell on this? How soon can you start turning your attention to the NCAA?
JACKSON EMERY: This will hurt for probably tonight. We wake up tomorrow, we go home, we get ready for NCAA selection. Coach talked to us in the locker room. A good trademark of this team is how well we bounce back from losses.
We would have loved to have won this game. But we're going to move on. We have a great week ahead of us. We're excited. Tomorrow we'll learn where we're going to go and we'll go back to work on Monday.
Q. Jimmer, can you and Jackson both talk about the job Billy White did today.
JIMMER FREDETTE: Yeah. No, he did a good job. He was very excited to play this game. He hasn't beaten us in a while. You could tell they were excited, ready to come out and play. He was very energized right from the very beginning with offensive rebounds, playing good defense, just doing things to help his team win.
He did a good job. He was a big key to the game.
Q. We talked about the emotion with players in the locker room. As far as next week goes, from your perspective, when do you start putting all the mindset on next week for the tournament?
COACH ROSE: I think we'll find out who we play. Once we find out who we play and where we're going, this group of guys, the core group of guys has been through this before, and Monday will be a really big day for us in the gym, in preparation.
So, you know, the most important thing now is to get ourselves back home, get rested, find out where we're going and then prepare from there.
Q. I have to imagine if before the game I told you both teams would have ended up with 16 offensive rebounds you would have liked your chances.
COACH ROSE: With San Diego State, the way they guard Jimmer, they get spread out pretty good. So we can offensive rebound the ball well against them. The problem, a lot of those we had chances to score on, we couldn't get the ball in. Then it turned into the times when Jimmer would penetrate, then we would get a couple other guys on the rim and we wouldn't secure the ball. They got out in transition. Second half we had to make a couple adjustments and try to keep the transition points down.
Key for us is, you know, when Jimmer gets in a situation where they're going to run two, two and a half guys at him, then we have to be able to make shots. Especially against San Diego State, because when you turn into a driving team and you try to get to the rim, that's where they're terrific. They've got size. They've got length. They've got athleticism. They make you change your shot at the rim.
Give 'em credit, they played. They played terrific tonight.
Q. For what it's worth, a lot of the brackets place you in Denver. Have you given any thought to it? Being in the same time zone.
COACH ROSE: There's not much thought for me personally to put in it because once you start thinking about one thing, then something else is going to happen. You can't really control what's next.
I'm really proud of our team, their consistency throughout the year. We have a great record. We have a great RPI. We played in a great league. Hopefully we'll get a great seed and a good place to go.
Q. James Anderson had a good amount of minutes today. Do you think that will continue?
COACH ROSE: I thought it was important in this game here because of fatigue. I thought James came in, his size and length caused some problems around the rim. James is kind of a situation, opportunity type player. Most of the time when he's called on, he does a really good job. We'll see what our matchup is, and that will probably determine most of that.
Q. The first two times you played San Diego State, you switched off of man and a 2 3 and beat them. I wonder why this game you went 2 3 this whole game.
COACH ROSE: A lot of it is, you know, just size and matchups. We felt like we needed to bring a second defender on Kawhi. We needed to bring a second defender on Malcolm. We needed to bring a second defender on Billy White. And Chase Tapley got off to such a good start hitting perimeter shots, we thought our zone, we could spread out a little bit more and double team better out of the zone, so that's why we stayed in it.
Q. Considering the losses you had this year in the post with Chris and Brandon, would you consider this your biggest challenge, making the adjustments to make this team continue on with success?
COACH ROSE: This group has been very resilient. I expect them to continue to be resilient because we ran into a very good team tonight that were playing with a lot of passion, a lot of emotion. I thought we matched that for a while, but they just kind of wore us down.
I was really proud of the fight that our guys showed because we were down big and it looked like our body language was bad. We got in a timeout. We came out. We addressed it. We talked about it. We cut that lead down and actually had a possession to cut the game to eight. We couldn't make the play.
There's a lot of fight in these guys and I'm proud of 'em.
Q. Of your body of work, would you speak to what you think is the strongest part, then put it in perspective this week, being here.
COACH ROSE: Well, you know, I don't think one game in a conference tournament on the third night is the way to really evaluate a team. I think that you evaluate a team over the course of four or five months. This team has been all over the country, found ways to win games, competed extremely well in the fourth ranked RPI team in the country, have a regular season co championship, has 30 wins, has an RPI in the top 10. I think these players have earned the right to play on.
Q. Points in the paint and second chance points were a little bit of a problem tonight. How much of that do you attribute to just the strength of San Diego State's frontline and how much could that be a concern for somebody with a similar frontline?
COACH ROSE: It will be a real concern, who matches up with them, because that's a very good team. They've got two losses on the year. Not very many teams are going to go into that tournament with just two losses. Someone is going to have to put together quite a game to beat 'em.
I wish Steve and his team the very best.
Q. When the dust settles, will you take comfort and tell your team, We're not going to play a format, playing three games in three days, so we'll be fine going into that?
COACH ROSE: I think we understand that. I think our guys understand that a day off in between is really important when you are in a rotation of maybe seven or eight guys.
The most important thing is, you know, to find out the matchup, the bracket. But I really believe that this turnaround, that our team will handle this, the fact that we've been beat tonight, we got beat by a really good team, and now our focus needs to change to instead of feeling sorry for ourselves to get ourselves ready to bounce back and win the next game we play.