March 24, 2008

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Opening Comments

We're happy we're still playing, and I'm really pleased with the frame of mind that my team is in. Some people told me that's as well as Mississippi State has played all year and we fought them off. We had chances to go away or stop fighting, and we didn't. At this point from that game and each game after that, it's a scrap. It's a dog fight, and hopefully we'll be up for it.

Dan Wolken
Commercial Appeal
Can you talk about Tom Izzo and how his teams always seem to play well in March?

I think part of it is their style of play. They are always really good defensively and are always one of the best rebounding teams in the country. They play you around the basket. You're not going to get any easy baskets. They really body up as well as any body else. They play a grind it out game offensively. They're used to an every position matters type game, because you're not going to have a lot. You are not going to have the normal 80 possession games. Those games are going to be down in the 60's because of how they play. They run great stuff, but they really grind it out.

What were your impressions of the Pitt-Michigan State game?

They played well. They did what they do, they played how they play. (Drew) Neitzel made shots, (Kalin) Lucas gave them problems and their freshman played well. Their inside guys muscled the Pitt guys. I think that Neitzel doing that really gives great confidence to their team and he flies off screens. He does a great job.

After watching your own game yesterday, anymore thoughts on the job that your big guys did?

It was incredible. Joey (Dorsey) is as dominating a player that I have seen in this tournament thus far in that game. Robert Dozier for that five minute stretch which created the gap for us where we said just score on the guy. He went crazy. There were no fade away. He just caught it very aggressively, went through the guy and scored; and then the and one. He rebounded balls, he was unbelievable. Shawn Taggart gives you five offensive rebounds; the biggest one on that missed free throw where we kicked the ball out. I thought all three for them played well.

We'll be fine. We made one more free throw than they did, so we beat them at the free throw line. We missed a couple down the stretch that I was surprised that we did miss, but again we shot 75 percent in our tournament, which was last week. We shot 70 percent last year. We shot in the mid 60's in the first game; well we had a bad game. Every once in awhile we'll do this, then we'll come back and shoot 75 percent and no one will say anything. It's almost to the point of do you really even know what my team does well or doesn't do well or is it because you don't know, you just say its free throw shooting that's all I'm going to talk about. They're not talking about how we blocked shots. We had 11 blocked shots and you turn on the TV and all it's talking about is they missed free throws and it's going to cost them a championship. We had 11 blocked shots. We played great team defense. Offensively against the zone we got it where we wanted it against a great defensive team that is second in the country in field goal percentage defense. We only had five turnovers. Wait a minute let me say that again, we only had five turnovers. But everybody all they want to talk about is our free throw shooting. I don't know why. I come back to the conclusion that maybe they haven't seen our team play nor do they really know and the easy thing to talk about off the stat sheet is our free throws. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Joe Resrode
Lansing State Journal
How much have you been able to use the dribble-drive motion? And are you able to use it more against teams like Michigan State that play basically man-to-man the whole game?

The principles are good against zone and we do it in spots against zone. But you look at Michigan State and the offense is designed to put the ball on the floor, but I think they are a great defensive team. Their big guys will clog up the middle and they will do some different things. Tom is a great coach and he's a great friend. He and I probably talk once every two or three weeks throughout the year. He's going to have plan A and plan B, because there's no one better than Tom Izzo. No one. So we better have plan A or plan B also. We do grind it out too. So we'll have like what we did against Mississippi State. They went man, we did some good stuff. I didn't like what it looked like so we went to more of a power game, a grind it out game ourselves; but we can play that way if we have to.