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Xavier Coach Sean Miller – “...I’d like to be playing one of those other schools from a bigger confe |
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AF_Puma | Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 2:45 pm
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Transcribed by Jim Vallen
COUGARBLUE
Sound like some good bulletin board material?
Those words show how easily words can be taken out of context, because he wasn't trying to disparage BYU in any regard.
In an interview this week, Xavier University’s head basketball coach, Sean Miller, spoke with KNZ's David James (DJ) and Patrick Kinahan (PK) about his team’s upcoming first round game in the NCAA basketball tournament with BYU.
DJ and PK are on KNZ’s, The Manly Morning Show (6 A.M. to 10 A.M. weekday mornings on 1280 The Zone (1280 AM Salt Lake; 960 AM Utah County). Here is their interview:
1280: “So what was the immediate reaction? You see your school name pop up on the screen; you know you’re playing BYU. What’s the first thing you think about the match up?”
Sean Miller: ”Well early on, ironically like a lot of coaches, you pick teams to watch in games during the course of the year. I watched the BYU/Michigan State game, which seems like a long time ago, but I had watched that game. At that time, just as a fan, I recognized what a good team BYU had. Once I watched them at that point, and I had the opportunity to follow their conference, just casually observe from that point on, you know you really find yourself extremely impressed.
They have a great coach. You can tell they have a system that fits who they are and that will probably be in place for many, many years. At BYU on offense, their numbers really stand out. Young and Plaistead inside and the way they shoot the ball and the perimeter is very disciplined. We knew right away that our match up was going to be an extremely difficult one.”
1280: “Could you talk about your ball club coach? It seems to be a veteran team. Give us some of your strengths.”
Sean Miller: “We are. We currently have on our team four one-thousand point scorers. We do have a lot of experience. Two of our three seniors started on our team that went to the Elite Eight as freshman and a third was a key reserve. In particular those three guys have had great careers. They won two tournament conference championships and one regular season conference championship. So we have a lot of experience including post season experience as well. A little bit like BYU, there’s not one player that will jump out at you when you look at our team. We’re a pretty balanced team on offense. We try to play some good defense with a pretty good deep team.”
1280: “We haven’t seen you guys play much out here. Do you tend to defend man-to-man and mix it up with a little zone? I’m not asking you to give away the whole game plan, but what’s been your history?”
Sean Miller: “We’re pretty much a man-to-man team. The team can adjust, but that's basically our base and the way that we can shut teams down.”
1280: “You’ve probably talked about how your going to handle Plaistead and Young. You guys are a little bit height challenged. You’ve got Duncan [Josh Duncan 6-9, 235 senior forward averaging 9.3 points and 3.5 rebounds/game] who’s a big kid. How are you going to handle that?”
Sean Miller: “Well I’m not sure. That’s the strength of BYU’s team. We’re probably not a small as you may think that we are. We generally start two 6-9 players [Duncan and Justin Doleman, 6-9, 210 senior averaging 13.4 points and 5.5 rebounds per game]. Some of our players off the bench, they aren’t 6-10 front court players, but we have a number of guys that are 6-7 [Derrick Brown, 210 freshman forward averaging 6.3 points and 3.8 rebounds per game] and 6-8 [Brandon Cole, 6-8 240 senior forward averaging 5.7 points and 4.7 rebounds per game] but I know it’s going to be a challenge. I know that BYU has won 25 games because you have those two guys [Plaistead and Young] inside as a crew and they are surrounded by guys that are skilled perimeter players.”
1280: “You had some nice wins in your non-conference games. We were looking at some of the games you played. You beat Villanova and you beat Illinois and Kansas State. You had some losses to Creighton and Cincinnati, but you really got it rolling when you got into conference play and from February on your only loss in February/March was Rhode Island in the conference semi’s [they were 7-0 in February and 2-1 in March]. Did something change there? Was it the schedule change? Was it your team growing up a little bit? What happened in February that you got rolling?”
Sean Miller: “Out team grew and we got better as the year went on. We became a better defensive team. We have a point guard, Drew Lavender [5-7, 153 junior averaging 11.2 points, 2.3 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game] that is a good player and he really led us through the months of February and March [averaging 5.9 assists, 16.1 points, 47% FG, 51% 3-pt and 82% FT per game]. He started his career at Oklahoma [he was a two-year starter at Oklahoma] where he started as a sophomore there. He led them to a Big 12 championship and he picked up right where he left off there for us here. It took him awhile in November and December [averaged 3.8 assists, 7.2 points, 44% FG, 30% 3-pt and 67% FT per game over most of their non-conference schedule which included four NCAA tournament teams] to feel comfortable with a new system and a new team. But right around Christmas is when he hit his stride. Really ever since, we’ve been a better team and clearly the last six weeks is when we’ve been at our best and a lot of that has to do with his improvement and who he is on our team.”
1280: “Drew Lavender is listed on the roster as being 5-7. What is it that he does that enables him to play so well at that height?”
Sean Miller: “He understands the game real well. His assist-to-turnover is right around 3-to-1. I think he led our conference in 3-point shooting as well [he did with his 46% 3-point season average]. You know, his size is sometimes an advantage to him defensively as he really puts some pressure on the ball, but I think the greatest characteristic he has that you want out of your point guard and that is that he makes people around him better. He makes really good decisions in transition and he’s able to get us easy baskets throughout the course of the game which is sometimes the difference between winning and losing.”
1280: “None of BYU’s current players have any tournament experience [actually Mike Rose was in two sets vs. Syracuse] and you guys have a ton. How big of a factor do you think that will be?”
Sean Miller: “Well I hope it is. The one thing about the NCAA tournament is that the best team doesn’t always win. It’s the team that’s playing the best on that night that does. The experience will hopefully allow us to play very composed and be that same team that we’ve been. Sometimes when you get on the big stage things unravel or uncharacteristic bad plays happen. If there is experience on our side it might help us to play a consistent game like the team we’ve been throughout the course of the year. I’m sure BYU feels the same. You know, we’re not very far from home [87 miles according to MapQuest.com from campus to campus], which also hopefully will be to our advantage. A year ago we came out your way and played Gonzaga and we felt like there were about 17,000 fans cheering against us so hopefully we’ll get to reverse that this year.”
1280: “How many fans do you usually draw and how many do you think will make the trip to Lexington [Xavier has averaged 9,910 in home attendance this season]?”
Sean Miller: “I’m not sure, but Cincinnati and Lexington are about one hour and forty minutes away from each other.”
1280: “It’s an easy drive for you guys. Isn’t it just separated by a freeway?”
Sean Miller: “It is. You just get on I-75 and head south and it is just a very easy drive. Cincinnati is in the furtherest south west part of the state of Ohio. It’s a lot further south than most people realize and that’s why we’re so close to Lexington.”
1280: “In looking at the way you distribute minutes, you mostly have juniors and seniors playing key roles. But you’re playing Derrick Brown about seventeen minutes a game. What has he done as a freshman that you’re putting him out there with all the experienced guys?”
Sean Miller: “Derrick is very long. He’s 6-7 and with his wingspan he’s probably about 7-4. He’s probably as talented as any player in our program. If you follow us down the road I think you’ll see that he’ll emerge as a very good player as he gets older. He’s on the all-freshman team. He plays the 3 and the 4 for us. He blocks shots [averages 0.63 blocks a game as opposed to Plaistead’s 1.36 and Cummard’s 0.85 a game] and is very long and he can get out in transition and as you can tell by his stats he shoots a high percentage [69.3%, with the highest from BYU’s starters being only 55.4% by Cummard] because a lot of his baskets have been close to the rim.”
1280: “Dave Rose, BYU’s coach, has said numerous times this season that the strength of his team is actually the team itself rather than any particular individual. When you look at your stats on paper, is that the same thing you would say about your team?”
Sean Miller: “I would and that’s the one similarity that we share with BYU. If we’re going to get credit for having a good team, it will be just that. We can beat you a number of different ways and on a given night different players have had big offensive nights and if we don’t defend as a team, anybody can beat us. That’s what happened in our Rhode Island game. We didn’t defend like we had been defending. There’s just not a whole lot different in college basketball of between one team from another these days.”
1280: “I know that a lot of BYU fans were expecting their team to be a little higher seeded, but you guys, like BYU, were regular season champs in your conference and you didn’t win your conference tournament. Did you think that you’d be a little higher than a 9 seed?”
Sean Miller: “Not really. These days, and BYU is in our same shoes, if you’re not in a BCS league you get tormented from just being in the tournament. People have been bringing up the question as to why we were even in and we were a nine seed. If you think about how many teams at-large births were below us. I just think that the system favors right now the big conference schools in terms of being able to get into the tournament. That’s what’s disappointing about us playing BYU is that I’d like to be playing one of those other schools from a bigger conference just from the standpoint of I think both BYU and us are as good as a lot other teams. The tournament allows you to prove it. Unfortunately we have to prove it against each other in this first round.”
1280: “If you were an opposing coach, how would you suspect that a team would defend you?”
Sean Miller: “[Sean laughs] I’m not sure. I think at this time of the year BYU will come in and play how they play. There’s a reason they have won twenty-five games and they’re going to do what works. They’ve had a great season. They have a system that their players believe in. So I’m sure they’re going to play their man-to-man and do it well and mix in their match up and do that well. We have a lot of balance on our team. Teams have tried different ways to defend us.”
1280: “That was a nice laugh there coach. Why don’t you just give us a scouting report? Break it down for us.”
Sean Miller: “Yea, you might be calling from the BYU offices.”
1280: “No, no. We’re not Cougars here. We’re on your side [slight chuckle]”
You mentioned that you have to prove it against each other. With the tournament success you’ve had, you’re 24-8 and you shared the Atlantic-10 regular season title, is there a little bit of, ‘We’ve got to win in the tournament or the season would feel like a failure? Is there some of that pressure riding on it?”
Sean Miller: “Not really. You know, sometimes what’s lost in the shuffle is the fact about this great season that you’ve had. I’m sure that BYU is the same. We’ve felt really good about what we’ve done. Expectations at Xavier are extremely high. The history of our program speaks for itself. Six of the last seven years we’ve been in the NCAA tournament. If you go deeper than that, over the last twenty-five years we’ve been in it roughly seventeen times. That’s pretty astounding if you think about that. So just apart of what we’ve done in the past we’re going to go on down to Lexington and do the best we can do and hopefully our experience like you guys mentioned will allow us to be consistent with how we’ll be in that game. We clearly understand that we have a tough opponent.”
1280: “What happened at age nine that made you famous?”
Sean Miller: “[Sean laughs] You know, my dad was a high school coach so I was a son of a high school coach. Back then, hoops didn’t get lowered very easily so you dribble a lot and as fate happens I developed a love for the game and I was able to dribble basketballs very well at a very early age which somehow got me on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. There probably hasn’t been seven days in my life since then that have gone by without someone bringing that up. You guys got it done early this week.”
1280: “Seriously coach, and you and I are probably roughly the same age. Two things in life. To have coached a team in the NCAA tournament and to be on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson—I could die happy.”
Sean Miller: “Yea, I’m going to retire after this.”
1280: “Who were the other guests that night? Do you remember?”
Sean Miller: “You know what, I don’t, which probably tells you that it wasn’t a big night or I would have.”
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