March 14, 2007

Press Conference Quotes
March 14, 2007
BELMONT BRUINS

HEAD COACH RICK BYRD

Opening Statement It's an understatement to say that we are very happy to return to the NCAA Tournament. Last year was the thrill of a lifetime for our school, our young men and our coaching staff. This year is a very different feeling. We're very happy to repeat. It means a lot to our program and I hope it says something about where we've got our program. The task at hand is very difficult as it was a year ago when we faced UCLA, if not more so. I do think our team comes into this game this year with a naturally different approach. It's very hard not to be just happy to be there when your school goes for the first time and I didn't do a good job of negating that because I was just happy to be there too. As a coaching staff we tried to change that mindset, but we didn't have to change a lot. The players felt as I did. We were happy to be there and we tried to play a good game. This year we're more focused, but that doesn't make us as good as Georgetown. We more focused on that task at hand and that's doing our best to win the next basketball game regardless of whose name is on the front of the jersey.

How do you combat the name on the front of the jersey? Anytime we play a team that is on national television all the time and is ranked in the top 10, you somehow have to get to the point where you really, really believe you can win that game, if you put yourself in a position to win. You could substitute 15 or 20 names for the name Georgetown and we'd have the same challenge, if we take them into the second half can we get over the hump of believing that we can win this game? We've got to play this game like we play an Atlantic Sun game and when we play an Atlantic Sun game we expect to win. If we approach it in a different way then we won't have a chance to win. If we say let's try and keep it close, then we might keep it close, but we'll fall short of our ultimate goal. We're going to play the five guys we put on the floor and they're going to play the five guys they put on the floor. It's almost like you showed up in a rec gym somewhere and there are five good guys over there and anybody that is worth anything would want to go play those good players. And then they'd try to win. They wouldn't worry about where they are from, what their names were or what kind of jerseys they had on. That's the way our guys have to think.

What are your thoughts on the great Georgetown teams under John Thompson II and how they contrast with the team today? Those Georgetown teams were so physically dominant and carried an aura of invincibility. They were in that group of teams that you just didn't think you could beat. I've been so impressed with the job that John has done with this Georgetown team. To take a program that didn't make the Big East Tournament and be in this position in such as short time; to take all the good parts of the Princeton style offense and mesh it into a team that has great talent. Recruit great talent, get them to play that way, but not make it purely just Princeton and utilize Hibbert and their guys and modify the Princeton style. Their offense is statistically the most efficient in the country and I believe that after watching them play. Both coaches won and had great post presence and great athletes. I think probably this team is more precise in the way they run their offense and some of the things they do.

When their name came up on the board did you say there are some others we'd rather be playing that fit our style? I did think that for sure. We felt like we'd be a 15. It was the two-seed that we'd prefer not to play. They're not going to be unfocused nor are they going to look past us. They just don't beat themselves. The one that could be on our side is that they don't run a lot. If we were facing North Carolina I'd wonder if we could even beat those guys back down the floor two or three times. That's a weakness of theirs, but it's also their strength because they always come down and work to get a good shot. One thing we don't have to worry about as much is transition defense. Once they get it down there and set up, they are very precise. They almost always get good shots.

Talk about how rough the recruiting wars are in Tennessee? We try to recruit a certain kind of player and a certain kind of student. The good thing about where our program is that we've developed a certain niche. We have kids that are serious students. Our team GPA is well over a 3.0. When kids are really looking for a good education and want to be on a team with kids that are like them that want to excel in the classroom then we've got a chance to beat out schools that don't take that approach. We've been able to continue to recruit not only good students, but as we've gotten better on the floor, we've been able to recruit the good basketball players that are also good students.

Student-Athletes Josh Goodwin, Boomer Herndon, Justin Hare and Andrew Preston

Talk about your experience in the NCAA Tournament last year and how you think that will help you this time. Goodwin: I guess just being here for the first time and being able to come back a second time, just having the experience. You hear on TV all the time, being tournament-tested is one of the most important qualities to having a good run. Although we didn't go deep in the tournament, we've been here before and I think that's important for us.

Herndon: We're not as star struck. We were kind of happy to be here last year. We've tried to prepare ourselves a little differently this time. All the bright lights aren't going to have us awestruck; we're just going to try to play as hard as we can.

Discuss Georgetown's style and how you match up. Hare: They got a lot of size, (Roy) Hibbert as 7-2 and (Jeff) Green at 6-9. They're tough to guard inside. We've got two big guys ourselves, but we are going to have to try to play more zone, or something like that to prevent them from scoring inside, because that is where they really want to go first. We're going to have to get more moving offenses and set more screens up top to make Hibbert get out there and guard to try to take advantage of their size.

Are there a lot of teams that run back cuts in your league? Preston: Some of the teams in our league play more gung-ho, more up-and-down, very athletic - so they like to play the motion offense and sometimes we do see a lot of those back cuts. It's nothing that's new to us. Goodwin: When Andrew and I were freshmen, we were in the same conference as Samford, who runs the exact same offense. We are pretty comfortable with the Princeton offense. We haven't seen it in a while, but we've been practicing it and we've had experience with it before.

Are you familiar with Georgetown's basketball history and do you have any heroes who played for Georgetown? Herndon: Guys like Alonzo Mourning, big centers; they are known to have great centers. Being a center myself, (and) watching those guys back in the day, I've always kind of looked up to Georgetown as a `post university.' I'm just excited to play them. Preston: I agree with Boomer. Growing up watching Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning, you learn a lot just by their hard work ethics. They're great role models for how posts should be.

How can Belmont encourage crowd support for the underdog early in the game? Hare: Get off to a good start and get going. Last year we got off to a good start against UCLA and got the crowd rooting for us. Everybody wants to go for the underdog. I think if we just keep it close, as close as we can, and play hard and get off to a good start, maybe we can get the crowd behind us.

Boomer, can you take us through your illness in the fall? Herndon: Late August I was having really high fevers, around 103 degrees, I was having headaches so bad that I couldn't see. They admitted me in the hospital three separate times. The third time they decided to keep me. They thought it was at first, just some sort of bug. For a couple of days they just searched everywhere because they had symptoms, but they had no cause for my high fever and for my headaches and for me just feeling terrible. So they ended up doing x-rays all over my body. One of the last x-rays they did was actually on my chest and they found a mass in my chest that was a little smaller than a baseball. They thought immediately because of where it was, the position it was, right above my heart, right around my lungs, that it would be cancer. They had to cut through my lat muscle and spread my ribs and do a biopsy. They got the biopsy and said it would take about 24 hours to get results. After a day, they said they couldn't find anything cancerous and it turned out it was just an inflammatory mass. After surgery my symptoms, even though they didn't take the mass out or anything like that, my symptoms just totally, miraculously stopped. I stopped having high fevers, having headaches. They said the only thing they could think of that might possibly be the reason why I had the inflammatory mass, was because something I ate might have cause a puncture in my esophagus, which allowed bacteria from the food I ate to get through into my chest and create an inflammatory mass.
Something you ate? Did they tell you what it was? Herndon: They just asked me if I remembered anything that might have hurt when I ate it. The only thing I could possibly remember was when I went on a basketball trip this summer with Athletes in Action, a Christian basketball group, and we went and played in Taiwan. I ate a meal in Taiwan, a fish meal that had a small bone in it. I remember eating the bone; it kind of hurt going down. I played basketball the next day and was fine until about a month later and that is when my symptoms started.

To the other guys, how did it affect the team as a whole? Goodwin: A lot of us were in town, several of us are from Nashville, so we really didn't go home for the summer or go anywhere. We were in the hospital with Boomer the whole time. To get the call that they thought he had cancer worried us a lot. We had a lot to think about and a lot to pray about. To find out that it was okay and he was going to be fine, that took a load off of us. We weren't really concerned about Boomer as a basketball player and him coming back to play basketball. He is our best friend, he is somebody I've known since eighth grade, it was more that we were worrying about him as a person and caring about him as a person more than a basketball player. I think that goes for our whole basketball team, we're more of a family than just a basketball team.

There are four teams from Tennessee in the tournament. Is basketball getting better in Tennessee? Goodwin: Nashville and Tennessee as a whole, since we're from there, has always been a good basketball state and city, it just hasn't gotten the recognition. The majority of us are home-grown players and the majority of the rosters are all Tennessee players, so that just gives us a sense of pride in knowing that we played against these guys in high school and we're all staying at the college level and we're playing against each other in college and succeeding and doing well.

What has to go right for you guys to win tomorrow? Goodwin: Everything, maybe. We've got to make shots; they've got to miss shots. Most importantly we have to play defense and rebound well. If we rebound well and keep them off the boards, I think we've got a good shot as long as we make our threes and we run our offense solidly. Hare: I agree with Josh. We're going to have to play our best game; they're going to have to play one of their worst games. We are probably going to have to make a lot of threes and rebound the ball very well to have a chance. Herndon: I feel like we have to try to negate their post players, because they have two very good post players who score really well around the basket. I think Roy Hibbard shoots about 70 percent (for the) year, so if he takes 10 shots, he's going to make seven. If he's going to make seven out of 10, we're going to try to make him make seven outside of the lane and keep him away from the basket. Preston: As a team, we are going to have to be very focused and stick to our game plan. Basketball is nothing but a bunch of runs. When they make a big run on us, we just need to stick to how we prepared ourselves and not get frustrated and continue to play hard and play like we know how to win.