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Mike Montgomery Weekly Press Conference
Men's basketball coach discusses Pac-10 title, final regular season road trip.
March 2, 1999
STANFORD, Calif. - At his weekly press conference, Stanford men's basketball coach Mike Montgomery discussed the sixth-ranked Cardinal's clinching of the Pac-10 title, upcoming games in Oregon, and the season to date. Stanford is now 24-5 overall, and 14-2 in the Pac-10, following a Thursday overtime win over Arizona State 87-77 and a Saturday win over No. 7 Arizona 98-83. Montgomery passed Howie Dallmar as the winningest coach in Stanford men's basketball history with his 258th win on the Farm Thursday vs. ASU and captured his first-ever conference title on his 52nd birthday.
Q: Can you talk about what you've been able to see of Oregon and how they've changed since the start of the season?
They're running less set and more motion than they were. They changed the line-up a little bit more, maybe playing a few less players, and changed the line-up just a little bit, maybe gone back a little more with the veteran players. Probably a little more confident in what they're doing. Knowing what they're trying to do and how it fits, and what they need to do to win and those kinds of things. A little more solid defensively, which naturally happens as you go through a season and you become more comfortable, because they've got some new players. But still a lot of threes, and they're going to play five post guys if they need to, pound you at the post. And I think as much as anything else, winning a few close games has helped them.
Q: To what do you attribute your team's second-half strugglesS Struggles?
Didn't have a whole lot of struggles. Didn't notice a lot of struggles.
Q: Well, compared to the first half, you appeared to have some struggles?
Not really. Tough league. It depends on where you're playing people. We lost two, I guess, I don't know - Connecticut, which isn't a bad team. I guess the difference is people trying to look at margin of victory, which I've never really looked at. I think we're pretty much the same team.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about the reaction to winning the Pac-10 title, and how you see that impacting the rest of the season?
You know, it was exciting for two reasons. One is, it's not something that's happened here for a long, long time. In fact, we've never won the Pac-10, per se. So winning that was significant for us. It was something we really wanted to do. And it was a goal that we had early on to try to do that. Two, when it happened at home, and you have your seniors at your last home game, and it's Arizona, who was the team that had a chance to get you, it made it that much more fun for everybody. And I think it was a release of a lot of emotion. Everybody really enjoyed it. How it affects us this weekend, I don't know.
Certainly we've got to try to stay focused. We can't win at Oregon or Oregon State without being as good as we can be. But that would have been the case whether we were winning or not winning. Those are two good basketball teams that have been very good at home. Our ability to win is going to depend on our ability to play well and stay focused. We want to try to continue to improve; we want to try to get some momentum going into the tournament, which, for the first time in my history, we know we're going to play in because we have an automatic bid. So it's hard to say. I think that the subconscious, the subtle part of Oregon still feeling like they have a chance to play in the NCAA but they need to win their two gives them a lot of incentive. Hopefully we'll just match that from the standpoint of pride and trying to win.
Q: Do you start thinking a little bit more about the tournament?
No sir. I don't answer questions about it. I'm asking the kids not to think about it out of respect to our opponents. We need to play well. We need to go up there and compete. If we're thinking about the tournament, we're going to get beat twice.
Q: You've always been a good front-runner - once you get the lead to tend to put the hammer down - can you explain that?
Typically against good teams basketball is a game of momentum. We're going to have a stretch where we play well and if it's a good team, they're probably going to have a stretch where they play well and start making shots. Late in the game I think it's because people that want to foul or have to foul you, our guards are great foul shooters and we don't give up much there.
And the other thing I would say is if we're able to get a lead, it's possible that the match-ups are good for us. That we know we have the ability to defend them, or we have the ability to score. We know that, and we get a great deal of confidence out of it, and it's possible that they can't change. In other words, (they think): "Boom, uh oh, we can't score. They know what we're doing. They're able to score against us." And it means maybe in that particular match-up that we're pretty good.
Q: You talked about playing your best going into March. We're into March, so are you playing your best, is everything on schedule?
I don't know that that's the case. I think are big guys have struggled a little bit lately. We'd like to have all our people making all their shots and being confident and so forth. Certainly Arthur (Lee) and Kris (Weems) were at the top of their game Saturday against Arizona. Again, I think with this group there's probably not as much room for growth because we're a veteran team, and pretty much what you see is what you get coming in. We're not going to make improvements by leaps and bounds because we were good last year, and that's kind of what we are, what we do.
I think the mental part of it, the confidence part of it, those are all things that go into making you play your best. The confidence in your shooting. We don't have the depth we had so maybe it's worn on us a little physically. But we've been trying to take a day off here and there to keep us fresh. But I think the last two weekend we've had two real good performances against two of the better teams in the league, in Washington and Arizona, so maybe there's some indications we're starting to show a little bit of our best basketball.
Q: Are you doing anything different to prevent a let-down this week after clinching the Pac-10 title to keep momentum going into the tournament?
I don't know that we can prevent a let-down, subconsciously, and there will be momentum one way or another based on the weekend games. We don't want to lose. Ever. Certainly we don't want to lose this weekend. The momentum thing, I don't know too much about that. Truthfully, I think we've had the ability to get up for games we need to win, and I think we'll be able to do that come tournament time. Regardless of what happens, you're set up anyway. If we don't win, it'll be a let down, and truthfully that may not be the case at all, because of the strength of Oregon and Oregon State, how well they're playing late in the season, and the fact that they're good at home.
Q: In light of what you were saying, is there anything you can really say to your players, like try to approach this week like you haven't won it yet?
You guys are looking for more than there's here. We've played 30 games, or somewhere in there, 29 I guess, and we're going to go up and try to win. I don't know what more has to be said. We're going to compete; we're going to play hard; we're going to defend; we're going to try to take them out of the things they do. I'm not a psychologist, per se. What we're going to try to do is talk about pride in the program and being the conference champ and going into the tournament, and let's go play some hoops. That's all we can do.
Q: You said you don't want to talk about the tournament, but isn't part of the incentive of going up there playing for the No. 1 seed?
I don't think that we can control the seeding situation. It looks to me that the rankings and the way they do it, things are pretty well set, not that the rankings are what do it. Again, we're not going to get into all that stuff. We're going to try to go up and play two basketball teams in the conference. Maybe for once you'd like to go play without the weight of the world, with everybody trying to put ramifications on what the outcome is, other than trying to just compete and playing a basketball game. Without, "Gee, we blew that," or "you would've been a this," or "what about that." Maybe we just go up and play, and maybe that allows us to play our best basketball. I don't know.
Q: You've been at Stanford a long time to get to this point. Is there something, besides recruiting good players, that has made the difference to get you to this point?
No. There are no secrets. We've been close before; we've had good basketball teams before. The league, I think, is stronger top to bottom in terms of some other people not winning. I said for years there's always been somebody that's been No. 1 or No. 3 or No. 2 nationally ranking in the country, and it's been pretty tough to finish ahead of those people because they're always so strong. It seems to me that I guess that must be a little of what you need to win in this conference. You've got to be real, real good. And this is probably the best we've been, probably, on a national perception basis, and all of a sudden we win the conference. This league is very, very good, and you better have some guys that can play. It's as simple as that, or you're not going to be able to win in this league.
Q: Is there any sense of a little pressure being off after everything that was said about you before the season, being "a foregone conclusion" for the Pac-10, etc.?
If this thing was a foregone conclusion, I wish we would have decided that way before we had to go through all this. It was anything but that, and it has been a series of good performances and gut-wrenching wins, and a little luck here and a little luck there, and the whole thing. You're wire-to-wire. You're picked to do it, you're in first place the whole way, and then you end up doing it. I think there's a sense of satisfaction when you can do that. Certainly we've seen people with some of their best performances and we've had to withstand those performances, and in most cases we have. There's a great deal of satisfaction now, we've just got to start shifting toward finishing up the league strong, and then obviously to what we call the third season, and that's the postseason.
Q: Can you talk a little bit about Arthur Lee's year.
I think people tried to make him something that he wasn't, and I think that was very difficult for him. He's a very good player. He's been great for us. He's our team leader. As he goes, in a way, so go we. But they wanted him to be the best guard in the country, and I don't think he is that. I think he's a very good player. I think he's really tough. I think he can defend. But he has to pick and choose his spots, and he's not always going to be the best. But he has typically come up with good performances in big games, and I think Saturday was a good indication of that.
Q: Would you be willing to say this year's team is better than last year's team at this point?
I think it probably is just from an experience standpoint. Well, it has to be better given the schedule that we've had, and our ability to win the league. We don't have some of the ingredients, maybe, from the standpoint of depth, but again, you're talking about a bottom-line evaluation which says last year we went to the Final Four. The tournament is such that that doesn't guarantee you anything because this team is better. The fact that we withstood a tougher conference, the fact the target was on us all year long, the fact that we played a much tougher schedule - this team is better.
Q: Following up on Arthur, he does seem to come up with better performances in big games. Does he put more pressure on himself, or is there a way to explain that?
I think Art, like any young person, his focus maybe in some instances, even understanding what his role is, I think sometimes he got caught up in trying to match somebody else, rather than trying to just play the game and let the game come to him. We played against virtually all of the best point guards in the country, and the focus then was swung over to him versus that person. And sometimes he got caught up in that a little bit. In the Arizona game I think his focus went back to us winning, and it took a little bit of pressure off. We talked about how Terry was going to score, but don't let that be an issue. Just play. And I thought that focus was much better for him in terms of his ability to do the job.
Q: Again, knowing that you're already in and are going to get a very high seed, does it even matter where you end up? Well sure it matters, but it's not in our control, so what difference does it make?
If they irritate Mike Montgomery, well, so what? It's easier if it's closer. I think it's easier for people that support you to go. I think in terms of all the other things, but, a tournament's a tournament. There are six games to be played. You're going to play a good team regardless. Sure it matters, but there's no point laboring about it.