Jan. 13, 2001
Head Coach Mike Montgomery
Opening Statement:
I thought our energy level was much better tonight than it was Thursday night. We had two good days of preparation. I think they were disappointed in their preparation for Thursday's game and Oregon comes in with a little better of a record. We prepared ourselves well. First half execution - offensively, I thought we were very good. We had some foul trouble with Jarron [Collins], which obviously hurts you, but we got really good performances from Justin [Davis] in particular defensively and on the boards, Curtis [Borchardt]. That is encouraging to know that we can have that kind of performance inside. Jason [Collins] was huge, he missed a couple finishes early and I think he got angry and just started to dominate inside the paint and probably his best effort so far numbers-wise - 24 [points] and 12 [rebounds]. Other than the stretch in the second half, where I thought that defensively we gave up a lot and traded baskets - which we've had a tendency to do, I thought we played very well. Tony Giovacchini was real good off the bench, a lot of energy in the first half - got some steals, made some plays. From a depth standpoint I was really encouraged. Julius [Barnes] had the game Thursday and Tony tonight and Curtis and Justin. If we can get those guys more consistent, that will really make a difference as we go through the season. Oregon is a very good team. [Bryan] Bracey is surprising how much he's improved, how good he is. They shot the ball very well, Luke Jackson was impressive of the bench. A good shooting team, they really know where they want to move the ball, but we were good today.
Q. Was Jarron defending Bracey better in the second half?
A. Well, I think he did a little better of a job. They got off Bracey a little bit. I think early on, Bracey's been the go-to guy and when you're down 20, you might change your style a little bit. We just felt there was no reason for Bracey to have the ball if he didn't need to have it. I think Justin did a real good job. Jarron got caught a couple times when [Bracey] got the ball, and got two quick fouls and typically we like to keep a guy and not get a third if we don't need to. I could have gone back to him, but I didn't want to dot that. He did a better job in the second half.
Q. Did you put the freshman in when they backed off Bracey because he's perhaps a quicker defender on the perimeter?
A. I assume the freshman you're referring to is Justin. Justin - that's got to be the match-up we have against a smaller, quicker player. The disadvantage you have, obviously, is that we're bigger and when you get a smaller forward like that, and we're going to have the same problem with [Sean] Lampley [California], it's a little bit of a match-up problem and Justin would be the closest thing we have at the power forward position to a little smaller, quicker player. We were hoping he could do that, I didn't think it was a very good match-up for Curtis, although, he doesn't have the ball all the time and it makes it easier.
Q. Nationally, people are saying this is a very different Stanford team than before - quicker, more versatile. Considering you've had a Final Four team and a team that's been ranked No. 1 before, is there any credence to that?
A. They don't know. They turn on the television one time and they watch you play and they form judgements. Every team is different. We have different people that are capable of doing different things. I think Casey [Jacobsen] as well as Ryan [Mendez] is elevated in terms of putting the ball on the floor, and that's helped us - without question. Mike [McDonald] is playing with a lot more confidence. We're doing the same things. We do have some players that have improved and expanded their abilities to do things with more confidence, and I think our coaches have become more confident with their abilities to do that. I don't think there's any major thing happening other than just a team that has improved and pretty comfortable with what they can do.
Q. Was that about as good as you can play?
A. No, we can play better. We can defend better for sure. We have a good shooting team, and I would say there are stretches when we played very well and you'd say, "Gosh, what else can you do?" But there were also stretches when we gave up too many points and didn't defend as well would like. I think it's just a matter of sustaining your best effort for 40 minutes. We shot the ball well. We defended well in stretches, but again the consistency was not there for 40, I didn't think. We've had trouble with that typically when we've gotten up. We seem to lose our hunger on defense to really make a stop imperative. That's something we have got to continue to work on.
Q. People say that it doesn't matter getting to No. 1 as much as what you do once you are No. 1.
A. In our league, if you don't win at home, you've got problems. We're still all competing for a conference championship. You've got to guard your home court and make that a priority, and certainly we're trying to do that. The road in this league is very difficult and we know we're going to have our hands full. There are a lot of good teams. We're not worried about the No. 1 thing - in fact it's not even an issue. It's just trying to compete in the conference, knowing that if you slip up or don't play well or give up a game that you know you shouldn't by not playing well that you probably won't win the conference championship or have a chance to compete for it. That's what we're trying to do.
Q. Can you talk about Justin's improvement?
A. It's just experience. You put a kid in that's a freshman - and you have to be very impressed with Luke Jackson and [Luke] Ridnour, two freshman from Oregon that they're able to play at the level they're playing at as freshmen, that's hard. Justin for all intents and purposes is a freshman that missed even the first half of this year, so experience-wise. He will get better as time goes on. It's just a matter of understanding what is a good play for him, what he can do, relax him a bit, get in better shape because he missed so much time. He got the rebounds he should have. He defended very well, got after the ball a couple times with his quickness. I expect him to relax and get a better and better.
Q. A lot of people are suggesting that no one has gone in to the NCAA Tournament in the past nine years undefeated and that you have a chance to do it?
A. It is absurd. A lot of people? It's probably some guy who called that's trying to sell magazines to you and suggested that. The fact that there are only two teams left that are undefeated certainly indicates that we have a better chance than the other 323 who have all lost. If you look at it logically, there are only two people that can, so we have a better chance than the others. It doesn't make any sense to concern ourselves with that at all. We're not going to any game thinking that were going to lose or that we want to lose this one. We're going to try to compete every night out, but at some point, somebody's going to play really well or we're not going to play really well or we're going to play well and they're going to play better, and we'll lose. That will not be the end of the world for us. It's just going to be the way that it is. We just hope that we're ready to play every night, and hope that when that happens or if that happens that it happens because the other team played better and we didn't go out not prepared to play. It's not even in our thought process, it shouldn't be and it is really not important. We would like to go undefeated in a third season, but up to that point, it's not something we're going to concern ourselves with.
Q. How have the players responded to the No. 1 as a distraction?
A. It's only a distraction because people keep asking. Just think, if nobody asked about it, why would it be a distraction? It's like asking the guys if they're going to go into the draft, if you ask and a guy's never thought about it, and all of a sudden he has to have an answer. It's amazing to me. You ask a guy and he goes, "I'm going to keep my options open." Now it becomes an issue. It's like [Rick] Pitino who can have any one of the 325 Division I jobs in the county, it's just what everybody says, so that now becomes the deal. It's not a distraction - it's flattering. We haven't lost, we've won some games, and we've played well. We've had two really good wins against visible teams - and low and behold, we've ended up on top. All we're trying to do is play basketball and the fact that we're No. 1 means we have more attention, but it shouldn't affect anything more than when we were No. 2. We were still undefeated at that point. It's just the way it is, it's just the way this thing goes. It's very, very arbitrary, and we understand that. You have to be considered good early to even get No. 1 and we were considered good to start with and we haven't lost, so we moved up. It's just not much an issue, is we would just not make it an issue.
Q. Did Jason's performance tonight reflect maturity?
A. They had a problem size-wise. [Julius] Hicks is 6'8", although pretty strong and Bracey is 6'7". Either way you look at it, they were going to have a problem size-wise, and we had to exploit that. They front and pretty much have to front when they can because they can't play behind guys that big at their size. So, they front and try to force you to go over the top. What we were doing was by them fronting, we were able to get some penetration or get shots up and now they were in front on the weak-side board, which means Jason is right in position to score the ball. It's a perfect situation. If you're going to front, it's hard to board. It does put you in jeopardy. A lot of times when you tell guys that they have to get in front and the guy says, "I'm going to get killed on the boards," and that's true if the shots are taken and the ball comes off right. The other thing is if you front and then you push, you're going to get in foul trouble, and that's again what happened. You say, "Hey, the guy's rebounding and scoring, I better push and then you get fouls called. In the same token, if you look, Oregon went down low late and we were behind and we had a hard time guarding them. It's hard to guard good post players. We were behind, a guy took a couple dribbles, they had a three-point shooter opposite - if you help down there, they shoot a three. If you let the post alone, he backs in, turns up and scores. It's hard to guard good post guys.