Eric Musselman's Complete Press Conference Before Elite Eight
Here is the complete transcript covering a wide range of topics from Arkansas coach Eric Musselman headed into a shot to reach the Final Four, but he has to get a win over Duke first.
ERIC MUSSELMAN: We are extremely excited to still be playing. The respect we have for Duke is immense. The way that they win year after year, what Coach K has done is incredible, but we're looking forward to the challenge of playing an incredible program and giving ourselves an opportunity to play to be in the Final Four.
Q. Eric, how much have you interacted with Coach K over the years, and as sort of a corollary, you said earlier in the week how coaching against Phil Jackson and I'm blanking on the other coach.
ERIC MUSSELMAN: Pat Riley.
Q. Pat Riley. Thank you. That no one would intimidate you in college. I'm not suggesting you would be intimidated tomorrow but what's it going to be like given the circumstances and the stakes to coach against him?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: Yeah, I would say as far as relationship, I joined him on his radio broadcast a year ago, so I don't really have any personal connection other than the fact that one of my best friends, Tom Thibodeau, worked with him with Team USA, and Tom speaks so highly of Coach K.
Then just to piggyback on what our players said. We're only concerned with how do we play up to our potential, maybe play beyond our potential, bring our "A" game, and then try to focus on game schemes that can help us offensively and help us defensively. I don't think I've ever talked to a basketball team about another coach just because our guys -- we have a very limited amount of time, and we just have to focus on who they might be guarding and what are their themes on both sides of the ball.
Kelley L. Cox / USA TODAY Sports
Q. I've actually just got a quick light-hearted question. I've got another story, Muss. What makes you wake up and say I have to go to Twitter headquarters this morning?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: That's a good question, Matt. Rachel is here, so you would have to -- I just kind of do what I'm told on a daily basis. Rachel is a social media expert. I didn't want to go into an extra film session or the players. I didn't want to wake them up that early, Matt. I knew we were going to the Giants, to go see the ballpark, and I had already finished my workout, and so Riley and Rachel asked if I wanted to go to Twitter. They thought it would be a good --
Q. Squeezed in. Okay. Cool. More seriously, you defeated Vermont, New Mexico State and Gonzaga. Duke has obviously not -- K hasn't faced the program since '94 and the title game. What are the benefits to you and your staff over the fact that that Coach K isn't familiar with your style, and has that benefited you at all in any of the previous three wins to get you to the this stage, just the unfamiliarity of teams and not having schemed against them? Is there something you have done in prep that gives you an advantage versus those other teams in those spots?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: I don't really think so. I think in this particular game when we aren't playing, for instance, I'm watching, quite frankly, SEC games, and if the SEC isn't on, then I'm watching the Pac-12 just because of where I grew up. Other than that, I don't really watch much ACC basketball at all. I don't really watch much Big 12. I'm either watching, like I said, SEC, Pac-12, or NBA games.
Do I know more about Duke than their staff knows about us? Probably not. Yesterday was -- that was the first time I've seen them play live. When we started film last night, that's the first time I've watched them on film ever. So I don't think so, but I do think maybe our style of play for Gonzaga is a little bit different based on their last 20 games in conference play, and I only say that because -- and I said it last night, I played in that conference, and I have a lot of friends in that conference. I have a lot of players that we recruited when I was at Nevada that are currently in that conference. Yeah, we're a different team than what they've seen other than in their game against Alabama and some of the non-conference games. Maybe when they played Duke.
I think that maybe and certainly any time you play a mid-major like a New Mexico State, I think that when you play a Power Five it can just be a little bit different because of the size. And then certainly with Vermont in league play they had not seen anything that could resemble us or any team in our league really.
Q. Just talk about the challenge, back-to-back games when you are facing Gonzaga with their size and weapons and now Duke, different type of size and their weapons. I know you go through the SEC, but that turnaround in just a couple of days.
ERIC MUSSELMAN: Yeah, our road -- we knew when the brackets came out that our road was not going to be easy at all. It would be overly challenging, and right now there's -- it's not a lot of prep time. Last night when I got back and we had dinner, we talked about Duke. We went through some themes on both sides of the ball. We went through personnel. We did it again this morning. Obviously, we just had a light practice. We went through it. We'll do it before dinner tonight. We'll do it after dinner, and then tomorrow we'll probably have two film sessions, and we are going to come and shoot. Our shoot-around time tomorrow is 8:55, which is early, extremely early, but I asked guys. I put it to vote, and they didn't flinch, man. They want to come shoot and go through shoot-around. Same drills. They want to be put into station work.
I don't want to say I was blown away, but I was -- I've been around teams that would say they want to sleep in. We haven't missed a shoot-around day at all this year, and might be the first time ever that we've had a shoot-around on every single game day.
Q. You told us earlier this season one of the reasons you changed your line-up is because that is what you felt like your dad would do, and I know your dad is no longer with us, but what do you think your dad would be telling you heading into this game tomorrow night?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: Same thing that I told the team a couple of days ago. Fear no one, but have great respect. My dad was just wired different as far as being a competitor, so I don't think I'm quite as competitive, but I'm close.
Yeah, the change in the starting line-up, it was something that I thought he would do. You know, the way that we go about our daily business, I always think about how he would do stuff.
Kelley L. Cox / USA TODAY Sports
Q. Eric, kind of a two-parter. That buckeye that your mom gave you, do you have it in your pocket, or what did you do with it during the game?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: I would love to tell you that I kept it in my back pocket. That's what I told her I was going to do, but it sat in the coach's locker room.
Q. Okay. Are you going to leave it in the coach's locker room or put it in your pocket tomorrow?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: I'm going to leave it back in the coach's. I'll bring it to the arena. I think that brings good luck if I bring it in here and then just kind of leave it on the back table.
Q. Au'Diese has had a lot of good games against Duke. Scored 27 and 22. I'm sure you're aware of that. What do you think about that, and do you think that might give him an extra boost of confidence?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: I don't think it will hurt his confidence, but if you like baseball, a baseball hitter can get hot against a certain pitcher, and then you can play him three weeks later, and the guy has four strikeouts. Or the opposite. You could struggle against somebody and then have a big game, so I'm not a big believer in things carrying over because I think each game has its own identity, its own theme, but if you have had two really good games or two career nights, it certainly cannot hurt your confidence. It can only help your confidence as an individual player.
Q. You guys are obviously a really experienced team contrasted with Duke that starts a lot of freshmen and sophomores. How does that look to factor into tomorrow's match-up?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: I don't think that it factors too much into it, because last year in the NCAA Tournament we started three freshmen in Davonte Davis, Jaylin Williams, and Moses Moody. Moses was our leading scorer as a freshman. I don't know how many shots he took against Baylor. Like, I don't know, 17 or something. When you have freshmen that are that talented, they're wired different, so I don't look at any of their freshmen in their top six rotations or sophomores. I don't look at them as being inexperienced. They played a whole season, and that's why I think you can see freshmen in NCAA tournaments play really well. They've been challenged every night in their conference, which is one of the best basketball conferences in the country. Then when you got a guy that's going to be a lottery pick, I mean, his mentality is just probably better than most fifth-year seniors, to be honest.
Q. I'm not sure, did you recruit Jaylin, or was he sort of already in the fold?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: No, no, I recruited him. Took a long time, but, yeah, I recruited him.
Q. Did you notice his ability to take charges and -- because that's probably like a subtle thing that maybe if you had only seen him a handful of times you don't necessarily pick up, so it sounds like you did. Can you just talk a little bit about what you saw in that and --
ERIC MUSSELMAN: Really, really interesting that a player that I did not recruit that Coach Anderson had recruited was Isaiah Joe from the same high school as Jaylin. Isaiah Joe was the best take-a-charge player I had ever been around, and then when we were evaluating Jaylin Williams, we were able to see not just the charge taking, but going vertical, using his chest, using his body to protect the rim, as well as being able to block shots. I thought he was from a high school perspective the best off-ball big that I had seen that entire summer in the evaluation process. He has really improved other parts of his game, but that particular part of basketball defensive IQ, he was college-ready already.
Q. Just to follow up on that, last night was kind of the flip side of that. It's a high risk-high reward kind of thing. He helped get Holmgren in foul trouble, and he picked up a couple late. Is that something that you've discussed with him over the last couple of years of just kind of the nuances of that?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: We talked to him about going vertical at times as opposed to just standing in there and taking a charge, but having said that, I want to give guys freedom on what they feel comfortable doing, and he hasn't fouled out of many games at all. He really hasn't been in foul trouble. To consider who he has to guard in our league and then like who he had to guard last night for Gonzaga, he is pretty good about not getting himself in foul trouble.
So we'll kind of leave it continue up to him. We do tell him which players are susceptible to charges, which guys to stand in front of because maybe they're a little bit more out of control, which players do not try to take a charge on this guy because you're not drawing a charge because he knows how to jump stop or he knows how to contort his body in such a way that the foul is going to be put on you. We do have some dos and don'ts on who to and who not to.
Q. First of all, I just want to say it's been awesome to have you and your program back in the Bay Area. It's been a ton of fun. Congratulations.
I'm just reflecting on the last couple of off-seasons basically since you have been there with roster construction. In terms of I don't care if it's a JUCO kid, a high school kid, a transfer portal kid, we won't name names, but Arkansas is usually like in the top five on a ton of recruits. You've been beyond aggressive, and now look at you. Two straight Elite 8s. Does that philosophy start to change because you're so established with two straight Elite 8s, or are you going to stay just as aggressive?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: We'll always be aggressive. From the very first meeting that I had with our staff, I mean, we equate -- we use the terminology, just basically what I learned from the NBA. We'll talk about a player being, hey, this guy has the potential to be a lottery pick. This player is like a late first round pick. This is like a late second round pick. This player's talent level is like a free agent that you pick up later down the road or this guy is a summer league type candidate.
We have all these different phrases that we use. We are overly aggressive making phone calls in the transfer market. Quite frankly, we don't want everybody to know who we're recruiting, so we evaluate. The guys that we really want I'm calling, and sometimes we're throwing stuff out there just so that somebody else, a competitor, gets excited about recruiting a guy that we think can't play for us, to be honest.
If you look at the numbers and we've called 42 transfers. We're not recruiting 42 because I'm the one -- but we don't want everybody to know what our evaluation is. If we're only talking to four players, then everybody would go after those guys because we've had really good success evaluating guys. We have not missed on many transfers.
We'll always be aggressive. That's how the world is right now in college basketball. In high school, when I grew up, you went to one high school. You didn't like the play-in time or your role, your dad or your mom -- you are staying there, and you're fighting through it. Well, now guys are going to four, five high schools. They're going to three different states. AAU, you didn't like your AAU program? You stuck with that AAU program because that was the neighborhood AAU program. Now guys are playing for seven different AAU programs and nine different states, so that's the nature of the world. You either adjust. There's no reason to complain or -- I never talked to my guys about, hey, you stay at one school. You adjust. You adapt. If you don't, you're not winning. If you don't use transfers, you're not going to win, plain and simple.
Now we have five incoming freshmen that I think are really, really talented. I think it's an incredible class, but we're still going to recruit transfers. That's just how you roll.
Q. Given the success that you guys had last night against Andrew, especially with Au'Diese being able to sort of lock him down. He had one of his more turnover-prone games. Is that a replicable strategy against Duke considering the ball handlers he has, especially Paolo with his ball handling on the floor?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: Yeah, I don't think so. Just as Bob and I were talking, every game has a different theme. From a coaching standpoint, number one, we had a lot of days to prepare. We don't have that -- I can't put him through all these different stations and go through all the footwork that we think we're going to see, which way is Timme going to spin and where you are going to dig and on what dribble. I can't do it. We just don't have enough time, and we don't have enough energy based on we play tomorrow.
Roach is different. He is different than -- and I had played against Andrew. So I had game-planned against him. I knew what worked, what didn't work so, I felt really comfortable about having a solid game plan because I had seen him with my own eyes live. It wasn't on tape. I'm not that familiar with who we're playing. Again, I didn't start the tape until last night after the game.
Q. I noticed the first person you hugged in the stands was your mom. What did it mean to you to play such a great game, and that was the first time your mom had seen you coach Arkansas? What was that moment like for you?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: I mean, really, really special. My mom, she's seen more basketball than I have. She went through it with my dad. It's been not easy to not have your mom come and visit. Not just the basketball part, but it's hard travel. There's no direct flights from San Diego to Fayetteville, and so it really did mean a ton.
Not just the game last night, but also she's with her granddaughter and gets to see Michael and Matthew, and yesterday they went to dinner without me, but they all went to dinner. I think there's a lot of special things.
I wanted her to know. I didn't want to go to one of my sons or my wife or my daughter. I wanted to go directly to her because the last 45 seconds I kind of looked over there and to see the emotion of her excitement was pretty cool. I was focused on the game too, but I did glance over there a couple of times.
Q. You say went on Mike Krzyzewski's radio show, and what was the circumstances surrounding that and what was that like?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: I don't know, Bob. Some producer called and asked if I would go on with Coach K on his radio show? I said, yeah, Coach K? Yeah, that would be awesome. He with just chopped it up on the radio.
Q. He said it's not a podcast.
ERIC MUSSELMAN: Yeah, I used the right terminology. Radio show. I'm not like these other guys that call it the wrong thing. (Laughter).
Kelley L. Cox / USA TODAY Sports
Q. I was hoping to follow up on your earlier comment about your dad and how you are almost as competitive as he was. How similar are you in sort of demeanor and coaching style and when you were growing up, was there ever any doubt that you would become a coach?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: I think, first of all, he was my best friend. He was my idol. When I went away to college, I talked to him every single day. There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't pick up the phone and call.
Similarities? Probably really close, Ron. I did coach a game against him. He was coaching Rochester in the old CBA, and I was coaching Rapid City. And his team was up by about 15 at halftime. Let's put it this way. He could hear me through the walls of our locker room to his locker room. My team went out on the floor. There was a knock on the locker room door. It was my dad. Now, it's halftime of a game. He is the opposing coach. He goes, man, I have never heard you act like that before. I was, like, it kind of caught me off guard, and he goes -- then he walked out and said, it sounded like me. We ended up coming back and winning the game.
But he wanted to trade one time, and he called and I said, hey, yeah, I'll trade. I think it was Clint Wheeler. I said I need a first, second, and third round draft pick for him. I never heard him talk to me like that. He's like, are you crazy? The guy is only worth a second rounder, and you are asking -- it's your dad, man. Do me a favor. I'll give you a player down the road when you need one. I said, no, dad, I need first, second, third round draft pick.
Just a lot of competitive stuff. Playing pick-up ball with him. Anybody that's ever played pick-up ball with my dad, it was, you had to full-court press. Nobody was allowed to get a layup. If the game was to 15, it took an hour to get from 14 to 15 if he was losing because he would basically foul you every play. A lot of competitive stuff in the household.
Q. You referenced the Baylor game earlier, and I just remember how emotional it was for Jaylin, J.D., and some of the other guys that were on this team last year walking off the floor. You even talked about how you watched that game several times over months later.
Is that something that they have talked to this current team about how they felt then and just kind of where that season ended last year?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: Thanks for the motivation tip. We might use that. I hadn't thought of it, Ty, but they haven't. In the locker room I vividly remember holding Moses. He's the guy that was really crying and sobbing, and it hurt him tremendously.
It was the same thing with Jaylin, Tate, and Justin just because those two guys, we kind of knew that they were -- I shouldn't say those two. Even Moses we knew that those three were -- that was probably the last time that they would put on a Razorback uniform. I do remember those three guys in particular, but certainly Jaylin and Devo, I know they were hurting as well.
Maybe that's something good we talk about tomorrow at our last pregame meal before we go and play that game, and that's the last time that we'll meet going into the game. So that might be a good thing for those guys to get up and give them the floor for a minute.
Q. I guess kind of following up on that, what are your emotions like being on the verge of going Final Four again? Mike Krzyzewski said it's the Mecca. What are your feelings?
ERIC MUSSELMAN: Kind of like every game, to be honest with you, Bob. I thought last night until the Au'Diese dunk, just try to be composed. You are trying to get your team to focus on the task at hand. I didn't really feel last year that our team was that nervous going into the Baylor game or felt like any added pressure. I didn't think we played last night -- actually, I thought we played way more loose last night than we did in the first -- I thought the first two games -- that first game was miserable, you know, because we're supposed to beat Vermont. I didn't have that feeling in the locker room at all. I felt like all of us felt really comfortable from a competitive nature, and I hoped that we had the same kind of loose feeling tomorrow because I don't think you can look beyond what if. You can look the other way. What if we lose, and then we're done for the year? I don't think you can -- I think you've just go to focus on the team you're playing, strengths, weaknesses. That's all we really needed to think about right now.
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