It’s Final Four week. Four teams left. Four coaches left. Until Saturday night’s national semifinals in Jerry Jones’ Playland, we’re all about the number 4.
The NCAA pulled together the four coaches for a conference call with reporters on Monday. From all that pregame chatter, we’ve extracted four – yes, four – talking points. One comment from each coach that you might find interesting as Florida prepares to play Connecticut and Kentucky squares off with Wisconsin.
In an interesting twist, Florida has played the other three teams already this season. The Gators only losses this season came at Wisconsin and at UConn. Florida has defeated Kentucky three times. Coach Billy Donovan was asked if that recent history gives Florida an advantage.
Donovan: “I think for us, whoever we’re going to play, the other team’s got the same thing. There is familiarity because at least from our standpoint, we’ve played UConn, Wisconsin and Kentucky. So there’s familiarity with us, too. I do think that is a good thing as it relates to preparation. I use this as an example. When we’re playing UCLA, we have not seen a 6’9” point guard like Kyle Anderson. A little bit different, a little bit unique. You’re trying to explain that to your guys, show it to them, but they really never have gone against it.
“Whereas I think for us playing against UConn, our guys know Shabazz, Boatright, Daniels, they know their roster. UConn knows our roster, too, because we played against each other. From a preparation standpoint we can take some things from previous games, things we need to do better. I think every team right now, since we’ve played them, has evolved in some ways. Hopefully we’ve evolved, as well.”
Kentucky coach John Calipari has a few secrets about his team’s turnaround. He will clue in the rest of us idiots when the season is over.
Calipari: “We tweaked some things. I’ve had all different kinds of point guards and I’ve had guys that have been different types of players. I waited probably two months longer than I should have to put the couple things in that changed how we were as a team. When I did the first tweak, I told everybody, You will see a change. They saw it. They couldn’t believe it. Before we went to the tournament, I tweaked another thing. I said, You will see the change.
“Most in the media don’t know enough about basketball to know what I’ve done. When the season is over, I’ll go through point by point how I did it. You’ll be able to say, Wow, I see it. The question becomes, when you hear it, Why didn’t you do it earlier? I don’t really have a good answer. My only hope would be to say to you maybe they weren’t ready to accept it two months ago. Maybe they had to fail more. Maybe they had to understand that you must surrender to your team, you must lose yourself in your team, and you must understand less is more when you’re talking about team play.
“But if they were ready to accept it two months ago, we wouldn’t have been an eighth seed playing in the gauntlet that we just played.”
Wisconsin 7-footer Frank Kaminsky is averaging 22 points in his last three games. Arizona couldn’t do anything to stop him in the regional championship game. What has led to the sudden improvement in Kaminsky’s game?
Coach Bo Ryan: “If I said coaching, would it get me any points? He’s just a tough young man who really wants to be a player, who has physically and mentally matured into what he feels he’s comfortable with as far as his body and mind are concerned.
“He’s learned how to be stronger. He’s learned some nuances defensively of positioning and balance, all those things that you like to feel really every student‑athlete does. They improve when they’re in school. He’s improved in every phase of his game.”
An African-American coach has not won the national championship since Tubby Smith at Kentucky in 1998. Pat Forde of Yahoo! Sports asked UConn coach Kevin Ollie if he is concerned about black coaches getting the best jobs in college basketball. You can read Forde’s story here. Here’s what Ollie had to say.
Ollie: “It’s definitely a concern. We don’t want to look at ourselves as African American coaches, we want to look at ourselves as a coach. Hopefully our coaching ability doesn’t have to do with the color of our skin and we’ll be judged on what we do on the court, getting our guys prepared, what we do off the court getting them prepared for life.
“I just admire John Thompson, Nolan Richardson. They paved the way for me that I can have a job and do it successfully. But it’s definitely something we need to take a long look at and hopefully we can get more African Americans in these jobs, in these positions, that they can run a program.
“I feel it’s my duty to continue to be a role model, to continue to do the things I do, really handle myself as a great person, so a young African American that’s eight or nine years old can aspire to be a head coach one day. Hopefully I can provide that pathway like John Thompson did for me, and Nolan Richardson.”
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