Transcripts From Purdue And VCU Press Conferences

The Boiling Point: Transcripts of Purdue and VCU’s official press conferences from earlier today have been released.

Here’s the transcipt from LewJack, E’Twaun. JaJuan and Matt Painter today: One highlight:

"Q. Does one game sort of right the ship? I mean, last night, obviously, sort of rectifying what you saw against Iowa and Michigan State?COACH PAINTER: You hope so. Any time you have losses, you know, it makes you search for the answers as a coach and try to do what’s best for your team. You know, you hope you can get a victory, and you can get on the — back on the right path, so to speak.We’ll see today. It’s a different opponent. They do some different things than some teams we’ve faced. So we have to be prepared for that. But it comes down to playing hard and giving a good effort. And making good decisions."

Here’s the transcript from VCU’s press conference. Some highlights:

"Q. JaJuan Johnson is the one guy that Purdue has. He’s the one player that has difficulty matching up with. How are you guys going to play him without giving away your entire game plan? COACH SMART: Someone asked me a while ago what our exact game plan was, and I said, I can’t tell you that now or I’ll have to kill you.We’re going to put multiple guys on him. We’re going to use our entire front court to block him at times. We’ve got a lot of big guys that don’t play a lot of minutes, but when they do go in there, they should have a great deal of energy and a great deal of passion for stopping their man. Different people will take turns on Johnson. Jamie Skeen is going to find his way onto him at some point, whether it’s to start the game or later in the game. If he really gets going, we can double-team. Purdue can make you pay for doing that.It’s something I really don’t like to do, double-team big guys, but, again, you do it if you have to. We did it on Wednesday against Vucevic from USC, and it really paid off for us. We held him to five shots and 11 points.Johnson is a more versatile player. He can step out on the floor, make jumpers, put it down on the floor, dangerous on the offensive glass. So it’s going to have to be a total team effort on him. And the reality is you’re not going to shut him down, neither him nor Moore. You’re just going to take them out of the game. They’re too good a players to do that.You have to contain them, hold them under their average, and you’ve got to do a phenomenal job on the supporting cast."

"Q. You talked about how the efforts to defend JaJuan Johnson and the efforts to defend E’Twaun Moore and you acknowledged they’re probably going to get theirs anyway, maybe make them work for it. Would you say it’s more important to try to stop Lewis Jackson than to try to stop JaJuan Johnson?COACH SMART: I think so. Jackson can’t be up 15, 20 points. That would be a problem if he gets that many. I’m not saying he can’t do it. I’m saying we can’t allow that. Moore and Johnson, for them not to score in the mid-to-high teens, like I said, it would be a miracle, but it would be pretty close. So we’re going to do the best job we can on them.Ed Nixon is a terrific defender for us. He’ll draw the assignment on Moore, and he’ll do a very good job. They’re going to get some baskets because they’re going to get a lot of shots because they’re All-Americans. We’ve got to do a great job on Byrd, on Smith, and on anyone else that comes in the game for them."