SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Steve Kerr stepped to the podium on Thursday night with a small smile on his face and an extra pep in his step. The longtime coach of the Golden State Warriors has acquired something within his team that he hasn\u2019t had at any other point in his 12-year tenure: bragging rights.<\/p>\n
That arrived last week when the University of Arizona Wildcats beat the Purdue Boilermakers to advance to their first Final Four trip in 25 years. The Wildcats face Michigan in Saturday\u2019s second semifinal in Indianapolis, and Kerr, who played in Tucson from 1983-88, has been beaming with pride ever since.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fun to be a Wildcat this week,\u201d Kerr said Thursday, while wearing a familiar Arizona T-shirt, prior to the Warriors\u2019 118-111 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers.<\/p>\n
Kerr attended the Wildcats\u2019 Sweet 16 win over Arkansas in San Jose, but won\u2019t be in Indianapolis to watch his team try to capture its second national championship. With a Sunday game against the Houston Rockets to prepare for, the Warriors\u2019 coach plans to watch from his Bay Area home, on his couch, with his dog.<\/p>\n
What he\u2019ll see is a dramatically different style than he\u2019s seen most of the season with his own team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s funny, the Wildcats are the exact opposite of the Warriors,\u201d Kerr told The Athletic earlier this week, laughing. \u201cThey get to the foul line. They dominate the interior. They never turn it over and they don\u2019t shoot 3s.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do the exact opposite: We launch 3s, we turn the ball over left and right. We try to outscore people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe college game is so different than the NBA,\u201d Kerr continued. \u201cIt\u2019s like a different sport almost. I think we\u2019ve gone so far over the top in the NBA with 3-point shooting \u2026 The college game reminds me a little bit of FIBA, when I was coaching in the Olympics, where every possession matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr sat right behind the bench in San Jose and clearly loved being a spectator.<\/p>\n
Regarding the Wildcats\u2019 semifinal matchup against Michigan, Kerr said his initial thought was, \u201cBoth teams are bigger than the Golden State Warriors, that\u2019s the truth. These guys, Michigan, too, are massive!\u201d<\/p>\n
Much has been made about the fact that Arizona almost entirely ignores the 3-point line, playing more of an old-school, bruising style focused on points in the paint (and getting to the foul line). Kerr loves it \u2014 but he does have some concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cMichigan shoots more 3s, and as an NBA guy, I do worry about the math working against us,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cIf you can hammer the ball inside and control the paint like we did against Arkansas (in the Sweet 16), you don\u2019t have to worry about the 3 as much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr has had high praise for Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd and appreciates the style that this iteration of the Wildcats plays with. He\u2019s also a big fan of UConn coach Danny Hurley, whose team faces Illinois in the first semifinal Saturday. Kerr noted that when he visited Hurley and his staff a couple of summers ago, he learned that they use a lot of the same sets that Fenerbah\u00e7e uses in Turkey. He appreciates the precision with which Hurley\u2019s teams play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love him,\u201d Kerr said of Hurley. \u201cHe\u2019s authentic. He\u2019s exactly the guy you see on TV. I don\u2019t know him that well, but I\u2019ve visited with him and really impressed with their execution, the stuff they run, how he made some changes as a coach and elevated his team the last few years to really amazing heights. He\u2019s a great coach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kerr said he spent part of his time before Thursday\u2019s game on the phone with another great coach, Michigan State\u2019s Tom Izzo. The pair has gotten to know each other well through the years, thanks to their shared connection of having coached Draymond Green. Kerr said he didn\u2019t even ask Izzo about the report that Izzo turned down the chance<\/a> to coach the Phoenix Suns last year, but did note that he doesn\u2019t believe a lot of college coaches are looking to make the jump from college to the pros.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t get that sense that college coaches are clamoring to come to the NBA,\u201d Kerr said.<\/p>\n Kerr is just hoping his Wildcats can cut down the nets in Indianapolis \u2014 and he can enjoy watching a team he cares about that plays nothing like the one he coaches.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so great, and honestly, it\u2019s good for the game,\u201d Kerr said of the Wildcats\u2019 style. \u201cBecause you want variety, you want different styles. There have been some really successful college coaches who, like Nate Oats at Alabama, who have kind of brought the NBA style to the college game. I don\u2019t know Michigan well enough but I sort of sense that Dusty May has brought some of the spread, pick-and-roll, spacing bigs who can shoot 3s, that stuff to the college game. Illinois seems to have done some of that, too.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are really different styles in this Final Four. I think it\u2019ll make for a great weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Steve Kerr stepped to the podium on Thursday night with a small smile on his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[1414,64,63,5552,1418,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-587995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-arizona-wildcats","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-golden-state-warriors","12":"tag-mens-college-basketball","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}