NCAA Press Conference Quotes

NCAA Press Conference Quotes

3/18/2004

NCAA Press Conference Quotes
Quotes from Thursday in Orlando

The following Vanderbilt and Western Michigan quotes are from Friday’s press conferences at the TD Waterhouse Centre in Orlando, Fla. Vanderbilt head coach Kevin Stallings and student-athletes Scott Hundley, Matt Freije and Russell Lakey. WMU head coach Steve Hawkins and student-athletes Mike Williams, Anthony Kann and Reggie Berry.

Vanderbilt Quotes

Head Coach Kevin Stallings
Opening Statement …
“Well our team is obviously excited to be here. We’re looking forward to our game tomorrow. We’ve had a good week of preparation for this game. This is what you work for and sweat over. It couldn’t be any more exciting for college basketball player than being involved in an NCAA basketball tournament.

“We realize we’re an extreme underdog and we’ll do our very best to overcome the odds and try to somehow try to pull out a victory.”

On being deep teams …
“Sometimes depth doesn’t tend to be as important in this tournament as it is in the regular season because the timeouts are so long. They are very deep, that is a fact. Our bench has been good for us for the better part of the season, so that will probably just cancel each other out.”

On being viewed as the underdog …
“I wasn’t surprised. They couldn’t even get off the selection show before they had declared that we were pretty much in trouble. So, I guess Western Michigan has done a lot this year to generate credibility with the experts this year. You have to give credit to them for putting themselves in a position to where people have made them the favorite.”

On controlling tempo …
“We like to play fast, too. They probably do a little better job of playing faster than we do. We’re not scared of the game being fast, that’s ok with us. We just want to make sure we’re doing the things that we practice and we’re playing the game at a speed that we’re effective at playing at. We always want to control the tempo, but sometimes controlling the tempo means making it fast.”

On poise …
“Very few basketball games are won in the first five or six minutes of the game. We always talk about not wading in, but jumping in. We want to jump into the game, we don’t want to sort of crawl in because the water’s too cold. We want to be aggressive. We’ve been a team that has played aggressive all year long and we’ve been our best when we’ve been loose and aggressive.”

On Mario Moore …
“Mario has been very good for us at times and he’s capable of going through stretches when he’s not as effective. When we’re really good, he and Russell Lakey are both playing well. He’s certainly not afraid of taking the big shot, he’s not afraid of taking the ball inside and making plays for himself and for others. Discretion is the key for Mario. Knowing when to and when not to and the better job he does with that, the better he plays.”

On Mike Williams …
“Mike is a very good player, a very skilled player. Obviously he’s player of the year in his league, so he comes with great credentials. I’m not really sure if we have anyone that can guard him, that’s probably one of the reasons that we’re the underdog. We’re just hoping for him not to get 35.”

On the turnaround …
“We didn’t have a good season last year. Thanks to the seniors in our program we were able to turn it around and have a successful season this year. They deserve the credit for that turnaround, as well as the rest of our players. It’s probably taken us a year longer to get to this point-we thought we could do it a year ago. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen then, but fortunately for us it’s happening now and we’re happy for that.”

Senior Guard Scott Hundley
On the chance of being upset …
“It’s a lot of the same we hear in the SEC. We hear it every night we go out there. Most people think we are last in the Conference.”

On being viewed as an underdog …
“There is not a lot of respect for us. Our women’s team is always very good, but the men’s team usually isn’t. This is our opportunity to prove ourselves.”

Senior Forward Matt Freije
On being viewed as an underdog …
“We don’t pay any attention to that, to us it is another game. A lot of us our seniors and this could be our last game, so we are going to play our game and play hard.”

On both teams being deep …
“Western Michigan plays about eight deep and sometimes we play twelve deep. It may or may not neutralize each other, but neither team is going to run the other one out of the gym. It will be a tough and rugged forty minutes and it will be a real fun game.”

On his match-up with Mike Williams …
“He is obviously a great player, he was his conference’s player-of-the-year. He is your typical inside-outside guy and can do a lot of great things out there. I won’t start the game covering him, but will have to cover him on and off throughout the game.”

On what he needs to do in the game …
“I just need to play my game. I don’t need to do anything special, however I do need to play better than I did in the conference tournament.”

Senior Guard Russell Lakey
On being viewed as an underdog …
“We have to settle it on the court. It doesn’t really affect us. We know what we can do. It is going to be two teams trying to prove what we can do out on the floor.”

On what you’ve learned about Western Michigan …
“We know they are a very good team. They shoot the ball well. They push the ball very quickly up the floor. We know, down low, they are big strong bangers. They pose a lot of match-up problems for us.”

On your offense …
“Our four and five players being our best shooters, poses a problem for other post players.”

Western Michigan Quotes

Head Coach Steve Hawkins
Opening Statement …
“We are very excited to be representing the MAC in the NCAA Tournament. It’s our 1st time through this. The kids have done a very nice job handling the attention.”

On when he realized that Ben Reed was back to his freshman form …
“Shortly after I got the job, Ben & I met and he was excited. He had a frustrating sophomore year. The kid is a workaholic. After working all summer his jump shot was back. He was a man on a mission and ready to make a mark his junior year.”

On being a surprise favorite despite lower seeding …
“I don’t feel that we are a favorite. We are the No. 11 seed. It’s nice to see that some people feel we can win. All this stuff piles up in the Vanderbilt locker room, though. Nothing matters. We are going to play 40 minutes just like Vanderbilt.”

On the involvement of Brian Snider at point guard …
“He became a point guard on accident. In practice we needed someone to run the point on the other team. It gives us two completely different looks. He handles the ball very well. It gives us two different personalities at point guard.”

On Vanderbilt’s offense …
“First of all it is not their style, it is their personnel that concerns me. They have some wonderful basketball players. They could run some different offenses and be successful because of their personnel. It is not everyday you play a team like Vanderbilt, especially in our league. They have Dawid Przybyszewski, a 7-2 player that can step out and shoot three’s. They are a unique team to prepare for. We will guard the paint and hope they miss shots from the perimeter.”

On first season at Western Michigan …
“This is my first season as head coach at Western Michigan. I was head coach for nine seasons at Quincy in Illinois, a division II school. It has been a pleasure to coach this team this year. We don’t have good kids, we have great kids. I love to coach these kids because they work hard everyday. I know that sounds like a clich-, but it’s the truth. We have great kids and high character kids who care about what they are doing.”

Senior Forward Mike Williams
On the MAC’s success in the tournament …
“We can’t base our team on what teams have done in the past. We have to base it on what we’ve done this year. We haven’t played in the NCAA tournament yet, but we’re just coming out hungry and just ready to play.”

On controlling the tempo …
“Our style is we try to run as much as we can. So hopefully we can run the whole game and get as many easy points as we can.”

Senior Forward/Center Anthony Kann
On their size …
“We’re all kind of undersized. We’ve played against 7-footers. We’re used to playing against guys that big. The only difference is that these guys can shoot.”

Senior Guard Reggie Berry
On being favored …
“It’s great to get the attention we’ve been getting, but at the same time we realize we’re just a team from the MAC. We’re here with a lot of other great teams. We just want to come out tomorrow and play Bronco basketball.”