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HAWAIIAN AIRLINES DIAMOND HEAD CLASSIC MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 16, 2013Leon RiceHONOLULU, HAWAII ELIZABETH MCCOLLUM: Boise State Head Coach, Leon Rice. Your first round match‑up is against the tournament host school, Hawai'i. Is there added difficulty to playing a game that's essentially a home game for them? COACH RICE: Well, anytime you come over to the islands and play University of Hawai'i, it's a tough task. And Coach Arnold always has them ready to play. They've got a really nice team this year. They're playing really good basketball. So you add all those things together and, yes, it's a really tough task to open with them. ELIZABETH MCCOLLUM: Not only will you be over there, but your football team will be over there also for the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl. Do you expect more fans at your basketball games since your football team will be making the trip as well? COACH RICE: Yeah, I was really excited about that. This is a unique school and maybe in a way that all our sports do such a good job of supporting each other. It's really special that you get your football team and your basketball team in the same spot for the holidays. Great for our fans, and it's going to be a neat situation where I think the football team is going to be able to come to our games. That's our once‑in‑a‑lifetime kind of thing where they getting to to a bowl game and get to come watch us play and support us. Last year we went to their bowl game. So it's just a neat situation. I think it adds to the tournament. Q. You've lost a tough game this Saturday versus St. Mary's in the non‑bracketed Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic game. And you could potentially play them again in the tournament. Is there an advantage to having had already met up with them? You learned some lessons that way? COACH RICE: Well, we just knew it was an opportunity to have a great match‑up. St. Mary's has done such a nice job the last three, four years where they've had really good teams, and they've got another really good team this year. So it was just, Coach Bennett and I saw a great opportunity to get a home at home series started out of this. It was, you know, it was a mid‑season, late‑season kind of contest. It's played at a high level by both teams, and I was really, really impressed with St. Mary's. Q. You're returning two very prolific scorers in Anthony Drmic and Derrick Marks. Talk about the importance their leadership has been on your team? COACH RICE: Well, when we took this program over, we brought in a bunch of freshmen. Second year these guys kind of took their lumps as freshmen, and each year they've matured a little bit and they've added to their games, all of them. To have those guys now in their junior year, we're starting to maybe reap the benefits of getting a more mature team, that is just building a program. When you build a program, you like to have a good nucleus that you can hang with for four years. That's what we're getting. We're starting to get to that level where now we have some juniors and seniors that have been in the program for a while, and that certainly helps in the leadership category. Q. In the tournament format you play two games and you have a day off which you may be going to the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl, and then you play on Christmas Day. How do you like the format? COACH RICE: I like it. I've been in a lot of tournaments where you don't have a day off. Then that third day is a grind. I think with the way our team is made up, we haven't been playing a lot of guys. We haven't been playing eight, nine, ten guys. It's mostly been seven‑and‑a‑half, eight guys. I think that day off is crucial. It makes for better games on the last day. I think‑‑ I'm really excited about that. Q. Coach, I was wondering, if I looked at the schedule right, I think you guys went to Hawai'i your first year and stopped at San Jose State on the way. But how does going over there for a tournament, how is it different than going over for one game as far as the experience for the players and being there for a few days? COACH RICE: Well, it's completely different. Because when you're there for a quick hitter like we were, it's easier to manage the business trip part of it. When you're there for four or five days, it can become pretty difficult as far as there are a lot of good distractions: Number one, being the sand and surf, and number two being the sun. So you've got to keep your discipline in what you're doing, but yet I want our guys to have some fun over there too, no question. But we're going over there to play a tournament. Our guys are approaching it the right way. Q. You don't play until Sunday, what do you have planned as far as the first two days? Are there any extra things like going to see Pearl Harbor or anything that you have planned already? COACH RICE: We're not going to do anything like that before the tournament. We get in and travel most of the day Friday. Then that just leaves us with Saturday. We'll have a shootaround and some game prep stuff, just get ready for our game the next day. So it ends up being really just one day to prepare when you're over there and then you play in the games. We'll do something after on Christmas Day, and then the next day, then we fly out on the 27th. So that gives us a little opportunity to do something afterwards. So our guys will be dialed into the games before that. Q. With all that's going on this week, how much practice time are you able to get? Is it a lot of individual stuff or a lot of team practice as well? COACH RICE: Well, we've got finals this week. So we're working it around finals, but we'll do a lot of team stuff. This gives us a couple good days to work out some of the thing that's we've done well and some of the things that we need to get better at. So that's the nice thing about having this week. Q. Coach, what is the importance of these holiday tournaments? Do you think it's imperative to find tournaments like this against this type of competition before conference play? COACH RICE: Oh, these tournaments are great. You like the association with ESPN and the national exposure and you hope to go out there and play well for a national audience. I remember last year clicking on my TV on Christmas Day, and it's the only college game on, so there's real value to that. So just from the exposure point, it's terrific. Then from the competition point of view, you've got eight good teams in this event. You've got some teams that have really done terrific work in the preseason so far and building up to this. I look for just a tremendous field that's got some outstanding teams. Q. Wanted to ask you really quick, this year you're playing the tournament and taking another week off before conference play. I know last year you guys played the NAI schools kind of in between. What kind of problem is that this year and how will that be different having that a week before you hit conference play this year? COACH RICE: Well, that will help us because we have to travel back from Hawai'i. We have to get through the Hawai'i hangover and be able to play through that. Teams that come back from the islands sometimes don't play that great of a game right away. So we have to work through that on the practice court and be ready to go for the start of the week. Q. Your thoughts on the match‑up with Hawai'i and two teams that really like to push the pace and put up a lot of points? COACH RICE: Yeah, they've done a great job. They've been playing really good basketball. They just got a road win at Northern Arizona, which is never easy at 7000 feet. That's really impressive. But you've got two, I think, exciting styles which makes for a good style of game. I think it's going to be a high‑scoring affair. I think both teams put points on the board. So from a spectator's point of view, I think it will be a fun game to watch. Q. As a follow‑up, from your days in the WAC playing Hawai'i, you and Coach Arnold came into your programs at the same time. What are your thoughts going your separate ways and the different conferences? But where you guys are both at as programs right now? COACH RICE: Well, yeah, we were together for one year. It was kind of actually an odd situation because we beat them in Hawai'i and they beat us in Boise. You wouldn't expect that both ways that year because they had a good team and they did great at home that year. Then we had a good team and we both played great at home. I think watching him this year he's got a really good team. They're going to drive a hard bargain no questions asked. Q. Coach, I wonder if you could tell me how daunting it was when you first took the job at Boise State going into what is essentially a football school and building up the basketball program the way you have? COACH RICE: Well, it was a tough task in the fact that when I got here there was a great group of seniors, and we had a great first year. It was our last year in the WAC. Well, what became the biggest challenge was moving into the Mountain West Conference. Maybe a lot of guys, a lot of people and coaches that were in that league said from top to bottom it was the best it ever had been. So we were moving into that new league with a group of freshmen, so that was probably the biggest challenge. Last year we had that good year with our group kind of coming together a little ahead of schedule. It was a tough grind to get where we could be competitive in the Mountain West Conference. It's still going to be. We've still got a lot of ground to make up on those elite programs in the Mountain West. They were recruiting on a national level. They have first class facilities. I mean, it is a great basketball league. Q. What was it like your first couple‑‑ I guess your first season with fan turnout or interest in a team, was that difficult? Was that pretty eye‑opening? COACH RICE: Well, it was encouraging to me, and that is one of the reasons why I took this job is I've known the football built here and how they did it, and I knew it could be done here. If we could put a product on the floor that's good where the Bronco Nation is going to support us, and that's what we've seen every year. We've gotten an increase in attendance every year. Two of the years we've been in the Top 5 in the country in increased attendance, so it's building. The thing that I see is that there is huge potential still here. We feel like we're not even close to scratching the surface of how good we can get here at Boise State. Q. What was the attendance like your first year or maybe first couple ballgames? COACH RICE: I remember coming out for the first exhibition game, and the arena is huge. There are 12,500. So it's a big arena. I came out for the first exhibition game. Could have fired a canon in there and not hurt anyone. It's just, I mean, you could have heard the crickets in the upper balcony. There was nobody there. We knew we had a challenge ahead of us. We did it brick by brick and kept building on the little successes that we had. People watched us and liked our style of play and the way our guys scrapped and hustled and fought and that's kind of how we built it.  It's just grown and grown and grown. We had close to 9000 in our last game. So it's continuing to grow. It's like I said, I think the sky's the limit here. Q. Is there any chance it would become a basketball school some day? COACH RICE: Oh, absolutely. There is no question it could be both. We could have a great football program and great basketball program. I think our administration understands that. We're going to make investments in both of them. This is a city that needs both of them. That's why I'm here, and that's why Coach Harsin came back too. We know that we both have something special, and we can build something special here. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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