|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
EA SPORTS MAUI INVITATIONALNovember 25, 2014Steve FisherTrey KellWinston ShepardLAHAINA, HAWAII San Diego State – 74 THE MODERATOR: Coach Fisher, some opening comments on tonight's game? COACH FISHER: I like how we played. We played together. We guarded hard, made it difficult for them to get easy shots, and we fought like crazy on the glass. They're a very good offensive rebounding team, and they showed it again tonight. You look at the total 17, and it's hard to keep them off the glass. I thought the way we played and shared the ball and moved the ball is indicative of a mature team that cares more about winning than their own personal stats. When you do that, you've got a chance because we've got good players. You know that. We're proud of what we've done and we look forward to an opportunity tomorrow to play a team that's as good as anybody in the country. We're excite about that opportunity. When we talked down here, Winston said I hope they ask me a question tonight.  So somebody ask him a question. Q. Winston, last night you were the guy who kind of ignited the team. Tonight Trey did. Can you just talk about how much you've seen him grow just in five games and what he brought to the table? Trey, can you just talk about are you feeling more comfortable out there in what you saw? WINSTON SHEPARD: Well, Trey's been great. I think these last two games the country is starting to see what we've known really since this summer. He's a good player. I know it's his first time playing point guard, but I thought he was being more aggressive this tournament and looking for his shot. That's going to open it up for everybody. Just got to continue to work at it and continue to get better every day. TREY KELL: For me, basically the same as Winston was saying. The first couple games came out tentative, nervous, the big stage and over these past games I felt like myself out there, felt comfortable with my coaches and teammates pushing me to be aggressive. I'm helping the team and coming out with victories. Q. Trey, you guys seemed to get to the basket almost every time you wanted to. Is that something you saw that maybe you'd be able to take advantage of against Pitt or is it what you're trying to do every single night? TREY KELL: For us, I think it's more of a read because he come off the screen, and we can always swing it. If they go underneath, we can always shoot it. I felt like today with the hedge, some of the bigs were hedging a little soft so we could take advantage of that and get to the rim. Q. San Diego State seems like it just keeps bumping into Arizona. Can you just talk about playing these guys one more time out here? WINSTON SHEPARD: For me, this will be my fourth time playing them. 0‑3 so far, so I just want to be able to get a win. We just happened to be two great teams in a lot of the same tournaments, I guess. TREY KELL: For me, this is my first time, but I've seen all the games on TV, so I feel like I'm part of it. I'm just trying to help these guys get their first victory against them, and have me start off on the right note. Q. Since you're the last players to ask a question today, I'd like to ask you a frivolous one. What do you think of Maui? WINSTON SHEPARD: I love it. Hopefully when I get Coach Fisher's age, I can have a house out here. Q. Is Coach going to let you jump off black rock after the game tomorrow? WINSTON SHEPARD: What's that? I haven't heard of it. Q. You get to dive however many feet into the ocean? WINSTON SHEPARD: Not me. Not me. Q. Winston, you had a big game last night, and tonight, 13, 7 rebounds and three assists. Do you feel like you've talked a lot about the potential living up to the hype fairly or unfairly? Do you feel like you're starting to turn that corner now? WINSTON SHEPARD: Absolutely. I don't mean to be funny at all, but do you remember what I said to your wife the other night? I told her I would pick it up. She told me I was one of her favorite players. Sometimes I feel like I get judged unfairly, but some of it is fair. At the end of the day, I just try not to worry about it. I come out and try to get to the glass. Try to rebound and try to get to the free‑throw line and do whatever I can to help my team win. So I think I got off to an okay start back in Viejas. I think I had two games in a row where I wasn't so good. But this is the stage, and I pride myself in performing on the biggest stage. Q. Winston of all the times you've played Arizona, I was wondering what your memories were that game in Honolulu a couple years ago? It really went down to the wire, a terrific game. What do you recall? WINSTON SHEPARD: I remember my old teammate, Nick Johnson stealing the wind from us. I thought we'd played great. I thought Chase Tapley had an open look, and Nick just, he made a great play. That's why he's in the NBA right now. So me personally I just want to redeem it. Like I said so far, since I've been here, 0‑3 versus them. So hopefully we can turn the corner tomorrow. I think we have a great team and match up pretty good with them. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach. Q. You guys allowed by far the most points that you had this season last night to BYU. What did you do to sort of ratchet it up defensively tonight again against Pitt? COACH FISHER: I thought we played really good defense against BYU. I don't know what the score was as it came down to the end of regulation, but they were well below what they had been averaging. You throw an extra half of a half in and you're going to have more points. We're a good defensive team. If we continue to work on keeping the guy in front of us, keeping the guy in front of us. Don't give him anything on run outs, box out and rebound, we'll make it hard for people to score a lot of points because we're long, we're athletic. At times we can say, okay, we're going to switch one through four. At times we're going to say don't switch anything. At times we're going to say run double in the post. Sometimes we'll say we're not going to double. So I think we can say what do we think in this game will help us, and we've got a lot of different ways to go. I think good defensive teams can do that. But it starts with guarding the ball and having a collective effort of be a good teammate, stunt, help, make it hard for them to get good looks. Q. You talked about the unselfishness of your team and how you play as a team and guys give up their own personal stats to win. Do you recruit that kind of player or is that something that you have to instill in them because the stereotype now is young players, that's not what they want to do or that's not how they play the game anymore. COACH FISHER: I think everybody wants to win. There is not a player that we recruit or anybody else recruits who doesn't want to be on the floor. You know. That's what we all have to negotiate and to teach to is you have to be the ultimate teammate. How can you be that? By being unselfish. By being happy for someone else's successes. Hard to do. We try to recruit the best players we can. We want good character, but we're no different than anybody else. We teach, and prepare share the ball, early up, give it to the first open man. We have three fifth‑year seniors, and I think our older guys set the table for our younger guys. We have four new recruits in, all highly regarded, and they very quickly fell into the group theory of play together. Don't worry about me, worry about me and we'll be good. So I think we're now at a stage where the older guys could help the younger guys, and we get good kids, but most of these teams who are here, I would say all these teams who are here have good kids in their programs. Q. Coach, you played really heavy minutes last time against BYU. JJ played 48, and couple other guys played in their 40s. Bunch of career high in minutes. How imperative was it for you to go to your bench early, and how important was it that they kind of responded and allowed you to not to play more. I'm looking here, and Winston played 28, and that's pretty much it. COACH FISHER: We knew we were going to have to sub frequently, that multitude of Sky's play would be impactful on tonight's game. So I told the players I don't know exactly how, but we're going to play a lot of you, so be ready. We subbed four people starting with the first TV timeout and we've got good results. But we've got good players, and all those guys are nipping at the heels of the guys who get called to be part of the starting lineup. They want to be there. So they come in, compete hard. I thought we got great defensive play from Dakarai Allen tonight when he came in. He needs to go from fifth gear on defense to two and half gears on offense at times when he tries to lower his head. But I thought he did some really good things. Angelo did a nice job, and we've been steady with those other guys, AQ, and Zabo. It's good to see Malik get in, and I told him after the game, progress, progress, and progress is our most important goal. Just inch forward. Don't get in a hurry. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|