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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: LOUISVILLEMarch 18, 2015Quinton ChievousReginald JohnsonEdward JoynerDeron PowersLOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY COACH JOYNER: It took us a while to get here, but we're here. Fresh off of last night's win. We're happy about that and ready to get ourselves together to go beat them all. I guess that's it. Q. Coach, did Jesus ever call you back? COACH JOYNER: No. Actually, he sent me an e-mail and said go ahead and prepare. We'll talk a little bit later on. All jokes aside, though, I think the guys are ready. They're confident, and they're ready to compete. Q. Coach, you say you guys are here. You're ready to compete. When you're talking your team, you know the task ahead. Is this a game you think that you could win? COACH JOYNER: Any game you play, you think you have a chance to win. We all put our shorts on the same way. Of course, understanding that Kentucky is the best team in the country, and that's fine. But at the end of the day, we're prepared, and we think that we deserve to be here. And the goal of any team is to go out on any given night and put it all out on the court. I think that's what we're going to do, and we think we've got just as good a shot as any if we can play the way we're capable of playing and probably do things 100 times better than what we should. Q. What is your guys' health status across the board for various dinged up guys in this game? COACH JOYNER: Dwight Meikle is still rehabbing. Right now I don't think that he's going to play. We'll see. We'll try him out again tomorrow. Quinton Chievous, I think is -- he participated a little bit in our walkthrough today, but he's a warrior. I think it will be short of death that he wouldn't play. And the rest of our guys are in good shape. Q. Could you just talk about just the importance of getting out -- trying to get out to another fast start like you did last night as the key to trying to beat Kentucky. COACH JOYNER: Any time you make shots early and you get going good early, your confidence in everything is right. It kind of puts everything in perspective. Against a team like that, if you want to try to get the victory, especially in our case, you have to provide some sort of cushion where you can exhale a little bit. I'm not going to change a lot of what we do. I'm going to let my three guards play, and hopefully our bigs can bang with their bigs. Again, we're coming in. We're confident in the things that we think that we can do and the ways that we can play, and I've got faith in my guys. Of course, a fast start would help. You don't want to come from behind on a team like that. Q. Coach, I'm wondering if there's a team you've played earlier this season that can give you a feel for what you've got to deal with tomorrow night. COACH JOYNER: We had a chance to play Iowa. We had a chance to play Syracuse. And we had a chance to play Illinois. They all, from a size standpoint, were bigger than us. We had to do some things better than -- different than what we normally do. I don't know that they bring the same thing that Kentucky's bringing, not from the tape that I'm watching. They've got four 7-footers that all can perform. They've got a set of wings, both the Harrison twins,(Devin) Booker, another kid. They have a complete ball team. Again, we understand that, to be able to compete and have a shot to win, we're going to have to play as close to perfect as you can. But like somebody said before, they have us as a one in a billion shot. That's one shot we do have, and we're going to try to take advantage of that one shot. If we're able to make shots and rebound the ball and get into transition ourself and kind of make them human, we may have a chance. But we're going to go out and fight for that. Q. For the players, how much other teams and other college basketball do you guys watch? Do you usually watch a lot of Kentucky, just on TV during the season? QUINTON CHIEVOUS: Yeah, I watch a lot of basketball. I've seen Kentucky play a lot of times. I played in the SEC. So I know some of the players, and a lot of the players are still on the team. I feel like I've got a lot of knowledge of them and a lot of the other teams in the field. I've just got to put the rest of the guys on and get prepared for the game. DERON POWERS: I also watch a lot of college basketball. I didn't watch Kentucky too much this year, but I've seen enough to know they're a great team. But like Coach said, they put on our shoes just like we do. So we're going to go out and try to win. REGINALD JOHNSON: I remember two games, Georgia and LSU, I watched, where they were almost beat. It just kind of gave us an understanding that teams have come close. It's just those last five minutes of the game where you let loose. So we just trying to get out and control things like we supposed to do. Q. Coach Joyner, how are you embracing this newfound role as so-called giant killer? Granted, it's just one game, but that's the word that's been bounced around the last 24 hours. COACH JOYNER: You've got to love it. We're going out to play as if we have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I think the statement about Jesus, yeah, it was funny, and I was trying to have a little fun with it. A lot of people don't understand that I'm a loose guy and everybody around our program is loose. We think that we're more successful when we're loose and kind of playing off our instincts. Don't take that as us being scared and not wanting and ready to compete. Kentucky is a great team, but at the end of the day, everybody wants to play against the best, and everybody wants to see how you measure up against the best. That's what we're going to get a chance to do tomorrow. And we've earned that right. Things didn't go that great for us during the season, but we were able to pick it up for various reasons, but we were able to pick it up and get things right in our conference tournament, go through that, and win the game in the first round to earn the right to get here. Again, don't take that statement as us being afraid. It's us having fun with the moment and being loose in the moment. But we are going to come out tomorrow ready to compete, and what happens happens after that. Q. Coach, what you said last night about the cell phone and Jesus, it got a lot of play on ESPN and so on. I'm wondering what sort of reaction you got from family, friends, fellow coaches, or anything else. COACH JOYNER: At the moment, I was having fun, not understanding it was going to play like that. I think I had 297 texts when I got out of the gym and finally checked my phone. Everybody had something to say about that comment, whether they liked it, didn't like it. You know what, I'm going to look at it from the positive side. Hampton University's name, our team, our guys, we're looked at, I think, in a different way, and it can benefit us all. Hopefully, we'll come out and compete the way that I want us to. We were just having fun with the moment. My family, everybody -- I've heard from everybody about that statement. It's just having fun in the moment. Q. Coach, you mentioned about making Kentucky human for your guys. How do you do that? What do you try to seize to humanize them? COACH JOYNER: That's just us coming in, and some of the things that we think we do well as a team, be able to do that. Deron (Powers) being able to get up and down the court, break down defenses, score himself and get other people baskets. That gets him going. That settles the game down for him. We look for Reggie (Johnson) to score, to score the ball for us. If he can come in and knock down a couple of early shots, that brings the game back for him. Quinton (Chievous) is one of those guys who, whatever we need to win, he answers the call. If he can get going and play with that reckless abandon that he plays with, that will settle the game down for him. When I say make the game human for us, I want us to settle down and be able to play. Of course, it's going to be emotional at the beginning, and we understand that, but once we settle down and play our game, if we're where we need to be from the scoreboard on, I think that will make the game human for us, and it's a chance for us to make an upset then that's what we need to do. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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