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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: CHARLOTTEMarch 19, 2015Lucky JonesRodney PryorMarcquise ReedAndrew TooleCHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA MODERATOR: Robert Morris student-athletes, Lucky Jones, Rodney Pryor and Marcquise Reed. Questions? Q. Congratulations, guys. Has the euphoria of a win last night left you and when does it leave you? MARCQUISE REED: You know, we enjoyed it while it lasts, and we just try to move on to the next game and hopefully make another run and get another win in the tournament? RODNEY PRYOR: Yeah, like Marcquise said, we enjoyed it after we won but now we're onto the next game. LUCKY JONES: We embraced the moment. We've just got to go out there, follow our plan and execute and see what happens tomorrow. Q. Lucky, do you feel -- you obviously have a great back story. Do you feel blessed to be where you are right now? Obviously when you were a young child, the health complications, and in high school you didn't really have any scholarships until the end of your senior year. Now, here you are getting ready to play Duke in the NCAA Tournament. LUCKY JONES: I'm very blessed and fortunate. I'm just going to embrace my moment right now, just go out there continue to play the way I've been playing, help my team, hopefully get this win tomorrow. Q. Lucky, two North Jersey guys with you and Kavon on the team. Can you talk about your relationship, I know you were at Saint Anthony's, I know he was at Hudson Catholic, how much did you know each other in high school? Did you room together at Robert Morris and what does it say about the toughness of North Jersey basketball that you guys are both here? LUCKY JONES: It's very tough in North Jersey. That's my little brother since day one. As soon as he stepped on Robert Morris campus, I took him in, I showed him the ropes, I showed him how to work hard and he's really grown into a mature point guard and he's doing big things for us out there on the floor. We knew each other a lot, obviously for him playing with the New Jersey players AAU program and me playing for IZOD, so we played against each other, we talk off the court. We always had that mutual relationship. Q. For Lucky again, do you like the first name? Did you get made fun of a lot when you were younger? LUCKY JONES: Not at all. Everybody thought it was a cool name, especially playing basketball, if I hit a good shot or if I hit a shot that nobody thought I could make, they would just be like Lucky, Lucky, Lucky, keep saying it over and over. It's something I got used to. I love my name, I wouldn't take it back for nothing. Q. Do you think it's kind of emblematic of when you were younger? LUCKY JONES: Maybe. It's just the name I was given. I was blessed enough to be here and I'm just living this moment right now. Q. Lucky, last year the team obviously had more managers at one point suited up with suits and ties than the players did. Talk about what happened this summer and coming into this year to get this team to develop and redevelop and kind of reestablish itself with some newcomers and what not. LUCKY JONES: I believe we just all had to, you know, take a realty check, look where we came from, understand we all wanted the same goal and that was to get to the NCAA Tournament and we just had to put a lot of things aside and just sacrifice for the greater good of the team. We put in a lot of hard work this summer in the waiting room especially on the court and we just tried to embrace that and bring it all together because we knew what kind of talent we really had. Q. You guys played a game in the tournament already. Do you think that will help you tomorrow against Duke? RODNEY PRYOR: Definitely to get one under your belt is a good experience for the whole group. We went over that in scout today that Duke has a few players that hasn't played in a NCAA game yet so we're going to try to use the experience of already playing in one and getting all the jitters out of the way and stuff like that, so I think that's good for us. MARCQUISE REED: Just to touch on what Rodney said, just for us to have that experience already for the first round. They've got a lot of freshman so they never experienced an NCAA Tournament game. I think that's the motivation for us to come out and play hard and get another win. Q. What's the confidence you guys have playing a team like Duke that obviously have the huge name, they have the big stars, but as you've seen already there have been big upsets, anything can happen. How confident are you guys that you can give them a game tomorrow? MARCQUISE REED: I'm very comfortable with my team because we've got some real high-level talent on our team, more than a mid-level program, so I'm confident with my team to play with the best of them. RODNEY PRYOR: Yeah, I'm confident, like you said, some teams already made upsets. When you get on this stage you never know what's going to happen, you've just got to come out, give it your all, play hard and I think teams with the most energy and effort can come out on top. LUCKY JONES: We very confident in our coaching staff and our program and our players, so we've just got to go out there and continue to execute the way we've been executing especially in the last 18 minutes of the second half of the last game, so we've just got to make sure we play like that for 40 minutes and don't have any lapses. MODERATOR: Let's start with Coach Toole. Questions? Q. Coach, kind of walk us through a little bit, I guess, the turnover from last night, the game, travel, and kind of how you do the whirlwind to get here? COACH TOOLE: Well, as soon as the game was over last night we went back to the hotel, packed, went over to the airport where our charter was, ended up taking off probably 1:45. Got here a little after 1:00 in the morning, got to the hotel about 1:30. Not that anybody was worried about getting any rest, that's usually when our guys operate at their best, in the early morning hours. We were able to get in to do some film and some scouting report earlier this morning, probably about 11:30, 12:00 and then get in to have a practice as well to walk through some stuff. Obviously we're light on the floor, didn't want to do a whole lot, having played last night and then the turnaround for tomorrow. Tried to just do what we needed to do, be efficient with our time there on the floor, and then we will use this time to get a bunch of shots up and get ourselves loose and be ready to go tomorrow. Q. Your first couple years of college when you were playing just down the road from Duke, was there anything about Duke that you learned or that left an impression on you? COACH TOOLE: Nothing in particular I learned from my time at Elon. Obviously you knew a lot about them before you came down here and continue to learn stuff all the time. Obviously they're the gold standard for college basketball. They're a well-oiled machine in terms of how they consistently win year after year after year. At our level now, this is my 8th year at Robert Morris, and the amount of effort it takes to sustain our program at our level is incredible, and it's hard to imagine what it takes to sustain a program at the national level like Duke does. That's something that I look at and say that's incredibly remarkable for 30-plus years to be able to do what they've done. Q. Two years ago in Moon Township, you guys took down Kentucky in the first round of the NIT. How have you been able to draw from that experience as you come into the last game yesterday, and then tomorrow's game as well? COACH TOOLE: Well, I wish this game was in Moon Township, that would make me feel better about it. Obviously any time you get in games where you are playing the high majors of the world, you can always learn something. Obviously we played Carolina, Georgetown, Clemson this year, and each of those experiences I think we fared better each time we played those guys, and I think a lot of times it's a matter of being comfortable and figuring out you can play your own game and stay true to who you are and what you do best. I think at times you get in these situations and you try to do more than you're capable of, and you're a little bit on edge or you're playing a little faster than you want and so you can't relax and play your game and I think that's what we try to talk about with our guys and that's what we talk about going into that Kentucky game. Just do what we do. If it's good enough, great, but if not, that's what you live with. But trying to recreate the wheel or pull out some shot that you've never done before, that's the first step in failure in these kind of games. You have to stay true to who you are and you have to make sure that your team is staying together and playing together. Q. I guess how much then concern do you have about your guys being loose? They have a game under their belt and they sounded like they thought that might help them, having played a game already. Do you think they'll be loose and relaxed about it or tense, do you think? COACH TOOLE: I hope they're going to be loose and relaxed. Obviously getting some of those first-time NCAA Tournament game jitters out of your system, I think, can help. We weren't ourselves in the first 10 minutes of the game yesterday, we were kind of a little bit on edge. We were rushing things, there were times where we were taking some shots that were a little bit uncharacteristic. We just weren't playing at a comfortable pace. We weren't playing our basketball. Hopefully with that having been done already, we'll be able to kind of settle in as soon as the game starts tomorrow. Obviously the opponent is a little bit different and the stage is a little bit different, but I think hopefully we can remind them it's still the same tournament and it's still the same way that we played for at least the last 18 minutes of that game last night as how we've got to play for 40 tomorrow. Q. One specifically about Duke. Quinn Cook, for all the attention that goes to the freshman, he's really picked up his game and he's been a leader for them. What do you see when you've looked at him on film as far as it's not just the scoring but what he does, the intangibles beyond that? COACH TOOLE: I think as a coach, you watch a guy like that who in his senior year has to shift a little bit of what his role is, has to learn to co-exist with some talented freshman and actually ends up probably having his best season because of it. That's got to be a credit to the way he approaches every day and his desire to win. I think when you really want to win and you're concerned about your team and your program and you're willing to make any adjustment you can, that it's in the best interests of the team. Obviously he's been super aggressive in terms of his scoring, he shot the ball at an incredibly high rate but you can tell he's the emotional leader of the group. When he gets going, when he gets up into that ball and starts to pressure his opponent, speed them up, that energizes the rest of his team. As poised and as great as Tyus Jones is with his decision-making, you can see when they get in the huddle there's one voice talking and that's Quinn Cook's, and he's getting everybody on the same page and getting everybody working together, and I think that's been something from an outsider, obviously something that's pretty remarkable to see from a guy like that in his senior year. Q. Understand your son's a Duke fan. How does that go over with dad and how do you cope with that? COACH TOOLE: Well, I married his mom and she's a Duke fan so I kind of knew it might be coming down the line at some point in time. Actually he's two and a half and I think he's doing it just to really bother me at this point in time. I think he knows who he's rooting for tomorrow and I think he knows the right answer, but he enjoys reminding me Duke, Duke, Duke. When I go on the road sometimes, they'll watch games and I have clips on my phone of him saying on the phone, Tyus is my guy. Tyus Jones. So all year long, him and his mom watched and I'm sure she didn't think we would be playing them in the NCAA Tournament but it's been pretty funny and he's got a very good personality and I think he kind of enjoys telling dad that he's not rooting for Robert Morris. Q. When you look at Lucky and the career he's had, could you tell he's a guy who's dealt with a lot of adversity from when he was obviously younger to in high school where he didn't really have much scholarship offers until his senior year? COACH TOOLE: I think that's part of what makes Lucky a good player, that constant thought process of trying to earn respect I think is something that he's always faced and I think it drives him, I think it motivates him, I think it helps him compete, I think it's part of what makes him the player that he is. He's always out there trying to carve his niche and earn respect and increase his reputation as a player and these are the kind of moments and situations that you find yourself in when you work the way he works, so it's really helped our team in the last month, I think. I think he's really focused on what's best for our team and has driven our team into this direction that we are in, having won seven games in a row and his attitude and his communication to his teammates has been terrific. He's talked all about the things that are important to help us win games at this point in time and I think he understood or he finally realized here in the last month that the only thing he hadn't accomplished as a player was being a part of the NCAA Tournament and I think that's really where his change and shift in mindset came from. It's been great to coach him and guys have responded to him and really played their best basketball. Q. You have a couple North Jersey guys there in Kavon and Lucky, you're also from New Jersey. A, do you feel like this is almost a New Jersey team and, B, what is does it say about the toughness of guys like tough Kavon and Lucky from North Jersey that they bring to a team? COACH TOOLE: I always tell them that they got tough when they came to hang out with me, and I'm a Jersey Shore guy. That North Jersey toughness, I'm not sure I'm buying it. We've always recruited Jersey guys, we've always had a couple Jersey guys. We have a kid from Union Catholic obviously signed for next year. You like to have those guys that have those Jersey roots to you. Kavon and Lucky, their greatest attribute is their stubbornness and toughness sometimes, you butt heads with them, but when you get on the floor and you're in competition and facing adversity, like we did last night, those guys step up and respond. You look for that in recruiting, you look for that competitiveness, you look for that toughness. Sometimes on the practice floor you wish it was different but you know they're going to show up on game day and that's exactly what they've done. Q. I apologize if this has already been discussed but I happened to see the bit about your wife and your son being huge Duke fans. COACH TOOLE: Yeah. If J.J. Redick was sitting here, I probably would be single right now, put it that way. Q. So how is that dealing with that on the home front? COACH TOOLE: It's been great. It obviously adds a little bit of entertainment and some enjoyable conversation. But my wife, I think when it's all said and done, she'll be rooting for us. I'm not sure about Ryan yet but hopefully he'll come to his senses by 7:00 tomorrow. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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