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MOUNTAIN WEST MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 10, 2016Leon RiceJames Webb IIINick DuncanAnthony DrmicLas Vegas, Nevada Colorado State - 88 Boise State - 81 THE MODERATOR: Coach, we can start with you, some thoughts on tonight's game. HEAD COACH LEON RICE: Well, like I said before the game, we have some great battles with Colorado State. And I think Larry hit it right on the head. We both have teams that are really competitive. And we both get after it pretty good. So tends to be pretty competitive games. And both teams were really making shots for a while. And they just kind of outshot us there and kind of dug in and got the stops they needed to get. Q. If this does turn out to be the last game for you, how difficult is it to go like this? I know obviously you were shooting 3's at the end, but two points short of the school record. What's the emotion like right now for you? ANTHONY DRMIC: It obviously sucks. I don't really have anything else to say about it. Q. Leon mentioned it a little bit, their ability to shoot outside. What kind of happened defensively in the second half for you guys? NICK DUNCAN: We just didn't get to the three-point line as well as we have this season. They hit the most 3's on us this year out of any team. We gave them a lot of easy shots. And they were knocking down some key 3's at the end of the game. We didn't score at all in the last four minutes, and that hurt us. Credit to them. Q. What a run after you came back in. What are your emotions sitting up here after the way this one ended? JAMES WEBB: It's not how I wanted it to end. I felt like I let my team down, got in foul trouble. But they were calling it both ways like that, so couldn't do anything about it. Q. You played at Boise State a long time. And when you came in here you guys were young. Just curious how have expectations changed and what is it like playing with expectations? ANTHONY DRMIC: Yeah, I mean freshman year we obviously didn't do very well. Didn't have many expectations. And then through recruiting and guys getting better, we kind of built the program up and had a lot of expectations from the fans, from the league, from people. So it's been a fun ride. I don't know what else to say. Q. Obviously it was a good offensive game for you. You mentioned sometimes this team lived by the three, die by the three. Second half I think you only made one. What was different offensively in the second half? NICK DUNCAN: I think not getting stops put a dent in our offensive game. We couldn't seem to get a stop and I think that just kind of got in the back of our head. And trying to make the hero play, and trying to get a three or trying to get back to them and they kept getting stops and coming down to score. So I think it was just offensive 3's and shooting well and playing good offense. Q. What was it like to see Colorado State keep coming back? I know you got in foul trouble early, when you came back, went on a run, and then the second half went on a run with a three-point run. How hard is it to try to defend them? JAMES WEBB: It was very hard. Like Nick said earlier, they hit a couple of tough shots, contested, but we just -- we let up on defense. I mean, it's hard to beat a team when you don't play defense. Q. I know a couple of years ago you guys lost I think it was to New Mexico, and the seniors said, We're done, we don't want to play anymore. If a postseason tournament is a possibility, do you want to play another game? ANTHONY DRMIC: It's up to the team. If the team wants to keep playing, yeah. If the seniors and the upperclassmen want to play, then, I don't know, we'll talk to the coaches and we'll figure it out. Q. When you talk about the expectations and coming into this game, you won 20 games this year, and it seems like maybe a disappointing season. How do you look at the season as a whole and just what you guys were or weren't able to accomplish this year? NICK DUNCAN: I guess as a program these seniors have built up the program to what it is now. And I guess we need to learn how to play with expectations. I think every time we kind of get for media ^ about us we kind of crumble and we come out and have a bad game. How we need to progress as a program is to be able to play with that expectation. I mean obviously 20 wins, we had a good year, and ups and downs. And it's sad going out. I think as a program to go where we want to go, we need to be able to play with the hype and expectation on our shoulders and just go out there and win games. Q. I know how close you are with Anthony, and I know that maybe you guys are more focused on wanting that win right now. Do you want to see Anthony play another game, and get the record considering all he's been through at Boise State? NICK DUNCAN: A hundred percent, yes. We'll find a way to get a game hopefully and we'll go out and get him one more game. What he's done for this program, no one really knows what he's done behind the scenes. This year has been tough on him. I live with the guy, and for him to get up and play every game. He goes there and doesn't say a word behind the scenes. He was playing on half a leg half the year, and it got better at the end of the game. No one understands how much work he's put in this program and he deserves one more game and he deserves to go out in the right way. He's built up the program from the bottom and all the coaches and Derrick and Mikey and all the others guys. We'll find a way to get another game, hundred percent. Q. Obviously a lot of questions, people always wonder about your future. How much does a game like this maybe affect that either way, if at all? JAMES WEBB: I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. As far as I'm concerned we still got to finish out the season the right way. Q. Defensively, James mentioned the runs you would go on and they'd come back and hit huge shots. And Scott had the dagger there with 90 seconds left. How tough was it to guard them? I know you said last night they can be a scary team because they can put up a lot of points. HEAD COACH LEON RICE: They're capable of making contested shots and they can make big shots. I thought a big key was we were kind of making a nice run, got up five. And then James picked up his fourth foul on a rebound. And we'd been getting stops. So that kind of got them some free offense right there, where we were kind of feeling like we were about to maybe get some gap time on them. But Colorado State is a really, really good offensive team. And when they get rolling, and sometimes they're almost impossible to stop sometimes. But you've got to give them a lot of credit. They made some big, big shots. And then we had to juggle our defense around a bit. You can't have James sitting the whole game. We played some zone and it helped us in some ways. It bought us some time and we were able to keep James out there a little bit. It's tough when he's in perpetual foul trouble, and your most productive player is getting 20 minutes. To beat them he had to be out there 30 minutes. Q. For Anthony Drmic, you either have been recruiting him or he's been in the program since you've been at Boise State. How hard is it to see him maybe not go out with an NCAA tournament bid or reaching the pinnacle, what a kid like him deserves? HEAD COACH LEON RICE: Well, you know, these kids get some tough things thrown at them. And that was a really, really tough break for him because he wanted just one healthy year. He gives his body up for this program. And to have the surgery go well and then to have nerve damage is just such a bad hop for a guy like that. Because he would have been healthy. We've all seen him when he's at his best. He's one of the elite players in the league. And to see a kid have to deal with that much frustration, because he wanted to and he tried to and he kept going. But there's certain things when you don't have a leg, like Nick said, he's playing on one leg. And that's tough for a guard, really, really tough. It's not like he's seven foot tall and can just stand in there. I'm just so appreciate the chance to coach these seniors and Anthony all these years. And our relationship has been so awesome. And to have a competitor like him and have him as a role model and the face of our program, he's just awesome. And again, like I said, sometimes you just get thrown a curve ball and you just have to deal with it and he dealt with it the best he could. And that's life. But I'm just grateful for the chance that I got for six years to know him and five years to coach him. Like I said, you want him in the foxhole with you all the time. And I'm going to miss that. Q. Nick mentioned trying to take that bit of a hero shot, that 3-pointer. You talked about not trying to rely on it too much. Is it going to take time to break that habit for you and for the team? HEAD COACH LEON RICE: In what way? Q. You mentioned you live and die by it. HEAD COACH LEON RICE: You've got to. Good teams, guys step up and make those. Scott, up two or whatever, I think he was up two, and he makes that hero shot. And that's -- great players do that. And Anthony has done that over the course of his career. And you've got to be able to do that. Guys have to be able to step up and make shots and make big plays for the team when you need them the most. And his mind wants to do it, sometimes his body couldn't. Q. I don't know if the season is done or not, but when you look at the expectations coming in, most people thought you would be back in the NCAA tournament this year. I know it's been 30 minutes, but how do you process what you did or didn't do? HEAD COACH LEON RICE: Things get thrown at you and you always have to adjust. We had two season-ending injuries with guys that were going to be a big part of things. And with Drmic at 50 percent, he's a preseason player of the year candidate. And that's a big twist when you don't get him. And then you just had the odd things like the Colorado State game, getting -- so we weren't far away from being a great team. We were picked second and finished third with a game that got reversed or a game we won that we didn't get credit for. Who'd ever go through something like that? In some ways, I think these guys overachieved in a lot of ways. Expectations are a funny thing. If everything is perfect, Drmic makes it 100 percent -- but as the season progressed we had some curve balls that we just had to deal with. And the guys always competed. And look at the whole season and there wasn't even those elite teams we played against, Michigan State, and Arizona, and Oregon. We never, ever didn't have a close game. Everything was close. A couple of them got away at the end. But Michigan State was in a game with us, Arizona State was in a game with us. They battled night after night. Q. Nick said they'll find a way to get Anthony another game. Maybe you have the option of coming back down here. What are your thoughts on the possibility of continuing the season? HEAD COACH LEON RICE: I'm one of those burning bridges guys, I didn't pay much attention to anything else. I didn't know about the one tournament down here until you told me about it. We were focused the right way. We were focused on this tournament. So we'll sort it out with Curt and figure things out, and figure out the options. But this program has its sight set on the NCAA tournament. And it's not easy to get to. That was the other thing that was odd. Usually if you're second or third in the Mountain West you're going to be in that large team or close to it. And with the way the league was, it was really good once we got to league, we just stumbled as a whole in the preseason, so we didn't get the national respect. Go out and play at Wyoming, go play this Colorado State team, and that's a good basketball team, there's good basketball teams, great coaches. Mountain West is getting beat up nationally, but these are still good basketball players, good teams that we're playing against, I know that. Q. You heard James say that you're not going to be a good team when you don't play defense. It's an easy thing to say. Why couldn't this team click consistently on the defensive end? HEAD COACH LEON RICE: We had our moments, I think. We're not a physically opposing team, we don't have a lot of shot blockers, we don't maybe protect the paint, because we have a lot of skill. And with that skill is maybe not as much -- Nick's not the world's greatest athlete, not a true center in the fact that he's going to block shots and kind of patrol the paint that way. And then our guards aren't -- Drmic, like I said, he's a little slower than he usually is right now. So just physically I don't think we can just roll out and dominate a team. But we had our good moments throughout the year of pretty good defense. But it's something we have to continue getting better at. Q. When you're looking ahead, whether it is the next game or next season, you look at Paris Austin, who really grew up the last couple of weeks, especially. How much is a positive sign for those younger guys, how excited to see what they can do? HEAD COACH LEON RICE: I'm really excited. That's the thing that none of us never really talked about is when Harwell blew his knee out. You should have seen him that first month, I thought we were going to have great things out of him and Paris is an exciting player, and he's going to be a great point guard here. He showed that tonight, and he showed that toward the end of the season. It's hard to get him a ton of minutes throughout the year, because you had Mikey and Tigo, and you had a bunch of senior guards that were playing well, also. But I'm really, really excited about this kid. He loves the game. He's got to keep working and he'll continue to grow and get better. But he's got moxie and he's got a little toughness about him and his love for the game and wanting to work, he's going to get better and better. We've got a special player with him. We need Chandler to keep getting better, we need all those bigs to keep improving. And we have some great kids coming in. You're always excited about that. But my focus was on this group right now. Q. If the committee only decides to send one team to the NCAA tournament, you touched on this a little bit, but what would you say to them? HEAD COACH LEON RICE: I would say I've played now how many years is this in the Mountain West, five years in the Mountain West, and when we played the San Diego State team, it's different maybe than some of those other San Diego State teams, but it's an elite level defensive team. And I watch a ton of college basketball. I'll put them up against anybody because of the way they can guard. And it's not by accident that you can't get a shot off the last five minutes of the game against them. They deserve to be in. And to go through this league in the fashion that they did, it's brutal to go on the road in this league. And that team that showed up in Boise, they were just dialed in, focused, whatever you want to call it. And they figured it out, took them some time to figure out. They lost some games early, some goofy ones, too, they're playing San Diego outside, come on, that one should be thrown out. It's not a real basketball game. But like I said, they are an elite level defensive team and they figured out shot selection. They figured the whole thing out. And they missed a few free throws against us down the stretch. And you can't tell me they're not an NCAA tournament worthy team, because they lose that game. I don't buy it. I think whether they win the championship or not, I think they should be in and our league should get to that. But we'll see how it pans out. Because Fresno is playing great, too, and Colorado State is playing and Nevada is a good team. There's still good teams going. But I do believe strongly that San Diego State deserves that. Q. Were you guys making maybe a concerted effort to get Anthony a couple of shots at the end? HEAD COACH LEON RICE: He and Nick are the go-to guys for those 3's, because Anthony can get them off. I wasn't really aware of the scoring record or anything like that. He'd banged in a couple early, so tried to get him some looks. Nothing for the record. Q. Finally, just two years ago you guys came down here, felt like the circumstances were different, you guys were pretty banged up at the end of the season, and you chose not to play in the postseason. Is this year different that you're at least considering it? HEAD COACH LEON RICE: Absolutely. That group of seniors, we had a guy with a broken back, I mean we were so banged up. We couldn't play. And I didn't want to force them to play. This group it's probably different, no question the circumstances are probably a lot different. And so we've just got to dust ourselves off tomorrow and start to figure it out and let tonight go and try to sort through it the next couple of days. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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