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MAUI JIM MAUI INVITATIONALNovember 22, 2017Steve WojciechowskiSacar AnimLahaina, Maui, Hawaii Marquette - 94, LSU - 84 THE MODERATOR: We welcome Marquette to the media room. Coach Wojciechowski and Sacar Anim. Coach, your opening thoughts on tonight's game. STEVE WOJCIECHOWSKI: We beat a really well coached and hungry and aggressive team, with an incredible freshman guard. I've been in college basketball over 20 years, and I was a freshman guard once, and in my wildest dreams I wish I could have played like that kid, because he's something special. I thought our guys did a good job in the second half. We tried to mix up some different coverages to slow him down. I'm not sure we slowed him down, but we did a better job in the second half against him. So I was really proud of our guys with their fight over the 40 minutes. Q. Can you talk about Waters as well? How tough is that guy, man? SACAR ANIM: He's an incredible player, like Coach said. He's definitely one of the best players offensively that I've played. He was tough, he's really quick, and now he's really smart. He was really tough, I had a tough job all night. But my other teammates did a great job of helping me, so... Q. But I noticed one time down on our end of the basket when he scooted around and you stayed with him, intercepted the ball and went down and you guys scored. That was a hell of a turnaround play. Well done. SACAR ANIM: Appreciate it, thank you. STEVE WOJCIECHOWSKI: I'll answer that question. Sacar was a huge reason we won the game. Obviously as Waters got off, we put Sacar on him, and Sacar did as well a job as you could do on a player of that caliber. In addition to his defense, there was a lot of game pressure on us, both at the end of half and at the start of second half. Sacar had some incredible drives that really gave our team life and confidence. I mean, they were really strong drives. Thank God for the soft Maui rims. I told my team before we got here, I said, If your old coach who couldn't throw the ball in the ocean could make a few threes here, just put it up on the rim soft. There's a good chance that rim's going to swallow it up. Q. Sacar, could you talk about how big a difference going home 2-1 from here, versus today 1-2, how important was today's win? SACAR ANIM: It was really important. It's great to build on what we did yesterday. Although we lost, we wanted to bounce back and have confidence going into our next game. This was a terrific tournament, and there are a lot of great teams. It give is us a lot of confidence knowing we're 2-1. Although we fell short, third place is pretty good. We beat an incredible team in LSU. So I'm glad we got the win. STEVE WOJCIECHOWSKI: Our young group has gotten better early in the season, and it's a result of the schedule that we've played -- Mount St. Mary's, Purdue, you go down the line, VCU, Wichita State, LSU. Our kids have to play well to beat all of those teams, and we've learned a lot about ourselves here in Maui. It's something that we need to build on. Q. Coach, can you speak about how important today's win was to get to 2-1 versus 1-2 here? STEVE WOJCIECHOWSKI: Well, obviously every win's important, but for us to bounce back after a difficult and very hard-fought game against Wichita State, for our kids to show the toughness they did. We started the game off like gangbusters. LSU made an adjustment. There was a lot of game pressure, and our kids responded to game pressure. So for that, I'm proud. And to go home 3-2, you know, quite simply, it's a lot better than going home 2-3. So that's probably as simple as I could put it. It's an honor to be at this tournament. Coach Odom does a great job, and the organizers here. This is my fifth time at Maui, and there is no other tournament in the United States in the preconference that's like this tournament. First-class people, well-run, great programs, and it was an honor for our basketball program to be a part of it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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