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MOUNTAIN WEST MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 13, 2019

Las Vegas, Nevada

Boise State - 66, Colorado State - 57

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Colorado State head coach Niko Medved and student-athletes J.D. Paige and Nico Carvacho. Coach, an opening statement.

COACH MEDVED: Obviously, these things are never easy when it ends up being the last game of a season and the young man left to me being the last game of his career. There's nothing I can say, unfortunately, that's going to make him or us feel better about the result.

But I could go on and talk about this game today, and I'm sure you guys may ask me questions. Obviously I give a lot of credit to Boise. I thought they came out and played really, really physical, really aggressive.

And we definitely didn't play our best in a lot of areas. But I thought we fought. It was a frustrating game. We had a lot of opportunities to maybe even take the lead or seize it. We just couldn't kind of get over that hump. But I thought the guys kept battling and fought through some adversity. Boise was just the better team today.

Q. What's the difference between emotions from last year's tournament to this year's tournament? Obviously same result, but is there a different of emotion between the two years?
NICO CARVACHO: Last year we went through a little different situation than we are now. We came out this year, we fought every single game, had a lot of close games, thought we could have finished a little better. One or two plays that determined the games that we lost. We came in here confident knowing that we were going to have to battle for every single thing, and we left it out there.

Q. I saw some kind of sloppy play on offense from you guys. Was that difficult when you have those sloppy turnovers to get something going offensively?
NICO CARVACHO: Flow a little bit. Messes up the flow, hard to get in a rhythm.

Q. What do you feel was the biggest key for Boise? Obviously they did really well in the paint today. What were you seeing that maybe they were doing that maybe you hadn't seen before this year?
J.D. PAIGE: I would just say they were the more physical team from the start to the finish. And credit to them. They battled hard, but our guys didn't stop battling. But I would just say that they were the more physical team.

Q. You guys have credited Kendle and Adam all season for being able to step up in the tough moments. Kind of seems like maybe for the first time since Reno they were a little in the moment and just kind of struggling. Adam had a rough day obviously. What are you telling your younger teammates after today?
NICO CARVACHO: Yeah, I was in that situation as a freshman, and he was in that situation, so we know how tough it is to come out here. You play 30-some games, heavy minutes all year, started a lot of games. They did the best they could. And they're going to keep on getting better in the offseason and grow. This is just going to help them out and give them more motivation to get better in the offseason.

Q. J.D., what are the emotions for you right now?
J.D. PAIGE: I'm just proud of the way that I've grown this whole season. I know that we lost and things like that. But I'm really just ecstatic the way I've grown as a player.

Q. Did it mean a lot to you to kind of, I guess, help the transition with this team, that, yeah, you're not going to be there next year, but it seems to be kind of going in the right direction and to help out with that?
J.D. PAIGE: Like I said, this year I was just telling everybody to buy in. Once you buy in and that's when you start winning and things start going your way and things like that. We had ups and downs this season, but these are my brothers. And I love them.

Q. When you mentioned kind of buying in, obviously culture change was one of the things that you guys focused on at the beginning of this year. Do you think that kind of changed this year; you guys accomplished what you wanted to with that?
J.D. PAIGE: Most definitely, buying in. Me and Nico were the leaders on the team. So if we showed that we had bought in then other guys would follow.

Q. Coach, how did you notice your guys buy into that?
COACH MEDVED: First thing, I'd say something about these two guys. You look at the improvement and obviously this is a bottom-line thing, you want to win every game, but I look at Nico -- and I was saying this, in 20-some years of coaching, as an assistant and head coach, I think he's improved as much as any player I've seen throughout the season from where he was in November and December until now. That takes a tremendous amount of commitment and buy-in and maturity level.

And this guy, too, I mean, J.D., I think he's right. I think he's grown like crazy and was playing his best basketball here at the end of the season. It's not just the way he was playing; it's the other things.

Sometimes as a coach, when you're close to it and you get to be around these guys every day, you get to see the growth. They may not even see it because, hey, they're frustrated because they didn't win and they're competitors and they should be. But these guys have grown like crazy and I'm really proud of them. And we're in a much better position now as a program than we were because of these two.

Q. Hyron Edwards was a guy, was sort of questionable how much he could go and he really provided a spark. What can you say about what Hyron provided today?
J.D. PAIGE: I thought he was good today. Like you said, he provided that spark off the bench. He's been injured the past couple of weeks and he just came in and fought through and gave us some energy.

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach.

Q. Obviously as you mentioned it's a bottom-line business. But when you look back at your first season being back at Colorado State, what's going to stand out to you the most?
COACH MEDVED: That's a great question. I don't know. You're kind of in the emotions of it right now and you're obviously disappointed. And looked like two weeks ago we were kind of starting to turn a little bit of a corner. I felt like after we had beaten this team on the road, and obviously we didn't finish the way we wanted, so there's a lot of emotions coming with that.

I think what you try to build on is you try to build on the positives, and you try to build on some of these guys who I think have really grown, trying to buy into our system of the way we want to do things. And I think that stands out to me the most.

And it stands out to me on a personal level, how excited I am to be here, and just how much radical belief that I still have and we still have of what I believe we can do here and build. And, so, I'm going to try to focus on the positives from this season and obviously there's a lot of things we need to get better at and grow. We've got a long ways to go to get to where we want, but I think it's starting to build with the positives. And I think that's what you always do.

Q. With both Adam and Kendle struggling, how difficult is it to juggle your rotation, because it's already small? How difficult is it making adjustments with that?
COACH MEDVED: Yeah, those are the guys that have been playing and you just keep fighting through with them. And you know what? I think oftentimes you learn the most in the most difficult situations. Adam is in there crying his eyes out. He knows he didn't play well. Nobody cares more. Nobody cares more than Kendle.

But I think they're going to learn as much from the feeling that you have right now in these situations, moving into the spring in the offseason. And you're going to remember the success, too. But those guys care so much.

And we've rolled with them all year and they've played so well in so many critical situations. So, hey, it wasn't their day today. Give the opponent credit. But trust me, those two guys will be back.

Q. With those emotions after the game does that kind of speak to the character of both those two, but kind of the way this program's moving?
COACH MEDVED: Yeah, again, you just see how hurt Adam was in there. But if you know Adam, it has nothing to do with that. He's mad that he missed shots. He feels like he let people down because for him it is bigger than that. He wants to win. He wants to play well for the team and for the program because he cares. And Kendle is the same. And the other guys are the same way.

But I don't ever like to see a player hurting, but I love to see that because I love to see the passion and somebody caring so much about what we're doing.

When you get people that are invested like that and we continue to do that, that's when great things happen.

Q. Given how the season went, if you had been told before the season, hey, this is exactly what's going to happen, you guys are going to have ups and downs losing the first round, where would you find your team?
COACH MEDVED: It's so hard to say. I came in here. I didn't know what to expect. I really didn't have any goals as far as wins or whatever. I just wanted to come in, get to know these guys, try to establish the way we wanted to do things on and off the court, the way we wanted to conduct ourselves.

And I know we've made a lot of progress there. Yeah, of course you're disappointed right now. I thought we left some games out there that we could have won. There's no question about that. But if I just focus on that, I think I'm missing something bigger. I think I'm missing something else because there's more to it than just how many games we won this season. So there's a level of disappointment where we finished. But again I do think that there is a lot to build on.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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