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MOUNTAIN WEST MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPMarch 7, 2020Craig SmithSam MerrillNeemias QuetaLas Vegas, Nevada Utah State - 59, San Diego State - 56 CRAIG SMITH: Well, that's what March Madness is all about right now, and I know that's easy for me to say being on the victorious side, but that was a whale of a basketball game, and two highly competitive teams, two very, very talented teams, and let's not forget like these guys are basketball players and they make all the plays, and tremendous defense I thought by both teams. Very good offense, as well. We played three games in three days; it's a bit of a grind. They are very, very well-coached. They're a very, very good team, and they can do it all at every position. I thought our guys played with tremendous poise tonight. Early on we got a bit of a lead, and these two guys had great looks, I thought, most of the night. We just couldn't get them to fall at times, but they were getting clean looks. But we just -- instead of letting frustration set in, we just kept battling. I thought a big key to the game, certainly down the stretch, but besides that, the way we finished the first half was huge because not a lot was going right on the offensive end, and we kind of weathered the storm. Went on a little bit of a run, and then even that last play with 1 point whatever seconds it was, Abel Porter was our inbounder and finds Brito wide open, kind of on the other side of the top of the key, and he sticks that three, and we go in at halftime down eight, but quite frankly it felt like we should have been down 18. And so that was huge for us. And then we had a great start to the second half. I think we went on a 7-0 run, if I remember correctly. That gave our fan base a lot of juice and I think it gave our guys some juice. Alphonso Anderson, and I'll get to these guys, but Fonz gave us some huge minutes all game long but certainly hit those two huge threes when they were up eight or seven, and it kind of kept them at bay, and then we were able to get enough stops there down the stretch. And Neemy hit a big kind of jump hook late in the clock, hits the front rim and rolls in, and he's been working a lot on his touch, and then certainly Sam's three right at the end. It kind of felt like one of those games where whoever is going to have the ball last is going to find a way to win, and then they almost throw in a half-courter. But it was a heavyweight fight. We knew it was going to go 15 rounds, and fortunately for us we were the last man standing. One more thing: You know, I said it out there, but our team has been through a lot of stuff this year with injuries, and I know that people can roll their eyes, and I get all that, but our guys stayed the course and stuck with it and stuck with it, and just never lost confidence, and we just were never going to flinch. We were just going to keep going and keep going. And I'm a history major, so where we are, where we were, where we're going, and this league has such a rich tradition in men's basketball, and to be able to repeat back to back, it hasn't been done in a long time, I'm not sure when the last time, but it's been quite some time, and that's a difficult, difficult thing to do, and I couldn't be more proud of these young men. Q. Sam, what's going through your head on that final shot? SAM MERRILL: I was just trying to get a good look. We had been hoping that I would get that opportunity. I barely slept last night, partially because the schedule is rough when you play that late-night game Friday night, and it's a quick turnaround, only got a few hours of sleep, but I was just hoping that I'd get that opportunity, and I had a move and vision that I was going to do. I didn't get to it because he took it away, but I just threw it up there and it went in. I made that shot before, but you guys know what I'm saying. Q. Can you tell me what the importance that Justin Bean brings to the table, being able to get all those rebounds tonight? NEEMIAS QUETA: Amazing. Bean is a great offensive rebounder, and a defensive rebounder, too. I just feel that he just has a knack for knowing where the ball will fall, and he positions himself in the spots to get the rebounds, and he outworks everybody. I feel that his juice never ends. He's just constantly outworking everybody, and I just feel that he's amazing at it. SAM MERRILL: Yeah, he's the ultimate glue guy. Just like Neemy said, he's always getting after loose balls, always getting rebounds. He's got such a knack for the ball, and he makes timely plays. He made that play sometime in the second half when he drove a closeout, and we'd been yelling at him to do that. We were going to try to throw it back and he was going to drive the close-out, and he finally did it, and he was under control and lofted it over to Neemy and that was a big bucket. I think that put us up four. So he does it all. Q. Sam, it's no secret that you grew up a Utah State fan. What does it mean to you personally to be not just a part of one of the greatest stretches of Utah State basketball's history but also be one of the main drivers of it? SAM MERRILL: Oh, it's everything. Like you said, that's what I've been reaching for my whole life and trying to accomplish, and when we lost at New Mexico last week, I know Coach said he doesn't pay attention to bracketology, but I do, and I knew that the cards were stacked against us, and this morning getting prepared for the game, I was just -- I did not want to play in the NIT. I didn't know what was going to happen if we lost, but -- CRAIG SMITH: We would have got in to the NCAA. They're smart people. SAM MERRILL: Yeah, but we had a sense of urgency all week. We didn't play incredibly all week, but we found a way to win, and for me personally, just to be a part of it and to see all those fans there and to see Utah State back on the map is -- like I said last year, it's unlike anything I could have ever imagined. Q. Sam, where would you rank that shot in your career? SAM MERRILL: One time, my seventh grade year of junior high, my coach didn't play seventh graders but one game were up like 40 and he decided to put us in and I hit a half-court shot at the buzzer, so it's comparable to that one probably. (Laughter). Q. Halftime adjustments are a big part of the game. Same, obviously fatigue in the first half must have been playing a role, but you come out in the second half and you think you'd be more fatigued then, but you guys came out a different team, what was your locker room atmosphere like at halftime? SAM MERRILL: Well, like Coach said, that finish to the half, we had 11 points with three and a half minutes left. Part of that was -- everyone knows how good San Diego State is but we had missed a ton of open shots, and then we were able to score 10 points in those last three minutes and get it to eight. Like Coach said, that was a big shot by Diogo. We felt confident because we had missed so many shots, and defensively we had been pretty good. Just made a couple mistakes. We felt confident. Felt like if we could fix a couple things and make a couple adjustments, we'd be in good shape, and just came out with a ton of energy and our crowd was fantastic. I know there was a ton of San Diego State fans, but our crowd was just as good tonight. Q. Sam, seriously on that last shot, when your legacy is written, will that be the most iconic shot in your history and also in Utah State's history? SAM MERRILL: Well, I hope there's a few more. I hope there's a few more games to be played and a few more big shots to be hit. But you know, the shot went in, but basketball is absolutely a team game, and like Coach said, he talked about everyone that played well and everyone that stepped up, and we wouldn't have been in that position without those guys and without doing it together as a team. I know I made the shot and whatever, but we could not have won three games in three days without doing it together. Q. Neemy, last year when you were up on the stage, you couldn't believe the path Utah State had taken you to winning a title. What do you think of back to back years of doing so? NEEMIAS QUETA: This one is even sweeter than last year's. We had a lot more ups and downs -- a lot more downs than last year, and we just stuck together and just found a way to overcome everything that came at us. Coach Smith just always told us to like stay together and just always try to think of the next play and keep staying together. It was just great. I don't have words to explain it. Q. It's been a while since a team in the Mountain West Conference has been able to make a really deep run in the NCAA Tournament. My question to you guys is talk about your chances; what do you think you need to do to make a deep run, and then your thoughts on San Diego State, do you think they're capable of making a deep run? SAM MERRILL: San Diego State is definitely going to win a couple games. They have everything. Malachi is obviously a phenomenal player but they have so many other options, as well, and that opens things up for him and the rest of the team. So they'll win a couple games for sure, but for us, that last year was really tough to go out that way, losing in the first round. We are going to have -- luckily we can just not worry about everything that was new last year with all the media and all that stuff that goes on, and we can just focus on just trying to win our first one and then hopefully go from there. CRAIG SMITH: And I know they're fired up for practice tomorrow. Q. Neemy, obviously this game -- you'll remember Sam's shot at the end but you had a huge play there in the second half, and this is a game of ebbs and flows as far as emotion. How big was that highlight-reel dunk that you had in the second half, and what do you think that meant for you guys going forward? NEEMIAS QUETA: I think it just helped me feel more comfortable during the game. Stuff wasn't going my way during the game, but after that I think that we just started playing with a lot more confidence. I think it just helped to settle in in the game, and just keep playing hard and knowing that I was going to still be a threat down there. Q. If you guys could put into words what this tournament has actually meant for you, what would you say? SAM MERRILL: What this tournament or -- Q. This tournament. SAM MERRILL: Like I said, we weren't sure -- we felt like every game was a must-win game for us. This year feels sweeter than last year. Last year it just feels like everything went perfect. We had no injuries. We obviously lost a couple games, but this year we had to go through some stuff, Neemy missing a ton of games, some other undisclosed injuries that slowed us down a little bit, and lost a couple games that we really had no business losing. To be able to just find a way to win three tough, tough games against New Mexico, who was probably playing their best basketball, Wyoming, who was absolutely playing their best basketball of the season, and then San Diego State, who's as good as advertised, it's super sweet. Q. Sam, I'm not going to ask you to disclose your undisclosed injuries, but I did want to ask you about that quick turnaround. Players never get a say in this type of thing, but they moved up the start of the final a half hour this year, so it's even quicker. If you could say something to a TV executive about how hard that is and how unfair it is to make players doing that after playing two straight games, what would you tell them? SAM MERRILL: I wouldn't necessarily say it's unfair, but that 2 seed game is definitely tough because our game ended at like 10:45, we didn't leave the gym until probably 11:45, midnight, so we get back to our hotel at 12:15, and then we went straight into our meeting room, walked through San Diego State stuff, so that took about a half hour. So we weren't even done until about 1:00, and then we had to do ice bath and some recovery stuff, and I didn't get to bed until like 2:15. Then we had to wake up at about 9:00 -- CRAIG SMITH: But that's 10:00 our time. SAM MERRILL: Had to wake up at 9:00, go straight to another film session and walk-through. So it almost felt like we had no time at all. I mean, it worked out for us and it worked out for us last year, as well -- CRAIG SMITH: I kind of like the 2 seed. SAM MERRILL: It's definitely difficult for sure, and I'm a big-time sleeper. I need like 10 hours of sleep a night. CRAIG SMITH: He goes to bed at 7:30. This year he's got online classes, so it's 9:30. Q. I'm sure that you've been -- well, I'm not sure since you've had such a busy schedule, but with the NBA talking to its teams about possibly having to play in front of no crowds due to the coronavirus, I wanted to know, it could happen with the NCAA championship, although that's obviously coming up pretty quick. What would your thoughts be about having to play in that kind of situation and how would it affect your games? SAM MERRILL: That would be really odd. I don't know, that's all I can say. Will there be TV? CRAIG SMITH: We're going to triple our cheerleaders. NEEMIAS QUETA: I never even thought of that. CRAIG SMITH: We're going to need a lot of media and a lot of cheerleaders. Double our managers. Q. For the players, I want to get your thoughts, Coach touched on a couple players, but I wanted your thoughts. First, Abel Porter, you could see he was kind of obviously hurt from the past couple of games. Zero points but he was the team high plus-10. Can you talk about his effort and his ability to play through whatever was ailing him? NEEMIAS QUETA: Abel yesterday only played I think two minutes, two or three minutes, something like that. Today he played 25, so you see how resilient he is. Especially after the injuries that he's had lately. I just think that he's one of our glue guys, too. He knows how to run our team, and as you see on the plus-minus, he had plus-10, and I think that he knows how to guard, too. He just knows how to share the ball, too. He only had two assists, but he pretty much just set up everyone to have good shots, and I think that's what we need from a point guard. SAM MERRILL: Yeah, that might have been the most impactful zero points, two assists in three rounds ever. People don't realize that Abel just settles us down offensively. It helps us -- if he's not in, I usually run the point. But there's a lot of plays that we run where I'm not the point guard, so we have to like -- I have to bring it up and then give it to Diogo and then move around, and it takes some time to get into sets, but with Abel he can just get us into our sets, the ones that we want to run. Like Neemy said, he's great defensively, and he's been in a lot of pain, but for him to be able to battle and play 25 minutes and be as impactful as he was just speaks volumes to who he is as a person. Q. So you guys have talked about the constant wheel of injuries. You got another one tonight - Sean goes down. Only played about a minute. How does that affect you guys going forward? SAM MERRILL: Yeah, that's really tough for him. He's come along so much as a freshman. I don't know exactly what the extent of the injury is, but he was super distraught at halftime when we came in. You feel for a guy like that that was so helpful for us last night and the night before. I know he wanted to come in and make an impact, and that was unfortunate, but like we've done all year, we're just going to have to find a way to regroup and make things happen. Q. Sam, you talk about your lack of rest; how do you then find the energy to go out and play the entire 40 minutes? SAM MERRILL: Coach Smith tried to take me out, but I said, "No way." CRAIG SMITH: That was right about when Sean got hurt actually. It was on that play where he took the charge, and I think it was 8:02 on the clock, so we were just trying to manage it, obviously, and he kind of had that look, but we had back-to-back time-outs right before that, long ones, and Sam just kind of gave me that look like, he was staring right through you, kind of one of those -- oh, you're good, we'll get Sean out. SAM MERRILL: But if you can't get -- you might have seen a little bit of fatigue. I missed probably four or five shots short, so maybe that was part of it -- CRAIG SMITH: Free throw missed. SAM MERRILL: First ever in the last minute of a game in my career, so that's sad. But if you can't get motivated and physically ready and emotionally ready for a game like this, then you have no business being here. Coach does a good job of letting me rest every once in a while on the court. And it helps when you have Neemy because you can go two, three possessions where I hardly have to move, because we just give the ball to Neemy and let him do his thing. When you play for four years, you find ways to rest up during the game. CRAIG SMITH: That's why Sam likes when we play 1-3-1, he just stands on the side, okay, drive it in there to Neemy. Neemy will get it to the rim. Q. Sam, do the back-to-back titles and MVPs rival your ultimate goal to win an NCAA Tournament game? SAM MERRILL: I mean, I'll look back when this is all said and done and be grateful and obviously have fond memories of Utah State. But it's been the goal from day one. We had a chance last year, didn't come through, and fortunately found a way to get another opportunity. You can bet that we'll bring our best to wherever and whoever we play. Q. I want to look forward a little bit instead of back. You're going to have maybe 13 days off, and college basketball teams almost never have that, particularly this part of the season. Have you started thinking how you're going to possibly occupy those 13 days? Will you scrimmage somebody, take days off? What will you do? CRAIG SMITH: We're definitely going to take a couple days off. I've thought about it a little bit because I knew -- obviously we knew for a long time, and we knew we'd be playing some sort of postseason. Obviously we always held out hope, and hope is a dangerous thing, but I've thought about it a little bit but not too seriously. Now, the one thing we can draw back on is last year we had the bye going into the conference tournament, so we clinched the regular season title at Colorado State on a Tuesday night, and then we didn't play for -- until the following Thursday. So that's about nine days. And that was a grind early in that game, if you remember. I think we had 18, 17 turnovers in the first half, and we were like Edward Scissorhands out there dribbling and dribbling off our knees and catching with our nose. And then we settled in, and I thought it helped us in the back half of the tournament. I thought we were the fresher team in the title game, especially the second half. But that's less time than 13 days. That's a long time. Basketball is such a rhythm game. That being said, I think it can benefit us, too, and we've just had such an uneven year with, okay, who's playing in this practice, and like who do we have today. Our athletic trainer and our strength coach, I can't tell you how many conversations we had. Who's clear today, who's got this today, who's got -- so we've always just been kind of having to redefine ourselves, and then we finally the last four or five weeks had pretty much a good rhythm. Neemy was healthy and in good condition, know what I mean? His conditioning took a while to kind of go. And so we finally kind of got into a rhythm I would say. But one thing we've emphasized with our team all year is listen, we're just scratching the surface of how good we can still become, and that's what I think is really exciting is if you look back to where we were five or six weeks ago, I feel like we've just gradually gotten better week to week. And obviously we had a minor -- now it ends up being a minor setback at New Mexico. But I feel like we got better since that game, certainly this week. And so that's what's exciting. I think with good quality practice, we have great character in our locker room, we have a bunch of guys that love to compete. We have a bunch of guys that love to play, and we have phenomenal chemistry. And we're a driven team. Sam touched on it; when we got there last year, it was a typical, oh, we're going there to win it, but you kind of -- it's a little bit of a -- not daunting, but you have this media obligation, you have this going on and this going on, and I remember riding in the bus when we landed in Columbus, and you know, the police escorts -- the guys are like, oh, the police escorts. So everything was a big deal. Now we've been there. We know what to expect. And we had a phenomenal summer this summer with our guys. Sometimes when you do something that -- the highest seed in the history of Utah State and there's a great tradition at Utah State basketball, 28 wins last year, first time ever winning in the Mountain West Tournament, go on and on with all the accolades last year, and then we have that disappointing loss to Washington, and they played great. I'm not sure we were our best, but a lot of that was them. It looked like Thybulle had like four arms out there, he was so athletic and everywhere. But our guys over the summer weren't beating their chest about how well we just did, right, and we always say if what you did yesterday is a big deal, you haven't done anything today. And we just have a driven, driven group of individuals. I would fully expect us to have a very good 10 days of practice or so, and whoever we play and wherever we go, we're going to put our best foot forward. As we know, this year has just been a topsy-turvy year in Division I men's basketball, and I think it's just really, quite frankly, a wide open tournament. Q. You guys obviously had a really good shot at earning an at-large bid regardless of today, but how relieving is it to not have to worry about that at all? CRAIG SMITH: It's been like this all year, and it's definitely relieving, there's no doubt. Coach Lappas who did the television today, he goes -- and I'm not sure what he was trying to say, but he goes, "Best of luck these next eight days," and I'm like, well, let's just win the game and we don't have to worry about the next eight days, and that was our mindset the whole time. I know in today's day and age, everybody has got the world at their fingertips. People kept asking me, what do you think about your chances? I literally didn't look at any prognostications, which I know sounds crazy to you guys. I understand that. I was kind of living in a bubble. My oldest son pays attention to all of that stuff. My wife does, my kids -- I don't want to know. "Dad, it was a good day for us." I don't care. I don't want to know. So I never got caught up into all that stuff. As a coach, all I can do is be the best I can be for our guys every day, motivated, not worried about did Stanford win or whoever. Like I don't care. I have no control over it. And I think part of that, not to get too deep, part of the problem -- in life, I think so many times people, it's easy to worry about so many things that don't matter or that you can't control, so let's just lock into the controllables. And when we lost -- we've only -- we lost those three games in a row in early January, and I think that's what Sam was alluding to was, some of the stuff that maybe wasn't out there with our guys being hurt. I just was like, you know what, quit worrying about all that stuff. We're going to beat Florida and beat LSU, and when you beat Florida on a neutral floor -- neutral in the Orange Bowl, right? That was far from neutral, but that was huge for us. If we wouldn't have won tonight, I guess my hope was our intent of schedule was very, very good. We played any high major that was willing to play us, and you saw the two that we played, and then we agreed to a home and home with St. Mary's, and of course they wanted to play at home first and we did it, and -- screw it, if we play at their place we know that'll be a quad 1 game. If we play at our place, it's not guaranteed to be a quad 1 game. So we scheduled aggressive. We have a six-year deal with BYU. We scheduled as hard as we possibly could, but scheduling isn't just a thing where you get to go out and say, hey, we want to play you. Oh, sure. It just doesn't work like that. So our intent was very, very well. We had to do some -- we bought ourselves out of a tournament, and I give our credit to our administration, to pay a decent amount of money to get out of that at the recommendation of the Mountain West Conference because that would have really hurt our schedule, so to speak. That was the first thing we scheduled when I first got hired. I don't think anyone could have totally predicted that when we got hired less than two years ago we'd be back to back Mountain West champs. So I give our credit to our administration for doing that and making our schedule right. But it sure is nice to do this. Wow. Wow. Q. You had only 11 points about four or five minutes to go in the first half but you were only down 13. Did you feel like at that point that you were actually in a really good position and did you communicate that with your players? CRAIG SMITH: Yeah, every huddle. Our guys have pretty good stick-to-itiveness but it was all about effort, effort, effort tonight, execute, execute, execute. But more so than anything, in a basketball game like this where it's two heavyweights, and especially the -- I mean, to have two -- what is the record, 30-1 going into the game, I think? That's incredible. That's incredible. And so to be able to go toe to toe for a long time, we just have to stay the course. There's going to be up and downs, but you just can't get distracted, and effort, effort, effort, and we did say that every time-out. So how many clean -- like Merrill missed a lot of clean looks early. I told one of the officials during the game, I'm like, Merrill in the first half missed more shots than he missed the first two games. Maybe not quite, but it felt like that. Then Neemy missed a couple and then he steps out of bounds on a dunk. I think you asked the question to Neemy -- yeah, well. So that dunk, I thought kind of certainly changed -- not changed his mindset, but it just gave him a little juice. It's like you see the ball go through the hole -- Diogo only made one shot tonight, but it was a big one, and that gave him some -- that dude, Diogo Brito is a winner in every way, shape and form and he doesn't get enough credit. We put him in the starting lineup and you've got to give this guy humility. He started almost every game as a sophomore. Didn't start one game last year. Didn't start until Senior Night this year. His mom and dad came over from Portugal to see him play the first time in his college career. Saw him against Wyoming. He didn't play great. I think he was nervous. I put him the lineup for Senior Night. We played really well. 19-0 start. First game here I think he played 36 minutes, last night 37 or maybe it's flipped, and tonight I think he came out one time. He's never played those kind of minutes, and he's guarding, by the way, a really good player on the other side, right. You go right down the line. We talked about Bean. Somebody brought up Abel Porter being plus-10 and just a sounding board for our team, was just humongous for us tonight, and that's what we had. I felt like last year our role guys were just such studs in their role. They were just stars in their role, and we had some serious shooting woes for a while this year where we couldn't make -- I don't know how many point-blank wide-open shots that we had and we just couldn't make a shot. It's kind of ironic you look at the numbers tonight, these guys made 15 or 16 threes last night, 15 or 16. And tonight we were able to hold them to 5-for-9 from the three and we flipped the script and go 9-for-24 from the three. So we felt like if we could stay the course we're getting good looks, and certainly just that three-minute stretch or whatever it was, and certainly Diogo drilling that three was huge, and that 7-0 start, I mean, we made up some monster ground in that about six-minute stretch, and then we knew it was just going to come down to the wire, and fortunately for us we were able to make one more shot. Q. Just going back to that second-half offensive stretch, you guys hit five of your first six threes. Did you make any offensive adjustments or was it more of a confidence seeing your guys see shots going into the net? CRAIG SMITH: Well, going into -- in the last media time-out of the first half, they were playing Bean really soft, which is what we expected. That's what they had showed the first two games. And Justin, we kind of got on Justin about being more of a player without the ball and being more of a screener and being more active to help other guys get open. You know, and that's kind of -- Justin has got such a unique game, and it's hard to describe, but you don't want Justin overthinking. He's a smart kid. He's compliant. He wants to be coached. And I thought he did a much better job doing that. And then of course he's all over the place with rebounding. The other thing we said, I thought we were very physical on the defensive end, but I felt like we had to be more physical on the offensive end, do a better job setting screens. I thought Neemy had to post-up harder, not just kind of accept posting up at 15 feet. No, you've got to get deeper catches and post-up harder. When we are turning the corner on a ball screen, you have to be tougher with the ball. So just kind of challenging them. And the other thing we did, honestly we didn't call as many plays, because not only are they a very talented team, they're a very well-coached team, and I've known Coach Dutcher for a long time, and I was an assistant at Colorado State for five years when he was an assistant, and all their other staff members, they've kept the family together. Coach Fisher's son Mark is a very good friend, and they do it right, man, and they're very, very well-coached. You call a play, they know it's coming. They call a play, we know what's coming. They call a play, our guys know what's coming. They call a play, our guys know what's coming. A big strength of ours last year was our motion. We struggled earlier this year with our motion. A big part of that Queta not playing. He's got such great feel for what's going on out there, and our motion offense has gotten much better here the last three weeks. So we just said, you know what, we need more randoms. We've got to let our players play, but we've got to do a better job screening, attacking and sharing for one another. Q. Last year one of the main qualms with the title was that you never played Nevada, who was the top seed and a lot of people wanted that match-up. How good does it feel to have the match-up with one of the best teams the Mountain West has seen for a couple years and to come out with a title? CRAIG SMITH: Well, to be quite frank, and I don't know this for a fact, I think our guys really wanted to play San Diego State. I wanted to play San Diego State. And not because -- I made very clear, we respect them like beyond belief, but we lost to them both times in the regular season, and last year we beat everybody on our schedule that we played, that we played twice, we at least beat them once. So we were 0-2, and it gave me a lot -- at our place, we had just lost to UNLV, Queta didn't play, that was his first game back. They made some big-time plays. They scored 15 points with five seconds or less on the shot clock, and that kind of reared its ugly head a little bit in the first half. I think they scored six points on us right at the shot clock buzzer going off, right at the rim. So we talked about that at halftime, and I'm not sure they did that in the second half. And then at their place, just by coincidence, they're retiring Kawhi Leonard's uniform. And so my mom, just like moms do, she saves the newspaper, like I don't even know anyone that reads newspapers -- no, I'm just kidding, guys. I'm kidding. (Laughter). I actually do read the newspaper religiously. But she saves the newspaper, they were at her house for a week, and usually they're good luck charms, and then they flew to San Diego, we have family out there, not to bore you, they came to the game, and of course they stayed and then flew back because we had two more home games. She gives the me the newspaper like a week later, like "thanks for reminding me, mom." A big picture of Kawhi, who was my favorite player in the NBA, by the way. But in that article -- and we all know playing at Viejas is ridiculously tough to do. Very rarely do they lose there. When it said in that article, This is the most rowdy and electric that building had been since Kawhi Leonard and their teams, I'm guessing Billy white, Malcolm Thomas and that whole crew was playing, BYU and Jimmer Fredette and they had it rolling, that was incredible. So for us to go toe to toe with them in that environment at their place, we were up eight at half, up 12 in the second half and then the wave kind of got the best -- I should have done a couple things differently. When we can go toe to toe at their place knowing we didn't play our best yet, we had so much confidence that we can come in here and take care of business. We have ultra competitors on our team, and obviously we were fortunate to find a way to win that game. But I think that gave us a lot of confidence that we can do that. Q. You've coached Sam Merrill for two years now. First player ever to win tournament back-to-back MVPs. How often do you have times on the court where you see something he does and it leaves you speechless? CRAIG SMITH: Well, nothing surprises me with him anymore. I remember last year for quite a while I would have to tell him, Sam, a bad shot for you is better than a good shot for someone else. He's just so programmed to make the right play all the time. Now the dude is -- I said it after New Mexico, now he's the second all-time leading scorer at Utah State, No. 2 in assists. That is unheard of, and he never plays point guard. He's played more point guard this year than any other year. Nothing surprises me, and everyone is going to talk about that shot, and that was a shot of the ages certainly, without a question. The dude guarded Malachi Flynn all night. He guarded Malachi Flynn all night. That guy, every single night that we go out -- and Neemy is obviously just an incredible defensive player. But Sam is guarding the other team's best guard every night. Every night. Now, he might have to take a break off and Diogo is a great defensive player, as well. But Sam gets nowhere near the credit for how elite of a defender he is. He understands angles. He understands scouting reports. He's a legit 6'5" and long, and he's way more athletic than people give him credit for. To do that -- and we have to depend on that dude every night on the offensive end certainly, but he's a two-way guy. He wants the challenge of guarding that other team's best players, and that's a rare -- that is getting rarer and rarer to find. And then at the end of the day, I could talk -- we could do a half-hour dissertation on this, but he's just the ultimate winner and competitor, and he grew up an Aggie, and it means so much to him. He has so much pride. Dude shows up every -- this is not a -- I know how coaches can get, "guy shows up every day to play." That dude, every day. Every day. Doesn't matter, 45-minute workout, hour and a half practice, three-hour practice. His team loses, he's so PO'd without taking it out on anyone. When we lose we run sprints and he wins that sprint every time. Wins it every time. And that exudes to everybody else on the team when you can do that. I get a little animated because I love that guy. He's just everything that a college athlete is all about. Q. Can you speak to the impact he has in those late-game situations and the leadership he brings to the rest of the team? CRAIG SMITH: He makes everybody better, and he has a unique -- is it Tom Rinaldi that asks those questions that gets everyone to cry? I've said this multiple times, but he gives everybody confidence. He just -- when he's on the floor, there's just so much confidence that he provides everyone else. He's out there and guys just play better. And I think a big reason why is he's a star. He's the most unselfish star I've ever been around. I think he brings so much confidence because he's so humble, and he makes that shot, he didn't do -- none of that. And the guys are so fired up for him. What he did at the end of that New Mexico game, are you kidding me? He gets four fouls in the first five minutes of the second half, doesn't play forever, they go up, we're down eight, and it's like, guys, we've got to do it without Sam for a while, just got to figure it out. But he brings this level of comfort where guys are so confident. But he doesn't, like, "Give me the ball!" You'll never hear that out of the that kid. He's a shot-maker. He's a great decision-maker, without a question. And he's an elite defender. And so that's a great combination to have. This is the ultimate player's game. Queta is a phenomenal player. Certainly Sam does. Our role guys are stars. The evolution of Bean has been huge, and players win games, man. As a coach you do everything you can to put the guys in the right position, but those dudes are out there in front of 15,000 people or whatever it is, where you see every facial expression, you see every -- and they get -- you lose a tough game and everyone is coming at you, oh, why are the Aggies falling apart and this guy doesn't do this. You've got to eliminate the noise and trust who you are. You cannot flinch and just keep going straight ahead. Obviously it was exciting. I do want to real quick thank our coaching staff. We have a great coaching staff. The preparation those guys do, all the extra hours that they do and their families, we all know this is a lifestyle, just like you guys traveling, it's a lifestyle thing, and you've got to have everybody on board. I have an amazing wife and family, as do our staff guys, and there's such support there, and it's always fun when we can get together and do it. John Hartwell, our AD is incredible, and the strides we've made as a program in support have just been incredible. And I want to thank all you guys for everything that you guys do reporting it, and you guys have a thankless job, and I really appreciate everything that you guys have done for Aggie basketball and for our players with the exposure and just being fair and real people. And I want to thank the Mountain West Conference. This is -- I've been in the Big Ten, I've been a coach at every level, NAIA, D-II, D-I, and this as good as it gets with the pomp and circumstance, the support, everybody coming to this incredible venue, and I know I might regret saying this, but I think it's so great that it is in this venue where everybody can get to and support it and back it and get here, and to have the spirited atmosphere that the Mountain West conference provides, it's absolutely incredible. It's first class in every way, shape and form. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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