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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: SPOKANEMarch 15, 2007Craig BradshawMichael JenkinsGregg MarshallTorrell MartinSPOKANE, WASHINGTON THE MODERATOR: We'll begin with questions to student athletes from Winthrop. Q. Michael and Torrell, what has the atmosphere been in practice for the last couple of days? How are you guys approaching this? Is this business as usual? What's going on? TORRELL MARTIN: We've been approaching the game like we would approach any other big team we would play in the preceding like North Carolina or Maryland or anybody of that nature. All of our practices are usually pretty tough and pretty hard. We just prepared a little more and getting a little deeper into this team and trying to do the best we can do and give us the best chance to win on the court. MICHAEL JENKINS: Like Torrell said, we're just practicing normal, practicing hard, staying focused on trying to accomplish a goal. We practice as normal as usual. Q. Question for any of the guys. What's the difference coming in as an 11 seed as opposed to 15 seed? Do you approach it any differently? CRAIG BRADSHAW: It's just another game. Notre Dame is a good team. We're just looking forward to it. We'll play hard and see what happens. Q. I'd like to ask you guys a question about do you feel any different than last year? This is, I guess, the third or fourth time for you guys here. Do you feel more confident? Do you feel like because you've been here a few times that you're more prepared? TORRELL MARTIN: We definitely have experience coming into this game because we've been here. This is our third consecutive time. But it's no different than the other years because either way you look at it we're going to play a great team and we have to prepare well and go out there and give our best efforts. The biggest difference between this year and last year is the amount of preparation that we have for Notre Dame because we haven't played them before. Different from last year, I would have to say, the amount of experience that we have as a team, coming in, being three consecutive years has a big factor on our confidence level in coming into the game. But like I said it's definitely going to have to be the same preparation that we did the year before and the year before that. Q. Michael, I assume you'll be guarding Colin Falls. I assume that will be your match up. Can you give me a little scouting report on him? MICHAEL JENKINS: He's a great shooter. He had the Big East record in three point field goals made. I'm just going to try to approach the game and play defense like the coach will tell me to. Like we did in the bracket, the game against Greg. I'm going to approach him and try to take away his strong points, not get any open looks. Q. Wonder if you could give us your story of how you end up going from New Zealand to Rock Hill, South Carolina? CRAIG BRADSHAW: Basically I was at New Zealand University. I wasn't playing any college basketball or anything. My coach knew of Winthrop. I went to see Winthrop. I liked it. I'm here now. Q. Craig, if you could just explain how the international experience you've had playing has helped you with college basketball. CRAIG BRADSHAW: It's helped me a lot. I'm more confident. I feel that just because I've been in the Olympics and two World Championships I can take more of a leadership on the team. I think players do look up to that in the respect that I have been places. It just made me appreciate the game more and know that there's -- know that where I've been, it's places where I would never have thought I would have gone. And it's all because of Winthrop, I think. Q. I wanted to ask you about I know that rugby is the national game of New Zealand. And if you ever had to make that choice between playing rugby and playing basketball, if you did, why? And why basketball? CRAIG BRADSHAW: Everyone plays rugby. I was at the stage where I was getting too tall and too skinny. I was just getting hurt too often. So basically I had to choose my junior year of high school between the two, and basketball just seemed the right option for me. Q. I know you've fielded this question a lot and you're probably going to field it again. Thoughts about the Tennessee game last year. You guys go in the locker room tomorrow. Is that going to be brought up? Do you think that's going to be a big issue between now and tip-off tomorrow? TORRELL MARTIN: I believe in the back of our mind that's always going to be there, but as a team you must move forward and put last season in the past. It's hard to live it down the way we went out on such a great shot. But that was a feeling that I don't believe anybody on the team ever felt before, because we were so confident to that game. Like I say, we have to bury last year and come into this season ready to play. And we got to where we wanted to be this year. And now we have to see what we can do, so we don't have that same feeling that we felt last year. Q. For any of you guys. A lot of people are saying you guys are this year's George Mason. What kind of pressure does that add? MICHAEL JENKINS: That doesn't really put any pressure on us. We've been hearing that, as you all know, for the past few years people have been saying we're going to upset people, how good we are, and we haven't fit the bill yet. We don't listen to that. Our coach tells what people are saying. We try to listen to it as players. You can only go as far as what you want to do. We try not to listen to it and play each game normally and not think about that because you've got to take one game at a time. TORRELL MARTIN: I'd like to add onto that. I think this year's George Mason, that's just more giving people something to say. I think we're this year's Winthrop. And that's what we're going to go out and play like. Q. You guys have the nickname "Junkyard Dogs". How did that come about? MICHAEL JENKINS: Coach said after the Wisconsin game a reporter or writer wrote up in an article that we just kept attacking like junkyard dogs. And from then on the coach liked the statement or phrase that he made and we got a junkyard dog and WWE wrestler going. After the game he chooses who plays the toughest, who plays more like a junkyard dog, and you receive that award, get that accolade. THE MODERATOR: We'll go ahead and ask Coach Marshall to make a quick opening statement. COACH GREGG MARSHALL: We're glad to be here in Spokane. We're glad to be in our third consecutive NCAA tournament. We appreciate the opportunity to compete in this great championship. We feel like we are ready to compete and try to advance. We've been very close the last couple of years. We've got a veteran group that's hungry, that's getting healthy, and we're excited about this opportunity. Q. I want to ask you a little bit about Torrell Martin. Tell me what kind of a player he is? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: First of all, Torrell Martin is one of the greatest kids I've ever been associated with. He's got I refer to it as "it". If you could bottle what he has, you could make a lot of money because he walks in a room, he lights up the room. Everyone is attracted to him from the old to the new, and he's just a great kid, a great student. Just lightning in a bottle as a player. He plays elbows above the rim. He's got the flair and the talent with the floppy hair and the game that can shoot 3 to 25 feet. He's a great defender. He's high energy, just high energy and is a very coachable kid. With all that talent and everything he's got going for him, he's just a real joy to coach every day. Q. A moment ago your players were talking about the Junkyard Doing Award. Could you tell us your version of its genesis? Is it actually a trophy or momento? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: Well, I have a friend who's a psychologist that used to work at Winthrop and now he's at St. Mary's in Texas, Dr. Tom Woodruff, and he drove up to College Station when we played Texas A & M on January 2 with his wife Cindy, and we were talking one night. We had just gotten done playing Wisconsin. The announcer that night, kept referring to Winthrop and our team as a bunch of junkyard dogs, they keep coming at you like a pack of junkyard dogs. We were discussing that comment. And Tom went back, purchased a doll, if you will, in its original case, a plastic and cardboard box. And we have given it out since then. I was a little leery at first how the guys would react to it. But he said go with this, this will be great. They'll have fun with it. Initially there was a little apprehension on the players' parts, but now they probably compete, and they're a little jealous if they don't get it. You get the Junkyard Dog by being the toughest, getting the most rebounds, the floor burns, taking the most charges. It has nothing to do with points or being aesthetically pleasing. It's getting down and getting dirty. That's how you get the award. It's about this big. We've got it on the trip. Hopefully we'll be able to give it out tomorrow afternoon. Somebody will get to keep it until Sunday if that's the case. Q. Is it a dog? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: It's a wrestler. It's an African-American figurine. Supposedly he was a great wrestler, WWE. I'm not a wrestling guy, but he has a dog collar, just a real strong, cut up wrestler, professional wrestler known as the Junkyard Dog. Q. What's been the approach the last two days in practice? Is this a business as usual kind of game? Are you trying to get a little more energy, more excitement? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: You've seen a lot of practices over the last several years. Last week I think you would agree we tried to let them get healthy if we could. We shot a lot, did some sprinting to try to stay in game shape. We didn't bang them too much. There was no combat. The chin straps were not fastened. But I can assure you that this last couple of days the chin straps have been fastened. We've had blood spilled. We've had a concussion. We're getting after it. So hopefully the guys understand they can't be out competed. If we come out here and Notre Dame competes harder than us and wants the game more than us, it definitely minimizes our chances for success. Q. Coach, have you taken any different approach this year than you have the years before? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: Not really. We've been getting steadily closer over the last several years, and this is, I think, without a doubt our most talented team, our most veteran team, the highest seeded team that we've ever taken to The Dance. With all due respect to Notre Dame, this is the best team that we've taken. Just in that regard, having nothing to do with the opponent, it's our best chance to advance. Now the obstacle is a great team from the Big East that won 24 games and had a wonderful year. Q. Who got the concussion? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: Anthony Williams. It was our luck that one of our kids, a freshman that's red shirting, he knows where he is today. That's the good news. He's going to be fine, but he got a slight concussion, and the doctors have evaluated him. And that's what it was. I think he hit Torrell's knee as he fell down in a drill yesterday. Q. I know in the past month you kind of talked about this chance to advance. It may be becoming a little bit of a monkey on the your back. A Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl. Now that you're here, how do you deal with the monkey? Do you deal with it? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: We don't talk about it. I know the media writes about it. That's fine. You're stealing my words. I made that analogy because I like Peyton Manning, I like the Colts. It was his monkey, and he couldn't shake that, no matter what kind of year he had, no matter what kind of numbers he put up, he couldn't win the big one. He couldn't get to the National Championship Game, he couldn't win the Super Bowl. But everybody knew he was a really good quarterback if not maybe the best quarterback in the NFL and in college football way back. That's our monkey, and quite frankly I'm sure a lot of teams would not be able to advance in the NCAA tournament had they been given our seeds and our teams that we had in previous years. In the last couple of years I think as a 14 and a 15 the last two years and now this year as an 11, we feel like we can compete and we have a great opportunity to advance. It's just a matter now of going out and playing and playing better than Notre Dame and hoping they don't hit shots, we do, and we get a call here and there and a couple of breaks go our way. Q. Can you break down Notre Dame for us? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: First of all, Notre Dame is one of the most confident offensive teams we've played all year. They have a great tempo. They try to get straight ahead to those shooters, Kurz and Falls, tremendously good shooters with very deep range. They do some things in their secondary to get those guys shots early in a possession. If they can't get that, then they'll go into a motion offense where they're setting a lot of screens for those two. Meanwhile you're got Harden, you've got Hillesland who can drive it. You're got Kurz who can shoot it. Zeller who can shoot it. All post players that are capable scorers. If that doesn't work out, you've got the young point guard Jackson what can break you down and get to the rim. They score a lot of points. They mix up their defenses. They've got a two-thirds court pressure, if they fall back into a zone, a 2-3 or 3-2 match-up zone and then they've got the man-to-man. They're the leading scorer in the Big East. We've got our work cut out for them to try to keep them in the 60's and hopefully score one more point than they do. Q. Can you talk about Jackson? Is he playing like a freshman who picked it up in the middle of the season in terms of being the starter? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: We were in the NCAA tournament two years ago with a freshman point guard, Chris Gaynor. He played quite well. You can't really consider Jackson a freshman right now. He's been in the fires of the Big East. He's been in Madison Square Garden, the Big East Tournament. He's just confident, very strong, very aggressive. He plays the game the way I love it to be played. He's very sure of himself, and he holds nothing back. He makes big steals when he needs to. He comes up with offensive rebounds, which we'll have to be conscious of. I don't think we're going to halt him. We are going to attempt to change defenses and do whatever we can to keep him off balance to a degree and make him think a little bit. He's a very good player and a guy that we'd certainly love to be grooming as a young guard in our program. Q. I notice over the last few years you've really put Winthrop on the map in basketball. I know they don't have a football team, and they're kind of in the spotlight now. Has that affected the team at all or the school as far as the players are able to bring on board and recruit and the student body as well? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: We're not confused for Wingate, which is a very good Division II program about 20 minutes on the east side of Charlotte. We're 20 minutes on the south side of Charlotte, which was a problem nine years ago. I think we have an opportunity now to recruit some student-athletes that maybe we couldn't get into the front door nine years ago. And this year's recruiting class upcoming, I think you'll see some guys that are a little more talented than what we brought in six, seven, eight years ago, if you will. And that's because of the name recognition. Being in the NCAA tournament has paid dividends in recruiting. We were able this year, because of our depth, to red shirt all of our freshmen. We'll have a lot of new players next year, but at the same time I think the talent level is continuing to rise a little bit. Q. Is this the game where you really have to be the junkyard dogs collectively? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: Well, they shoot a lot of 3's as we do. There's going to be a lot of offensive rebounds that come off long. I hope more come off long on their end than our end. I hope they bounce in on our end. Those long rebounds, not only do you have to check, but you've got to retrieve the ball. There's going to be some that hit the ground. It's going to be a dog fight. The junkyard dog is going to come up with that rebound. Have you ever noticed you only need one junkyard dog? Have you ever seen a junkyard where there's more than one dog? You only need one. Hopefully that's us. That's a tough junkyard. Q. Along those lines, where did you pick up this junkyard dog figurine that you give to the guys? COACH GREGG MARSHALL: We got it off E-Bay. We talked about that a little earlier. A friend of mine went on E-Bay, Tom Woodruff. I don't know what he bid on it. But I can tell you this, we're not giving this to the players. They just get to use it for a couple of days, and then the next game we take it back and give it to someone else. Hopefully that's not an extra benefit. End of FastScripts |
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