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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: MIAMI

March 19, 2009

MIAMI, FLORIDA

LARRY WAHL: This morning the first team up is Stephen F. Austin, the 14th seed in the south, the champion of the Southland Conference. If anybody has any questions for any of the players, please raise your hand.
We have Nick Shaw, Josh Alexander, Eric Bell, Eddie Williams and Matt Kingsley. They'll be here for 15 minutes and then coach Kaspar will be in.

Q. Josh, welcome to Miami first of all, you guys. Of course, it's well known how well you guys defend, particularly how well you defend the three. What do you see from Jonny Flynn and Devendorf and all the other guys that can shoot it that you think you guys can do defensively against them from long-range?
JOSH ALEXANDER: We're just going to go out there and do what we've been doing all year, and that is play good defense and give a good effort and just play defense, the thing that's been carrying us all season. We'll just go out there and stick to the game plan and play defense, I think we should be fine.

Q. I'm wondering, you had some issues with your ankle during the season. Is that all cleared up?
JOSH ALEXANDER: Yeah, it affected me for probably four or five games, but my ankle is 100 percent now. I've been playing some good ball as of late, and hopefully I'll go out here tomorrow and have a pretty decent game.

Q. Matt and Eddie, a first-time trip to the NCAA. It's a big deal for any school. Two questions on that and if you can address it, that would be great: One, was it a little bit tough that the student body wasn't there this week on campus to share it with you with it being break and kind of a quiet time? And secondly, have you had that moment yet here since you've arrived in Miami, saying, it's really happening, we're really here at this thing finally?
EDDIE WILLIAMS: It was hard going back to campus not seeing anybody there. But I mean, I had a couple friends talk to me on Facebook, so it wasn't that bad.
It still probably hasn't hit me as much as I thought it would. It will probably hit me when I step out on the court and there's fans and I see Syracuse on the other end.
MATT KINGSLEY: For me, it wasn't that big of a deal for all the students to be out for spring break because right when we got back in town, we just pretty much went in for the night, went to bed for the night, then the next day we had practice and just started our whole routine over. We didn't have too much time to celebrate because we had to get ready for this game. That's pretty much it.

Q. Just to follow up on that, since it was your school's first time in the tournament, when you guys came in, was that always the talk, let's get the first tournament bid, or was that ever a goal? It hasn't been discussed among you guys at all that it's the first time?
MATT KINGSLEY: I don't think we've talked about it too much. I think that ever since I've been here, I came to school here about five years ago, and just our main goal was to win the conference and go to the NCAA tournament every year, not to go to the NCAA tournament for the first time in school history. Let's just go. Like every team in the country, we want to go there. And we just happened to be the first team in SFA's history to do that, and it's a privilege.

Q. This is really to any of you: Do any or all of you have family and/or friends coming to this? And if you don't, I'm just curious, it's a long way and an expensive trip on short notice. Did that keep people who you would want here from making this trip?
EDDIE WILLIAMS: The short notice, there was a couple more people that I thought could have come. But my parents and my sister along with his family and one more of our families, they drove. I think it was about 18, 19 hours from Oklahoma to Texas. So that means a lot.
MATT KINGSLEY: Eric Bell's parents come to every single game, every one. So I was hoping he would speak up. But his parents are at every game, no matter where we play.
ERIC BELL: Yes, it's true. I don't think they've missed a game since junior college, since I played ball in junior college. They might have missed two last year, but they're definitely on the way here now. I spoke with them before we came into the arena, and my dad told me that they're about three hours out.
I'm very excited that they got a chance to come. And I pretty much knew that they had already made their mind up that they were going to come anyway.

Q. They're driving?
ERIC BELL: Yes, sir.

Q. Have you guys followed the debate, national debate, on the mid-majors and how it seems they're being shut out this year? Obviously you guys earned your way in with a bid so it's a little bit different, but do you feel any -- I don't know if "pressure" is the right word, but any belief that you want to show that the smaller schools can compete with the larger schools in tournaments like this?
MATT KINGSLEY: I think it's always -- a small school like us, that's always our goal whenever we're playing bigger teams, bigger conferences. Our goal is to prove ourselves. That's what we plan on doing. We want to come out here and prove that we can play with any school in the country with our defense. You know, we don't plan on just going out there without a fight.

Q. This is for Josh: As you guys go into this game, of course Syracuse is a major team from a major conference, but you guys, thinking back to the games you played against Texas A & M, Texas Tech, Arkansas, schools like that, did that kind you help you as you prepared for this one?
JOSH ALEXANDER: Yes, those are the purpose of the games in the first place, to go out there and play schools like that, Arkansas and Texas Tech, like we did and just get us better prepared for games like this. We played well with a couple of those teams. A couple games we didn't play as well as we should have. But we definitely got confidence that we can go out here, and if not win, lose in a good way and make it a fight.
LARRY WAHL: Thank you, gentlemen. Good luck. We will have Coach Danny Kaspar of Stephen F. Austin here in about five minutes.
(Short break.)
LARRY WAHL: We'll start with Coach Danny Kaspar of Steven F. Austin. Once again, we ask that you turn off phones and beepers, and if anybody has any questions for Coach Kaspar, please raise your hand. The microphones will be brought to you and then state your name and affiliation.
Coach Kaspar, do you want to start with some remarks about your team?
COACH DANNY KASPAR: Thank you for being here. We're very excited to be here. It has fulfilled a year-long quest when we have set our goals very high, the regular season championship, postseason tournament championship and a trip to the NCAA. This is a special group of young men, a great many of them are back from last year's team, which went 26-6 but lost in the semifinals of the postseason tournament when two of our starters played but played injured.
So we're very excited to be here, and we're looking forward to playing Syracuse, one of the more storied programs in college basketball. They have a fine team, and we know that, and we know that the odds are against us. But they're against half the other teams -- half the teams, the odds are against them; half the odds are for them. So we're looking forward to this.
We played a schedule that played some pretty good teams that hopefully have prepared us for this, and we'll give it our best shot. I'll open it up for questions right now.

Q. When I spoke with you on the phone the other day you said you hadn't had a chance to review much Syracuse tape, and I'm wondering since then what you've learned about Syracuse that you didn't know before.
COACH DANNY KASPAR: Well, I believe we spoke on Sunday. I was on my way back from the tournament home. What I've learned is that I think they're a very skilled group of young men. I think Jonny Flynn is a pro prospect, a top-notch pro prospect. Coach Boeheim has seven or eight members on the team that are very talented. Obviously I think they like to run as much as possible. They have the big men inside that will get them the rebounds, either stop the other team from getting second shots or enable his team to get a second and third shot on many occasions.
The thing that concerns me the most is their fast break. They're very good at it. And when you have people like Rautins, and I hope I say his name -- I have a lot of respect for the kid watching him on tape, but is it Devendorf? I thought Devendorf and Rautins are not only good shooters but they're very well rounded players, very good players.
You know, even when I watched Syracuse for a short time play Connecticut in that six-overtime game, we had just won a game ourselves in our tournament, and my assistant and I were in his room talking about our next opponent in the tournament, but we just kept glancing up at the television because it was such an exciting game. I could tell not only are they talented but I think they're a pretty tough group of young men.
So they're a very formidable opponent for us.

Q. It's the same for Syracuse, of course, but do you think it could be to your advantage at all or could be a help in any way that you're the first game out there tomorrow, that your kids won't sit around all day and let the butterflies continue to multiply and multiply and multiply and they might if you were say going out there at 10:00 o'clock tomorrow night?
COACH DANNY KASPAR: Well, I hope you're right. But I do think that, hey, we get up, we play, and that's probably better than not. I'd rather be playing that game at 12:15 than the 9:00 o'clock game or the 9:30 game at night.
The only thing that I would not like about playing the 12:15 game, that's 11:15 central standard time, our time zone, and I'm not sure how many people are going to be able to watch that game. And I would like for our fans and family and friends would be able to watch us play.
By and large, I think these young men, especially after what happened to us last year when we had -- I think we had a great year beating Oklahoma at Oklahoma, beating San Diego at San Diego and S.M.U. at S.M.U., and after what happened last year, there is a business-like environment with our young men. I'm very proud of our players. I think they're tough kids. They played for me for a few years, so they've got to be tough, and they're very -- what's the word, focused.
I think our biggest concern, even though Syracuse is a great team and Jim Boeheim is a coach that I look up to, he's an excellent basketball coach, our biggest fear is this being our first time and the nerves. So we're trying to keep it loose, just say, hey, just keep doing what we're doing, play the way we've been playing that has netted us 50 wins in two years. We know it's going to come down to -- probably if we are to win this game, we know it has to be the type of games that we won against Oklahoma and San Diego and all these other bigger schools we've beaten over the last few years where we have to win in the last minute of the game. It's going to come down to us hitting a big shot or us stopping them if they have the last possession.
We're not trying to make it something it's not. As I said, I have a great group of young men, and I don't mislead them in any way, shape or form. This is what you've got to do, and if you want to win, this is what's going to have to happen.

Q. Just curious, since this is your first time, could you give us a sense of what it's been like? Obviously school is out, but you must have heard from some people, or just give us some anecdotes or stories.
COACH DANNY KASPAR: You know, 80 to 100 text messages and 50 emails and a lot of phone calls, and they're still coming in from friends who are saying, hey, I didn't want to call you right away. But it's been a great experience.
Really here's how I feel to be very honest with you: This is a reward for hard work put in over a season. I'm not the easiest guy to play for. We practice hard. As I told my players, nobody is going to outwork us, and they've worked very hard to get to this point. We've battled through some injuries this year that caused us to lose maybe a couple games early that we shouldn't have lost. But this is a great group of young men. I have no troubles with them off the floor, even simple things like tardiness have caused us very, very, very few problems. This is their reward for their hard work.
I think all of them are feeling really good about what we've accomplished already, and we want to get this win against Syracuse, but most importantly, let's just play up to our abilities, and if you do that, we're going to leave this gym on Friday feeling one of two ways; we're going to be euphoric because we won a very close game in Syracuse, or I want to feel like Syracuse and all the fans in this arena walked away saying, that is one hell of a basketball team we played today.

Q. Congratulations on the championship.
COACH DANNY KASPAR: Thank you.

Q. Could you tell us a little bit about your defensive philosophy, where it came from and how it's evolved?
COACH DANNY KASPAR: Well, my defensive philosophy, just thinking -- I had a scholarship, I was supposed to be a good shooter. That's probably debatable out there, but I was supposed to be a good shooter myself, and there was games where I could not explain why the shots did not fall, and then there was games where it looked like everything I threw up went in.
As a coach I thought that's going to happen, where my shooters are not -- it's not falling, and they have no explanation. I know they want it to go in. I mean, they're not trying to miss. So I've come with the philosophy that offense is not going to be there for us every night, and we can still win if we play great defense. I also had a great high school coach. He runs a recruiting service now, and he did a great job of convincing me that defense was important.
I have had some great coaches I've worked for, one of them right there at Stephen F. Austin, Harry Miller, still lives in Nacogdoches. He was a great teacher. Gerald Stockton at Midwestern. I worked for Billy Tubbs at Lamar and Gene Iba at Baylor, and I've learned a lot from those men. It's carried through. But as far as the defense is concerned, it probably goes back to my high school coach and my own personal experiences as to how I developed that philosophy.
We just do a lot of repetitive things on defense to make it habit. I think most points are scored on fast breaks. If you make somebody set the ball up in a half-court situation and make them catch it even a few feet further out than what we were doing in practice, that's disruptive. So it's the little things that we work on that hopefully make a difference, in addition to just having the players buy into that.
It goes back to the kind of young men I have. They are such great kids, they bought into it, and they said, okay, we'll do that. I've had teams where they're not so enthusiastic about it.

Q. I'm just curious, you've been in the game a long time. Have you crossed paths much with Coach Boeheim, be it clinics or --
COACH DANNY KASPAR: No. I heard him speak once, and this is many years ago. I played against Syracuse when I was at the University of North Texas. We played Syracuse, that was a long time ago, it was either December of '76 or '77. I can't remember the year, if it was my first or second year there at North Texas. I was a JuCo transfer. Heck, when you're a 21-year-old player, you don't know who the coach is on the other team. I don't know if he was there or not. I know we didn't play in the Carrier Dome. It was a packed house, but there wasn't, whatever it is, 30,000 people there. But it was packed.
They beat us by ten. We had a pretty good team in North Texas. I believe we finished 26-2 that year. They beat us by ten, I remember that, because we thought we were pretty good.
The thing about Syracuse, we were eating in a restaurant and it was snowing pretty good, and I said, golly, is it always this bad of snow storms up here? She said, "This ain't nothing." I said, "Nothing? I can barely see the road out there?" We were at a Denny's or somewhere, some restaurant. She said, "You see that bush out there?" That bush was no more than 15 feet from me. "When you can't see that bush, we're having a bad snowstorm."
I thought as good of a program as it is at Syracuse, if I was good enough to play here, I probably wouldn't choose here growing up on the coast of Texas.

Q. Obviously you earned your way in here, but the debate on the mid-majors and getting bids, I would assume you would side with the mid-majors and there should be more. What's your opinion on the bids and the selection this year?
COACH DANNY KASPAR: I see it both ways. There were a lot of good teams in the high majors this year. I see a team like St. Mary's and California thinking they should be in the tournament. I always think of teams like Utah State and Creighton. They're very good basketball teams. I mean, last year we didn't have much hope of getting in, but I thought, you know, a team like ours could make waves in a tournament, even though we got upset in the semifinals of our tournament.
So I do believe there were a few mid-majors left out that should have been in. I don't think there's probably as many left out as some people might think. But I would think if you -- I could pick three or four teams that should be in this tournament that are not. I hope that answers your question.
LARRY WAHL: Thank you very much.

End of FastScripts

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