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NCAA MEN'S 1ST & 2ND ROUNDS REGIONALS: MIAMIMarch 20, 2009J'Nathan BullockNorris ColeGary WatersMIAMI, FLORIDA Cleveland State 84 LARRY WAHL: We'll open up with Coach Waters making remarks about tonight's game, then we'll open it up for questions to the student-athletes. Coach, you want to start us off. COACH GARY WATERS: You know, if you've ever heard me at a press conference, the first thing I do is give honor to God because he's first in my life. So I don't hesitate to tell the world that. Secondly, I thought our guys came out and followed the game plan. We talked about having a game plan, and they executed it the way we wanted it. We had to hit them early in order to be in that game because they're a very, very talented group, and I think what we did was we surprised them. It took them a while to realize what was occurring out there, and then it became a ballgame. We almost let them back in, and I would have been pretty upset about that. But our guys I thought were resilient during that time, and they continued to just press on, and that's why they've been successful this year. Questions, please? Q. Any of you can answer this: It seemed like to me you talked yesterday about wanting control tempo. It looked like for a good portion, a majority of the game, you were able to do that and play the game at your speed. Is that a fair assessment? COACH GARY WATERS: Oh, yes, yes, a couple times it became easy to score, so we started getting into transition a little bit too much. You know, we wanted to control it completely, and I thought our guys did a good job of it, and they listened exactly to what we wanted them to do. Q. Norris, at what point in the game did you say, wow, we can play with these guys and we can win this ballgame? NORRIS COLE: Well, we believed from the start of the game that we could play with this team, but like Coach said, we knew we had to execute the game plan. We knew we had to go out there and jump on them early, but we were confident in the game plan, and I think we executed. And as the game went on, we stayed with the game plan and didn't veer off, and I think that's why we were so successful tonight. Q. J'Nathan, what was your game plan? J'NATHAN BULLOCK: My game plan was the team game plan, just to come in and focus on what we do, and that's defense, and we stuck to it, and it helped us get this victory. Q. (No microphone). J'NATHAN BULLOCK: No, really just playing the system. We don't have individuals, just trying to do it all by ourselves. It's a Cleveland State team game. Q. It looked like your backcourt pretty much had its way tonight against their backcourt. Norris, would you tell me about your approach to guarding Jeff Teague tonight. NORRIS COLE: Well, I knew he was a very quick, shifty guard so I wanted to break his speed, make him play at a speed where our defense could help if he were to beat me and get behind me. My plan was to keep him within arm's distance to break his speed, then not let him get a full head of steam, and then the team defense behind me helped me on the drives. COACH GARY WATERS: The Horizon League is primarily a guard league. There's some great guards in that league, and I consider Cedric to be the best, and Norris is coming. He's just a sophomore, and he's learning each and every day. I think they feel pretty confident when they go up against someone guard-wise. The positive thing for both of them is on defense, they've always got extra help because that's our team defense to help and support that. But offensively you can see what they can do. They're not afraid to score the basketball, sometimes too much. Q. Norris, yesterday there was a lot of questions about 1986 Cleveland State team and what they did against Indiana, and each one of you said you wanted to create a legacy of your own. Do you feel like you got a start on that tonight? NORRIS COLE: I think we gave ourselves a good start. We're not going to jump ahead of ourselves. We're going to make it one game at a time. We understand what the '86 team did was important for our school, but now it's time for a new chapter and we're going to try to establish that. Q. For both players, you didn't just beat them, you beat them badly. Did you think it was going to be this easy, or are you surprised? J'NATHAN BULLOCK: We know our defense will always give us a chance to win. As the game went on, we gained confidence, and it turned out the way it did. COACH GARY WATERS: One of the things we have said throughout this year, whenever we shoot 40 percent, it's hard to beat us. Today I don't know what we ended up shooting 47, so a team is in trouble then. Q. I hate to be the first guy to ask you about the next game, but I'll be that guy. Did you watch some of the Arizona stuff, and what did you see about them? COACH GARY WATERS: They're very good. I mean, again, it's another talent that we have to deal with. You know, they also play a lot of zone, and so you're going to have to hit some shots. You can't just do moves inside and get the ball inside. You're going to have to hit some shots. They're a tough team, and they're a good defensive team, and their little point guard, he runs their show. I think they do a very good job at what they do. That player when I look at him out there today, he looks like a pro. I'm going to be honest with you. I don't want to think about that right now. I want to savor this a little bit. Give me the night to enjoy this a little bit, and then I'll think about that team tomorrow. Q. You guys said you believed you could win, and you did that with dominance. As the minutes ticked off towards the end, what were you thinking, what were you feeling? How much does this mean to you personally in this program? NORRIS COLE: During the game, we were focused on the game. Even though time was running out, we were just thinking "finish the game." We don't try to get happy even though we're up by a margin. We're college basketball players, we work on game situations, so we were just thinking about finishing the game first and thinking about the celebrations or anything, that's after the fact. But during the game we're focused on finishing it out. Q. Once the game was over and you had won -- NORRIS COLE: There was a sense of accomplishment. We represented our league, the Horizon League. It was a good feeling, but we're not celebrating because we still know we have games to win. COACH GARY WATERS: One of the things he's trying to say is that we've got another game in two days, and we can't be getting over-excited over this game. One of the things one of our seniors said to the team is that once this game is over with, now this is before the game even started, we're going to take it in stride and be ready for the next one. I don't know what that meant at the time. I was pretty excited that he said that. But by the same token this is a very what I call experienced group that understands how to take wins or how to take losses, either way. Q. J'Nathan, the out-of-bounds play, the alley-oop play when they were starting to make a run, all the guys' faces lit up. Was that the point that you think, all right, now we're back in control again? COACH GARY WATERS: Yeah, we thought so, and we knew they would bite on that because they were coming after us pretty hard. If they didn't bite, we knew we'd get the ball and they'd foul us. So we called that play, and I told him, if he's open, throw it. If he's not, take care of the basketball. And he did a very good job of making the play. LARRY WAHL: We're going to let the student-athletes go back to the locker room and leave Coach Waters here for some additional questions. Q. I apologize if this has been asked: How much was the accomplishment of the 1986 team in the back of your team's mind going into this game? COACH GARY WATERS: You know, these guys in our society, our young kids don't even care about what happened in the past. I mean, it could be two weeks ago and they're not even thinking about it. I'll give you a funny little story. I took a group to Dallas, and we're in Dallas, we're getting ready to play a game and everything is pretty exciting, and we had a date to go around and enjoy Dallas a little bit. So we went to the book store depository, where the whole issue with Kennedy. They went in there and they said, man, what happened here? We didn't know all this happened. I'll tell you, our kids today really aren't caught up in history. Q. But there will be a lot of people, basketball fans around the country who will see this result tomorrow and maybe will not have heard of Cleveland State since 1986. What would you say to them? And what is it about Cleveland State in these situations? COACH GARY WATERS: The biggest thing I want to say to them is now Cleveland State is on the map. All we do is try to play and represent our school and our conference, and what we did today is saying that, hey, Cleveland State is a ball player in this whole game now. You know, a lot of people still remember that issue back then, but many people don't because it's so long ago. Q. Piggybacking on a question a little bit ago, you guys will be flashed across the country in highlights and all of that and you're the Cinderella of the tournament so far. You led the whole game. Will that get lost in translation? COACH GARY WATERS: Let me give you something about translation loss, we played a great game this year at Syracuse, right, and you all remember that because the shot at the end went in. But do you know that with 20 seconds ago we were up six? See, no one knows we were dominating that game, but they remember the shot, and that's what brought all the life to whatever went there. Now, the positive thing is we're on ESPN for a whole day or two, and that helps, so the shot was even better. This team has done things throughout this year that in my estimation has gone unseen, and now they're getting a chance to be seen. Q. How is Cedric? And what can you tell us about his knee injury? COACH GARY WATERS: He didn't have a knee injury, he cramped up. We had two guys cramping up. He'll be ready by the next game. LARRY WAHL: Thank you very much, Coach. End of FastScripts |
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