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NCAA MEN'S 1ST ROUND: DAYTON

March 14, 2011

DAYTON, OHIO

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock coach Steve Shields and student-athletes Alex Garcia-Mendoza and Solomon Bozeman. We'll start with questions for the student-athletes.

Q. Solomon, what did you think of the accommodations coming out here, the chartered flight?
SOLOMON BOZEMAN: It was great. It was definitely something new for us. A big charter flight. It was something new for the team. But, I mean, it was great.

Q. Alex, have you ever been on a charter flight before like that for a basketball game?
ALEX GARCIA-MENDOZA: No, this is my first time, as many of my teammates, too, and we are just enjoying, everybody having fun and just enjoying this opportunity and great experience.

Q. Wondering what your schedule has been like since the announcement last night, kind of how much sleep did you get, and did you leave last night, did you leave today? What's the travel schedule been like so far?
SOLOMON BOZEMAN: The traveling has been pretty good. I didn't get much sleep last night. We found out on Selection Sunday, obviously, but we stayed around the gym, had meetings, and then we went to pack our bags and got up this morning, and we left around 8:15 to head to get on the plane.
But it's been a good experience. It was fun getting on the charter flight, and we're just enjoying the moment.

Q. Alex, for people who haven't followed you all year, what are maybe a few things throughout your season that you've had to overcome to get this far that people haven't realized if they hadn't followed you all year?
ALEX GARCIA-MENDOZA: I think we're a team, we have worked extremely hard at the end of the season. We put all the pieces together.
We had seven new players, so it took time for us to adapt. But once it happened we became a really good team, and I think we accomplished what we planned from the beginning and we made it to the NCAA Tournament.

Q. What's the best part of being on that charter flight as opposed to some other way to travel?
ALEX GARCIA-MENDOZA: Well, there's a lot of space. And you actually -- you can play around with your teammates a little bit more, joke around. While in a regular airplane you gotta be respectful to everybody.
But it was really exciting. It was fun.
SOLOMON BOZEMAN: It's just more comfortable. Everybody seemed more relaxed. I mean, it was a great experience being on a charter flight. And, I mean, there was more room. Usually it's packed and everybody's loud and talking, but it was just more comfortable. It was a smooth flight.

Q. Solomon, you committed to Ole Miss, is that right, and then you went to South Florida, and now you're here at your current school, Arkansas Little Rock. Why all the traveling? Why all the switching?
SOLOMON BOZEMAN: I had a lot of coaches get fired. I mean, before I -- I signed with Ole Miss out of high school, or I committed to them, and then before I got there, before I even signed with them, my coach I planned on playing for, he got fired.
So then I went to South Florida. It was the Big East and that's a great conference. And my coach ended up getting fired after my freshman year. And Stan Heath came from Arkansas. And Coach Heath from Arkansas, and I was in Arkansas my senior year of high school, and he never really recruited me. So I left that year and came back home to Arkansas Little Rock. And it's been a great fit. Now we're at the NCAA Tournament, so it's been a good experience.

Q. So when you leave the SEC -- you never really got there but you had planned on it. Then you're in the Big East, and then you go to a lesser known conference, do you think at all that, well, maybe I'm losing out on NCAA Tournament dreams here?
SOLOMON BOZEMAN: I thought about that, but I really thought that if I -- I really thought, I mean, the Big East is so hard, I mean, and I knew if I left and came to UALR, I'd have a better chance to get to the big dance with UALR than with South Florida, because there's so many good teams in the Big East. You've got Pitt, UConn, Syracuse, and they were only taking about eight to ten teams. So it was a big change. I mean, the crowd big differences, but I'm glad I made the choice because we're in the big dance now.

Q. How satisfying is this for you, then?
SOLOMON BOZEMAN: It's very satisfying. I have no regrets. I love my teammates. I love all my coaches. And I think it was the best move.

Q. Solomon, just wondering how many times have you seen the replay of your 3-pointer and how many times have you replayed that in your mind since then?
SOLOMON BOZEMAN: I've probably seen it about 50 times now. I watch SportsCenter a lot and I've been seeing it on SportsCenter. I went to my mom's house the next day after the game, and she rewinded and showed it over like 25 times. So I had to leave her house and get away for a minute because I got tired of seeing it.
But it was a great moment. It was a great shot. And, I mean, my teammates who stayed together and fought hard and everything that we worked on, it paid off. Now we're in the big dance and we just want to try to compete and make some noise.

Q. Alex, I think just about every team has kind of a team superstition or superstitions, I guess you'd say. What is it for you guys? What is a thing you do before every game, after every game, whatever it might be, that you feel like has kind mysteriously helped get you here?
ALEX GARCIA-MENDOZA: Well, we have a Brazilian, myself being Mexican, Kibi from Canada and Marlon from Brazil and myself, we -- and Courtney Jackson, we all four pray in our own language, so we kind of do that every time before the game and everybody get together. And that's how our routine goes before every game.

Q. Solomon, I've always wondered, when teams make it to Dayton for the preliminary round games, if they're part bummed out that they're not in that official field of 64, is that what it is? But what are your feelings and what do you think are your team's feelings about being here?
SOLOMON BOZEMAN: We're excited about being here. I mean, we don't look at it as a play-in game or whatever. We're just excited about being here, and it just makes this team more hungry.
We're already coming in with a chip on our shoulder. And a lot of people didn't expect us to be here in the first place, but now that we're here, you know, this just makes us hungry and makes us just want to go out and compete even more harder than we were going to compete at the beginning.
So it just makes us hungry, and we are ready to get on the court and play. Hopefully we can get a win tomorrow and keep winning. We're here to win. We're not just here to be here.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you. Questions for Coach.

Q. Alex mentioned you got guys from a couple different countries on your team. Just kind of wondered how that all came together for you, and has it been a recruiting focus or did it just kind of work out that way?
COACH SHIELDS: No, we do have guys from different countries, when you look at Alex Garcia-Mendoza from Mexico, he came from Northeastern Junior College out in Colorado. We had a previous player from out there, Shane Edwards, played for us two and three years ago and had a lot of success for us. He was First-Team All-League his senior year. He's been playing in the NBDL the last couple of years, and so that was the connection.
Also Marlo, who is from Brazil, played junior college ball in Midland where we had a connection with Joe Golding knowing the people from out there and being a West Texas guy. And I've coached in Texas for a long time as well. So it was more of a connection thing.
We also have a couple of young men from Canada, Tramar Sutherland and Eric Kibi.

Q. How do you go from 8 and 22 to the NCAA Tournament?
COACH SHIELDS: Good question. We had some misfortune last year as a basketball team.
Mike Smith, in our first conference game, unfortunately blew his knee out. And he was a senior, an excellent player for us. And that was the first conference game of the year. We played an 18-game conference schedule at that time, 17 games left. And we didn't handle the adversity very well as a team.
And as every coach in the country talks about, you're only as good as how you handle adverse situations. I don't care if it's Duke winning a national championship a year ago. I mean, they faced a lot of adverse situations along the way and handled those in a very positive way.
But we didn't handle it very well last year. We had five juniors on that team. Those guys recommitted when the season was over, led by Solomon and Alex. And they had a great off-season with John Barron. I've got a strength coach that has been with us for five years. His name is John Barron. And in my opinion he's the best strength coach in the country.
And we geared everything toward toughness in the off-season. And I think it's paid dividends for us. And we haven't been perfect this year, by any stretch. But I think this group of guys has handled adversity in a much more positive way.

Q. Could you talk a little bit about what places you've been before in your coaching life and kind of what you've taken from them, kind of what path you've taken to get here?
COACH SHIELDS: I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

Q. Where you've been in your coaching career and kind of what you've taken from different places, how you've gotten here in your coaching career.
COACH SHIELDS: Well, I think back to I started out as a high school coach in Central Texas. Took over a team that had won two games the previous year and we were fortunate to have won 23 in the turnaround. And then I went to a junior college and was an assistant for a very good coach, Ken DeWeese, that I learned from for three years.
Then I went to work for Bob Marlin at Pensacola Junior College right after they won the national championship. It's a small world type thing where he's now the head coach at Lafayette in our league. And a great coach I was able to learn from there.
And I also worked for Scott Schumacher at Kilgore Junior College in East Texas and learned a lot from him as well.
Then I went back to McLennan where I played, had been an assistant. We were fortunate in my second year there to go to the national junior college tournament. We had been -- McLennan nan hadn't been there in 22 years and we went there in '98, so I felt like that was a very good accomplishment for our program, much like this is for us at this time.
But I've been fortunate to be at Arkansas Little Rock for 11 years now. Porter Moser hired me in 2000 from McLennan. We took over a situation where they had only won four games the year before. As I mentioned those other coaches I had been fortunate to work for, Porter did a great job in getting the mindset of those guys turned. We won 18 games that first year, 18 the second, 18 the third, and he went to Illinois State, and I was fortunate to be able to stay due to Chris Peterson, our administration.
And during our time we've won four division championships, and those are great accomplishments for our student-athletes and our program, but we haven't been able to take that next step.
Two years ago it felt like we had a good chance going in with a 23-8 record. We were 11-3 in true road games and had four seniors and just didn't play real well in our semifinals of the conference tournament.
But that's the thing I'm most proud of with this group. This group of seniors, those five guys, have been really good, as I mentioned earlier, throughout the off-season, and they don't care who gets the credit. I mean, they're about being a part of something bigger than themselves as evident with our play over the last four games.

Q. Initial thoughts on UNC Asheville and how similar do you think you two guys are? Because you're pretty guard-dependent on the scoring.
COACH SHIELDS: I think they've got two premiere guards when you look at Dickey and Primm. Those guys can score, averaging 15 and 14 a game. Both of them can shoot the ball, 37 and 35 percent from 3-point line. You know they're extremely well coached, the job that Eddie's done over a number of years. And they force a lot of turnovers. We've got to have good value of the basketball tomorrow night.
They can -- as evident with them forcing Coastal Carolina into 21 turnovers in the championship game, they're very sound defensively. Anytime you only give up 41 percent from the floor for a season, especially when you look at the schedule that those guys played, having played Georgetown, Ohio State, North Carolina, Auburn, those people, and throughout conference play, you know they're sound defensively. And I haven't been able to see but a couple of game tapes on them with the quick turnaround.
But you know anytime you've got really guard play, that's number one. And then they've got a number of guys that play their roles extremely well. I mean, Williams is a great shot blocker. Stephenson can get the ball to the paint, and they've got guys that can get to the foul line.
We know we've got to be very sound in our transition defense and our half court defense. And we've got to be able to rebound the ball.

Q. I know you can't anticipate nervousness, and is there really any prevention from what's going to happen when you guys haven't been here before and you first step on the floor and the bigness of the moment? Other than maybe calling an early time-out, what do you do to try to combat what you assume you expect to happen in the first few minutes?
COACH SHIELDS: Good question. My big point to our guys, and obviously we're excited to be here, anytime you've got five seniors and you want those guys to enjoy each and every moment, but these guys are driven and want to keep their season going. I mean, they want to continue to play, as Asheville does. And I don't think our group is going to be satisfied with just being here. And I think they're going to play with a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm.
Obviously they're going to have some nerves to them. But we've been in situations before where you're down in games and where you've had to handle some adversity.
You know facing a team like Asheville, there's going to be runs in this game, and we've got to handle those in a positive way.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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