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EA SPORTS MAUI INVITATIONALNovember 19, 2012Eric BovairdDominique CooksDeAndre HaskinsLAHAINA, HAWAII Chaminade – 86 THE MODERATOR: This was Chaminade's seventh victory here at the tournament. Last victory was 2010 versus Oklahoma, and this is their fourth opening round win. DeAndre had 32 points. That was the game high. Dominique had nine points and six rebounds. Turn it over to Coach Bovaird for opening remarks. COACH BOVAIRD: Yeah, sure. We're ecstatic. That's an incredible win for our program. We believed all along that we had a chance to play with these guys over here, and we knew if we got down to a close ballgame, that there was a good chance we were going to win. I have so much faith in my team. I'll put them up against anybody, anybody in the country on a given night. These guys have worked so hard to get to where they are right now. You have no idea. They've worked just as hard as any Division I athlete. I'm really proud of them. Q. Talk about your team's poise at the end, especially at the free‑throw line? COACH BOVAIRD: Yeah, I was a little worried about that myself, because in our previous game against Western Washington we were 15 for 31 from the free‑throw line. It really hurt us in that game. I wanted to talk about that free throw shooting in practice, and we needed to practice more. So it was a little bit of a focus, but I've had faith in these guys. These guys are great players, great shooters. I had all the confidence in the world making shots down the stretch. Q. Are you impressed with the way you guys rebounded tonight against a larger team out there? COACH BOVAIRD: Well, it was a huge focus for us. Obviously, when you look on paper, their size, their strength, their weight as compared to us, everybody, it didn't take a basketball genius to realize they're going to try to beat us inside and try to beat us on the boards. So it's something we talked about for a long time, and the guys did a great job. I think we had ten, eight offensive rebounds in the first half. It shows that they were ready to come to battle. They crashed the boards like crazy. They boxed out. They executed the game plan, and just did a great job. Q. This is win number 7 out of 83 games in this tournament. Chaminade's never won twice in this tournament. Is that on your minds now? COACH BOVAIRD: Not exactly at this moment (laughing). I'm pretty happy about this win right now. But we just talked about it in the locker room. You know, Lee Bailey said this summer, Coach, we can win that. We can win that tournament. And these guys believe that. They believe that. That is the first step in achieving something like that. They believe it. So we're going to come out, get prepared for whoever wins this game, and they're going to be in for a battle. Q. We saw you guys practice the other day. Everybody was pretty relaxed. I noticed the first half you couldn't throw it in the ocean, nobody could. Texas couldn't, you couldn't. But something happened. How did you all of a sudden gel like that? You guys didn't seem nervous the other day. COACH BOVAIRD: Well, I hope that they get the confidence from me, because they know that I have confidence in them to make shots. I tell them all the time that you're going to make the next one. Just shoot it. If they have that in the back of their mind knowing they have the confidence from the coach, they can go out there without anything in their head, step up and shoot and make open shots, and they did that tonight. Q. So you're not fooling around when the guys from Chaminade say they can beat just about anybody if the stars align? COACH BOVAIRD: Don't even necessarily need the stars to align. Q. No, I mean these stars right here? COACH BOVAIRD: Oh, well, we definitely need these two sitting right here. We're just extremely happy. We're excited about the win, but knowing these two right here and the rest of our team, they've got a lot more goals to accomplish. I told these guys some day or some time we'll celebrate this win. I promise you, we'll celebrate. But it isn't going to be tonight. It isn't going to be tomorrow. Eventually that day will come, but right now these are great basketball players. We're going to be focused on our next opponent. Q. DeAndre, 32 points tonight, can you talk about going off like that against a Texas team that's one spot out of the top 25 as of this morning? DEANDRE HASKINS: Well, I don't even‑‑ I just, honestly, last game I played an off game because I was thinking too much. Honestly, I just came into this to play hard and play with my teammates. I have a lot of great guys on my team, mostly Darko, my roommate. Man, he always motivates me and keeps me in check a lot of times because I kind of go off a little bit.  But he helps me out. Just, God, and glory to God all day every day. He inspires me, and I get that drive. I get that drive. Q. Could you guys talk about what Kevin Hu gave to you guys tonight? It seemed like he really had some swag out there and got you guys going? DOMINIQUE COOKS: Kevin's one of the funniest guys you'll ever meet. His energy is contagious. Tonight, as you said, we couldn't hit a shot to start the half. He came in and really got us going. He made some shots and I think that's when we started to believe, okay, we can beat these guys. Kevin was big tonight, especially in the first half. Some of the plays he made really got us going. I think that's one of the big reasons we got a win tonight. Q. Rhys seemed to be struggling tonight. I know he was ill. How big of a motivational factor was he just the way he was able to hang in there? COACH BOVAIRD: He's a balancer. We knew what we were going to get out of Rhys tonight. He got a case of the food poisoning a couple days ago. We were hoping it would be cleared up. The poor guy was throwing up on the whole flight over from Oahu a couple days ago, and hardly practiced at all yesterday. He just felt horrible. But he's a fighter. Our game plan with him was to get him in there for a minute at a stretch and just battle. If he had to use a foul, I think he knocked down a big three at one point. Got a couple of offensive fouls on Texas. He's a good player. He's a battler. He executed his portion of the game plan, and I'm proud of him also. THE MODERATOR: Why don't you make a quick comment on the fact that Tony Randolph and Ralph Sampson were in there? COACH BOVAIRD: It was just kind of unique, because after I accepted this job, I would say there haven't been two or three days gone by without somebody asking me about the Virginia‑‑ the Chaminade victory over Virginia. I figured with a big win like this tonight, that some of those questions might stop coming. Maybe we'll be talking about the Texas victory 30 years from now. At least I hope. But, no, the guys got to meet Merv Lopes, and Tony Randolph, Mike Vasconcellos, it's a huge part of Chaminade history. It's a huge part of the EA Sports Maui Invitational. That's kind of what got this ball rolling. The guys got to meet all those guys, and I think they were inspired. I think they were inspired from meeting them. So it was a huge lift for us. Q. You just had a big upset, and it was great. You had a celebration in the locker room. Are you going to immediately go and scout out USC and Illinois? COACH BOVAIRD: Oh, of course, of course. That's what you do. That's what you do if you want to have a chance to win. I'm going to watch as much of this game as I can. I actually have to drive the guys back to the hotel. Coaches at this level usually have to drive. So I'll drive the guys back to the hotel. I'll watch it. I may come back, but I'll watch it on TV, and I'll watch it at least three or four times before tomorrow. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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