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SOUTHEASTERN CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 13, 2013Colin BorchertRick RayFred ThomasNASHVILLE, TENNESSEE MISSISSIPPI STATE – 70 THE MODERATOR: We'll start with Coach Ray and then the student athletes. COACH RAY: I'm really happy for our players. They've been through a lot this season and for them to come down here to Nashville and the SEC Tournament and experience some success and just grind it out and get that win, just really happy for those kids the way they keep competing out on the court. The one thing I can say for our kids is they continue to develop on the court, not just individually but as a team, too, and I think you see some of the maturation process and some of our players, even a guy like Colin Borchert who was a junior college kid and you see the junior beside his name but he's not played basketball at this level and you see that he continues to progress as a player. Same thing with Fred Thomas. We got to get him stop shooting 3s with three minutes left in the ballgame we're trying to win the game. Little bit better shot selection by him as the season continued to progress but I'm just happy for our kids. Thank you. THE MODERATOR: All right. We'll take your questions just for the two student athletes at this time. Q. Colin, you guys lost 13 in a row, it's been 3 out of 4 you've won. What's been the difference? COLIN BORCHERT: You know, I think we just had to slow it down a little bit and go out there and grind. We're not that talented of a team but, you know, we can work harder, we can control that. I think that's the one thing that we've been doing is going out there and controlling how hard we work and I think that's the best thing about it is we go out there and give it a hundred percent like tonight, man. We were out there flying around, being active on defense and offenses just rolled over, started making shots, going to the basket and eventually we started hitting them. THE MODERATOR: Questions for either the student athletes. Go to the left side. Q. Fred, this is kind of a basic question but what's the motivation for the players to go out there, play hard and play enthused? FRED THOMAS: I can say we motivate ourselves most of the time and our coaches do, too, so like we go out there every night like give it all we got. We going to try to play smarter, tougher and harder than the other team. It carried over tonight. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions for the either of the student athletes? Q. Fred, y'all struggled from 3 point range all season and y'all were almost 50 percent tonight, you were 50 percent.  What was the difference tonight from long range from 3 point range? FRED THOMAS: Well, like my coach told me like to come out with some energy and play hard and I guess it carried over to my offensive game. I got to hit some shots. It was pretty good for me and my team. THE MODERATOR: Other questions? Q. This question is for anyone there, the players. Basically you shot 46 percent the first half, 47 percent in the second half. Do you guys think you need to put up better numbers in order to continue winning in this tournament? COLIN BORCHERT: I don't think so. You know, I just think that we have to go out there and play Mississippi State basketball and that's on the defensive side. You know, Coach harps on us every day we have to play defense to the best of our ability. We don't want the scores to be in the 70s or 80s. We want 50s, 60s, so we can slow it down and get high percentage shots and work the ball around so everyone gets the opportunity to attack to the basket, get offensive rebounds and play their game. THE MODERATOR: Other questions for either student athlete? Q. Fred, you talked about motivation a little bit but I know during that losing streak there was a lot of talk about how poorly the team was playing, about the streak, about all the adversity you faced. How much motivation was that to kind of just answer the critics after that long losing streak? FRED THOMAS: We're not a team that's going to give up. We keep motivating each over every night we play. It carried over tonight. We're going to get ready for the Tennessee game, should carry over to that game. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions for the student athlete? All right, fellas. We'll excuse you. Return to the locker room. Thank you very much. We'll continue on now with Coach Ray. If you have a question for him if you'll raise your hand and get a microphone to you. Hands up. Let's start on the left. Q. Rick, Coach Martin saluted you and your team for how hard and enthused you played. I kind of ask you the same question of Fred, where do you think that comes from, how is that produced when the overall results are not what you'd like? COACH RAY: I think it's got to be the staple of our program. I really believe that today's recruiting efforts, if you miss out on somebody that's a 5 star or 4 star guy, you better get a 3 star guy who can work, you know, and I really believe that that's got to be our staple of our program. We got to make sure we go out and out work our other people. I tell our guys every single time, you know our goal is to play harder than the other team, play tougher than the other team and play smarter than the other team. Because we're so young and inexperienced a lot of times we don't play smarter than the other team. I thought for the most part throughout the season we continued to play harder and tougher than the other team and I think our guys are starting to believe what they need to do individually and as a team in order for us to meet our goal. To me, like it's hard because you're supposed to play hard. You're not supposed to get a gold ribbon for playing hard. This is what you're supposed to do. And so I'm always amazed at people who talk about how hard we play and I'm just like we're supposed to do that. Sometimes you don't make shots, sometimes you don't make the right pass, you know, that's understandable but not playing hard, I don't get that. So, I just think it's something our guys expect. Q. Coach, I know you've heard a lot of moniker of worst team in SEC basketball history. What do you think about that at this point? COACH RAY: Well, I'm a math major. I majored in applied mathematics and so I'm in logic. If you finish 13th in the season, you can't be the worse team ever in SEC history. That pretty much solves all that. Q. Rick, just never to solve the 1-3-1. How well do you think your guys executed that tonight? COACH RAY: You know, the 1-3-1 defense is a unique defense. I think a lot of people play zone, they play a 2-3 zone, they play a 3-2 zone and the one reason I wanted to play the 1-3-1 is one, for the pressure that it applies on the other team and then, two, I don't think a lot of people spend a lot of time with zone against a 1-3-1. They have a lot of zone offense for a 2-3 and a 3-2 but a lot of people don't have a great zone offense for a 1-3-1. It really just relies on having guards out top that can really handle pressure and distribute. You can do everything you want to against a 1-3-1 but if you don't have two guards up top who can handle pressure and pass versus pressure, it's going to be hard for you to solve that problem. THE MODERATOR: Other questions? Q. Rick, how do you handle the hours until tomorrow afternoon against Tennessee and what are going to be the key factors in that game? COACH RAY: Well, we're not going to talk about the quick turn around with our guys. I think if you want to focus a successful team, you got to be task orientated. What we're going to do is talk about what we need to do in order to have success against Tennessee. The other outliers, the time, the turn around, us having 6 guys, we never addressed that with our team. So, this quick turn around, it will never come up in our discussion. We'll talk about hey, this is what we need to do to stop this play against Tennessee, this is what we need to do to score against Tennessee, this is what we need to do as far as like with our 1-3-1 defense. I don't talk about like those other things because I think kids are impressionable and whatever you put into their mind they'll start believing it. THE MODERATOR: Any other questions for Coach Ray? All right. Thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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