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NCAA MEN'S 1ST ROUND: DAYTONMarch 18, 2013Dale LayerDavon MarshallTavares SpeaksJoel Vander PolDAYTON, OHIO THE MODERATOR: We'll be joined by head coach of Liberty, Dale Layer. Coach, we'll start with an opening statement by you. COACH LAYER: On 2 1/2 hours sleep, 8‑hour plane delay, it's great to be in Dayton. What questions might you have? Q. Why was the plane delayed eight hours? COACH LAYER: Let's see. It was some kind of a skid light‑‑ I don't really know. But it wouldn't let us take off. Dumb coaches don't really know. They're probably a need‑to‑know basis, and I didn't need to know. They had to bring in another plane. Tried to fix it, couldn't fix it, brought in another plane. We were up at 4:30 this morning, expecting to leave at 7:00, ended up leaving about 2:30 or something. But glad to be here. Q. Did you get to sit in the plane all that time? COACH LAYER: No. We were in the‑‑ it's a double‑wide‑trailer‑type terminal, but we were allowed to leave a little bit. It was fine. They treated us well, just inconvenient, and we're running late. We're supposed to be here on time for NCAA events. It kind of put some pressure to us. We've done our best. Q. There's a lot of people around the country that the burning question is how did you get here? At 0‑8 and 10‑20, to win your last five, we know how you got here to win your conference, but what happened? And how did you turn things around? COACH LAYER: Good question. 0‑8 to begin the year. My best player, Antwan Burrus, never played a minute. He was my best returning player from last year. Had two starters out, one for nine games, one for six. Had two players in the rotation quit in December. Other than that, things were going really well. I'm very, very thankful that I've got players who have great character.  And if you go through stretches like that, your character's tested and it's revealed, and I think the character was revealed on our guys in a tremendous way. They held on to the hope that at some point we could be a good team. But when you're 0‑8, a lot of people quit. Men quit. Grown‑ups quit. But our guys just kept coming back every day saying let's get better today. I told them in January, I said, There's going to be a story in March of somebody‑‑ there is every year‑‑ of the Cinderella story or the feel‑good story of March. And I said, Why couldn't it be us? Just think if it was us after losing eight games in a row to start the year, and we're in the Dance. They kind of embraced that and started saying, well, why not us? Slogans don't do much for you, but work does, and I think that we worked every day, we improved. I think God blessed our work. I thought in January we were playing December basketball. That's not what you want to do, but that's kind of where we were. In February, we were playing probably two weeks behind where we should have. I told our athletics director, Jeff Barber, I wish we had another month with this group. And he looked at me like I was crazy, for good reason, because we were struggling, but I kept sensing this team was bridging the gap and closing the gap. We hit our stride‑‑ we lost our last game at home, our 20th game, on Senior Night. That's not really what you want to do on Senior Night. As a head coach, the 20 is not what you want to do on the loss column. That's maybe the worst feeling that you can have as a coach. First time I've ever experienced that. Won our last game on the road at Radford, got a little energy from that, looked at the conference tournament bracket. We had to play the home team in the first round, Coastal Carolina, the No. 1 seed in the North who had beaten us twice. High Point, the second round, the hottest team in the tournament. The third round, Gardner Webb, who had won eight straight games. And then arguably the best team from day one to the second to last day in our league, Charleston Southern. So we did not have an easy draw. It was the hardest. I think the odds have been stacked up against us from day one. But I think, when you have the odds stacked against you, it can turn into the best story, and I think that's probably what we experienced. Q. Paul Daugherty, sportsillustrated.com‑‑ COACH LAYER: Cincinnati Enquirer? Q. Yeah. COACH LAYER: I read you every morning. I'm a big Reds fan. Q. Oh, good. Because of the religious emphasis of the university, do you attract a different type of player, and can you describe that type of player? COACH LAYER: That's a good question. I think that the mission of the university is biblical world view. It is‑‑ it probably permeates every class, to some respect. We've got medical school being built. We've got a law school. You can major in anything. A player has to embrace who we are, not necessarily every belief, but the culture. So our team is built upon the culture of Liberty, not that every player carries a bible everywhere they go, although some do. Their head coach does. So it's part of who we are as the fabric of our university. Liberty is the largest Christian university in the world, 13,000 students, 100 online students. They're spending literally millions and millions of dollars on the infrastructure as we speak. It's a special place. Athletics is very important at Liberty. It's not the most important thing, but it's‑‑ we want this to be at some point a BYU type for evangelicals, a Notre Dame type school for evangelicals. We're not there yet, but that's kind of where we're heading, and any player who comes in has to embrace the culture. Fortunately, I think God has worked the work in these guys' lives and my life during the year that the odds were stacked against us. The adversity was hard, strong, tough every day. The negativity from fans, from friends, from family was consistent. And it's hard to come to work every day like that for an 18‑ to 22‑year‑old kid. I'm so proud of them. I think God used this in their lives and in my life. It will be a story and a testimony for the rest of their lives that, hey, we can do something when it's all stacked against us, no matter what it is‑‑ being a dad, being a worker, being a businessman, being a husband. I think this will be a story that will resonate in their hearts for the rest of their lives. I think we'll all be changed because of it. Q. A lot of America thinks that the tournament really doesn't start until Thursday. What would it mean for your program, particularly after all you've been through this year, to win the tournament? COACH LAYER: I'm just happy to have a good day. That's been our mantra all day. If you have a good day today and wake up early and have a good day tomorrow, good things can happen to you. We've had the hope that, if we did things the right way, it can turn into a good story. I think the tournament starts today. We've got hats. We've got trophies. We've got banners. It gives us a right to play tomorrow. There are a lot of good teams who won't be playing tomorrow, but I don't think you can marginalize what we did in the face of what we had to experience and overcome. If anybody wants to disregard that or marginalize it, I would say, well, what have you overcome? Q. Coach, I just want to play off that. How did you become a Reds fan? COACH LAYER: My dad was born in Cincinnati. I've got a hundred relatives right outside of Louisville. I came to visit my grandparents every summer in Louisville. We would make the trek up‑‑ what is it, '81 or whatever it is‑‑ to Crosley Field. I lost my first baseball glove on July the 4th‑‑ I would say it's probably 1966, the fireworks show. And my dad said, Don't bring your glove, pal. Don't do it. You're going to lose it. I said, I want to catch a fly ball or a foul ball. And during the fireworks show, I lost it. Saw Pete Rose hit a double that was above the‑‑ is it the yellow line? But the umpire said it was below the yellow line at Crosley. Big Red Machine. It's kind of part of how I grew up listening to Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhal. Great memories. Baseball is great over the radio. That's kind of how I was brought up from my dad. Q.  I don't mean to overemphasize this religious aspect, Coach, but do you get‑‑ have you gotten players there that you might normally not have gotten because they prefer that aspect of it and they're comfortable with it? COACH LAYER: I think it narrows the field of people that would be interested in Liberty, but the people who are interested would be overly interested. It runs the whole gamut. Tomasz Gielo is from Poland. He came because we recruited him the hardest, and he wanted to come to America. He's 6'9", sophomore, started most of the last two years. I asked Tomasz after his first year, I said, Tomasz, how do you like it? He said, Coach, you guys are great. My teammates are awesome. You all have accepted me from day one. He said, But the thing I didn't understand is the religious aspect of it, and I've grown closer to God in the past six months, and that's maybe the best thing that has happened to me. He didn't choose Liberty for that reason, but it was kind of an added benefit. There are guys who want to go to a Christian university, and if you want to go to a Christian university and you want to play Division I athletics and you want to have a support system athletically that's‑‑ our facilities are literally high major, becoming high major. So if you want a Division I athletic experience that is not a compromise just because it's a Christian school, Liberty is the place. So the word is not out there yet, but when people come to our campus, they go, I can't believe what's going on here. You guys are spending money on football, and our baseball stadium is SEC quality. Our basketball facility, we've got a brand‑new practice facility that just opened up. Our arena seats 8,000, NBA scoreboard. No one knows those kinds of things. If you want a Christian education and you want a high Division I experience, not that we are there yet, but that's our aspiration. It's an itch, and it's a good thing, and it's a good match for a lot of people. Q. One last thing, Coach. Marshall couldn't go to‑‑ he did transfer in, but he had options of some pretty good programs, right? COACH LAYER: John Caleb Sanders had low‑end Big 12 offers. Davon had several offers from higher institutions. Tavares had a couple that were higher level. They all chose Liberty for different reasons. I don't want to speak for them, but I think the Christian aspect was part of it. If you have a Christian school with poor academics, you don't want to go there. If you want to play high Division I or Division I experience and it's a compromise in facilities and how you're treated, well, you don't want to do that. But Liberty has that unique blend of Christian education and a high level of athletic experience. Not that our league is that yet, our league is getting there, but what we're trying to do athletically is moving forward very, very quickly, and I think ten years from now it very likely could be on par with a BYU and a Notre Dame‑‑ not in tradition, but on that type of a trajectory. It's what we're hoping, anyway. THE MODERATOR: Thank you for your time. We're joined by Liberty student‑athlete Joel Vander Pol. Open up the floor for questions for Joel. Q. Were there moments during the season that you doubted, obviously, that you can get here, but that you could even have a representative season? JOEL VANDER POL: I think it's easy to have doubts like that during the season. But when your leader and head coach every single day instills confidence in the players and shows faith in us, that goes a long way. Every single day he was our biggest cheerleader, our biggest fan, and that was a really big deal for us and a great reminder for us. Q. Davon, can you talk a little bit about your options, your choices behind Liberty and why you chose Liberty. DAVON MARSHALL: I had a couple schools, Wichita State, UNLV. Oregon showed me interest too. LIU Brooklyn, North Carolina Central, but I chose Liberty because I came from a Christian background. When I came on my visit, they welcomed me with warm hands‑‑ the coaching staff, the players, and everything. It just felt right for me. Q. For Davon and also Tavares, could you kind of‑‑ what was the low point of the season? Not to dwell on that, but could you compare it with what it was like to win your conference tournament and knowing you were coming to the NCAAs after everything you've been through? DAVON MARSHALL: Low point was probably beginning of the year when we were 0‑8. Guys started to quit. It was a lot of long days at practice. Guys are just down on themselves. We're thinking about next year, not looking forward to really finishing up this year strong. But towards the end of the year, we started buying into everything the coaches were saying. The chemistry started building, continued to work hard at practice, and it paid off for us. TAVARES SPEAKS: I think for me the low point was coming off, I think, a win and then headed into Senior Night, my last game at the Vines Center, and to lose in the way we did, it was just kind of a devastating loss. Trying to keep a clear head going into the conference tournament and coming off a loss like we did, it definitely discouraged our team as a whole. So just keeping each other on the right path and giving each other that confidence back was a difficult task. Q. Coach was in here earlier and said that‑‑ I guess it was in December when he pulled you all together and said every March there is that one team. You know what I'm talking about, I guess. That Cinderella team. It might have been when you were 0‑8. I forget. Give us a little bit of that story, and if you were 0‑8, if it was the lowest point of the season to that point, how much did you believe in what he was saying? JOEL VANDER POL: We definitely believed him because he's been coaching for 30 years, and every single year we definitely hear a team that's‑‑ Greg Gumbel is doing a story on someone special every single year that was 0‑10 or something like that. So just looking back now, it kind of made Coach look like a prophet, and we're really excited to be that team so far. THE MODERATOR: Joel, Davon, and Tavares, thanks for your time. Good luck tomorrow night. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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