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NCAA MEN'S 1ST ROUND: DAYTONMarch 19, 2013Jason BrickmanC.J. GarnerJamal OlasewereJack PerriDAYTON, OHIO THE MODERATOR: We're joined by the student‑athletes of LIU Brooklyn. We'll open up the floor for questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Could all of you perhaps address you guys have been here before. Your opponent has not been here. Do you think that's a huge advantage for you? C.J. GARNER: I think it's an advantage, but at the same time, they're a pretty good team, and at this time of the season, it really doesn't matter. You've just got to come out and play real good basketball. JASON BRICKMAN: I think their experience is definitely an advantage for us, being here for a third straight year. I think that we're going to be comfortable in this environment and atmosphere and playing on national TV. So I think it's definitely an advantage. JAMAL OLASEWERE: Like they said, experience is very key, especially in situations where we may be down or the game might be hairy. Q. Jamal, can you talk a little bit about your relationship with Londell Francis, how it came about, maybe a story or two from this year and how it's had an effect on your life. JAMAL OLASEWERE: Londell has‑‑ it's sickle cell, right? ‑‑ sickle cell, and he joined the team in the beginning of the year, and he's been a brother ever since. We treat him like a little brother. He's a great guy, very joyful, even though he's dealing with this strong threat. I remember specifically in Quinnipiac‑‑ actually on Quinnipiac Senior Night, when me and C.J. had our big games, he congratulated me for my big game. He was very happy for us. Q. C.J., for you in particular, these last three games in the MVC Tournament, offensively, what have you been able to do so comfortably? C.J. GARNER: I've been able to knock down my midrange jump shots. Also Brickman's been doing a good job finding me in transition, which he always does. Basically just playing off my teammates and the confidence my coach gives me. Q. By now you're probably aware James Madison's leading scorer and rebounder has been suspended for the first half. You guys‑‑ obviously during the season you lose players too. Could you kind of address the fact what this could do to a team when you're filling in for somebody that's not there, a key player. C.J. GARNER: When Julian went down, it took some time for us to adjust to find our new identity. Them not having him in the first half very well could be a problem for them. But I'm not sure about that. Just going to go out there and play hard. Just see how things go. Q. Just for the three of you, after losing in the NCAA the last couple of years, how much more ready do you guys feel to get a win this year? JASON BRICKMAN: I think a lot of seniors and myself, I think we're really hungry to get our first win in the NCAA Tournament, just coming in the first round the last two years, I think all of us want to get our first win and hopefully use that momentum and take that into the game against the 1 seed, Indiana. THE MODERATOR: C.J., Jason, and Jamal, thank you for your time. Good luck tomorrow night. Right now being joined by the head coach of LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds, Jack Perri. Coach, we'll start with an opening statement by you. COACH PERRI: We're excited to be here. We're embracing the First Four. Our guys are excited. We got in here yesterday, got a practice in last night, and we're looking forward to playing JMU tomorrow night. Q. How does Goins' first half suspension make it tougher for you today. COACH PERRI: It makes it bizarre in terms of how to prepare for them. Obviously, we're preparing for him to play. That changes them quite a bit. He's just a house down low. But they're unique. T. Hey have the ability to go really small also and very athletic. So it's going to be dangerous one way or the other. Q. How much of an advantage is it the fact that your team has been here the past two years and a lot of the guys have at least been under the glaring light, I guess? COACH PERRI: Yeah, I was talking about that with somebody else before. Obviously, it's a great positive to have all this experience, not just one year, but two years in a row. I think last year against Michigan State our guys didn't have that wow factor. And certainly I think this year, going up against a like opponent, there's definitely more of a sense of urgency to try to get a win here and compete against these guys. So it certainly is going to be a positive. It's certainly not going to be the reason why we win, but I think that certainly helps. Q. You've got either six or seven guys from Texas on your roster. How did that come about? Is there a connection down there? Just talk about that Texas thing. COACH PERRI: Texas connection, yeah. We've done it for a while now. Probably even before I got there. I've been here eight years, and we had an assistant coach, Andy Johnston, who started that pipeline, I guess. He was originally an assistant at West Point. So he knew about Texas. We just kind of started going there and getting a little bit better and better talent each year. Once I got there, it was like, okay, I loved going down there. I loved the events. They were well run, and there was a lot of talent down there. Again, not highly recruited. So then you have New York City, which is the draw, and a lot of kids like to go away from home, keeping the New York City kid is tough. There's so many teams that you're competing with that are like levels, that it was like, okay, let's go down to Texas, and we're getting kids probably better than what we can get here. We get‑‑ Julian Boyd was probably the first one that really got things rolling for us, and then Kenny Onyechi followed after that, and he was our next highest rated recruit. Jason Brickman comes in, and we've really kind of‑‑ we've made a name for ourselves down here. Everybody knows us now when we go down there. They're excited when they hear from LIU Brooklyn. We're going to keep it going because all the players that we've had from Texas have had great careers, and to be honest, a lot of times kids that go away from Texas, they end up transferring back home. Kids that come to LIU, they don't transfer. They stay because they really enjoy it, enjoy New York City. Q. I'm just curious, I know you've been in this environment as an assistant coach, but this is your first time as the head guy. Is that any different for you at all? COACH PERRI: I'd say it's a little bit different, making the decisions on everything. Q. I guess I meant as far as mentally going through the game. COACH PERRI: Hey, what's great is we have a senior‑led group. They help so much, just the fact that they've been through it as well. So, yeah, we're prepared. We're ready to go. Obviously, again, you get a chance to play against a like opponent. We're going in with our eyes wide open, and we're ready to go. Q. Play‑in game, First Round game, used to be a little bit of a stigma, now it's really‑‑ after VCU's run a couple of years ago, it seems like it could be a little bit of an advantage for teams to get out of the first round and kind of whet their beak. COACH PERRI: Yeah, what's following after for our game is one of the best teams in the country, so a little bit different that way. But we've really embraced this. Our players have. I certainly have. We thought this might happen. We've had a lot of adversity this year. To get to this point was a major accomplishment for our group. So with that being said, we've embraced it. We're like, hey, we've never won a tournament game before. We're 0‑5 going in. So we have an opportunity. It's an opportunity, that's all it is, to beat a good team, and it's on a national stage before the rest of this stuff gets going on Thursday. Q. Coach, talk about the matchups, if you will. You've had time to watch film. These are two pretty evenly matched ball clubs as far as I've seen. COACH PERRI: Yeah, evenly matched, but very different. Their guards are big and long. They're tall and long. Our guards are short and fast. We're trying to get the game in the 80s. It's kind of interesting watching their games. They do like to get out in transition some, but not always. Once they get in the quarter court and the half court, they slow it down. That's not to our benefit. I'm interested to see how our guards handle their length. If we can't get out in transition in the half court‑‑ because they are a good defensive team. We'll see how that goes. They do a lot of switching. So it will be interesting. Again, I'm confident in our guys. We have some talented guys as well. How they match up with Jamal Olasewere is going to be interesting too because he's a unique player that a lot of teams have difficulty trying to match up with. Q. Can you tell us about a couple of guys that are kind of on the periphery of your program, Richie Kurlander and Londell Francis. Tell us a little bit about those guys. COACH PERRI: Londell Francis, he's an eight‑year‑old with Team Impact. Team Impact is a program where kids have the ability to be a part of our program as long as they want, and we've adopted him into the program. We set it up right off the bat in September. He came in. We did this whole big party with him. This kid is just a wonderful kid. He's got a great personality. He's got sickle cell anemia, so the kid goes through a lot of pain. He's got to go to the hospital and have these blood transfusions, which is really difficult for an eight‑year‑old. He's awesome. He's awesome. Our guys love him, and they embrace him. He comes to practices after school. He'll do team meals with us. He spends a lot of time around our guys. It's great. It's great to have him be a part of the program. Q. And Richie? COACH PERRI: And Richie, obviously, he just‑‑ he's been around for a long time. He comes to all the games. He's a really good person, very into it. He's a very enjoyable guy to have a conversation with. He's very knowledgeable about the program and all the stuff that he obviously has to go through is unique as well. So to have both of those guys be a part of us is tremendous. Q. Do you feel your players get any kind of inspiration at all, or am I making too much of this? COACH PERRI: You know what, I think‑‑ especially with Londell because he's more‑‑ he's there a lot more, and I think they see him and they see this face that he just‑‑ he's got this great enthusiasm for life and all that he deals with, and we talk to our guys about that. I think it humbles our guys, and they feel really good that they can have this impact on an eight‑year‑old. It's great. We've never done it before, and this is the first time we've done it, and I was excited about the opportunity to do it. I think it's helped our guys quite a bit. It's great. Q. Just curious how much it's helped, if at all, to have Julian Boyd travel with you guys and have him here with you guys. I know he can't play, but does that leadership or that presence help you guys? COACH PERRI: It does. Julian is such a positive kid. Here's a kid that couldn't play for a whole year because of his heart ailment, and then to tear his ACL his senior year, where this was the year that, after two years going to the NCAAs, we were going to have a chance to make some more noise with so many upperclassmen. Him to go down, he could have went the other way and kind of went into a shell, but he's not. He's there. He practices all the time. He's got a great personality and positiveness to him. Everybody enjoys his company obviously, and his leadership is tremendous for the younger guys. We have a lot of older guys too, but for the younger guys, for E.J. Reed, for D.J. Griggs, you can't get better than Julian Boyd, just to see how he works, how he's constantly going after this ACL injury, the next challenge, the next bit of adversity for him. So they see that, and they're like, oh, wow, that's how you're supposed to act. That's how you're supposed to do it. It's great. It's great having him around. THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you for your time. Good luck tomorrow night. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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