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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: AUBURN HILLSMarch 20, 2013Jordan DykstraTony FiegenScott NagyNate WoltersAUBURN HILLS, MICHIGAN MODERATOR: Let's start off with Coach Nagy. COACH NAGY: Good morning. Obviously we're thrilled to be here. It's our second time. I think this time it's a little less overwhelming for us. The stage is big and we know that. It's bigger than what we're generally used to, but I think last year having made it through the transition from Division II to Division I was very emotional for me and for some of our players and staff. This year it's less emotion. Feels a little bit more like business, and less overwhelming more us. So we're thrilled to be here. We know we're playing a great basketball team. But I know that our players are excited. We've had good practices this week and we're just ready to go. MODERATOR: Questions for the student-athletes. Q. Can you expand on what coach was talking about this being the second time around? TONY FIEGEN: Yeah, last year was a first time for all of us. You know, we'd just experienced the NCAA tournament by watching it on TV. Then last year, you know, it was our first year. Kind of the bright lights, the big stage, it was kind of new for all of us. Like Coach touched on this year, it does feel a little bit like a business trip, you know, because we're coming here to play well. Q. What are your thoughts on Trey Burke from what you've seen on him on film? NATE WOLTERS: He's a great player. Probably the national player of the year. They're a really talented team. They ranked No. 1 earlier in the season. So I mean it will be a good challenge for us and we're looking forward to it. Q. Jordan, can you talk a little bit about coming back this year? JORDAN DYKSTRA: I mean, I don't think that really has a whole lot to do with it. I think like Coach and Tony touched on already that we were here last year in this situation and we've been through this already. So this year is more business. Q. Nate, we've got Valparaiso here in Auburn Hills as well. I was just wondering how many times have you seen that Bryce Drew shot and do you have any recollection of it? NATE WOLTERS: Yeah, I mean I think that's every kid's dream to hit a shot like that. I remember as a little kid just being a huge upset story and he was a great player. So yeah I think that's what kind of all these mid-majors dream about. Q. Tony, you were one of the earlier Division I recruits that Scott had. Can you talk about the process of making that decision to go to SDSU, and then also what that's been like? TONY FIEGEN: Well, coming in I don't know if I really had any expectations. You know, they were going through a transition and times were tough. I'm just glad to be a part of kind of getting South Dakota State back to the winning experience. You know, Coach Nagy held tough through the hard times. And just to be a part of that with these guys and with the alumni that have since graduated, it's just really special and definitely a blessing. Q. Nate, obviously it's about the team and trying to pull off the upset. How do you reconcile that with a lot of the individual stuff that you've been getting? NATE WOLTERS: Not really. I mean, it's a team game. We're just focused on trying to win. But, yeah, Michigan's a really talented team. We're going to have to play really well to stay in the game, and we'll see what happens. Q. Nate, you talked about Michigan's talent, but now that you've seen him on film, what jumps out to you? NATE WOLTERS: Oh, yeah, offensively they're really tough to stop. A lot of talented offensive players. So I mean, they have a great point guard who makes a ton of plays and we'll have to try to keep him in check, but I mean it's going to be a tough task. We probably haven't played an offensive team as good as they are. Q. All year you've talked about how you're kind of a quiet team. Does that help you when you're talking about this big stage? TONY FIEGEN: I think it can play to our advantage. You know, we don't play this game up more than we should. Obviously it's a big stage, it's a very good team. We're just coming in here confident, and we're just going to have to, you know, talk on the floor more than we would talk otherwise, I guess. But, yeah, it's going to be really important that we just go in there and play confidently tomorrow. Q. Tony, you talked about having the experience from last year. How much is that going to help you this year? And then Michigan's a pretty young team. You guys have a lot of seniors? TONY FIEGEN: I think our experience will play to our advantage here. Last year it was kind of -- we got off to a quick start last year that really helped us. I think it will be important for us to get off to a quick start again this year especially definitely. Us three, and we've got more experience back in the locker room that will definitely play to our advantage. Q. Some of you guys came here last year and didn't play your best games. Does that motivate you at all going into this year? JORDAN DYKSTRA: I think it does just knowing we can play well against the good teams. I know for myself it's really fueled my fire this year playing really poorly at the end of last year, and I think for some of the others it has too. So hopefully we come out with another win. Q. Tony, can you talk about a little bit about the match up down low with Jordan Morgan and the other Michigan big guys? What are you seeing on film and what things do you have that could maybe neutralize them? TONY FIEGEN: Well, what we've seen on film is that they really crash the glass. They're good at finishing around the rim and they're obviously bigger than I am. It's going to be important for me just to keep a body on them at all times when the shot goes up. Outside of that, I think maybe just using my quickness and just -- yeah, just stepping away from the basket a little bit. Q. Nate, do you see any similarities between the way you play and Michigan's Trey Burke? TONY FIEGEN: Yeah, I mean, I watch him on TV multiple times this year. I mean, he's a great player, probably the best point guard in the country. So we try to learn things from him and, I mean, he's really good with pick and roll and good shooter. He's going to be tough to guard. Q. Tony, obviously a South Dakota kid from Madison, and you've observed this program even before you were a part of it. How amazing is it to see how far they've come from a Division II program going through the transition and now making a second consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament? What are some of your observations on how far South Dakota State has come? TONY FIEGEN: It's really cool from seeing the success that they had at the Division II level. You know, coaching AU was always -- they were a powerhouse at the Division II level in the NCC. That was really fun and just to be a part of South Dakota State reemerging at the new level, it's just really special and, you know, for these guys, they probably didn't hear much about South Dakota State until they started getting recruited. So I think for me it's a little more special now that I've -- since I've been familiar with the program. Q. For Tony and Jordan, can you guys talk a little bit about the type of teammate that Nate has been and how he's helped bring your program and your team to the place you are today? JORDAN DYKSTRA: I mean, Nate's the best. I mean, there's -- simple. He gets people open. He creates for himself. You just can't put words to describe how good of a player Nate is. TONY FIEGEN: To add to that, just I really admire how he handles himself on and off the court. You know, he receives so much press, but he remains humble. And, you know, as a teammate I really appreciate that because, you know, a lot of our success is attributed to him and he's just a special -- it just speaks about his character. MODERATOR: Thank you student-athletes. Now we have Coach Nagy available for questions. Q. Coach, how much do you think the experience factor plays a role, whether it's tournament experience or just the veteran nature of your players? COACH NAGY: You know, I think it's important, you know, how big a percentage of the role it is, I don't know. I mean, we're -- you know, talent, I think supersedes experience. I love experience, but, you know, I think as -- I can't believe how much freshmen Michigan plays and how good they've been. So I think that we can talk about experience, and they were here last -- many of their players weren't here last year because they played so many freshmen, but all year those kids have played a lot of minutes. So I don't think you can call them freshmen anymore. And they played in, you know, what would be considered -- people call huge games, huge venues. The stage has been big for them all year, and so I think they have the experience to come into these games and play. The fact that we play mostly juniors and seniors and they play a lot of freshmen, I think that they have very experienced players at this point. Q. Scott, looking back ten years, you said that this team could be competitive at this level. It got to that level. Did the time frame match up to what you thought it would be? COACH NAGY: Well, I've kind of blocked a lot of that out, Chris, to be honest with you. I mean, it was -- the transition was difficult for us for a lot of reasons. When we went, we didn't have a conference. We weren't eligible for any postseason play for five years. You know, we weren't fully staffed at the time. I mean, there were just so many things working against us. And we were able to keep players for a couple years. Then we would lose them because it got tough. It got tough. And I began to recruit. When I would recruit, I would tell kids, look, this is going to be tough, and we need you to stick it out no matter how tough it gets. We need you to stick it out. I need guys that are committed. And if you're going to come here and when it gets tough you're going to leave, then please don't come here because we don't want that anymore. And we got a group of kids to stick around and they helped us recruit this group of kids. As far as a timeline, you know, I didn't really have one. I mean, you can't -- I don't think, you know, right now here we are the second time going into the NCAA tournament. I think some of the people at South Dakota think this may be a yearly occurrence. This is a really difficult thing to do. It just is, playing at this level and being here. So we feel very blessed, very fortunate that we've gotten here twice. So we don't assume that we'll be back here. We know that we're going to have to do the hard work. So I don't know what the time -- I didn't really have a timeline. I've just been really proud of these kids and how they've handled this. Q. Coach, Michigan as a team, they don't turn the ball over much. As you've been scouting them, have you noticed a lot of similarities between their style of play and yours? COACH NAGY: In terms of their offense, we're different, because they have more reads; we're just more emotion. When you look at how much they depend on their point guard, as we do, and how much he has the ball in his hands as Nate does, they don't turnover a lot, we don't turnover a lot. They don't foul, we don't foul. There are a lot of similarities. So I think it will be interesting. It's going to be important for us not to turn the ball over because they're tremendous in transition. We have to take care of the basketball. Q. Coach, you talked on the similarities. Do you envision trying to run with them, or does that make defense more important? Nate and Burke, do you think they'll end up going one and one or probably guard them with somebody else? COACH NAGY: Well, we'll put Nate on Trey. I don't know what they'll do. I can't answer for that. And I've said this before, Nate is a tremendous defender, but we've relied on him so much to play 40 minutes and to handle a basketball that I think sometimes people don't get to see how good a defender he is. In terms of the other question, are we going to try to run with them, we're going to play the way that we play. Now, that means that in transition we're going to try to get good shots. We need to push the basketball. I don't want to spend every one of our offensive possessions playing them five on five. We need to get the ball and go when we can. I mean, we've always done that and I know that's what they're going to do do. The most important thing for us is transition defense, and it's hard against them. You can talk about transition defense all you want and then you see the kind of speed. What makes them dangerous is not just Trey Burke that can handle the ball. Robinson can get the ball off the glass and go. Hardaway Junior can get the ball off the glass and go. Stauskus can do it. They have a lot of guys that can handle the ball on the break, and I think that's what makes them so dangerous. Q. Coach, you've got a lot of good players, but I think Nate has become somewhat symbolic in the tournament run. How much of a turning point was that to convince him that South Dakota was the place for him to be? COACH NAGY:  Well, I mean, he's a huge reason why our program was able to get turned around. I mean, we have certainly surrounded him with very good players, and I think he would be the first to tell you that that has a lot to do with his success, is that we can put good shooters around him, open up the floor, let him do what he does. When we tried to sign him early, in the early period in his senior year, he wanted to wait because we were still not a great basketball team. We hadn't proven that we could make that transition. And I don't blame him for waiting and for wanting to see more from us. I think that we showed enough in that year that we're moving the right direction that he wanted to come here. I think the other thing about recruiting him is we wanted him to be a point guard at South Dakota State. That's all we wanted him to do, where other people were recruiting him to be a combo, to play the two, play the one. We said, no, we want you to be our point guard, we want you to handle the basketball. Q. Coach, what did you learn from last year's tournament experience and how has that impacted the way you've prepared for this game? COACH NAGY: You know, we prepare for every game the same way. I just think last year, personally, was emotionally overwhelming because of what we had been through. I mean, even though I had been with the University of Illinois, we went to the Final Four as a graduate assistant. I didn't have to deal with all this. I'm just behind the scenes and do what I do. As a head coach, you have to deal with all this, the media attention, the radio interviews. So I think emotionally it was overwhelming for me, all of the attention was overwhelming, and it's less of that this year. Like I haven't had the emotions that I had this year. I've been much more calm, and I think that the players have seen that too. Q. Scott, given the amount of recognition nationally Nate's got, can you talk a little bit about his ability to handle this moment since there's going to be so much attention focused on him both on the court and people watching in the stands? COACH NAGY: He's used to it at this point, and I think what Tony said, you know, it has been an amazing thing to watch him. It would be very easy I think on some teams for players to be jealous of the attention he's gotten and so many people thinking that he's just the only reason we got here and talk like that. I think, again, Nate would be the first to say that's not the case. But the media attention, you know, I just listen to him even answer these questions. Even as a coach I'm like, I want you to be more detailed. He just -- he's a little uncomfortable with it and he's a quiet guy. And the players know that. The players can laugh about it because they know that he doesn't -- you know, it's just not really what he wants. All he wants is to play basketball. He's handled the pressure incredibly, you know, at every turn. And I don't expect it will be any different tomorrow when he gets on the floor and he gets that ball in his hands, because he's spent so much time playing basketball, it just comes natural to him. And he is in the biggest moments -- in the four years that I've coached the biggest moments is when he shows up, and I don't expect any different tomorrow. Q. Coach, speaking of Nate's demeanor, he's very calm. Are there times when you'd prefer that you'd want him to show more emotion? COACH NAGY: Yeah, I would say sometimes, yes, I wish he was more verbal in his leadership, but we've gotten used to it too and we've adjusted and we've found other ways to do things. He does show some emotion on occasion, but I think it serves him well. The fact that he's low key I think serves him very well, and there's no perfect player, perfect personality. I would love for him to show some more emotion sometimes, but I tell you when he does, then we know, because he is so low key. But when we do see the emotion from him, our kids really respond to it. Q. Your team in its second conference championship game, so much more relaxed and loose. Have you gotten some examples of that since you've gotten here or during the travel where you feel like that trend is continuing? COACH NAGY: You know, I don't know Terry. I guess I don't want to make something up. The only difference traveling here was we get to take the bus and jump right on the plane and get off a plane and jump on a bus verses sitting in the airports and traveling like we do commercially. But other than that, you know, I haven't seen really any difference in our team in terms of how we're handling this versus last year or versus any other game that we've played this year. Q. Coach, being from a one-bid conference, do you feel anymore pressure to carry the flag for the conference? COACH NAGY: No, I mean there's enough pressure not to be adding things to it and trying to figure those things out. I don't think -- again, these aren't even things I even look at, but I don't think our league has ever won a game in an NCAA tournament. I could be wrong in terms of the summit league. I'm not talking about the mid-con, but in terms of as it's being Summit league I don't think we've won one. It would be nice to do that, but I mean that's certainly not going to be the driving force as to why we want to play well. We all know that any of our teams that get here it would be great for the league. Q. Coach, given that you guys are facing Michigan here in Auburn Hills, what kind of support do you expect to get from the Michigan State folks and the crowd? COACH NAGY: You know, that's what I was saying, I hope they bought up a lot of the all-session tickets. We went to PF Chang's last night and we had a lot of people that told us they were rooting for us. I expect that any Michigan State fan is going to be rooting for us, I don't think there's any question about that. MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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