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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: SALT LAKE CITYMarch 20, 2013Malcolm ArmsteadCleanthony EarlyCarl HallGregg MarshallSALT LAKE CITY, UTAH THE MODERATOR: Good morning. We have Wichita State student‑athletes with us, Cleanthony Early, Carl Hall and Malcolm Armstead. Coach will be with us shortly. We will open it up to questions. Q. Carl, the suddenness with which you guys went out of the tournament a year ago against BCU, can you give us a sense for how much more focused that she had make a basketball team realizing how quickly a season can end from a year ago? Does that linger with this team? CARL HALL: Yeah, it lingers with our group of seniors. We don't want to go out this year. We remember last year going out the first game and we want to focus on Pittsburgh, take it one game at a time. Q. Cleanthony, talk about the way you played in Saint Louis. I'm sure that wasn't up to your standards and the onus you feel to play better tomorrow? CLEANTHONY EARLY: I definitely owe it to my teammates to play better, and I definitely feel better. I'm going to come out and fulfill my expectations, and we will do what we have to do as a team together. Q. Carl, Malcolm, talk about Cleanthony's importance to your basketball team, especially offensively? CARL HALL: He stretches the defense because he can shoot the ball so well.  He can drive it well and he kinda gives us an advantage on offense because he's a 3‑man playing the 4‑spot. So it stretches the defense and it helps our offense out a lot. MALCOLM ARMSTEAD: Playing with Cleanthony, he can reach the floor, like Carl said, he plays with a lot of energy and passion. Fun to play with. Q. Can I ask you guys what you know about Pittsburgh and what your expectations are? MALCOLM ARMSTEAD: We know they're a physical, strong team, defensive rebound there is a lot that they pride themselves on. We have to go into the game plan and execute. We know that they're a good team, so got to be ready to play tomorrow. CARL HALL: We have to come ready to rebound. The winner on the boards is going to win the game, so I'm going to try to get focus, me and Malcolm and Cleanthony, try to focus on the boards. CLEANTHONY EARLY: Same thing that Malcolm said with them being able to rebound. We pride ourselves on the same things, so we got to play hard and beat them. Q. Is this where you guys expected to be after your exit from your tournament loss in that game, you knew you had to get an at‑large bid. Is this where you expected to be? How do you prepare based on that? CLEANTHONY EARLY: We definitely had an expectation that we could make it to the tournament and we had to play hard. It was a whole bunch of new guys coming in and everyone said it was a rebuilding year and they didn't expect to us get this far and that for ourselves were higher than what people gave us. So we tried to play hard and work hard every single day to make that happen. CARL HALL: We expected to win at Saint Louis, but that didn't happen and we thought we were going to get a 10 or 11 seed, but we got a 9 seed. So we're just thankful for being allowed to play in this tournament and we want to take advantage and take it one game at a time. MALCOLM ARMSTEAD: These guys have sum it up, just thankful for being here, and we want to take advantage it, one day at a time and looking forward to everything. Q. Carl, I wanted to ask you about taking on their 7‑footer, whereas he might have some size on you, you have experience on him, how that match‑up might play out. First, can you talk about the hair and what went into that decision? CARL HALL: I wanted to try something different. I just wanted to be like a new person coming into the tournament. I wanted to try to play harder and just give it my all. It's my senior year, so I'm just trying to get focused and get ready to play. When it comes to the 7‑footer, I want to take him to the outside because he knows he blocks shots. I think he leads the team in blocked shots, so I got to try to go around him because he's such a great shot blocker. We're just going to play hard and rebound tomorrow and try to come up with a win. Q. What do you think when you look in the mirror? CARL HALL: It's different, man! Like I haven't seen this person in five years, you know? I had my hair for five years, so I kinda‑‑ I haven't got used to it yet. I lay in the bed at night and I rub my head, wondering, what did I do, because I had it for five years. (Laughter.) Q. Was that haircut going to give you an advantage going against the big guy? CARL HALL: I hope so! Sometimes when I make post moves, my hair kinda‑‑ I think my hair distracts the other players which allows me to get my shot off. I got to see how things go tomorrow. CLEANTHONY EARLY: He's been movin' faster in practice, too. Q. What do the other student‑athletes think about it? If any of you guys plan to grow your hair out or anything like that? MALCOLM ARMSTEAD: I like it, man. I think he looks smooth with it, man. Something different. I'm not a big fan of low cuts, but it's whatever, whatever he wants to do. Q. Malcolm, can you talk about in a game where there is so much expectation on defense and rebounding, finding scoring and how those two things balance out? Both teams seem to concentrate so much on that end of the game, does it boil down to as something as simple as making shots? How when you have that focus, defense and rebounding do you find offensive flow? MALCOLM ARMSTEAD: Defensive rebound can create an offense for you. I look at it like the team who gets the most rebounds and the most stops is going to have the more opportunities on offense to score the ball, so defensive rebounding is the key for anyone. Q. Is that where the offense comes in a game like this? Or are there other ways to create offense? MALCOLM ARMSTEAD: You're still going to have opportunities on offense to make open baskets and stuff like that. But when you're playing good defense and getting good rebounds, it makes it easier to create offensive baskets. Q. Coach Marshall said the seniors and a lot of guys on the team got experience at the NCAA Tournament last year. The two on the end are newcomers. He said a lot of you guys won't have to be wide‑eyed and taking on the distractions. Do you guys feel like you're wide‑eyed? MALCOLM ARMSTEAD: Actually, I sat out last year and had to help prepare these guys for the tournament, but at the end of the day it's another day of basketball, it's another game. You can't get caught up in what it is, you have to perform day in‑day out. CLEANTHONY EARLY: It's definitely something new, but the game of basketball is something we have been doing for quite some time now. So we got to go out there and that's why we have our teammates who have been in the situation before to keep us calm and cool and we got to stay collected and play the game we know how to play. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, guys. Questions for Coach Marshall? Q. Gregg, as you have broken down Pittsburgh on video, the initial reaction was that it was a mirror image of you guys. Has that held up in your scouting process? COACH MARSHALL: Except they're maybe a little bigger. I haven't seen them in person. They appear to be an inch or two bigger per man across the frontline. Jamie does a great job. He's in the Big East and he's got a lot to sell. Maybe our guys have grown an inch or two, but if it's a mirror image I hope we stack up physically with them. Q. Can you discuss the coaching a guy like Cleanthony Early who has tremendous offensive abilities, a junior college transfer, maybe it's been a little more try to go get him to buy into the defensive end? Can you discuss coaching him? COACH MARSHALL: Coaching Cleanthony has been great. We don't add Cleanthony to the mix this year as a junior college transfer. We're not sitting here at the NCAA Tournament. He is supremely talented. He wants to please. He is more of an offensive player than a defensive player right now, but he's tried. He's been very receptive to coaching. Every once in a while he bristles at the directness of our coaching staff, but I think ultimately what is most exciting for him and for us is how much better he can become on that end of the floor, rebounding, defense, and there are some things offensively that he can improve upon as well; and when that happens we're going to have just a tremendous, tremendous basketball player. He's really good now! Q. Will you talk about preparing your guys, especially coming off a disappointment in your conference tournament? What went into that? COACH MARSHALL: Boy, that was approximately two weeks ago for us, so we've been practicing a lot since then. We broke the film down two or three days after that game, and that's over. There is nothing we can do about it. We have won 26 times. We've lost 8. Right now our guys are confident. They have won close to 80% of their games this year, and they're talented. They are eager and it's just a matter of us now going out and playing well against a very good Pitt team. Q. There is a lot of international post players in this pod here. I was wondering if you could speak to the challenges of finding big 7‑footers in America now and the length you have to go to recruit those guys? COACH MARSHALL: We recruited Ehimen Orukpe and it took us over a year. Even though he's an academic scholar, he didn't have the proper paperwork to be accepted by the NCAA as a freshman. So he had to go to junior college with the condition he would red shirt. He gives us a body to go against the Grays and the Zombas of the world and not take a back seat. He is a very large human being. He is a specimen. He's not the most polished offensive player in the world, but he rebounds. He protects the basket and we will certainly need him in games such as this where we're playing high‑level size athleticism and skill. Q. A lot of us saw last year, VCU was 12, it seemed as though they were seated low and now people are saying Pittsburgh is a better seed than an 8. Is there anything you can add to that if you guys keep getting dealt a hand that teams to be seeded‑‑ COACH MARSHALL: I don't think there is a conspiracy against Wichita State. We are a common denominator in that. I just want to continue to be in the NCAA Tournament, ultimately maybe that will get weeded out. VCU as a 12 was a pretty good 12, especially with the experience that he had coming back from the Final Four team before. This Pitt team I'm not privy to the discussions that go on in the seeding rooms and whatnot. I'm just glad to be a part. This is my ninth opportunity and we want to go play well and ultimately you're going to play good teams regardless of whether you play last night, tonight, Thursday, Friday, you're going to play a good team in the first round. Q. Gregg, in a game where there is going to be so much focus on rebound and defense by both sides of the equation, where do the points come? Does the defense create the offense? Give us a sense of how you balance that out in the search for points while keeping them off the board at the same time. COACH MARSHALL: For us, we want to limit their easy baskets. If Tray Woodall can create a basket or they run something that is really, really good and they get a great look and they burn it, that's one thing. We just don't want to give them easy baskets on layups, dunks, tip‑ins, atomic bombs where we turn the ball over and they get a basket where we don't have a set defense. I think they're probably thinking the same thing, so ball security and quality shots is what you can do on the offensive end to negate that and scratch and claw and communicate and really be focus and engaged on the defensive end. Q. Coach, can you talk about Carl Hall versus Steven Adams? COACH MARSHALL: He is very large. I haven't seen him in person, but Carl is maybe 6'8" now that he's cut his hair. It's going to be a sixth year senior, a highly‑decorated freshman with tremendous potential and size. That will be one key match‑ups. There will be others, and I know Carl is ready. And I'm sure he is ready. So let the games begin. Q. Are you shocked to see the different look with Carl, with the hair? COACH MARSHALL: He called me the night that he cut his hair and we practiced that afternoon and he called me‑‑ and Carl is a great communicator and I don't remember the reason he called me. The real reason was to tell me he cut his hair, but that came at the very end. He had something that he wanted to tell me, and I said, "That's fine, Carl. We'll deal with that tomorrow, that will be great." I don't remember what it was. But as he was about to hang up he said, "Oh, by the way, I cut my hair." And I said, "Good, I'm sure that's going to look great. I'm glad you did." I never asked him to cut his hair. I recruited him with the hair. I wasn't going to be high critical and tell him to cut it once he got to the program, but he did it on his own. I don't know the reason why or the timing of it. It was a little odd, but it's his hair, and again, I think he looks great. He looks a lot look his mom, I'll tell you that. She's a pretty lady. I'm not saying he's pretty, but he looks a lot like his mom. Q. Coach, every player wants to be at this point in their career. We want to make the NCAA Tournament. Have you made it a point of emphasis to these guys to enjoy the process of being here? I know you want to focus on the opponent, but you made it to the NCAA Tournament and for a lot of these guys it's their last hurrah. COACH MARSHALL: We really don't talk about that. They enjoyed a big steak last night at Ruth Chris and a lot of them said it was the best steak they've ever put this their mouths. There is an opportunity to keep playing, and ultimately that's what competitors want is to win. So the opportunity to advance in this NCAA Tournament is now what's going to make it fun and enjoyable. The one and doneness of a season being over or a career being over is also a reality. I think they realize that, I'm not going to get it into their heads. A lot of these guys will go on to play professional or get a good job from Wichita State, the other guys, once it ends, we will start work on spring drills and get back into their academics heavier. I want them to enjoy without the pressure of me beating it into their heads, they're smart enough to figure it out. Q. Creighton has made it official they're leaving the Valley. Do you have any sense of direction you would like to see the Valley go? How does that affect you personally? COACH MARSHALL: I just want to keep playing Creighton, I put that out there. We have had a great series with them even though they're moving on. I put it out there‑‑ we will go back to Omaha first. We played them in the last game of the regular season this year in Omaha and I'll make it two in a row. I want it to be a long‑term deal. I think I say a great rivalry, I think it's fairly close when you talk about the midwest. I wish them well, I'm not going to get into the politics of what's going on in our league. I want to keep playing them. Q. So there is no team that you would get behind as a potential replacement? COACH MARSHALL: Yeah, I've said many times I would like Miami of Florida because I enjoy going to the beach during‑‑ leaving in January, leaving Wichita and heading down to Coral Gables, spending time at South Beach, my players loved that when I did that and I was assistant at the college in Charleston and when I was at Winthrop and their football has been up and down lately, Jim Larranaga would be a great decision to the Valley Conference. THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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