|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: KANSAS CITYMarch 23, 2013Ramon GallowayJohn GianniniJerrell WrightKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI JOE DALFONSO: We're joined by LaSalle student‑athletes. Questions, please. Q. Ramon, questions about your interesting arrival to LaSalle, going to South Carolina, the family issues, why you came back to Philly. Can you talk about that a little bit. RAMON GALLOWAY: The reason why I came back to Philadelphia is because my family problems. The reason why I chose LaSalle is because, you know, I had a talk with Coach G and he told me as long as I listen, it's a two‑way street. As long as I listen, he would let me do what I do best. I mean, for the storyline and everything that's happening, I mean, I'm extremely blessed. I just can't thank G enough for giving me the opportunity to play this game the way I know I can play the game. Q. Why South Carolina in the first place? RAMON GALLOWAY: Because when I was getting recruited down in Florida, I seen Darrin Horn a lot. I felt as though if I see the head coach, that means a lot, instead of everything they recruit and the scouts. That's why I picked South Carolina first. Q. How is your dad doing? RAMON GALLOWAY: He's doing great. I talked to him yesterday and this morning. I think he'll be here tomorrow, so that will be great. I just hope he can be here. Q. He can be here tomorrow. He can't see the game, but he can follow it? Who will be with him? RAMON GALLOWAY: My cousin gonna travel with him. My cousin been there since day one for me. Even though my dad can't see the game, his feel for the game is tremendous because whenever I'm doing something I'm not supposed to do, after the game he always tell me. He just know the swings of the game because he played the game before. He just have a great feel for it. Q. Even though he can't see? RAMON GALLOWAY: Yeah. Through the help of my cousin, he let him know certain key things. I mean, I sit with my dad through high school games, he just know. He just has a great feel for it and knows a lot about it. Q. Your grandfather, is he still on the list? RAMON GALLOWAY: Well, yeah, my grandpa is still currently on the list. He has been taken and trying to get the surgery done. A couple times it fell, so I'm still praying for him. I'm extremely happy he's still living. When I transferred, the doctors told me he only had six months to live. He's getting stronger. He's doing great. Q. How big an influence was he? RAMON GALLOWAY: Huge influence. My dad got shot when I was two, so my dad wasn't able to be there hands‑on. Everything I learned through music, do dancing, anything, he told me how to do it. Play instruments. He helped me out. I used to travel with him when I was younger because he used to drive trucks. I was used to traveling, getting out of the city. Q. Jerrell, what kind of inspiration has Ramon been to this team? JERRELL WRIGHT: Ramon been a mentor since day one. I met him when I was like 14 at a recreation league. Since that day we combined, we was like family. On and off the court, he's a mentor to me. He pushed me to go to class, help me out with my work. For his basketball, even though he a guard, he help me out with big‑man moves, stuff like that. He's been a tremendous person to me. RAMON GALLOWAY: I love you, Jerrell. JERRELL WRIGHT: I love you, too (smiling). Q. Three games in five days, two different states. Last night you had a tough game against a good opponent. Are you worried that fatigue might be a factor? JERRELL WRIGHT: I don't think it will be no problem. Like we used to playing like a lot of games. We still young. So I don't think anybody tired. We more happy than tired. We just excited that we still here. RAMON GALLOWAY: Yeah, we can't focus on being tired. We can't focus on giving in to fatigue.  We got to play our game and we got to be happy and live in the moment. Like you said, we got great wins in the tournament, so we just want to keep winning. We want to keep our energy up, positive energy. Q. Ramon, can you talk about the relationship with Murphy Holloway. He said you were friendly at South Carolina. Your thoughts on playing against him. Are you that good of friends? RAMON GALLOWAY: Yeah, we're close friends. When he transferred, came back to South Carolina to take care of his daughter and stuff, it was an immediate friendship. He's a good guy. He has a story, too. He came a long way. So that's why I think like really we was really, you know, good friends because he knew where I came from, I knew where he came from, I knew what he was trying to do. As soon as I met Murph, we was friends. I'm just blessed we both got this opportunity to showcase our talent and stuff. Q. You both knew Philly, knew LaSalle. There's players all around the country didn't know much about it. What do you think being here and having a bit of a run can do for continuing the success of the program? JERRELL WRIGHT: Uhm, let me see. I'll let Ramon go first (smiling). RAMON GALLOWAY: It means a lot. Like you said, you know, LaSalle has a tradition of winning. They've been here to the tournament. We had Lionel Simmons, we Tom Gola, we had Tim Legler. We had great players. The thing we're trying to carry on is getting LaSalle back on the map. People always knew that LaSalle could play.  Now that we got our opportunity to play, we got to seize the moment, we got to show everybody that LaSalle is not Atlantic‑10 basketball team that's just having a Cinderella run. We want to show everybody that we are talented. It's a great community, LaSalle. Great friends, great family. Just for anything, recruiting, just being in the NCAA tournament helps you out a lot. You get new fans. Before I had the most comments or text messages or anything praising us, so it's a good thing we got this opportunity to put LaSalle back to where it was at. Q. One way to put it would be, do you feel like you're building something that's going to last a while? JERRELL WRIGHT: I think it's going to last from last year and this year, just having back‑to‑back 20 wins and everything like that. People now getting to recognize us and everything. Like he was saying, we got more fans, people coming out to support us. That's a huge part of our organization right now. RAMON GALLOWAY: Plus, when you think about it, I'm the only senior. After this, things could just get even better. You got Jerrell, sophomore. Zack, he's hurt, but he works his tail off. He's a great player. So when he comes back, it's all young players. Q. How much have you heard from people back home about what's been going on the last couple days? Can you give me a sense of what the reaction is, whether any of those people are going to try to get here tomorrow? RAMON GALLOWAY: I can't even explain the text messages and everything about the social network. I really don't try to think about it too much now because we have to focus on the task we have at hand: that's winning tomorrow. My phone couldn't even work. That's how crazy it was. I was showing Jerrell. I turned my phone on after the game, it's running so slow. I mean, just to have the whole City of Philadelphia watching, not just me, not just Jerrell, the whole LaSalle team, it gives us a great feeling. I think it motivates us a lot because we didn't have that support in a long time. I didn't have that support for a long time while I was playing. Now to have a whole city rooting for you, sending they prayers up that we all do well, it means great. JERRELL WRIGHT: As he was saying, the same thing as he was saying, for like LaSalle, when you got so many people here like supporting you, you want to do something back for the community. Right now us winning, everybody happy. We just want to thank LaSalle fans, the City of Philadelphia. We got all them supporting us. We just want to keep on winning. Q. You mentioned Lionel Simmons was with you in Dayton. He's here. What does that mean for you? RAMON GALLOWAY: It means a lot to have Lionel with us. He been here. He's one of the players that changed LaSalle basketball. Just to have him around just to talk to us, he gives us insight on the game to us. It just helps us out a lot. Q. How do you feel about the matchup tomorrow against the big guys from Ole Miss, Murphy Holloway, Reginald Buckner? And how do you feel about the matchup against Marshall Henderson? JERRELL WRIGHT: I heard the big men were very aggressive. They very good big men. Tomorrow just got to prevent them from getting the ball, make sure they get the ball less. That's basically my task for tomorrow. RAMON GALLOWAY: My task is to play my game. I mean, I love playing defense. I'm not backing down from a challenge. I mean, he's a good player. I'm not putting any negative on anybody. It's going to be a good game. We just got to play our game, stick to our game plan, and hopefully we come out with the win. Q. You've gotten off to really fast starts the past two games. How can you continue that and how important is that? RAMON GALLOWAY: Just to keep playing with our confidence that we've been playing with. I mean, you know, we have four guards that can get their own shots and get shots for teammates. Anytime you have four guards, you get to spread the floor out and play with each other. Right now we playing with confidence, we playing freely. We not thinking too much out there on the court. When you start thinking, that brings trouble. We could have thought about so many decisions when Kansas State was coming back on their run. But we stood together and we focused on one thing, and that was defense. Our offense, we really don't focus too much on because we work on it and we know that we talented and we gifted. You got to stop them. JERRELL WRIGHT: As he was saying, everybody can score. As you could see the second half, we only made three shots. Yesterday was all about stops. And yesterday Coach G, like every timeout he called, he brung us in the huddle and talked about defense, how we needed to stop the next person, individual baskets, needed to be mentally tough, be aggressive on defense. That's all we got to do basically to win games. Q. Ramon, everybody talks about Cinderella teams this time of year. Are you a Cinderella team? RAMON GALLOWAY: Absolutely not. I mean, I feel like we was chose for a reason, because we worked hard. I feel like we can play with anybody in the country because our team that we have. We're consistent at the big, we're consistent at the guard position. I mean, it's a Cinderella story to the media and everybody that looks down on LaSalle because ain't nobody have LaSalle winning this much or coming this far in the dance. But for us, we already said that through the whole year we can play with everybody. Even playing in the Atlantic‑10, that sets us up for teams in the country because we have Butler, VCU. Going up against St.Louis, it just makes us better because, you know, I mean, personally we feel like we met teams that played against the teams that was ranked No.1, and they won. I'm just happy that we here. We just happy that we here. We just glad that we winning. Q. Ramon, Andy Kennedy said he didn't know who has more swag, you or Marshall Henderson. What's the key to shutting him down, defending him essentially? RAMON GALLOWAY: I mean, he plays at a high level. He's going to take his shots. My thing is just making every shot, contest it. Not to give him anything easy. That's any player in college basketball. You let any player get an easy shot, they feel like anything can go in. My task for myself is just not to let him get any easy looks. So, you know, I just got to be ready on defense. It's not just individual, 'cause I know my teammates will help me. But I'm not trying to get too much caught up in the Ramon Galloway and the Henderson show. It's not about that. It's about LaSalle and Ole Miss. The team that plays together will win. Q. Ramon, one thing that Ole Miss liked to do with Henderson is run him through and around the screens. Do you have to fight through the screens or do you have to communicate with your teammates to get him when he comes off the screen? RAMON GALLOWAY: I mean, like I said, the Atlantic‑10 helped us out a lot because we played against Butler. Clarke runs off a lot of screens. The way we play, if we can switch, we're going to switch. If not, I just have to fight through. Stuff's going to happen in the game. There's going to be times where he probably hit a shot, you know, because there's no player that's going to score zero points unless he's extremely off. The thing is, when he hit the shot, I got to realize what I did wrong, to not make the same mistake. JOE DALFONSO: Gentlemen, thank you very much. John Giannini is here with us. We'll have him make a brief statement on the status of their program today with the game tomorrow, then we'll go to questions. COACH GIANNINI: Well, we're very focused. We had a hard‑fought, dramatic game yesterday. I'm really proud of what we did, especially in the last couple minutes: getting stops, getting rebounds, taking care of the ball, making big free throws. Doing things that coaches preach from the first day of practice, then you actually see your team do it, it's something that make you very proud. Of course, the results are wonderful when you do all those things. So we feel good. But we immediately move on. We always talk about dealing with things. You either have to deal with adversity or deal with success. When you have a little bit of success, you sure better move on, you better not dwell on it, because the next challenge, especially for us tomorrow, is enormous. We're focused on Mississippi, we're ready to go. JOE DALFONSO: Questions, please. Q. Can you talk about the impact Ramon has made on your program since he came in and how he does it considering all the issues he has to deal with along the way? COACH GIANNINI: He was the perfect player at the perfect time for us. We underachieved a few years ago, didn't have great chemistry, but we really liked our young players. We really thought that if Ramon got that waiver, he might give us enough experience, enough depth to make us a legitimately good team, quicker than what most people would think. And that's what happened. He got a waiver, which was I think very much deserved. The record speaks for itself. I mean, we've won 44 games since he's been on campus. We've been to the NIT, the NCAA. We've broken a lot of streaks. Now he certainly hasn't done it alone. He's needed a lot of help and we're a true team. But I think he's the kind of player that might have got us over the hump there a little bit and was really important. In terms of him dealing with adversity in life, I think he and his family deserve credit for that. When he was young, they saw the trouble around him and sent him to Florida because they knew that sticking around Philadelphia and the things going on in and outside of his family were not positive influences. That's a wise, smart, loving thing to do. We really care about you, we want you in a better environment. Fast forward to transferring from South Carolina. Now he's been away from home five years or so, five or six years, and he leaves with he's 14, 15, comes back as a 20‑year‑old or so. Now he comes back a man. Now he comes back focused and prepared to deal with some things. But the people in Florida really helped him. He's strong in character. He's helped his family. He's brought a lot of joy to him. He's been an aid to his father, who lives about a mile from our campus. Of course, can't see. He's been there for him. It's just a great success story. Q. Your guys seem to really carry an attitude of, We belong here. There's no sense of, We're a great story. Is that something you talked about? COACH GIANNINI: No, it's normal, it's rational.  We won 21 games last year, were in the NIT. High seed in the NIT. We beat three top‑20 teams this year. Finished tied for third in one of the best leagues in America. We have no self‑esteem issues (smiling). Q. Kansas City is a pretty historic place in the history of your program. Talk about that with the players? Are they aware of it? COACH GIANNINI: Great point. From the point we recruit them, educate them on LaSalle lore, which is wonderful and tradition‑rich. But we haven't talked a lot about the fact that the national championship actually happened here. We've been visiting with Lionel Simmons so much, been traveling with us. Most of the questions, you're right, have dealt more with not being in the tournament for 21 years more so than the anniversary of the national championship. We'll talk about that a little bit more, too. But we talk about the tradition a whole lot. Q. That arena is five blocks from here. You can go visit it. COACH GIANNINI: I know. Q. Can you put into words what getting into this tournament can mean for a program and the university? Maybe it's unfair for this to make such a difference, but it really does. COACH GIANNINI: Yeah, I think it does for any school. It's very public. It's one of the premiere national events in the sporting world. So it draws an incredible amount of attention to everyone involved. It's a good thing for the people that are fortunate to be here. I think it's going to help our program a lot internally as much as externally. Being a part of Selection Sunday last year with the NIT, being a part of it this year, I think it sets a standard in your program that players aspire to. When you look in our conference at Butler, for example. Those players expect to be good defensively. They expect to do tough things. They expect to win games. They expect to make it to the post‑season. Those teams are hard to play against. I think now we're taking a step to becoming that kind of program. Externally I think it certainly helps recruiting. It's all positive. I don't think there's any drawbacks. Q. The NCAA is still weighing the idea of stipends for scholarship players. Three other schools here have major college football programs. How might this impact a program like yours? COACH GIANNINI: Well, I thought you were going to ask me if I approved or disapproved. Q. Do you approve? COACH GIANNINI: You know, I think it's more symbolic than anything else. I think the NCAA can afford it. I think a kid getting an extra thousand dollars a year is a huge help, but it's not going to change their life circumstances. I think it's more symbolic than anything else. We recognize what these student‑athletes do. We recognize that a lot of them want for certain things, they're not privileged. We want to help them. At the end of the day, I don't think the amounts of money are going to drain the NCAA or change these kids' lives. It's a nice gesture, I think it helps. In terms of impact, that would be the extent of it. Q. Could football programs better afford this than schools without them? COACH GIANNINI: I'm not on the administrative end, so I don't know how much in the red or black anyone is. Basketball, you're talking fewer numbers certainly. I don't know how it would affect athletic departments. I'm not an administrator. At the level of the kids, it's a nice, symbolic thing and would certainly help, but I don't think it's world‑changing. Q. Could you talk about Henderson, the challenges it would be defending a guy like that. COACH GIANNINI: Yeah, you can't let him open. That's a problem. They screen for him. They have huge bodies setting the screens. You have to be vigilant and focused. You have to move when he moves. When those big guys try to hit you on those screens, you obviously have to avoid contact. He's so unique offensively that most of the time you play a good player, you talk about not falling asleep off the ball, once he gets it, guard him. Against him, you not only have to be alert off the ball for him coming off those screens, you better be alert as soon as he catches it because he'll shoot the ball when most players won't. Then you can't overreact and follow him the way Wisconsin did a couple times, too, on three‑point shots. He has a quick release, unlimited range. So, yeah, you have to be vigilant, you have to be focused. You can't get screened. It's not an easy task. Q. As a young coach you went to the Final Four with Illinois and Coach Henson. What kind of impression did that make on you? COACH GIANNINI: I think the most important thing is something that I just heard secondhand one of my players repeat. In one interview they said, they were asked about why they're so calm, they said, Well, coach treats this the same as any other game. That helps us keep calm because everything is the same, the routine, scouting reports, the way coach talks. That's what I learned from Coach Henson. You want to win every game bad. If you treat the early‑season games, your non‑conference and conference games as less important than the NCAA tournament, you're never going to see the NCAA tournament. Every game feels like it's life and death I think for good teams. We've been consistent in how we approach games. Q. Third year in a row that a team that played in Dayton advanced. Is there an advantage to having played that game? COACH GIANNINI: Yeah, you're certainly I think in a better rhythm. If you look at yesterday's game, you could say that it perfectly demonstrated the advantages and disadvantages. One team was really in a rhythm in that first half. But did the other team have some more fatigue in the second half? What wins out the advantage or disadvantage I'm not totally sure. But there is an advantage to being in rhythm, having played, working out some nerves, being comfortable on the court. Then again, you're fighting your guts out less than 48 hours before and flying halfway across the country and maybe getting one decent night's sleep in. There's pluses and minuses, but there is something to the rhythm factor, there's no question about it. Q. You are concerned about the fatigue factor for tomorrow? COACH GIANNINI: You know, I'm always concerned about being fresh. If someone saw our public workout a couple days ago, it was the most boring one ever because we really didn't do anything. We did our preparation in a walk‑through in the hotel. We weren't going to run around full speed and wear ourselves out for three days either. Today, again, we're going to prepare, but not overwork ourselves. Yeah, I'm always concerned about being fresh, no question, especially right now. JOE DALFONSO: Thank you very much, John. Good luck. COACH GIANNINI: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|