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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: SALT LAKE CITYMarch 23, 2013Ron BakerCleanthony EarlyCarl HallGregg MarshallSALT LAKE CITY, UTAH Wichita State – 76 THE MODERATOR: We have Wichita State on the stage. Joining us is Carl Hall, Cleanthony Early and Ron Baker. We will start with an opening statement from Coach Marshall. COACH MARSHALL: I just to want thank our team, our players, our assistant coaches, managers, trainers, secretaries, administrators, for the toughness; and the players especially displayed with all the craziness during that game, up 13, I think, down 8, and for just the resolve that they showed, the perseverance through all kinds of adversity. But none of it compares to what they've been through all season long. That's just what they are. They're winners; they find a way, and it couldn't happen to a nicer group of young men. Q. When you guys are down 8, I think with 8 minutes to go or something like that, what is said in the huddle at that point? RON BAKER: All the coaches emphasized that we needed to come together right now at that moment and we were down 8, right? Q. I thought it was. RON BAKER: I think someone called timeout, or it was a media, and we were sluggish getting off the court and the coaches emphasized, come together now, we gotta push to the end. And we came together, and the outcome was in our favor. Q. Ron, talk about being out for so long this season and how difficult that was. And did you push harder than normal to get back for potentially something like this? RON BAKER: Yeah, my expected time of recovery was six weeks when I first got hurt. When I got back on my feet, the trainer and all the rehab guys at the arena helped me get back in five. So I could come back for the Valley Tournament and those 21 games were long 21 games. I'll just say that. Q. Cleanthony and Ron, can you describe what it's like when everything is going in? CLEANTHONY EARLY: Just feels good to have your teammates believing and you and seeing your shots go in and your teammates' shots go in and it feels good. RON BAKER: Yeah, when you have teammates like me and Clea have, telling us to shoot it when we're opening and be confident in your stroke, it definitely helps. When they are falling in it is obviously a good feeling. Q. Will you talk about the difference at the very beginning of the second half, because in the first half your energy was high. Were you scared of losing? And what changed that, because it did shift. CLEANTHONY EARLY: I think sometimes we can get too excited. I don't think we got nervous. I came out and rushed a shot and Coach made me realize that I rushed a shot, and I was thinking about it. So we composed ourselves and got it together. They called a timeout and emphasized what we wanted to do. Within that 8 minutes we had a chance and we came together and the outcome was in our favor. Q. If you could take us through, the buzzer goes off, celebration, mayhem on the court. How did that go? CARL HALL: It feels good, man. But I want to tip my hat off to the coaches for sticking beside us through the ups and downs. It's been a long journey, man, and the fans deserve this, man, we got the best fans in the world and the best coaches in the world. It was just a blessing to be in this situation, man, and I can't‑‑ I really can't even talk right now. I'm so excited. CLEANTHONY EARLY: It feels real good to be out there with the people you love playing with and a great coaching staff and everyone who believed in us and just like you said, it feels real good. It's hard to explain. Q. At the very first press conference on Wednesday, Cleanthony, you said that you felt like people underestimated you. Would you talk about what it's been like for you guys throughout this run, and what do you think folks think now? CLEANTHONY EARLY: You hear stuff, and people come up to you saying what do you think 70% of America has you losing the fist game and you have to avoid everyone's opinion and go out there and play hard. At the end of day, it doesn't matter because we play the game of basketball and that's what we're going to try to do to the best of our ability. Q. You will be maybe favored against a lower seed. How important is it to keep the same mentality that you approached the first two games with? CARL HALL: It's very important. We got a saying, just take it one game at a time, one play at a time. And we keep fighting out there on defense, and I can't hardly talk right now. It's exciting. It's been a long journey for me, man, it's crazy. I can't describe this feeling. Clea, say something. Q. Was there any point where you guys were afraid, Carl or Ron? And Ron, do you think you would shoot 50% from the 3‑point line tonight? RON BAKER: Yeah. I mean, yeah. You got to be confident with your shot. We shoot well in practice, so why can't we shoot it good in a game when no one has seen us shoot that well, the coaches and the players, teammates getting your mind‑set right when you rise up and shoot. Q. Cleanthony, the match‑up with Kelly Olynyk was you wanted to get him out on the perimeter where you had the quickness. Does that sum up that match‑up? CLEANTHONY EARLY: Couple of times I thought about trying to get it over him too quick and I made a pump fake and got to the right. But he's a great player and he can leave his feet. He can do it all pretty much, but you're right, I tried to get him out to the perimeter and use my quickness. Q. Carl, you said yesterday you thought the team that won the rebounding battle was going to win the game. You guys got outrebounded by nine and still came out in front. What does that say about you guys where maybe that aspect doesn't go your way and you still won? CARL HALL: The only reason I think we won is because we made shots at the end, and that's what counted. We just got a team full of fighters, man; and we never give up. It starts at practice. Y'all got to come to our practice for once, and it's like that. The coaches make it like that and they make it like that in practice and it helps in a game when you get down in certain situations. We just try to come together. Q. Carl, Kelly Olynyk, you forced him out to the perimeter for jump shots? CARL HALL: He scored 26 points, but I was just trying to make things hard for him and give him certain shots and try to push him out and not give him angles to the basket. I tip my hat off to him, man. He's a great player, man. I really enjoy guarding players like that, man, and I like that challenge. I can't say much. My head is still spinning, man. Q. Guys, have you started to think at all about what this next week is going to be like? A lot of attention, a lot of fun, now that you're going to be one of 16 schools left playing basketball? RON BAKER: Yeah, it's going to be a pretty exciting week for us. We know whoever we play is going to be a good team because they're in the Sweet 16, too. Seeding means nothing, you've seen Marshall Henderson, he's a good player; and LaSalle knocked off a good K. State team. So we will prepare and find out tomorrow and hopefully make the best of this situation we got next weekend. CLEANTHONY EARLY: Ron summed that up, but like he said there are good teams in this tournament and we got to go out and prepare and just capitalize on this opportunity that we have. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, gentlemen. Questions for Coach Marshall? Q. Coach, talk about a fresh shot and obviously the clock was going down and it was a rainbow. What does it say that a freshman could come off the bench and hit not only hit that shot, but made four clutch free‑throws down the stretch? COACH MARSHALL: What does it say about the future for our program, and add Ron Baker now. He's a red shirt freshman. Those are the two guys making most of the big shots at the end. Carl made a jumper to put us up by 1, but Ron Baker had three, threes. The clock was running down. It was a rainbow. It was majestic, and it was forever. He's a winner; Ron Baker is a winner, multi sport athlete, pitcher, shortstop, quarterback, great basketball player. Fred VanVleet is the same way. He wants to beat you in whatever he plays in, whether it's in my pool in the summer, playing horse on the basketball on the side of the pool. He wants to beat you. He got angry with my daughter Maggie one time when she was his partner in the shuffleboard. Maggie you got to do better. He wins most of the drills in our practice, and we chart those. We strive to win and we compete every day and there are sprints for the losers, and Fred is a winner. I had total confidence of him being on the floor at the end, and I'm stoked that he, Ron, Tekele are so young in our program. Q. Coach, Ron just basically summed it up, he said that seeds don't mean anything in this tournament. Do you pretty much agree with that? COACH MARSHALL: Yeah, I think so. This has been an incredible year for college basketball with the parity, the great excitement, the wonderful plays and just‑‑ I don't know what happened today other than I know Michigan won and I watched a little bit of that one. We did beat the No. 1 team in the country, the No. 1 team in our region, and that's just a wonderful feeling. So we get to advance now. We get to go to LA, and these guys deserve the positive happy accolades and honors and pats on the back that they're going to get. But they have assured me that they're not satisfied. Q. Held a good offensive team to 35% shooting. What do you think was key in that effort? COACH MARSHALL: Well, the only thing we didn't do is keep 'em off the foul line. They rebounded well. Our first shot defense was incredible, it really was. I bet if you charted that, just alone, before they got the second and the third shots sometimes. Hart is a great offensive rebounder, and I love how he plays the game. But they killed us on the glass. Thanks goodness for once that they don't keep score with how many rebounds you get. I would like that most of the time because we would win about 90‑something percent of our games. But today they counted baskets and free‑throws, and I'm excited they didn't count the rebounds as to whoever won because they were good in chasing down loose balls. Q. Did you think you would win it from the 3‑point land after Thursday's performance; and secondly, mentally talk about how you prepare your boys to play against a No. 1 team in the country. COACH MARSHALL: Well, we approached it like any other game. It's not a cliché. It's the next team in the bracket for the NCAA Tournament. Whoever comes up tomorrow, La Salle or Ole Miss, it's going to be a great challenge and we're going to prepare the exact same way. There's how we're going to try to stop them. Here is what we think we are going to do to gain an advantage, if possible. I've always said, we defend a great‑shooting team, one of the best in the country. They shoot almost 50%. We hold them to 36, 35 from three. Thank goodness they only hit 69% of their free‑throws, because they got there a lot. But, I've always said, if we shoot the ball well, we're hard to beat, and tonight we shot it well. It was one of those nights where it went in. It was young players making big‑time plays, big‑time shots. Ron Baker made three threes in the comeback. Q. Cleanthony has been huge for you in this tournament. Did you have any conversation with him coming into this tournament? COACH MARSHALL: No, I thought he played well against Pittsburgh and he's back. He was sick and did not perform well in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament, and there's obviously something about Wichita and Saint Louis. But we don't have to worry about that now, we'll just take at‑large bids and do our thing. We're glad he's back, and you know, he's such a‑‑ we talked about this on Thursday. He's a live wire and that shot that he took to start the second half, I'm going, really, did you just take that shot and then you're going to go over the back? Now you've got a foul, compounded by an atrocious shot that the 7‑footer blocked. He needed to sit for a while and gather himself, and then he was good again. That's the thing, just listen, trust us, and you're going to be great. Q. When you're down 7 or 8 and their offense is going, did changing defenses mess up their flow and slow them down? COACH MARSHALL: Perhaps. But you know what, we changed defenses. We went to our three quarter court press. We went two our full‑court press. I don't think they liked it, but Kevin Pangos got loose twice in a span of a minute or two, late clock; and our guys did not contest well enough. But I do think that may have taken them out of the rhythm, and you're less likely to foul and we were in the bonus again. I did not want Kelly Olynyk or Elias Harris and those guys drive and get to the foul line. Q. Coach, what do you do defensively to make it difficult for bigs to score down low? COACH MARSHALL: Ehimen Orukpe is strong when he's in, and Carl Hall is a good athlete, don't let people score. Kelly Olynyk was 8 for 22. He got most of his damage at the foul line. He's a great player. I love his game. I think he's going to play in the NBA. But tonight his team came up a little short against our guys, so I thought‑‑ and I said at halftime if we could hold him to 31, again, I liked our chances because they had to guard us, too. But they got more than 31 but we were able to‑‑ we had 40 and they had 39 in the second half. Q. Buzzer goes off, describe the jubilation, the dancing, the pictures, the hugging in those minutes after the game. COACH MARSHALL: Just a euphoric feeling to know all the hard work and dedication and commitment that those young men and the coaches and everyone put forth, 28 years of coaching for me. To be in this situation playing for the right to go to the Sweet 16, No. 1 team in the country, and what that means and to be able to advance in this tournament and to now have a tremendous spotlight on our program and our city and our university in the upcoming week, at minimum. I don't know. It just was awesome. I really didn't think about it at all. It was a natural reaction for me, really, hugging the people that I care about and letting them know how much I appreciate everything that‑‑ all the efforts that they put in. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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