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NCAA MEN'S FINAL FOURApril 4, 2013Gregg MarshallATLANTA, GEORGIA THE MODERATOR: We're joined right now by the head coach of Wichita State, Gregg Marshall. Coach Marshall will begin with an opening statement and then take your questions. COACH MARSHALL: First of all, it's great to be back in Atlanta, Georgia, about two and a half hours from where I was born and raised. Great to be back with this Shocker basketball team, a team that's exceeded everyone's expectations this year and is playing some very good basketball at this point. We're excited about the opportunity to play Louisville, the No.1 seed in the entire tournament. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach Marshall. Q. What, if anything, do you still apply from your days as an assistant at Charleston and also your thoughts on the Rutgers situation, please? COACH MARSHALL: John Kresse is one of my mentors. In fact, he will be here tomorrow, be sitting in our section near my wife. Stay in touch with him. In fact, I've got him looking at a little Louisville tape right now to give me a few pointers. He's a big part of the reason that I'm a coach with any degree of success, much less at this point. We run a very similar style to the one I learned from him in my eight years sitting next to him at the College of Charleston. Having moved over those 18 inches into the head coaching chair at Winthrop, it was amazing how much I drew on that experience from Coach Kresse. He was my CoachK. He remains my CoachK. He's a dynamic coach. All of his career, but in the late '80s, NAIA tournament, winning that, arguably as successful as anyone's ever done it. Just learning from him was incredible, a great experience. With Coach Rice, I feel bad for Mike. I hope that he can get straight and figure out what he needs to do going forward, and gets another opportunity. I feel really bad for those young men. I hope it didn't impact any of them negatively to the point where they weren't able to be good basketball players and finish their careers. There's obviously a line that was crossed. Unfortunately there's a lot of people that will suffer now, including Rutgers University and the state of New Jersey. I'm hopeful that everyone can come out of it in a positive way somehow. That's it, that everyone can come out of this in a positive way. Q. This is going to be a matchup of guards. Every time you play Louisville, you need ball handlers out there. Talk to me about the role of Cleanthony and Carl Hall for you and what role are they going to play in this matchup? COACH MARSHALL: You're exactly right, they're going to need to be the beneficiaries of some hopeful easy opportunities to score after our guards are able to beat the pressure. They're going to have to come up and help relieve pressure as outlets. We can't play with five guards, because then you're not going to be able to get a rebound. We're going to need all the available hands on deck to take care of the basketball, be strong with it, organize and attack Louisville's pressure in an intelligent and sound way. If you have opportunity basketball, then you got to deal with the hand you've been dealt. If you don't have opportunity basketball, we need to try to set something up and flow right into a motion offense. Q. When we get to talk to you, it's normally maybe once or twice a week. What has this process been like for you and the guys, the constant attention? COACH MARSHALL: Well, we just know this is part of it. If I have to make that trade to do constant media attention, national radio, TV to get to this point every year, I'll make that trade. It is grueling. It's different. But that's part of the job. And our job as basketball folks at this point in a season is to reflect positively back on our university and our community and the state of Kansas. I hope that we're doing that. I hope the applications are rising in Wichita State University and the interest in our great university is just exploding. So that's what we can do being the front porch to a university. Q. Gregg, the pregame and postgame speeches are on CBS. How do you prepare for those? Are they off the cuff? Do you run them by an assistant coach? How do you come up with some of the phrases you use? COACH MARSHALL: I don't have any writers. Maybe we can work on that next year. Producers, directors. I just kind of go with what's in my heart. I really don't give it a whole lot of thought because there's so many other things that we need to get accomplished in a day. But as the team is out warming up, whatever is our keys to the game, whatever I think is important for our team to know, other than play angry and are you satisfied, which they've worked pretty well to this point, we write it down and then I let my natural personality come forth. Q. You have guys from a lot of different backgrounds, different paths to get to Wichita State. Are there common characteristics or threads that you look for in all these different guys? COACH MARSHALL: I think so. We want winners. We want guys that really want to win, that want to commit to something bigger than themselves. We want guys that are tough and athletic so they can defend and rebound at a high level. And ultimately some guys that can put the ball in the basket. I think we have a great blend of those guys. But the biggest thing we have are character kids. We really have high‑character young men in our program because they buy into the whole. They're not interested in individual stats. But at this point they're all being interviewed. They're all getting sized for Final Four rings. They're all getting new Nike gear sent to them by the droves. It's just a great experience. What we've been teaching to the victor go the spoils, and when we win, everybody gets a piece of it, can never be more true than right now. Q. Missouri Valley has been a very competitive league for a long time. How much do you think it helps to get to a Final Four, to have a team here? COACH MARSHALL: I think it helps us tremendously. I think it was '79, Larry Bird was the last Valley team to make it. I think Penn was in it the same year, '79. They were the last 9 seed to make it. Doug Elgin told me he was either O‑8 or O‑9 in Sweet 16 games in the past 16 years or so. Now we're able to not only get to the Elite 8, but to the Final Four. There's more money coming into the league. Shares of NCAA tournament money. There's more exposure for the league. Ultimately it could help recruiting league‑wide. I just think in many ways it helps not only us, but the conference. Q. We all know how effective Russ Smith is getting to the basket. Can you talk about Malcolm's ability to do the same thing. Secondly, can you discuss the guard matchups tomorrow, how you might play them defensively. COACH MARSHALL: Russ Smith is like a contortionist with his body. He's incredible how he can get in and change angles and get to the foul line and finish. Walking past him today as we were leaving the floor, they were coming out, I didn't recognize him, but he's just a little guy. I mean, he is so incredibly talented for his build. For those of you who are familiar with our recruiting, we signed a young man from North Carolina who's very similar to Russ Smith in stature. Ri'an Holland. That's kind of a good comparison physically. I hope Ri'an can play like him. We really are excited about Ri'an. But that's lofty expectations. Russ is tremendous in his ability to score the ball on the bounce. Malcolm is a little different. Malcolm is more of a mini train, if you will. He's stronger, stockier, thicker, not quite as shifty. Can do the things with his body the way Russ can, but he can bully a littler guard a little bit. I'm not saying he's going to bully Russ Smith or Peyton Siva, but he has tremendous strength in his hands, thighs, lower body. That's how he gets to the rim. Matchups, I can't divulge that. That's state secret (smiling). Q. Can you reflect a little bit on your Winthrop days, how that helped propel you to this moment. Also, how are you a different coach today than when you first got that job in your 30s? COACH MARSHALL: Well, when I interviewed at the Final Four in San Antonio in 1998, I didn't think I had much of a shot. I left the College of Charleston in '96. Two years at Marshall University, working for Greg White. So it's the spring of '98. I waited a month before calling Coach Kresse. I said, Dan Kenney was relieved of his duties at Winthrop. What do you think of that job? Coach Kresse bent over backwards at that point to tell me he thought I would be perfect for the job. His words were, Gregg, I would walk to Rock Hill right now to help you get that job and I would tell them that you're the perfect candidate. So I had his blessing. Greg White, I had his blessing. So between the two of them, they kind of double‑teamed Tom Hickman. I interviewed. I don't know why they gave me the job. But I remember telling them my College of Charleston experience, I was not the architect, but I was the foreman, and I carried some bricks, I slung some mortar, and I could steel the blueprint. They fell for it. Nine years later, seven NCAA tournaments, it was a bit of a run. I was a little bit younger then, a little bit wilder, if you will. I kind of refer to Cleanthony Early like an electric cord that's been severed and sparks are coming out of it, flying all over the room. That's how I was when I got my head job. It was perfect for Winthrop. We had a beautiful 6100‑seat arena. We probably had 500 fans at the first game I coached. You could hear every voice, every sneaker squeak, you could hear. I needed to infuse some energy into that program and energy into my team. We were able to do that. But you mellow as you get older, not to the point where I'm sedated, but I'm still a lot calmer than I was at that point, and hopefully wiser. Q. Fred Van Vleet has come of age the last couple games. How vital is it to have he and Malcolm potentially together at times on Saturday to offset Louisville's pressure? COACH MARSHALL: You nailed it. Fred is going to play a lot with Malcolm because we need the ball handlers, we talked about that. My college coach, Hal Nunnally, at Macon, I was a former point guard in high school. College level I played the small forward, at 6'2" and a half, 175 pounds. His belief was you can never have enough point guards on the floor because generally they can bounce it, they can pass it, they know the offense, they know how to play. That's what you expect from point guards. I've carried that belief to all of my assistant coaching jobs, head coaching jobs. You better have three point guards, because if one goes down, you need two in every game, because you need a backup. And Fred has proven that he's able to go in there, play valuable minutes. He's hit big shots for us. The three he hit against Gonzaga in the last minute. The runner in the lane he hit to give us the six‑point lead with under a minute to go against Ohio State, that's a true freshman making big plays. He and Malcolm will play a lot together. Demetric Williams had a great practice today. He'll get some time. We need as many ball handlers as we can. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much, coach. COACH MARSHALL: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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