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EA SPORTS MAUI INVITATIONALNovember 24, 2013Mike AndersonLAHAINA, HAWAII PALMER MOODY: I'm Palmer Moody, media relations director for the EA Sports Maui Invitational and on behalf of the tournament, I'd like to welcome everyone and thank you for joining us here today. I'll give a quick rundown of what's going to happen here, and then turn things over to our emcee, Jimmy Dykes. First, we'll hear from all eight head coaches, then after that we'll head over to this area over here for the surfboard photo op. Then we'll begin the charity free‑throw contest which will be set up over here by the basketball hoop. Then after that we'll have 15, 20 minutes for media round table one‑on‑one interviews. So, media, we ask that you hold your questions until that one‑on‑one time period. We'll have coaches make some comments here in just a few minutes. I'd like to introduce Jimmy Dykes right now who is going to host our coaches' comments here. Jimmy is beginning his 15th season as a college basketball analyst at ESPN, and this will be his sixth EA Sports Maui Invitational that he'll be covering. Jimmy was a three‑year letterman at Arkansas, and he went on to become an assistant coach for the Razorbacks and he's also coached at Sacramento State, Appalachian State, Kentucky, Arkansas‑Little Rock and Oklahoma State. He was also a college scout for the Seattle Supersonics. Please welcome Jimmy Dykes. JIMMY DYKES: I got fired at every one of those jobs and kept moving along is what happened. It's a pleasure to be here. One thing they left out of my resume there was as a three‑year letterman at Arkansas I'm in the record book. I think Mike Anderson knows this, I'm the only player in the history of Arkansas that when I finished my career, my overall grade point average was higher than my overall point per game average. I was not a 4.0 student so that tells you a little about the kind of player I was. My sixth year to be here. Seven years ago I was at the Great Alaska Shootout. That's when they changed me from the Great Alaska Shootout to Maui, it was a no‑brainer. Picture‑perfect weather here, a terrific field in the 30th anniversary of the Maui Invitational. As balanced as I've seen since I've been out here. I was telling Coach Drew a few minutes ago it seems like every year I've been here there's been a favorite coming in, a Top 4 or 5 ranked team, and this year it's a very wide open field, a highly competitive tournament awaits us. I'd like to recognize from Chaminade University, the president is with us this morning, Bernie Ploeger, Brother Bernie Ploeger is here. Thank you for being here and for all that Chaminade University does for this tournament. We're 18 days in, 19 days into the college basketball season, and there are 56 undefeated teams remaining in Division I basketball. 7 of those 56 are here on the island with us today. Chaminade is not Division I, they're also unbeaten, so these schools represent an overall record of 30‑0 to begin the tournament on Monday. That gives you an idea of the quality of basketball we're getting ready to see. There is also a brand‑new, refurbished floor. When I walked into the Lahaina Civic Center yesterday, that was the first thing that jumped out to me was a beautiful floor. David Odom and the tournament Selection Committee and his committee that runs this thing, they do an unbelievable job of making this, in my opinion, the premier event in all of early season basketball. It's a primary property for ESPN. We put major importance on how we cover it. We bring in the best of the best. Not only in terms of our production crew, but all the people that work behind the scenes for us here that make the job for Jon Sciambi and I, and Jay Bilas and John McDonough, that make our job easy. This is a highly important part of our season, the Maui invitational, when the eyes of the college basketball will be upon us. There are three National Championships represented up here, Arkansas, Syracuse, and California have won it 18 final fours, 79 conference championships, and 132 NCAA appearances. We have coaching spectrums at both ends. Jim Boeheim is the second winningest coach in the history of our game. No one has more respect. His imprint is all over the game of basketball from his time with USA Basketball to what he's done with Syracuse, on the other end we have Richard Pitino who is in his second year as a head coach, and he's been right there beside his dad and Billy Donavon for a lot of years. And that's an interesting match‑up right off the bat. All the coaches up here, I will say this, and I would not always say this about a bunch of guys that I'm around at this level, these are all highly talented guys in my opinion. They're also low maintenance. There is not a lot of those‑‑ there is not enough of those in the game of college basketball. These guys up here know what I'm talking about. There are a lot of highly talented coaches in the game. But also a lot of guys that can be difficult to deal with, they're high maintenance, and these guys are not. That's a salute from me to them. Everybody likes to coach a player like that as well. With that, I'm going to open it up to the coaches. We'll go down the line. Our first coach you're going to hear from is the head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks, Mike Anderson. He's in his third year as head coach of the Hogs. His third year at other stops prior to Arkansas at UAB and Missouri have been turning moments for him. NCAA Tournaments at both of those schools, three times for Missouri, three times for UAB. He was an assistant for Nolan Richardson and Arkansas when they won the National Championship. He's brought back a style to basketball that the Arkansas fan base was really starved for, Bud Walton Arena is now one of the most difficult places to play in all of college basketball. With that, I'd like to hear a few words from Mike Anderson, Coach? COACH ANDERSON: All right. First we're certainly excited to be here on the island of Maui. I mean, can you imagine these conditions? I think back home right now it's about 30°, 40°, so with that being said, we're excited to play against a great California team. Mike Montgomery does a tremendous job. A lot of teams here now are finding out more about their teams as we up the competition. What better setting to do it than in a tournament format where you play game‑in and game‑out. But we're excited about our team. We've addressed some issues from last year. We didn't have any size. Now we've got some size that we feel can play the way we want to play and that is up‑tempo basketball. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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