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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2014Marvelle HarrisAllen HuddlestonTyler JohnsonRodney TerryLAS VEGAS, NEVADA Fresno State – 61 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Fresno State. Coach, if you could make some opening comments about tonight's game. COACH TERRY: Extremely tough ballgame. We knew it was going to be a really hard game today. Dave's done a great job all year with this group. We've been fortunate enough the first two times we played those guys, we shot the ball extremely well. We didn't do that today particularly well. But we had to dig really deep down the stretch there. Our guys hung tough. We found a way at the end. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Allen, you might have sparked something there in that run. Was there a moment where you felt you only had a couple minutes left in your career? ALLEN HUDDLESTON: Definitely got a sense of that with about six minutes left and we were down by 15. I knew I didn't want to go out like that. I wanted to give it my all. My job is to come off the bench and give us a spark. I tried to do my best tonight and do my job. Q. Tyler, I think I heard when you were doing your interview out there, what were you eating? TYLER JOHNSON: I had some salt tablets and packets of mustard. Apparently that helps (smiling). Q. What did that taste like? TYLER JOHNSON: Pretty bad. Q. You felt okay, didn't have the cramps? TYLER JOHNSON: No, I didn't cramp up too bad in the last few minutes. When I first got in there, I thought it was about to start up again. Luckily it didn't. We got a timeout fortunately like a couple minutes in. That kind of helped. Then, you know, just got caught up in the game so I kind of forgot about it. Q. Did you ever have a moment when you were looking at the clock and score and thinking about your career coming down to the wire? TYLER JOHNSON: Yeah, actually about a minute left, they were on the free‑throw line. Hud looked at me, You've been quiet for a minute, is this how you want to go out? I don't know what happened. Just kind of made me realize, a minute, if we don't win this game, Fresno State and me are done. It did kind of wake me up. Fortunately we were able to come out on top. Q. Talk about the full court pressure you were putting on them, turning them over a couple times that got you back into it. MARVELLE HARRIS: Just playing hard. Sometimes we were gambling. It obviously worked. Just getting to our spots, knowing where to be, having each other's back. TYLER JOHNSON: Like Velle said, just turned up the intensity. Went to full court pressure and trapping that first pass. Fortunately we were able to get a couple steals. Hud got one, Velle got a couple. We were able to capitalize on them. That was the biggest thing. We got the steals and were able to finish them and make plays and put points on the board as opposed to getting those stops, wasting those opportunities away. ALLEN HUDDLESTON: We knew it was coming down to the end. I told them, 'cause I was playing the middle, so my job is to go from side to side and protect sideline to sideline. I told the guys, I'll have your back, go gamble, try to get a steal. Wanted to get something going, some type of momentum. I think that's what led us to victory. Q. You play tomorrow. You have a big matchup. Was tonight's game in any way symbolic of the season? ALLEN HUDDLESTON: Definitely some symbolism behind that as opposed to how our season started, we kind of picked it up towards the end. Same way this game went. I think we played very, very hard. I'm proud of my teammates, everyone we have. Everyone kept fighting and kept fighting. There was never a point where we gave up. I'm just really proud of everyone that contributed tonight and our entire team and staff. TYLER JOHNSON: I think it's funny that you say that 'cause that's almost indicative of how our season's gone. We start off 1‑7. We're able to battle back and finish strong. Kind of like this game, we started off real slow and were able to finish strong, on a good note. That's actually a good comparison. I never even thought about it like that. Q. Allen, it was a nine‑point game. You hit back‑to‑back shots. You could see the team was erupting heading to the timeout. What was the reaction going back to the huddle with everybody? ALLEN HUDDLESTON: We knew that we gave ourself a chance. That was kind of the whole mantra of the team at that moment. We felt like, hey, we have a legitimate chance. Let's take it. Let's not hold back. That's exactly what we did. We kept fighting and kept fighting and didn't hold anything back. It worked out for us. Q. Tyler, you hit back‑to‑back three‑pointers in the final. Talk about your wanting to hit those shots, what was in your mind. TYLER JOHNSON: I heard everybody on the bench after one of the plays there telling me to shoot it. As we were walking over here, coach was telling me you can't put your gun away no matter what's happening during the game. I was fortunate to have open shots, you know, just took 'em and made 'em. Q. Facing New Mexico in the next round. You played them only once this season. They have a bye. How do you prepare for a team coming off the momentum high? ALLEN HUDDLESTON: I think we approach it like we approach every other game. We do our preparation the night before and days before. If we're executing our stuff, I think we give ourselves a chance in every single game we play. I don't think anything will be different. We'll approach it the same way. We'll watch our film, guard their actions, play defense and defend them and hopefully put the ball in the hole. MARVELLE HARRIS: Like coach says, as much as it is about the opponent, it's about us, too. We're going to do our normal routine and we're going to use this game. Don't start off slow, come out hard and play defense, don't rely on our offense as much. Q. Do you feel like you're a dangerous team? Facing defeat, now you're invincible. TYLER JOHNSON: We don't feel invincible. We know what our capabilities are. We know that we've been playing as well as anybody down the stretch. This team, you know, despite everything that we've gone through this season, has really come together towards the end. These are guys that I'll go in the foxhole with. That's Coach Terry's favorite thing to say. These are guys that I'll really go to battle with. Like you seen tonight, they're going to fight till the end of the game. The game's played for 40 minutes. We're going to fight for every single one of them. I do think we're a dangerous team. THE MODERATOR: We'll continue with questions for coach. Q. This mentality of starting off slow, knowing they can still turn it on. Is that something that makes a coach a little bit nervous? COACH TERRY: I think, again, the slow start, we give a lot of credit to Air Force. Air Force is the type of team that's going to come out defensively and really make you have to make shots. Tonight we didn't do a great job of making shots for a better part of the ballgame. Tonight our best offense was our defense. Our pressure defense picked things up a little bit. We got to playing a little bit faster. It gave us a little bit of offense tonight. Again, good or bad starts, you got to play this game for 40 minutes. The last ballgame we played Air Force, got off to a really slow start as well. But we shot the ball a lot better than we did that particular night than we did tonight. But give them a lot of credit. Q. You talk about turning up the pressure. Did you have to say anything to add to that or just announce that you were changing defense? COACH TERRY: We needed to get some stops. They were carving us up a little bit with the back cuts, scoring in the paint on us there, especially toward the latter part of the second half. Game gets down to stops at the end of the day. We needed to pick up our pressure up the floor a little bit. They didn't handle it particularly well. We got some easy baskets off our pressure defense. We got a chance to go to the line. We got a chance to set our defense again which were key for us. Q. Talk about the journey of the season for you. You turned things around a month and a half ago. In particular a lot of coaches don't want to do what you did scheduling‑wise.  How did that mold the team, even though you lost some of those games? COACH TERRY: We got better as the year went along. We played a very difficult non‑conference schedule. I thought one that prepared us for conference play. We played teams like Pitt, who I liken to a lot of SanDiego State. Florida is very similar to SanDiego State type team. You look at what New Mexico has done. You schedule your non‑conference to prepare yourself for conference play. When we scheduled that tough schedule, we also had a couple big guys that we lost along the way. I'm a little bit proud of that. This group really faced some setbacks and adversity before we took the floor to start the year. I give those guys a lot of credit for staying the course and no one saying, Coach, I was recruited to be a wing, now I'm playing the four, having to be a big guy, Paul Watson, just doing his job. Whatever it takes for the team to be successful, I'll do it. This group has done it all year. Anything we've needed to fix, they've tried hard to fix. I've enjoyed working with this group and coaching this group. They've grown closer together and stayed together and stayed the course. Q. Those two seniors sitting next to you, Tyler with the shots he hit down the stretch, and Allen, did you feel like he was a big part of that spark with the turnaround? COACH TERRY: We need Tyler Johnson to score the basketball for us. He's had a great year, conference and non‑conference‑wise. When he's scoring the basketball, we're a better team obviously. He's our leading scorer. He's a guy we rely on a lot to rebound the basketball for us as well. Again, he got some great looks. They went zone. They had been in sagging man‑to‑man, switching man‑to‑man the whole time. Dave decided to go zone for a couple key possessions there. We ran a couple actions. He got a couple great looks. Again, even Paul Watson, some of the guys that didn't shoot the ball particularly well today, I said, Guys, keep shooting the ball, move to the next play. Don't carry the next shot into the next play, just keep playing. More importantly, we have to get stops on the other end. They dug deep. Again, our guys kept battling for 40 minutes. Q. Talk about Allen's role in that full court press, what he was able to provide you down the stretch. COACH TERRY: He's an anticipator, Allen's role in the pressure defense. He was the guy back in the middle. We were trying to get one hard trap. Once they threw out a trap, we were trying to maintain our pressure up the floor. He did a nice job back there anticipating, making a difficult pass down the sideline for their guards that were being trapped. They were going east to west as opposed to going north and south. He did a great job manning that up for us. Q. We know the nature of these conference tournaments, you don't get much time to celebrate. New Mexico less than 24 hours. What do you have to do? COACH TERRY: Again, we're playing one of the better teams not only in our league but in the country. You get a chance to savor this moment for one night, just like you do in conference play. You get a chance to keep it, win or lose, one night, on to the next opponent. Quicker in terms of preparation‑wise. Having a chance to have faced these guys earlier in the year, we'll have something to fall back on a little bit. Again, they pose a major challenge for us. They got obviously one of the best low post players in the country, not just in our league, in Bairstow. He's a load for anybody to deal with. He's really overshadowed a terrific player in Kendall Williams who has been player of the year in this league. He's been very important to their team as well. Extremely talented ballclub, veteran ballclub that knows how to win. We're going to have to play our best game of the year offensively and defensively and leave it on the floor for 40 minutes. Q. In recent weeks you've had a fantastic assist‑to‑turnover ratio. Tonight it went the other way. You'll talk to the guys about cleaning that up for tomorrow? COACH TERRY: We have for a better part of the year done a great job of taking care of the ball. We played a team tonight that does a great job of that as well, where you got to go out and beat the opponent. We pride ourselves on making a team have to beat us. We'll do a better job of that. Tonight I give a lot of credit to Air Force. They caused some of those. They played well. They played well enough to win this ballgame tonight. Sometimes in post‑season play, this time of year, you got to get a little lucky. We got a little lucky today. We tip our hat to Dave and having his group ready to play at a very high level. We were very fortunate to come out with the win tonight. Q. You played New Mexico once this year, back in mid January. Does that add any challenges to preparing for the Lobos with the quick turnaround? COACH TERRY: We're excited about not having to go to the Pit this year. Very difficult place to play. Obviously going into the season, one of the top teams in our league, with the improved play of Bairstow going to another level. But having a chance to play those guys one time, we still have some familiarity in having had a chance to face them the one time. We were new to this league a year ago, got a great taste of the Pit, those guys twice. Again, one of the best teams in the country, one that knows who they are. They all do a great job of playing their roles. Again, we're going to have to play at a very high level tomorrow to match what they bring to the table. Q. You missed 13 of your first 14 shots, then you rallied to take the lead going into half, then things went cold. Did you think entering halftime you had solved those shooting woes? COACH TERRY: We've been a good offensive team all year long. The big challenge, our season kind of flipped, our team got a little bit better defensively. That was the key. We were able to get stops. We could score with everybody all year long. It was a matter of could we get stops on the other end. Were we going to have enough grit and be a mentally tough team on that end of the floor. Again, it will be a major challenge for us tomorrow night having to do that. I don't worry about us shooting the basketball, not scoring the basketball. I tell our guys all the time, we'll score enough points to give ourself as chance to win. It's going to be the defensive end, taking pride, wanting to sit down and get some stops. We'll just keep shooting the ball like we have all year. I like to think we have some pretty good shooters on our team. You make a miss, you just keep shooting the basketball. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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