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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 12, 2014Kyan AndersonTrent JohnsonKarviar ShepherdKANSAS CITY, MISSOURI Baylor – 76 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by TCU Head Coach Trent Johnson and student‑athletes Karviar Shepherd and Kyan Anderson. Coach, your thoughts on tonight's game. COACH JOHNSON: Well, Baylor's a good basketball team. Obviously they caused a lot of problems. They're real fast athleticism and their skill level. But for the most part all year long I think everybody understands the situation we're involved in, and for these guys, especially these two to my right, I think they've done an exceptional job of staying the course, being coachable and fighting through. I look out there and I got Thomas Montigel as a walk‑on at 6'2", about 200, and he's doing the best job he can possibly do to keep Austin off the paint and off the block. You know what, in athletics, one thing that is real easy to do is quit when you're undermatched ‑‑ overmatched, excuse me, and you have a lot of adversity during the course of a season. And I'm a firm believer that adversity reveals your character as opposed to build it. And this is a group that has a lot of character and for the most part they competed their tail off. I wish we could have broke through, but it is what it is, and Kyan did an unbelievable job keeping us in games all year long in league play versus great players and great teams and well coached teams. And Karviar, for him to be in a situation like he was all year long in league play, playing multiple minutes and playing the post, speaks volumes to our future. And like I told them, we had two guys who gave us everything in Jarvis and Thomas and very competitive, great leaders, great kids. And we will learn from what happened this year and we will meet March17th individually and collectively and move forward and get ready for next year. Q. Both of you could you talk about what it was like, you got things going there in the second half and got interesting, what got the offense clicking there down the stretch? KARVIAR SHEPHERD: We just played mostly through the coach, coaching staff, and they draw up good plays in the timeouts and during halftime, and we just went by what they wanted us to do and getting open spots and take good shots and that's what we did. KYAN ANDERSON: I felt the second half we did a good job rebounding the ball on the defensive end which led to more fastbreak opportunities for us as a team. And we were able to knock down shots in the second half better than we did in the first half. So got us going a little bit. Q. They've gotten after you pretty good the first two games inside and on the boards. You did a lot better job today than in those two games. What specifically do you feel like you were able to improve on to make it closer in this game today? KARVIAR SHEPHERD: We just played harder this game. We knew that it was going to be tough for us to come out and just not give it our all on our last game or, you know, in this tournament. And we just came out and gave our all for our two seniors. And it just fell out with a loss. But we're going to learn from this and, like we did from the two games, before we're going to learn from this and come back next year and work out and do what we gotta do to win games. KYAN ANDERSON: Like Karviar said, we just try hard in this game, put forth more effort this game to rebound. We knew that they dominated the boards in the first two games, so we made it important to try to get, made it important this game to rebound. And we did a pretty good job. Q. Kyan, next season how much fun is going to be playing with a full deck against the Big 12? KYAN ANDERSON: It should be a lot of fun. If we can stay healthy and consistent with our weapons, it will be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to it. Like we've been saying, we're going to learn from this year. We don't want to feel like this next year. So it's me, Coach and Karviar's job to get these guys ready. We went through one round and seen how it is, now it's time to focus up and try to get a run next year. Q. Karviar, looking ahead next year, how much you guys are looking forward to that having more weapons at your disposal the next time around? KARVIAR SHEPHERD: Well, for the players that played, it gave us experience. So we'll be able to come out and do what we gotta do to help the players that was down and injured or didn't get cleared, help them out and play hard in practice and do what we've gotta do to make everybody improve. Q. Like I asked the guys, how much fun is it going to be for you to have more weapons next year at your disposal? COACH JOHNSON: Obviously, the more competition you have in practice and the individual workouts, the better you're going to be. So when you talk about fun, I mean, I'm not one that I'm going to sit up here and say just because we've got talent coming in from a recruiting standpoint and we have talent that's set out this year, this whole league is talented. And so everybody's going to be better. But for me personally, I agree with what Kyan said. I'm looking forward to having a healthy group that you're don't to have to worry about not being able to go full speed in practice and those kind of things. It's going to be exciting, it's going to be interesting. One of the things that's always been interesting for me is sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to really figure out what you need to do to get to the elite level, and it's easy for me because I've been here, done that. But I think these kids really now have got a great feel of how competitive, how good this league is, number one. But number two, how hard they have to push each other and how hard they have to compete, because usually when you have good kids, they're good to each other in practice and they're too nice sometimes, but I think we're going to have‑‑ moving forward, I think we're going to have a lot going on where guys play with an edge. Chris Washburn plays with an edge. Amric Fields has been hurt for a year and a half. I'm looking forward to him being healthy. Devonta Abron, for him to sit out has been painful. And Trey Zeigler, he's a special player. He's been around. He's been around. It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. Q. What's the process from here in putting the wraps on this season and the way it turned out? How soon do you let this one go or what do you try to pull from this one as you get ready to go next year? COACH JOHNSON: We will meet individually. I'll meet with them individually and collectively on March17th, and then basically we need to get healthy. So we will start spring workouts, individual workouts probably right after the Final Four. But the main thing is the academics, getting completely healthy and resting yourself mentally and physically. Q. How do you want this team to be remembered, I guess, because they've had so much adversity and they never gave up? COACH JOHNSON: Well, like who they are, I think you said it, a bunch of guys that never stopped fighting, never stopped playing, never stopped trying to get better and really supported each other. And that's a pretty good tribute. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Coach. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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