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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 14, 2014Jeff ElorriagaDerrick MarksLeon RiceLAS VEGAS, NEVADA New Mexico – 70 THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Boise State. Coach, if you could start with some opening comments about tonight's game. COACH RICE: I'm just proud of the way my guys battled. They consistently battle. They let nothing get 'em down and they keep fighting. You know, I think all of Boise has to be proud of these guys and the fight that they gave tonight. THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions for the student‑athletes. Q. Derrick, it was a pretty physical game out there. What were you able to do to keep your heads? DERRICK MARKS: I mean, in most practices we have, they're physical. Coming into the game, we're a tough team. Physical, we just keep playing with it every day. We just stay with it. Q. Jeff, playing for the third game in a row, the crowd is against you, Tom gets ejected, they kept going on runs. Seemed like no matter what, you had an answer. How were you able to stay in this game? JEFF ELORRIAGA: Just willpower. We knew it was win or go home. New Mexico is a great team. It pretty much was a road game. They had the best fan section here. For us we kept clawing. Guys were fouling, we were hacking Bairstow. You have to be proud of what we did. Too bad we didn't win it. Everybody was playing their asses off. It was a good effort. Q. Jeff, when Thomas had to go out of the game, 16 points, playing great. What sort of effect did it have? JEFF ELORRIAGA: Unfortunately, he got kicked out. I think we used it as motivation, we're going to win this one for him. He was playing great. I didn't really see the play, to be honest. I don't know if he really clobbered him or not. I know they were both on the floor. When Thomas went out, This one is for Thomas. Thomas was playing great. It was just unfortunate he got tossed out. Q. Has it hit you yet as a senior this is the last Mountain West game you'll play? What is going through your head? JEFF ELORRIAGA: Hasn't hit yet. Probably on that flight home it will hit. I'm still in Vegas, still with my team. It just kind of is bittersweet. It was a good run, but unfortunately we didn't get where we wanted to. Glad I got to be part of something special. Just thankful right now. Q. Jeff, did you have a chance to see Thomas when he was leaving the floor? He hugged Coach Neal, hugged Bairstow. Does it signify who he is as a man? JEFF ELORRIAGA: Absolutely. Thomas wouldn't intentionally try to hurt somebody at all. He was just trying to make a hard foul. Unfortunately it probably looked worse than what it was. Thomas is a great guy. As you can, he works his butt off. He was banging with Bairstow and Kirk. To have 16 points and stretch the defense out, he was really important for us. He's a great guy. He's my roommate. I love him to death. Glad he's a warrior. Q. When you're down three and you have the ball, you decide to drive with five seconds left, was there a thought to go for the three? DERRICK MARKS: Felt like I had the jump shot, but it wasn't going down. So I tried to get to my bread and butter and hopefully get a foul. Q. Jeff, just the amount of effort you played with tonight. Throughout your career that's one thing you prided yourself off of. Do you feel like you left it all out on the floor? JEFF ELORRIAGA: Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure we're exhausted right now. The guys in the locker room, Drmic, he's playing with terrible feet. Derrick, these guys, everybody worked hard. Just New Mexico is so big it's hard to keep banging with them, banging with them. Yeah, I don't think we have any regrets of effort or anything like that. It's just unfortunate we couldn't win. Q. Jeff, with New Mexico there's the big three guys. Delaney had a big game. How tough was he tonight? JEFF ELORRIAGA: He made us pay. We were trying to help on the big man. He made some good cuts. Hit some timely shots. Made some rebounds. Props to Delaney. He really stepped up. I think he was only averaging four for the season. For him to do that, that was kind of the X factor for them. Q. Derrick, I know you talked about defensive efforts, how much better they were. Struggled a little bit in the first half. Seemed to correct it a little bit. What did you do in the second half to get back into it? DERRICK MARKS: We didn't do anything special. We just stayed with it like we always do. We knew if we stayed with it, kept on getting the stops we needed, at the end of the game we'll be there. Q. Jeff, the season obviously isn't over, the NIT or something happens. What is the next goal? NewYork City in a few weeks? Is that in your head right now? JEFF ELORRIAGA: Not really. Our goal, we really wanted to make the tournament. Whatever we play in, we'll be thankful. I mean, I'm thinking about what I'm getting for dinner right now. I'm not that far ahead. I go an hour at a time. Q. Jeff, you talk about wanting to get to the NCAA tournament. After you do it once, you get there, how tough is it to get there again, dealing with expectations? COACH RICE: It's just tough to make it every year. As you can tell, New Mexico and San Diego State and those teams, they've got a system down, they've figured out how to get there. Unfortunately we couldn't get there this year. It's the best 68 teams. It's just tough to crack that kind of top teams. Unfortunately just couldn't get there this year. Had some tough losses. It's the way the ball kind of bounces. We had some fortunate bounces last year and this year they didn't always go our way. We're still proud, we fought every game. Unfortunately the ball didn't bounce our way. THE MODERATOR: We'll continue with questions for coach. Q. You talked on Monday about your team playing with confidence, playing above themselves. I think that's what we saw the last 40 minutes on the floor. COACH RICE: Yeah, thank you. They take a lot of pride in that. I enjoy the heck out of coaching these guys. They battle. They don't let anything get them down. We weren't going to cave into anything. Fatigue wasn't going to be a factor. Injuries weren't going to be a factor, nothing. We were just going to keep battling. I certainly feel like they did that. I want to give New Mexico a lot of credit. They're a great team. We knew that. Kendall, that big shot he hit from the corner, I mean, I thought we defended it pretty good, but he's a big shot‑maker. If that comes off, then we got a chance to win it. Again, they got great players, Cameron and Kendall. They made big shots when they had to. Like I said, I'm really proud of our guys' effort. They faced some adversity, we knew they would. Thomas starts playing terrific. I wasn't going to take him out for the rest of the game. We were going to get him a lot more shots, too. Again, Jeff hit that right on the head. Thomas is a terrific kid. There's never any doubt in my mind that he would ever try to intentionally hurt a guy. But the rule is the rule. I didn't get a good look at it, but I trust Randy on that. He knows the rules. I think he did what he had to do. I'm guessing, I don't know. I couldn't really see it. Q. They shot 36 free throws to your 17. Did you feel like maybe that was a deciding factor in the game? COACH RICE: You know, yeah. When they make more free throws than we attempt, yeah, that's a big factor. They put a lot of foul pressure on you. They're good at that. They're bigger than us at those two positions where they can pound it and pound it. So, yeah, it's a big factor. Q. When a guy like Thomas goes out playing as well as he was... COACH RICE: I'm proud of our guys. That affected me. I don't want Thomas to be judged in any way the wrong way. And hopefully he wasn't. I mean, like I said, I know it wasn't anything dirty. He wouldn't do that. My guys would never do that. So it affected me to lose a senior that was playing so good, no question. Then my guys rallied around it. So they kept battling, you know, like I know they always will. Q. The free throw question that was just asked. First half technical foul called at halftime. The Lobo bench exchanged some words. The flagrant. Was it an emotional game? COACH RICE: Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're in the conference semifinals. I think they're two teams getting after it. Our guys, we got a lot of crossover friends with the Aussie connection. Certainly have a ton of respect for them. I mean, there's no issues, that's for sure. I know there's not any on our part. Q. The technical foul. Seemed like it came at a convenient time for your team, I suppose. Was that an intentional thing on your end? COACH RICE: You know, that's between me and the official. But, yeah, I knew they had the ball, and I didn't give the ball up. Kendall was nice enough to miss those free throws for me. So play on. First one of the year for me. Q. Do you have any comment on the officiating of the game? COACH RICE: No, you know, I have no comment on that. We don't ever use that as an excuse. That's just part of the game. We don't go in the locker room and complain about that. We could have done more. We should have done more. We do all we can control. We can't control that. I don't want to take anything away from New Mexico either. They battled. We battled. Let the chips fall where they may. Q. Talk about Watkins. He's the definition of a blue‑collar, hard worker. It's rare. COACH RICE: It's character. We found a kid with character that wanted to get better. He had just a burning desire to get better. If you would have seen him four years ago, you'd have been like, you know, poor Boise, they can't play with that guy in the post. He ends up being an all‑league player. That's a credit to him, his work ethic and desire. It goes back to his character. That's what we try to recruit at Boise. That's what we have coming in, character guys. We're going to keep growing this program with guys like that. They'll continue to get better. We have to get better. This league is a heck of a basketball league. We want to go toe‑to‑toe with New Mexico, San Diego State. Next year the fouls will be opposite, so... Q. I think we're more accustomed to seeing Anthony score more points. What he was assigned to do on the defensive end, he probably had the most difficult matchup as anybody. COACH RICE: Yeah, he's got a guy that's 100 pounds more than him, I think. Again, Anthony is one of the toughest competitors I've ever coached. He just battled to stay aloft till the very end. Like you said, you hear their fans chant MVP about Bairstow. Certainly could be. Not taking anything away from X, he deserves it, too. Cameron is right there for that, too. A lot of credit to Anthony. Q. On the other side, the offensive side, Anthony ends up with six points. What does New Mexico do that makes it difficult? COACH RICE: They're long and they're athletic. Anthony did have some good looks in the first half, I thought, and I think he thought ones he should have made. He'll be kicking himself for that. But he's a competitor. He keeps fighting and battling. But they do a nice job defensively. They're long and athletic. They can challenge your shots pretty good. Q. You make a little run in the tournament. A tough close loss for you guys. You still have games ahead. What do you think about this team the last couple days? COACH RICE: I'm really proud of them obviously. There's a lot of accomplishments. We keep getting these firsts for our program. It's the first Mountain West games we've won in the tournament. First back‑to‑back 20‑win season in the last 25 years. They're great accomplishments and they're great battlers. Like Jeff said, sometimes the ball didn't bounce our way, but we always came to battle. Sometimes the free throws didn't drop, but we were consistent as far as how hard we played and how we played together and how we represented Boise State and our Bronco Nation. Q. Has your athletic director told you where you'll be playing? COACH RICE: No. We didn't come down here to play in any other tournament but the Mountain West tournament. We came down here to win this thing. We burned our boats. We didn't want to think about anything else or worry about anything else. We just wanted to win this tournament. You could tell that's all we were focused on. Q. What can you say about that group of seniors that came up with you? Did you say anything special to those guys? COACH RICE: We had one of the best senior banquets I've ever been around. There was a lot of emotion in that. I didn't want to say good‑bye to these guys, for sure. They didn't want to say good‑bye to each other. We didn't have an emotional locker room. We had one of the best senior nights because of these kids, who they are, the character. People don't know all the things they do away from basketball. They're all three graduating. They do community stuff. They represent our program in the best possible fashion that you can imagine, all three of them. We didn't get emotional in the locker room, but we've had our private or semi‑private emotional times. Q. Delaney, how has his game changed and developed? COACH RICE: That's what makes New Mexico so good. They've got a lot of really good players. They have the two monsters inside, then Kendall is so crafty. Hugh always makes huge shots against us. You have to pick your poison in some form. Good luck whoever draws them in the NCAA tournament. You're not going to‑‑ I'm not giving away with a scouting report here, but you're not guarding Cameron Bairstow by yourself, one person, I don't care who they play. You're going to have to pick your poison a little bit. When Delaney is playing like that, good luck. Q. It seemed like from the seniors to the freshmen you got contributions this season. Was this as complete of a team you've been a part of? COACH RICE: We want to keep building. We're going to keep battling to keep building and keep getting these character guys that want to keep battling together and keep developing them. The ones that come in, they're going to get that passed down to them. Now we're getting the culture of that because of the upperclassmen representing us so well and modeling that behavior so well. We got to keep growing, and we're going to. Q. We know you've been in adversity situations all season long. In the second half never led but never were behind by more than five or six points. How tense was the second half? COACH RICE: I think the players, I know my staff, we felt like, We're going to sneak this thing at the end, we're going to win this thing. When Kendall shot that shot, I thought, Too tough. That's too tough of a shot. He's not going to make that. You have to give him credit. If he misses that, we've got a great chance. Again, that's what great players do, they make those big shots. I consider Kendall a great player. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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