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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENT

March 9, 2006

DENVER, COLORADO

THE MODERATOR: Joined now by Colorado State head coach Dale Layer, Michael Harrison and Jason Smith. Coach, if you want to begin with some opening remarks.
COACH DALE LAYER: San Diego State is an extremely talented team. We were extremely short-handed. That's not typically a good mix. I thought our guys played really hard. I thought the defensive effort was about as good as we could possibly play.
The back-breaker was giving up so many offensive rebounds and heavy turnovers. And you can't give a talented team that many more possessions without, you know, bad things happening.
But I'm proud of our guys. They battled through it. And I thought gave a very, very good effort. And that's the breaks.
THE MODERATOR: For the next few minutes questions directed to the either Jason or Michael please.
Q. Jason, it looked like they were talking a lot about mixing different defenses on you and doing different types of doubles and stuff like that. It looked like it was changing things and got you a little out of your game early. Was there anything in particular they were doing?
JASON SMITH: It was pretty much a normal double team. It was partly on my fault. I didn't handle it very well. I just got to get better on that in the off-season.
Q. Michael, obviously a big game for you today. Was there something in their defense that allowed you to exploit that or what was it that allowed you to have a big performance today?
MICHAEL HARRISON: Well, Jason, he draws so much attention on defense, it kind of allows me to get a lot of one-on-one opportunities, use my quickness and my ability to get an easy basket. So I kind of just feed off defense, how the defense is playing. Jason, I kind of feed off that and take advantage of my opportunities.
Q. Jason or Michael, the coach mentioned being shorthanded. How much of a difference was it not having Stu Creason?
JASON SMITH: It meant the world. Stuart is an influential player on our team. He helps Mike and myself out, giving us a break, but he also produces on offense. He's a great defensive player and we missed him today.
THE MODERATOR: Did you want to address that as well, Michael.
MICHAEL HARRISON: Yes, he's a big body. He's always cleaning up the glass. And we got hurt on the glass today. We could have used him there. He's a powerful force inside. We missed him a lot today because he does a lot of good things.
He's also really emotional. He talks to the players, he keeps everybody up. We still got that part, but we really missed him on the court.
Q. Both Michael and Jason, when you look back, how will you remember this season?
JASON SMITH: We had a great start coming out of the gates, kind of coming into conference. We lost -- lost or wind out of our sails and we could never regain it.
MICHAEL HARRISON: We know we have to grow up fast. Had a lot of new guys on the team. We didn't know what conference play was going to be like, how much more intense it was going to be. When we look back, we have to know we got to step it up play harder and just grow up faster. From the freshmen to the seniors, everybody has to contribute.
THE MODERATOR: Jason and Michael, we'll let you guys go. Thank you. Questions now directed to Coach Layer.
Q. How significant was that stretch? It's 50/44. You couldn't get a rebound and they went on that 9/0 run?
COACH DALE LAYER: The offensive rebounds were the back-breaker. They seemingly got two and three shots every time they were at their end of the floor. And I thought our initial defensive effort was close to as good as we could play defensively, considering not having either Michael or Stuart there, and Chris Harris has the flu so he couldn't play.
But, yeah, we couldn't finish plays. And, you know, you got to give Slaughter great credit. I thought he was the guy that got most of those. But it was a team offensive-rebounding performance, and you know, its -- you can't give them that many more possessions.
Q. Early on the technical foul, was that just frustration coming out or was there something that you saw that you were really, really upset about and you needed to make a point?
COACH DALE LAYER: I was trying to protect our team, and I didn't think they were getting adequate protection from the folks who were supposed to do that.
Q. Coach Layer, it seems like a lot of the outside shots didn't seem like they were falling for you. How big was that, considering how they were being with your players on the inside?
COACH DALE LAYER: We shot 4 for 11. I mean that's average. But certainly if a couple of those would have gone down, it would have made a big difference. They were certainly collapsing on Jason the whole night. And, you know, we weren't able to take advantage of that. Had a few open looks. We just didn't get a lot of them to go down.
Q. When did you know that Stuart couldn't play today? I saw him walking after practice. He seemed to be fine.
COACH DALE LAYER: He hasn't practiced for a month. But it's day-to-day. You know, he might have been able to play tomorrow. Our typical, you know, break. But he's got a stress reaction, same thing that kept him out the first seven or eight games. And honestly, I didn't know until, oh, what time the game start, 12:05, maybe 11:47.
Q. Same question I asked the players. When you look back, how will you assess and remember this season?
COACH DALE LAYER: Oh, you know, very mixed emotions. Rollercoaster. We probably won some games that we might not should have early, and we probably lost some games that we should have won late. You know, you look around at this team, and Jason played last year in this tournament. Sean played last year in this tournament. That's it from tonight's team.
You know, we missed Michael Morris. We missed Stuart. There were times this year that we were new and we were -- you know, we were changing a lot of things from a year ago. We all learned. I thought, you know, if you look at -- if you look at our team, our RPI's up our, Sagarin is up, our wins are up, we got five starters back.
If you compare that to 365 days ago, you would say we made a lot of improvements. Is that enough? No. Are we disappointed? Absolutely. Could we have done better? Should we have done better? Certainly.
But I think there aren't many people that are going to return five starters. We have 8 of our top 10 back, and we've made a nice jump, not where we wanted to be. I think the expectations were very high going into the league. And we didn't probably take advantage of that. And whether that's, as they said, you know, guys who hadn't been around the block enough, you can blame coaching, you can blame playing, you can blame inexperience, but we made some nice steps. Not where we want to be yet.
Q. Is there sometimes a sense from what you were just saying maybe you had almost too much early success, that maybe wining some of those games early took some of the fire out or some of the other things that maybe would have helped you build on a conference season?
COACH DALE LAYER: It's hard to reflect after such an emotional few days here. But, you know, when went to Hawaii. We were tired coming out of Hawaii. As a coach, you go, Do you want to give them an experience? Yeah. Do you think it's the best thing to do going into conference? Well, we scheduled that two years ago and we didn't realize we were going to be four out of five on the road to start the conference.
Those two things probably took a little wind out of our sails. You can say that's bad scheduling by the head coach. Our players would say, Boy, it was nice to go to Hawaii. Probably 10 of the 15 had never been there. Did it take a toll on our team? Probably so. Four out of five on the road, nobody else had to deal with, yeah, it was probably a bad break. Five of our opponents having a week off to prepare, yeah, it's probably a bad break. Oh, well, what can you do? You have to fight through it. I think this team consistently fought through things where lesser men may not have.
So, these are guys I'll live with, fight with, be proud of. Both of our seniors are graduating. They're both reserve players. They made significant contributions. But in all, we're in a lot better shape right now than the same questions you asked me a year ago. Is that enough? Nah. Are we frustrated and disappointed? Sure. But I think this was a year to build upon.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks, coach.

End of FastScripts...

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