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MOUNTAIN WEST CONFERENCE MEN'S TOURNAMENTMarch 11, 2009Willlis GardnerTim MilesMarcus WalkerLAS VEGAS, NEVADA Air Force – 71 THE MODERATOR: Our student-athletes today are Marcus Walker and Willis Gardner. Coach Tim Miles, if we can start out with some general comments about the game. COACH MILES: Well, first of all, I'd just like to congratulate Air Force. I'm proud of those guys to hang in there and keep getting better and better in terms of we've been there, done that. You got a first-class operation with coach Reynolds in charge and obviously the academy. It was just -- if you look at it from a fan perspective, I just was appreciative of their effort, the way they came out and executed their stuff. I'm happy for those guys. That's about all. THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll field questions for the student-athletes. Q. Marcus, how big were those threes that Henke hit as the shot clocks were winding down late in the game? MARCUS WALKER: It was real big. Anytime you're trying to come back on any team, a three is a dagger. Maybe a two you can live with, but just a three, you know, that's kind of a dagger. Q. You led for almost all of the first half and for a lot of the second. They kept it close. How come you weren't able to pull away during that time? WILLIS GARDNER: Uhm, we just couldn't get defensive stops. It seemed like they scored every time they wanted to score, and we couldn't get good shots, couldn't get our feet in the paint on the offense. We missed a lot of shots. Q. You were competing there at the end every second, knowing it was pretty much the end. Could you talk about ending your careers in this way after you had the game in the first half. MARCUS WALKER: Like you say, I think we played good, pretty good, today. But just didn't come out with the victory. I think as far as my career, I think, you know, I chose the right place. I had some ups and downs, being ineligible, a lot of different other stuff. But I think all in all I think I chose the right place. A lot of people have been asking me, like last couple weeks, am I disappointed in where I came in coming to CSU. My answer would be no. I got to know some great people outside of basketball, then on top of basketball, getting to go and play basketball, which is something I love to do. Just to close my career, you know, I enjoyed it here. I mean, when you losing like that, you kind of find yourself as a person. I think anybody that has been a part of the program, you know, I respect them a lot because it's easy to give up when you losing like that. Just stick with something and work it out. WILLIS GARDNER: My career here, my two years, has been great. It's a tough loss, a tough way to go out. But I enjoyed everything about it, CSU. Coach Miles never gave up on me, any of my teammates. He never stopped coaching me. He was coaching me yesterday, this game. He never stopped. He treats all his players the same, from the non-scholarship players to the players, to his best player, to a player who is not playing a lot. It's been great for me. Q. Last year you beat Wyoming after being winless in the conference season. This year Air Force did it. Any thoughts of that? WILLIS GARDNER: We knew Air Force was going to come out tough. We kept talking about it. They are feeling how we felt last year: need to get a win. They just played their butts off. Q. Air Force was a lot more aggressive this game for driving for stuff inside the whole game. They said that was a big difference in their mind in why they were able to beat you this time and not the other two times. Did you sense that? In what ways were they different? MARCUS WALKER: I think that's true. I think coach touched on it at halftime about, you know, just taking too many threes. I think over half of our shots were threes. We just didn't get it inside and work out enough. I think that was the big difference, you know, in us winning. I'm pretty sure -- I don't know if it's true, but I'm pretty sure they probably shot more free throws than us. Usually we be more aggressive than that. I think that's one of the main reasons that they, you know, won today. It's a lot of things that, you know, you can look at and say why we lost and why they won. Q. I was also talking about on the other end with them driving. COACH MILES: Washington and Johnson. WILLIS GARDNER: Seems like it was a place for them to drive. I heard their coach say, Drive, drive. Every time we were playing defense, they just kept attacking us. THE MODERATOR: At this time we'll dismiss the student-athletes. Thank you, men. We'll field questions for Coach Miles. Q. Marcus mentioned you were having trouble getting defensive stops when you were ahead. Why was that? COACH MILES: Well, I think the last two times we played Air Force, they had a perimeter player going off making a whole bunch of threes. Matt Holland got us at our place. Andrew Henke. This time the guys that killed us were their drivers, Anwar Johnson and Evan Washington. Even Evan hit two threes. I thought those two guys really hurt us. As we alluded to earlier, they were able to get -- they outscored us 30 to 16 in the paint. Air Force shouldn't do that to you. If they are doing that to you, that's how you lose. That's a recipe for disaster. Q. Your former team is going to the NCAAs. COACH MILES: Thanks for bringing that up (smiling). Appreciate it. Q. Your thoughts on how long you're going to get CSU to do what the Bison are doing? Granted, it's a different conference. COACH MILES: All the same, you have to go through your conference and do it well. First of all, I commend North Dakota State. I'm so proud of that whole program. This always happens to me, right (tearing up). I am, I'm just very proud of 'em. You know, I don't know about us. We're not there right now obviously. I was hired to raise the bar. I was hired to take CSU to a different level. And obviously the first two years have been tough. I think we have a chance to turn it. I think we're instilling more discipline and things that I really think are going to come out in the end to allow us to proceed. We're not there today, obviously. But we're gonna keep recruiting, keep bringing in guys, keep developing the guys in our program so we can get to that level. Now, I want it to happen next year. Our fans want it to happen this year. Well, obviously it's too late. But we can turn it here. We can do it the right way. I think we were building the foundation for that. Q. In the first half you repeatedly were able to get that seven-point up by seven and never really push it beyond that. How critical was it to not be able to get that little extra push and get into a double-digit-type lead? COACH MILES: We allowed them to hang around. We just did enough wrong, enough quick shots or enough turnovers. Now, 12 turnovers isn't a huge amount. But in a low-possession game, I think it's a lot. A large percentage of your possessions. It was just like every time, you know, those things happened, it led into a poor defensive effort, too. Allowing Johnson and Evan Washington to get going. You knew Henke was going to jump up and make some threes. I just felt like that was going to happen. It's like those other guys just kept it close enough until he was able to do that and get the lead. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, coach. End of FastScripts |
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