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NCAA MEN'S 2ND & 3RD ROUNDS: ALBUQUERQUEMarch 14, 2012Griffan CallahanJordan DykstraScott NagyNate WoltersALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO THE MODERATOR: Questions for the SouthDakota State student‑athletes. Q. Nate, what has this experience been like so far since you guys got here? Do you feel that you've gotten comfortable with sort of the environment and the tournament? NATE WOLTERS: Yeah, we're all looking forward to it. It should be a great experience tomorrow. Baylor's a great team, so it's a good opportunity for us? Q. Griffan, watching Baylor's practice, I don't know if you got to glance over, just what are your thoughts on them and what you're going to face tomorrow? GRIFFAN CALLAHAN: We didn't really get to glance at them at all, but we've seen them play on TV before. They're long, athletic. They play quick. It's going to be a great match‑up for us. We're definitely going to have to box out, and our defense is going to have to be at its best. Q. Obviously, first time in the NCAA Tournament, and playing in an iconic building here in The Pit. How much do nerves come into play? Are you concerned about how you'll come out tomorrow or how you're going to react to that sort of setting? JORDAN DYKSTRA: I don't think so. I think for the most part our coaches talk to us about just staying calm and that we have nothing to lose going into it and play freely. Obviously for the first couple of minutes we'll probably be a little bit nervous, but once the first couple of minutes are out of the way we'll be all right. Q. Griffan and Jordan, Baylor's got a pretty good three‑point shooter. He can hit from all over the court. But the Bears were talking about how you guys have a whole bunch of guys that can do that. Can you talk about how important and how an integral role that is to have a long range jumper as part of your offense? GRIFFAN CALLAHAN: Well, just having Nate at the point, he creates a lot for all of us to go in the paint and finding us out on the perimeter. We just jump up and shoot it with confidence. That's what we've done all year and that's what we'll continue to do. JORDAN DYKSTRA: I agree with Griffan. We've just got to go out there and shoot with confidence, and get an open shot, got to take it. Q. Jordan, you talked about their front line. They're obviously very long and very athletic. You don't see a lot of guys like them. But you guys faced taller players all the time. In the past, what things have you done to be successful and defending maybe a Buffalo or guys that have similar size? JORDAN DYKSTRA: I think just effort. You've got to outwork them. You're not going to out‑athletic them by any means or anything like that. So just outworking them and trying to be a little bit more physical. Q. Nate, you guys have gotten a lot of talk, probably more than the program has ever gotten in the last couple of weeks, and being talked about as a Cinderella, how have you embraced that role? NATE WOLTERS: It's a good opportunity for us. We're the 14 seed, so not many people expected us to win. So we have to play loose with nothing to lose. Q. Griffan and Nate, talk about embracing that underdog role. Other than Seth Davis, I don't know too many people that are picking you to win. So if you do pull it off, you'll become maybe a Cinderella story in this thing. GRIFFAN CALLAHAN: Yeah, we're looking forward to it. 14 seed, whatever we got, we were going to be happy with. We're just going to go out there and play and do our best. Q. Nate, I wanted to ask you about your teammates answered about the three‑point shooting. Can you just talk about how you create that in the offense and why that is such an important part of your offense? NATE WOLTERS: I just have the ball in my hands a lot on the offense. Coach has given me a lot of freedom. They help in a lot, and I kick out to these guys for threes. They're all great shooters. I mean, it's pretty easy to get assists when these guys hit every shot. Q. Nate, can you talk about‑‑ it seems like such a key part of your game is getting up and down the floor. How difficult is that against a team like Baylor? NATE WOLTERS: They're long and athletic. We've played teams like that though this year. So we're going to try to get up and down, and if we get open shots, just take them with confidence. Q. Griffan, on paper they've got the edge on the interior. Where do you feel you guys have‑‑ where they'll be challenged to match‑up with you guys? GRIFFAN CALLAHAN: I feel like where they think they have the advantage, we kind of have the advantage too. We know how we play, and we know that we're a tough team. Our hard work will pay off in the end. Q. I wanted to ask you about the experience. I know you're focused on basketball, but are you able to enjoy the experience of being in the NCAA Tournament? Are you guys going to be able to have any fun down here, or is Coach Nagy going to keep you focused on X's and O's? JORDAN DYKSTRA: He's kept us pretty focused so far. We're having fun though. Any time you get to be around these guys is a good time. THE MODERATOR: Questions for Coach Nagy. Q. Coach, has it sunk in yet? Tomorrow's the day. You're here. This is all happening. COACH NAGY: You know, it's strange. When I walked in here for a meeting today, and of course you come in on the ground level, and I looked down and it made my stomach flutter just because of the atmosphere and looking at it and knowing that it has a big‑time feel to it. I was here, I was telling somebody walking up here, that I was here in high school when NorthCarolina State won the National Championship and got to watch the Final Four. So I have been here before, but it's obviously a long time ago. But it has sunk in. We're fortunate that we have a lot of level‑headed kids that a lot of this stuff doesn't impress them. They've been very easy to coach. My hope is that they won't play with jitters. I can't completely control that. But we certainly talked about it and prepared them, and we'll find out tomorrow. Q. Can you tell me a little about the Canadian, Taévaunn Prince? COACH NAGY: Taévaunn is a great kid, number one. We're very fortunate to have him. He's a 20‑year‑old freshman, which is a luxury. He's probably, I say probably, but I know he is the most physical guard I've ever coached in 17 years, and he's going to be a really good player for us. Most of this year we had to spend just getting him locked in on defense. Offensively he's been very, very productive for us. Where we've had the problem with him is making sure that defensively he understands what the other teams are doing. As a freshman, of all the guys that play on our basketball team, he is the most inexperienced, but he has been highly productive this year, and I tell you, in a lot of big games he's been highly productive. Q. Talk about the nerves angle. You said you hope they don't have jitters. Is there anything specific you can do to sort of guard against that that they play relaxed and loose? Also, does the altitude factor play into that because they're going to be maybe hyperventilating as it is? COACH NAGY: Well, the altitude will be the same for Baylor. I don't know where Waco sits in terms of sea level, but I can't believe it's much higher than Brookings, SouthDakota is. So they'll have that factor too. We've obviously played in Southern Utah this year, so our guys have felt that before. It takes a little while to work through it, but they'll be fine. I think the best thing I can do is for the players to see that I'm relaxed and not uptight. I think that that will help them. We're not the hunted anymore. We're the hunter, and it's a lot easier to relax in that situation. Q. Coach, as you've looked at Baylor this week, what concerns you the most about that match‑up? COACH NAGY: Everybody's talked about their length. I mean, it's like the first thing just about anybody will say when you talk about Baylor. But quite honestly, their smallest guy concerns me the most. He is really a good guard. I know having coached junior college players, it take a little while for them to adjust. They're almost like freshmen, and then by the end of the junior and senior year, they're tremendous, and he is to that point. We'll have to do a great job on him to control him. Their length is going to be a problem for us, we know that. I really don't ever concern myself in terms of when we play people, how are we going to score on them. My biggest concern is how are we going to stop them? When we do stop them, how are we going to rebound the basketball? And with these guys, it's going to be the best team that we've ever played in SouthDakota State. Let's just put it that way. We know it. In order to just stay in the game, we'll have to play the game of our lives. Q. The Baylor kids were asked about Seth Davis' prediction. They didn't think too much of it. How do you respond to that? COACH NAGY: Well, Seth didn't help us there. It was nice of him to say, but that doesn't help us, and Baylor doesn't need any extra incentive to stick it to us. All that stuff is prediction anyway. We just know that. But we have 27 wins for a reason. We haven't played the schedule Baylor has, I know that. And if we did, we wouldn't have 27 wins. But we still have a good basketball team, and we're here just like everybody else is to win, and that's the way we're going to approach it. All the predictions and things like that really don't mean anything anyways. It's just fun banter for people to talk about. Q. Can you talk about how the three‑pointer has been such a big weapon in your offensive arsenal and how it was an equalizer against some of your opponents who maybe shot the ball better during the regular season? COACH NAGY: Well, it's had to be. We're not a huge team, but we do shoot the ball well. When we do shoot the ball well, then it really opens up the floor for Nate, our point guard, because it puts a lot of pressure on teams to have to take away the three. When they have to take away the three then Nate is able to get it. I've coached Nate for three years, and I haven't really seen anybody that can stay in front of him. But our guys around him are going to have to play great, and Nate's going to have to trust those guys because he's become more and more focused of teams. He's going to have to trust and pass that ball and trust our guys. He's done that. We have four guys that shoot over 40%. We have three guys that shot over 50% during league play. I continue to say, they're good shooters, but one of the reasons they shoot it so well is because they play with Nate. Nate draws a lot of attention, and they're standing around getting wide open threes. It's a combination of having good shooters and then having a great point guard. Q. A lot of programs ban Twitter from their players, but you're tweeting on the bus, you're even tweeting at halftime of games. How does all that help your program and help the awareness you're trying to build? COACH NAGY: All I want to do is involve our fans. I guess nationally I'm not overly concerned with whether people are following us, but we want to involve our fans. That's one of the reasons why we tweet at halftime and do some of those things. I generally don't worry too much about our players tweeting. I follow all of them to make sure that they're not tweeting things they shouldn't be. But, again, we have a pretty level‑headed group of kids that we've talked to and understand how important it is and the responsibility that they have. Not only to the university but to their teammates and to the state of SouthDakota, for that matter, because we're representing all those people. So they get that. They get that. Twitter and Facebook and those things, not that they couldn't be a problem for us, but they haven't been a problem. It allows our fans a little more access than they'd normally have, so we want to use that. Q. I was wondering if you can expound on that whole thing about you being here in '83. Not a bad deal for a high school kid to check out a National Championship, and especially one that ended up being one of the most thrilling in NCAA history. Can you talk about that experience a little bit? COACH NAGY: Yeah, well, I came with my dad. Of course, he was coaching, and you always have the NABC meetings at the Final Four. So I generally, during high school, came with him every year. This was the one in '83. I remember coming to the practices, and just being astounded, absolutely astounded at how athletic the Phi Slama Jama was. It was incredible to watch them practice, Clyde Drexler and Olajuwon and Larry Micheaux.       It was phenomenal for me as a high school kid. I look back now, and it's come full circle. Here I am, back in The Pit, and here we're probably playing the most athletic team in the country once again. I'm probably glad I didn't see their practice today or I'd be a little disheartened. But for a high school kid to go to those things was always so much fun for me. Q. I heard you mention about how your heart fluttered a little when you walked into The Pit and you just talked about the excitement level when you were here watching before. Knowing that you could get the crowd on your side early, how important is that to tomorrow? COACH NAGY: It's not the most important thing. For us, probably early is just important in terms of our confidence. Being able to feel like, hey, we're okay. We can settle down, and we can play with these guys. If we don't get off to a good start, that could be a problem. We understand that. We saw it at the Sioux Falls Arena with Western Illinois winning Southern Utah how our fans got on their side because they were the lower seed. People just root for the lower seed. That's just how it works, and I understand that. That's not the most important thing in my thinking. It would be great to have fans rooting for us, but the most important thing is we get off to a good start so our confidence builds. Q. Both you and Wayne from Montana are going to be missing your kids' games this weekend because of being here. Talk about how you're trying to keep tabs on what your sons are doing? It seems like that comes with the territory in this profession. COACH NAGY: Yeah, I texted Nick this morning because his favorite place to eat is Fuddruckers, and that's where we were having lunch, so he was a little jealous. It's a good problem for our family to have. We have two boys playing in the South Dakota State tournament, the Final Eight, and Brookings has been there once since 1989, so this is a big deal for Brookings. Unfortunately, one of my sons is a senior, Nick, and we're not able to be there to watch him. My wife struggled back and forth whether she should go or not, and I made a decision for her. I said you're married to me. You were with me before we had Nick, so I think you should be with me. Our boys understand that. They grew up in our family. It's been a basketball family. They get it. It's a good problem to have that we're in the NCAA Tournament, and they're in the SouthDakota State tournament. They get that. So we'll be able to watch it on the internet, so we'll be watching tomorrow. Q. Coach, from watching you, one of the thing is you like to get up and down the floor. How difficult is that to do against a team like Baylor? COACH NAGY: Well, they like to get up and down the floor too. So I don't think that will be the difficulty. We're going to have to run to get some good shots. That's going to be important. We're not going to try to slow the basketball game down just because they're more athletic. It's one of the ways that can you get good three‑point shots is to push the basketball, attack the basket, and kick it out. The three‑point line has flat out changed the game. It quite frankly allows a team like SouthDakota State to play with Baylor, where otherwise it would be very, very difficult. It's still going to be that, but it would be more difficult. So the pace of the game for us, we won't try to change at all. We want it to go up and down, but we know that transition defense for us is going to be extremely important, and it's going to be even more difficult against these guys because they are so athletic. Q. Your guys were pretty low key and almost stiff when they were up here. But on the quiet times on this trip, are they having fun and enjoying this? COACH NAGY: Oh, yeah, they're having fun. There isn't any question about that. We were just in the locker room messing around with some of them. They're loose, and I'm loose. We're enjoying it. Like I said, we're here to win it, but we don't want to put too much pressure on them, and I don't think that there is. I think they get it. This is a big deal for everybody, but it's also not life or death, and we want to be able to enjoy it. It's the first time for SouthDakota State, but I keep telling them, it's not a once‑in‑a‑lifetime deal. It's just the first time it's happened for us, but this is going to happen again. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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