Wednesday’s Shootaround MBI quotes
UMass Coach Frank Martin – “That’s the world of transfers. That’s the hardest thing we as coaches deal with. Everyone’s brand new. The beginning of the season, it’s a get-to-know ceremony for lack of a better word. Outside of Wildens (Leveque) and Brandon Martin, no one else has ever played for me so that means I still don’t understand them and they don’t understand me. But it’s awesome, they’ve been great. At the end of the day, it’s getting to know people, which is what life’s all about.” (On the team building an identity): “They’re fighting for it. When I got hired, it’s my job to create the foundation of what we want to be about, then it’s up to the players to help me in fighting for that every single day and they’re doing it. They come in here every day with an eagerness to work. They accept responsibility, they stay away from blame. Blame is the worst word in the dictionary. I’ve never liked blame, I’m into fixing problems.” (On playing three games in four days): “No sleep. That’s what the coach gets. It’s a lot of knowledge. You find out about your team. When you play teams like the ones that are in front of us here for the next four days, you learn a lot about your team and that’s what you’re looking for.”
Colorado Coach Tad Boyle – “We’ll learn a lot about ourselves, win or lose. This as an opportunity to grow and get better. We’ve had three games up to this point and we’ve learned a lot about ourselves. It’s a great field, we’ll be tested, a lot of different styles of play in this tournament and we’re looking forward to it.” (On sophomore guard KJ Simpson): “KJ was a good player when we signed him, he had a good freshman year. He was on the All-Pac-12 freshman team. You don’t get that by accident; you play your way onto that team. He’s now developing into a point guard, he’s a true scoring guard, he’s kind of wired to score. He’s an important part of this team.”
Texas A&M Coach Buzz Williams – “It’s critical. This will be the earliest (tournament) I’ve ever played in. Normally it’s in the third week of the season. Hopefully we’re able to gain a little traction in our development in a faster way with three games in four days in the second week of the season.” (On if last year’s NCAA Tournament snub is motivation): “I don’t think so. We have six new guys. Obviously, the returning players are aware of what happened. But just like any other coach would tell you, every year is a new year and it’s based on what your body of work is that particular season, We do acquire wisdom from the process of what we went through last year but in this day and age, there are so many new people on each team. Every year is a new year in and of itself. I have great respect for (Murray State Coach Steve Prohm). Obviously, we’ve known each other for a long time. One of the better games I’ve ever coached in was our NCAA Tournament game, we played to go to the Sweet 16 (in 2012) when Murray State was 31-1.”
Murray State Coach Steve Prohm – “Not sure yet. It’s obviously a work in progress right now. Basically everyone on our roster is new. We’re really just trying to establish our foundation of how we want to do things on the court and off the court, in the community, in the classroom. These tournaments are good, playing at Saint Louis is good so we can figure out the best way for this to play but we can also understand what it takes to be at the highest level. Consistency is probably the biggest thing we’ve got to get do. We’ve just got to take it one game at a time. We’ve got to prepare for Texas A&M, we’ve got to play Texas A&M and go from there.”