Murray State University Athletics
Weekly Press Conference
1/10/2005 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Questions were addressed to head coach Mick Cronin.
Opening statement: It's all relative to who you're playing and where you're playing at. Obviously, the way we won Saturday night's game, in dramatic fashion, hopefully gives Keith Jenifer a little jolt of confidence to be able to make a big play down the stretch, not only to get all the way to the rim, like we tried to execute, but also to step up and make both free throws, and then for us to rally in overtime and do what we needed to do to win despite poor shooting from the free-throw line, especially from our big people. That's something we need to alleviate. We need to get more production out of our trio of guys that are playing center, although only two of them played the other night, and ended up playing Issian (Redding) and Shawn (Witherspooon) together.
We're still searching, trying to get tougher as we go along. We've got to get tough enough to win on the road this week, going down to Samford, who's 2-0, who we struggled with last year. It's a test of two styles to see who can win out on showing tempo.
On Samford being a contender for the OVC title: I would think (that it would be a contender). You're 2-0 and you own a win over Tennessee State, who everybody feels will be a strong opponent early.
They way Samford is shooting the basketball is scary. You look at their statistics, you wonder how they lose as well as they shoot the ball, especially from behind the line. Obviously, we've got to turn them over and we've got to out-rebound them, because they shoot well even in losses. The difference is they shoot 35 percent, roughly, 36 percent from the three-point line in their losses, and they shoot around 50 percent in their wins, so we're going to have to defend the line, without question.
But I think Samford is definitely a legitimate contender in our conference.
On MSU's three-point defense: I think we're getting better at it. The problem is when you're trailing games, you run around, trying to catch up, trying to steal the ball, you leave someone open, so you tend to give up some threes, so the stats may be misleading. I was really happy with the way we defended the line against Eastern Kentucky, particularly in the second half and in overtime. Justin Orr did a great job coming in for Darnell Hopkins on Zach Ingles and limiting his three-point attempts.
