Murray State University Athletics
Weekly Press Conference
2/15/2005 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Quotes from head coach Mick Cronin during the weekly men's basketball press conference on Feb. 16 at Pagliai's restaurant in preparation for the Racers' Ohio Valley Conference games this week at Tennessee-Martin (Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.) and at home against Tennessee State (Thursday, 7:15 p.m.).
Opening statement:
"It's a big game for us tomorrow night as we play without Adam Chiles for the first time, and we don't have a lot of practice time to prepare. We'll have to rely on senior leadership and some mental toughness to turn around and play on Tuesday and Thursday this week. But, that's the way the schedule is set up and you've got to play the games. I would say that our coaches are more worried about that than our fans or players are. Our players would much rather play games than listen to me in practice, especially this late in the season. So, hopefully that'll work to our advantage."
"It'll probably be a whole different ball game down at Martin than it was here when we played them. They've had time to adjust to an injury because they lost Justin Smith right before we played them the first time. As I said before we played the first time, I'm scared of Jared Newson because he's got more than enough talent to be an all-league player. I fully expect them to give us everything we want tomorrow night. I know they gave Tennessee Tech everything they wanted on Saturday night. I expect a tough game on Tuesday."
On the injury to junior guard Adam Chiles in the game against Austin Peay on Saturday night:
"He dislocated his shoulder and he's still being examined today. We won't know for sure what his status is for the rest of the season until later on, but he's not going to play this week. When the tests come back, we will know how much damage he did to it and that'll probably determine whether he's able to come back next week or two weeks from now or if he's out for the season."
On whether the loss of Chiles will impact the Racers' style of play during his absence:
"We're going to play the same style. We're just going to have to find a way to get the ball up the floor when Kevin (Paschel) is not in the game. We may have to do it by committee. Obviously, we're not quite as deep without Adam, but we're still going to look to push the ball and be aggressive and use our athleticism. We may not be able to press for 40 minutes, but we're still going play aggressive."
On whether he knows what the rotation at point guard will be with the loss of Chiles:
"Yeah. Kevin Paschel will come in and start the game. I'll call timeouts when he's tired and I'll put Kevin Paschel back in for Kevin Paschel (Cronin says with a laugh). Seriously, we'll probably just have to play five guys and work together. Rick (Jones) is not a point guard, but Rick's minutes are going to go up without question. The question of who actually brings the ball up is something that I don't know. I'm not sure I want to even pass that out when I do know because it'll be part of our game preparation."
On whether he has a maximum number of minutes that he wants to play any of the players in his style of play:
"With every game, I go back and look at the stat sheet and I feel I've played certain guys too long in our style. Now, we didn't score much in the second half against Austin Peay, so we didn't press a lot either. That's why I let Chris (Shumate) and Antione (Whelchel) play a lot of minutes in the second half. I would prefer that 30 minutes be the max for a lot our guys because if they're playing 30 minutes or less, then that means we're playing extremely hard full-court pressure defense which equals wins for us. Whenever we're playing guys for too many minutes, it usually means it's more of a half-court game and the results usually aren't very good. I don't know if there is a set number of minutes because it would depend on the pace of the game."
On the keys and his thoughts on the game with APSU:
"I thought it was a hard-fought game. I was disappointed in our rebounding. In all five of our losses, the common denominator is that we've gotten outrebounded. We had some defensive stops in the second half where we stopped them three times but didn't rebound. They had the ball for over a minute twice in the game when they had repeated offensive rebounds. They're smart and well-coached, and they threw the ball out and kept us on defense. Twice, we got traps with our defensive pressure and they called timeout both teams. It was by design to keep us in the half-court and keep us from making a run. We fought hard, but we were unable to get the pace of the game that we wanted. In games like that, one or two missed shots and one or two mistakes will make the difference. Overall, I was pleased with the effort of our guys. The only thing I can really point to is the number of offensive rebounds we gave up. That's not good and we've got to improve on that."
On UTM head coach Bret Campbell:
"I think his teams play extremely hard. He's probably done more with less than anybody. This summer, I evaluated a lot of tape and I saw then how hard his guys play. I thought he was out-manned a little last year, but this year he's caught a lot of bad breaks with injuries. I know he's one guy that doesn't feel sorry for us with our injury to Adam because he's lost two important starters to injury and he knows how tough that is. He's a guy that likes to play a pressure man-to-man defense, but he's played more zone this year trying to control the tempo. It's almost like high school coaching where you don't get to pick your players and you have to adjust to what you have. He's done a great job of adjusting to keep his team in games, but he just doesn't have all the bodies he expected to have this year. They're in almost every game they play and that's without two of their top scorers. He does a great job."
On the key to the game at UTM:
"I think controlling the tempo is a key. I've never had to coach a game at Martin, but I expect it to be different than our game with them here. We're going to have to handle their zone defense. Then, we've got to deal with Newson and (Jeremy) Kelly. Both of those guys can really score some points, and we've got handle that. We've also got to deal with all of the other things they'll throw at us because Coach Campbell will have them ready to play."
