Postgame Quotes
Spalding at Chattanooga
Chattanooga, Tenn. - McKenzie Arena
Dec. 13, 2011
Chattanooga Head Coach John Shulman
Opening Statement:
"It is really difficult when you are kind of struggling to
get out of a struggle. If you are having a tough time making a putt or hitting
a baseball, I am telling you that it is hard to get out of it. I can't tell you
that we are out of it, but it does feel better winning. I will say that. We
still have a long ways to do. It is just hard getting out of a funk. There is
not a lot of energy out there, nor should there be at this moment for us. We
are not deserving of it. It feels good. It is nice to see the guys smile for a
change. Smiles have been few are far between. We are on Christmas break and
playing games. We have an 11:30 a.m. meeting tomorrow, then we are going to get
back after it against a small school up in Lexington, Ky., on Saturday. It is
nice to see our guys smile and enjoy. There had not been a whole lot of
enjoying and fun moments this year."
On the game being important:
"Our team has been in a funk the whole year. We have had
some bad things happen to us. We have not had a whole lot of breaks and that is
okay. We talked about Western Carolina going 0-fer in December last year and
winning the north division with us. Let me ask you this, 'When was the last
undefeated basketball team in college?' (Indiana 1977). All teams go through a
tough time. We have had a tough time. Tough times make you tougher if it doesn't
kill you. It has not killed our kids and it is not going to kill our kids. We
are going to use this as all learning experiences and get better. This is so
like life. You just have to get back up and get going. That is why it was just
nice to have some success. I did not care if it was against Max, Tanner and
J.C. (Coach's sons) out there. We just needed to have some success. We deserved
to have some success. We just have not gotten it. We have found ways to pull defeat
out of the jaws of victory. We deserved to have some success in Charleston,
S.C. We just have not had it for whatever reason. We just have to keep working harder."
On the encouraging steps the team took tonight:
"Our kids are a little bit like me, which is not good. I say
that because our kids want to please. We have great kids. They want to please.
When they don't please, they get stressed. When they don't get success, they
stress and they feel like they are letting everybody in the world down. That is
not a lot of fun to deal with. I deal with it. Do you think I want to be 3-7
right now? I don't want to let down our fans. I don't want to let down
Chattanooga, but I feel like that. I stress. I give my stress to them. They
stress. They are good kids. They want to play for Chattanooga and have success.
Drazen [Zloravic] has put so much pressure on himself that he doesn't know his
name anymore. I don't want that. Why would you want that for a kid. For Drazen
to have a good game and have some success and to have fun out there is nice.
Ricky Taylor and Keegan [Bell] smiled again tonight. We have been under some
stress, maybe self-induced, maybe not, but it is what it is. It was nice to see
some guys have fun, success and smile on occasion. We all understand the
expectations of Chattanooga basketball. I am proud of our kids for continuing
to battle."
On former-Chattanooga athlete and coach Kevin Gray coming
back:
"It was nice to have him back. He is a legend here as a
player and coach. It was the good old days. It is always nice to come back and
feel wanted and appreciated. Hopefully, he did."
Senior Guard Keegan Bell
On the importance of tonight's game
"It's important for us to get better. To come off what was a frustrating road trip, going to Mercer, to come back and worry about us and get better. I think that was important. It was great for us to get out on a good roll and have a "feel good" after a game. We've been frustrated after some games, so to leave here feeling good and having positive energy. We're ready to carry it over to tomorrow at practice. Get ready for our next adventure which will be a big one."
On how this game helped work on focus:
"You may be up a lot, and you need to execute and you don't. It's good for us to be focused when you get a big lead - especially with us lately - we get a big lead and our focus seems to decrease. I thought it was important for us no matter what the score was to not play to it, but to stay focused and execute. I thought we did a great job of that."
On going from playing a Division III team to Kentucky:
"You look at this in the beginning of the year, you see Kentucky on there and you get excited, but you want to play every game one at a time. That's what we do and what we try to think about, but you have this one circled. We're excited. The fact that they went to Indiana, a team that we have played, and Indiana beat them. We did some solid things against them [Indian]. I know the score didn't look as great as we wanted it to, but we did some solid things. We rebounded the ball very well. We have the belief that we can do something really special. We're still going to play to our principals, we'll have to make some adjustments of course, but they're a good team. We're very excited and very eager. That's why we're coming in early tomorrow to get after it and get ready for this game. It should be fun."
On what they will need to do to be successful at Kentucky:
"You're never going to win or never going to do something special if you don't believe in yourselves. Maybe we'll go in, us as a team, we might feel that we're the only ones who believe in us, and feel we might do something special, but I think that's enough as long as you have everyone believing and dedicating themselves to the game and to doing right things, then we'll have a shot. We're not going to give ourselves a shot if we don't rebound and that's one thing we did poorly tonight. We're going to have to fix that and it's going to have to happen very, very, very quickly. I believe if we start doing that we can hang with anybody. We really do have a talented team. If you look at it, we have a bunch of guys who have transferred from high Division I's. We've been in those types of games, we've played those types of talents and so I know we're ready and eager to get it going."
On how the team will celebrate tonight's win:
"We'll just feel good. We'll go back to the dorm room and just kind of relax a little bit because we got the win. Just knowing that we got the start up so early tomorrow and we need to be rested. We need to be ready to practice. We can only enjoy these for a couple of hours. We'll probably enjoy it at dinner, have a laugh and joke about some things and talk about the good day we had today, but we'll have to quickly refocus and get back to work."
Spalding Head Coach Kevin Gray
On coming back to Chattanooga:
"It was a chance to walk through Chattanooga and it was wonderful. The university has really grown. This is the first time that I have been back, really since I coached here. There are some really nice things going on. The facility is terrific. I had a chance to see the football stadium as the bus took us that way. It is amazing to see how much things have changed over the years, but they have done a wonderful job at the university. The facilities are great. I can see how the program has continued to be a quality basketball program."
On having the Chattanooga jersey going against you:
"I did not feel like I was the visiting team. I felt like I was with a different team. They have a nice team. The key to any good team is about each player recognizing and understanding their roles. Playing their roles and playing hard. Tonight, I thought that they did that. If they do like they do tonight, then they are going to have a good season. I thought they were as good as Coastal Carolina, who we played earlier. They have the opportunity to potentially be a very good basketball team this season."
