Quotes From Head Basketball Coach Stew Morrill

The following are quotes from Utah State head basketball coach Stew Morrill at his weekly press conference on Jan. 7, 2003.

"We seem to be drawing the hot teams at the start of conference here. It's funny how being hot is. We were hot until the Pacific game, so it only takes a game or two to get somebody off being hot. We have a challenge trying to do that to Cal Poly. They got (Shane) Schilling eligible a few games ago and that has really helped them. He's a 20-point, 10-rebound a game guy the last few games. He reminds me of the kid from Northridge (Ian Boylan), we did a good job on him. But, he is similar, in that he can score outside, he can drive, he does a lot of good things for them. Then you have Varnie (Dennis), who is really hard to guard one-on-one, if you don't help on him you've got problems. To give you an idea on Cal Poly, just a couple of games ago they went to St. Mary's, and won at St. Mary's, who played Utah down to the wire last night. So, it gives you an idea that they're a capable team. You worry about them, you worry about Santa Barbara, but most of all you worry about your own team, and trying to make the adjustments you need to make to give yourself a chance. We made some adjustments yesterday and will continue to do so today in some of the things we do that might help us a little bit, we will see. Going into the road trip if you would have said if you get a split you would probably feel decent about that, I would have said, yeah I would probably feel decent about that. Then you win one and don't play very good in the second one, you tend to remember the second one. We actually played very well at Northridge and that was a good solid win for us, they were undefeated at home. Then we didn't play very well at Pacific, but that's college basketball, and that's do to them a great deal. They are playing awfully well."

"As we go around this league, I keep reminding the kids, people don't like you much. They don't like you, they don't like me. Anytime you've been fortunate enough to win some games through the past few years you kind of get a big target. Until we don't win games in our conference, that's kind of what we face game in and game out."

"He played well against us down there, he didn't play well here, but he scored a bunch down there. He did foul out at the end, but he had 20 I think, something like that. You've got to somehow help on him. If you just guard him one-on-one, it isn't going to work. He's just to big and to skilled, with a real soft touch. You have a hard time, especially with our undersized posts. When (Mike) Puzey comes in we're a little bigger, but for the most part we're undersized at the five position. Now, that creates problems for them at the other end trying to guard a guy like Spencer (Nelson) who is very active. But, when you go down to the defensive end it's sometimes tough for us to be a little undersized. He's their best three point shooter and he's not afraid to take them. He's got a real nice touch."

"He's missing shots, but he's running our team well. He did a great job at Northridge of running our team and handling the press. We went down there last year and turned it over a ton. He's like a lot of our guys when shots don't go down, and we took some real bad shots at Pacific. We watched the game tape yesterday as a team and we drove into four guys and tried to force it up instead of kicking the ball. Not a lot of teams rally to the ball as well as Pacific so your not used to that. But, he forced a couple their. We certainly had other guys force shots. If you take bad shots, then when you get good shots you've lost your confidence a little bit and all of a sudden you find yourself in a hole in terms of percentages, and that's happened a little bit to Mark. We need him to be a little more aggressive offensively. We think he can make shots. Now he's got to have a little time, with his size he doesn't get it off real quickly, but we need him to look for good shots when they are available, not bad shots but good shots. We need some more offense from some guys, obviously. That's one of the things we think we can get and we're working on. I haven't had a strictly offensive practice for a lot of years and we had one yesterday and it was all about offense, trying to get our offense better. And that concerns me about letting our defense slip because our defense has kept us in some games and our rebounding. But, at some point you've got to play a little better offense then we did at Pacific."

"Sometimes he's missing open three's, at some point he's got to make some. What we need Cardell to do is get to the line more. For a while, he had only shot like five free throws for eight, nine games or whatever it was. So, we'd like him to get to the line more. We're not going to tell him he can't shoot a three, because in practice he makes a lot of them and we need somebody to make some. But we'd like him to be a little more selective and get to the line more and hopefully that will help him. We've got to have more consistency out of certain guys. But, were not that far away. We split on the road, we're 10-3, although they haven't all been pretty. We're talking about all the things wrong with our team. We have been inconsistent and that's caused us some concern. The difference between being a pretty good team and an average team is not very big. Because, the talent level is very equal, even more with all the kids going pro. And I think it filters all the way down to mid-majors like us. There's just a small amount of difference between good teams and average teams, certainly in talent level and all that kind of thing."

"I think our defense has gotten better and our rebounding is certainly a positive. Now all of sudden you stress the offense, does your defense slip? I hope not. Were missing enough shots that I guess that helps our rebounding."

"They've got the same guys they had when they were picked to win the league and their backs are against the wall a little bit after losing a home game. My take on them is, their schedule was brutal. What happened is they went to Alaska and thought they could win that tournament, then Weber knocks them off so now their in a little bit of a funk and get beat. Then they think they can win another tournament and Nebraska gets them, then they loss to Bucknell. So they've lost some games where they were surprised to lose the first one and let it effect the second one, I think. Sometimes in tournaments that can happen. They thump USC from the Pac-10, they go to Cal and lose by six or seven. Sometimes "W's" and "L's" don't tell the whole story. If you look a little closer at who they've played, tournaments, the games they did win or the games they played close it shows you they're plenty capable."

"I've always said I would play any TV game anytime, national TV, anytime, anyplace. We used to do it all the time in the WAC at 10 o'clock at night. Any exposure like that is good. Obviously, if you play earlier you have a better chance of getting your home crowd where you want it and you also got people around the country that can see without it being the wee hours of the morning."

"He (Jason Allen) did a great job last year on Ronnie Ross. If I had to say one thing that has made them better since Kevin Bromley has taken over it is that they have improved dramatically defensively. Their physical, they guard you, they make it hard for you to get easy baskets. When you used to play Cal Poly, and this is no offense to their former coach, but it was just up and down and if you broke the press you were going to score a bunch, and they weren't very good on the halfcourt, defensively. And he's totally went opposite from that. They've become very solid, they don't press, their very solid on the halfcourt and that's what has made them a much better team in my opinion."

About the challenge with this team of keeping their confidence up, but not too high...

"It's a challenge. I don't like losing and I don't like not showing up to play with the energy you need to play with. I know we traveled, I know we were tired, you can find a million things. We sat and watched that game yesterday because I told them anytime we lose and we don't compete we're going to watch it. And it was not a very fun film session. But I got some things off my chest, and there your getting after them, telling them the things they've got to do. And they've got to be able to take criticism. But, you also got to tell kids you think they can play and we do have some good players. We have some areas we are deficient in, but we have some good players. One thing that happens when you get to conference, is your deficiencies become magnified. Because everybody has more time to prepare and does a better job on conference teams of preparation, so that's what you face when you get to league play. I tell them all the time, I believe you can make shots, you've got to believe it and you've got to put in the time. You can't all of the sudden think your just going to start making shots, you've got to take better shots. Some of our guys are struggling shooting, its no secret, they are. Then you've got to get extra shoots before and after practice."