Don Verlin press conference from March 10, 2015
“Eastern Washington is a good basketball team and we’re obviously looking forward to playing them. Played two great games with them and you gotta beat them all anyway to get to the NCAA Tournament. So whether it’s Eastern, Montana, whoever, we’re excited to be in the conference tournament.”
On adjustments from losses:
“I don’t know if there’s any one particular thing. Weber State played really well against us and then I thought it was a good basketball game against Idaho State — they played great on Senior Night. I don’t see anything different that we need to do than just play good basketball. This time of year is when you need to play your best basketball if you expect to go to the tournament.”
On whether they treat it like a road game:
“Nah, it’s a neutral-court game. I guess it would be a road game if you end up having to play Montana, but it’s a neutral court, it’s a place we’re familiar with. We’ve been there to play this year, we’ve been there to play in years past. The time is a little different than what we’re normally used to playing — we play at 10 a.m. our time — but everybody is really in the same shoes except for Montana.”
On Tyler Harvey, Venky Jois
“They’re good. That’s what makes Eastern so good is both those guys.”
“With Jois, you gotta do a good job of staying between him and the basket and make him score over you all night long.”
“But the guys who have bothered us, and both those guys are hard to handle, but No. 32 (Bogdan Bliznyuk) has played really well against us, 17 and 10 (points) against us, and then Drew Brandon is almost averaging a triple-double against us. So they got other good players too that you have to worry about.”
“Playing Eastern, we obviously know them. We had two full weeks before each game to prepare for them. I think it’s going to be a good basketball game. What we gotta do is make sure we’re on every facet of our game to beat a good team like that.”
On having 17-point lead over EWU in last meeting:
“You always draw a lot when you have that lead. There’s obviously that negative sitting out there that we didn’t execute down the stretch. That’s the thing with Eastern is whether you’re up 10 or down 10, Eastern can come back on you in a hurry because they can make the 3s. They made 17 3s against us in that last basketball game. What you gotta do with Eastern is you can’t ever let up. You have to sustain your intensity all game long if you expect to beat them.”
On early game:
“At this time of year, it’s all about your energy. We gotta have our energy at 11 a.m. Mountain time on Thursday.”
On how the early game changes preparation:
“Usually we go shoot around the day of the game. We’re not going to do that. We’re just going to get up, eat breakfast and go to the arena and play. It’s the same for both teams. We’re not going to change anything from our mealtime to what we do, we’re just going to get up at 7 a.m. in the morning and shoot around. We’re going to let our guys sleep.”