St. John's University Athletics
Pregame Quotes: St. John's Vs. South Florida
1/12/2006 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 12, 2006
QUEENS, N.Y. - St. John's takes on new BIG EAST opponent South Florida on Saturday in Tampa (7 p.m., MSG Network). On Thursday Red Storm head coach Norm Roberts and members of the St. John's team met with the media to discuss the matchup.
Head Coach Norm Roberts
On playing away from home:
"I've tried to get them to understand that on the road you have to take the game, you have to win it. It's not going to be handed to you no matter what the situation is, and teams are not going to fold at home. You must take the game."
"We have to make the game winning plays. We had [the opportunity for] game winning plays in other games that we didn't make."
On the importance of road wins:
"Wins are good, period. On the road it would be great. We've had opportunities, we've been close, but we have to go and take the game. We've got to play the whole 40 minutes; we've got to pay attention to detail throughout the whole 40 minutes. The kids work hard, almost too hard, for that not to happen."
"We know we need to get a win, I think our players know that. We need to get on the winning track again. I think they look at it as an opportunity to win on the road. And all we talk about is concentrating one game at a time, and focusing on this game. We've got to get ourselves a win and get back on the winning column and take it from there."
On a possible return for Daryll Hill:
"As of right now it looks like Daryll Hill can play, he's going through his second practice and he seems to have come out of it well and is doing fine."
"He's been significant just in practice, running offense. He's a guy who can pretty much always get open, no matter what. With his speed and his quickness you can't deny him the ball. He can get open and get to the ball. He's a guy who can break pressure, pretty much by himself at times because he's so quick. He's a guy that can create shots for guys and for himself when there's not a play. We don't have many guys like that in our program as of yet that can do those things. He makes everyone on the better and hopefully that can help us offensively and defensively. I don't know how much he'll play, we'll have to see how that goes."
Junior Daryll Hill
On his status:
"My knee has been good. I'm doing well, and I feel like I can be effective on the court. I think I'll be fine. I'm very excited, I'm anxious to get out there and play."
On trying for a win on the road:
"We have to go out and play to the best of our abilities and try and come out with a win. We have to have the mindset that we're playing a team that's in our league and we have to do our best to win. We have to play hard, play physical."
"When you have a losing record on the road it gets you down a little bit but you have to come back from that and play a little harder on the road. Obviously we were doing something wrong if we were losing every time on the road, so we just have to change that."
Forward Phil Missere
On playing on the road:
"This road losing streak is an obstacle that we have to overcome, but we don't really think about that that much though. It's another game, and we have to try and get another "W."
On the team's mindset:
"You can't just expect to win, you have to go out and take the game. We have to go out there and play St. John's basketball, with tenacious "D."
