St. John's University Athletics
Pregame Quotes: St. John's at No. 1/1 Kentucky
11/29/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
St. John's Head Coach Steve Lavin
On his current health:
"I'm cancer free, but now recognize I set myself back with a premature return to the sidelines. I was hoping with each subsequent game that my stamina would improve but instead it regressed. It became clear that presently I have not recovered enough from surgery to lead the team through the toil of a game. After consulting with Dr. [Peter T.] Scardino we decided to modify my coaching duties."
On his coaching duties at present:
"Attending practice to take notes and share thoughts with the team isn't taxing, sitting in the stands at a high school game or practice to evaluate a prospect isn't taxing. Going to dinner with a donor isn't taxing. At this stage of my recuperation it's the game coaching that presents the biggest challenge."
On coaching moving forward:
"The good news is being cancer free. That was the objective of the surgery. But it would not be prudent at this juncture to return to the sidelines and jeopardize my long term health. It's not fair to the team if I coach in games when not yet having the necessary strength for competing at the highest level of college basketball."
St. John's Assistant Coach Mike Dunlap
On matching up against No. 1/1 Kentucky:
"We're still in a phase of teaching our system so the focus is more on us than it is on our opponent. We have great respect for all of our opponents, but the fact is: we haven't had a true road game yet this season. There's a lot of firsts with this matchup. Like Coach Lavin reiterates, we have to keep our focus and temperament where it belongs - and that's on improvement. If we do that, we'll be fine. At this point, as far as dealing with the scouting report and individual Kentucky players, our group can't handle all that information just yet. Too much information will slow them down. Instead, we've put the focus on improving each day. But we won't be satisfied with playing a strong game and losing by 15 points - that's not in our personalities. We're an aggressive team. We're going in with an attitude of: we're going to go down there and see if we can do something special."
On the team's reaction to Coach Lavin not making the trip to Kentucky:
"Everyday has been the same as far as keeping the team informed on how Coach Steve Lavin is doing. We just go about our business each day. We're good about building a line of communication between our players and the staff. We want Coach Lavin to feel like he can take as much time as he needs based off our behavior - that's the most important thing for us. I don't want to paint our players as being machine-like, because they're not. But, they feed off of the rest of the coaching staff's energy levels. We have a tendency as a staff to have a lot of energy."
On his communication with Coach Lavin:
"He's got an A-plus on all of his blood work and when they did the surgery, obviously all of the biopsy work they did was good. It's a matter of recuperation. None of that has changed, but what I told Coach Lavin was: 'based off of all the reading I've done and the people that I've talked to, you're looking at a two-four month recovery period.' The day he had his surgery, I talked to him about that. I actually talked to him about that beforehand too. I did some homework for him because we have that kind of relationship."
Freshman forward/guard Moe Harkless
On matching up against Kentucky:
"I haven't gotten an individual matchup yet, but I'll probably matchup with either sophomore forward Terrence Jones or freshman forward Anthony Davis. It doesn't matter who it is, though, I'm just going to go out there and play. They're a real athletic team as well. They're like a longer version of us. But if we put more pressure on them and play more physical than they play, we'll be fine. We just have to go out there, play hard, and execute."
On playing against ranked opponents:
"I was at a lot of St. John's games last year. They made me real anxious to get here and be able to play in these types of games. Kentucky coming up is going to be real exciting."
On the difference between Coach Lavin being on the bench and when he's not:
"His personality brings a whole different feel, but it's still the same coaching style and the same information that we get from coaches. It's just a different face and voice."
Junior forward God'sgift Achiuwa
On what this game against Kentucky means to him:
"For me, I see it as an opportunity to play the number one team in the country. Coming off of Saturday's loss, we've been working on so many things that we didn't do in the last game. Our coaches stress: 'you can't teach effort.' That is one thing we didn't bring to Saturday's game. We'll have to play physical and bring everything in our arsenal to Kentucky. This will be good bounce back game coming up on Thursday."
On the difference between Coach Lavin being on the bench and when he's not:
"Whether Coach Lavin is there or not, he's still the head coach and a part of the team. He runs practice and tells the coaches and the players what he sees from the film. We're the same team whether Coach Lavin is on the bench or not. Coach Dunlap and Coach Lavin are different people, but in terms of basketball, it's still the same system. Nothing changes."
