St. John's University Athletics
Pregame Quotes: St. John's vs. West Virginia
1/24/2012 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 24, 2012
St. John's Special Assistant/Advisor Gene Keady
On where the team is at:
"They're trying to learn how to play right and trying to learn how to do the things it takes to win. It's all about teaching, getting better and staying positive."
On realistic expectations for the season:
"We were talking about the Giants a lot when they were in a dullness there in the middle of the season and came back and are heading to the Super Bowl. We sort of did this last year. I think we were 3-8 and we're 2-6 now so we always say we're going to win our next game and we have a great opportunity to win our next game. We're staying very positive and believing in our players."
On the impact of starting Amir Garrett:
"He has a very positive attitude and we have great expectations for him. He has an opportunity to be a great player... In two sports we hope. He's long-armed, harder to play against and we have an opportunity to score more with him. He got a really big steal the other night and he's very quick. Because of all that, he can be a great defensive player, get open on offense and it gives him a lot of versatility."
On keeping notes on the bench:
"I have 13 goals every game that I write down and see what we can get a plus or minus on and I think we only had three against Villanova. We have to get about six pluses in order to win. We've got a lot of things to work on fundamentally and Coach [Mike] Dunlap has had them do that this week. I have six goals on offense, six goals on defense and one goal on rebounding."
On if losing affects the team's spirit:
"It always has some kind of effect, but it's up to us to get them up. That's what they hire us for... to get them excited and motivated about the opportunity to win games. It has an effect on you and when you get down, you can't let that happen. If you're a great competitor, you find ways to get up and that's what we've hoped we recruited, great competitors."
Freshman Forward Moe Harkless
On recent tough stretch:
"I think everybody's just trying to stick together, get better as a team and try to get back on the right track. The losses are definitely tough on us, but with our team, nobody's really getting too down, we're just working at it every day and trying to get better."
On expectations for the team:
"I just want us to continue to get better and to try and win as many games as possible, because you never know what could happen, we could win out from here on out, make the NCAA tournament, and surprise a lot of people. We just try to stay positive. We're eventually going to win games, we just can't tell when, but it's going to happen."
On the big picture for this team:
"It's a one day at a time thing. We just try to get better every day and just take it one day at a time, try to win every game, one by one. We try not to look too far in the future or dwell on the past."
Junior Guard Malik Stith
On losing four straight:
"We played hard last game, we didn't come out with the win, but that's exactly what we wanted to do and that's exactly how we want to play for the rest of the season. Our effort level for the last game was perfect and that will lead to some wins."
On facing West Virginia:
"Bob Huggins is a great coach and he has a great system, so we just can't make too many mistakes against West Virginia because they play hard and they're well coached so they count on the mistakes. We can't have a high turnover number like we had last game."
On how winning or losing affects learning:
"I'm not too sure whether you win more from winning or losing. I think you learn more from the way you played whether you win or you lose. Last game we played extremely hard but we did make a lot of mistakes; we had a very high turnover rate. We learned a lot from that game, we learned that we can be in the upper-half of the BIG EAST just by playing hard and not turning the ball over is the biggest key coming into this West Virginia game."
