Bowling Green State University Athletics
Dan Dakich Press Conference Quotes
November 14, 2005 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 14, 2005
What are some of the positives from the trip to Virginia?
"I think it was an interesting weekend. I think that the amount of minutes we got the guys to play was good and beating an ACC team on their home court is always good."
(In that game) "We were up 11 late in the first half, should have been up at least that at half, and then got up ten with five minutes to go. We were never down, except for the first three or four minutes, and beat them all day and got a break at the end obviously to win the game. That showed us we could play, at least I've been telling our team, we can play anybody, and we can get beat by anybody."
"I think the team proved to themselves they can play with anybody, which is a big positive given that at the end of that Virginia Tech game we had Pat Phillips limping around there, who hasn't even practiced hardly, and then Brian Guerin who joined us in September. But as I told them they played the last minute even and we won the game, so, it worked out well."
What weren't you pleased with?
"We foul too much. We foul way too much and we turn it over to much and you can't play like that. A lot of fouling is just, probably the way we practice. We practice hard and we let things go, and over the last few weeks we really tried to tone it down in terms of just fouling and calling more fouls in practice, we just foul way too much. But obviously right now that just kills you. You know, your dealing with a short bench anyway, and then to have guys have to sit out and shuffle guys in and out is just no good. You can't play that way and expect to win."
What about the play of freshman Erik Marschall?
"Erik's been wonderful. Erik is a kid that, he made two plays that nobody else-as I told him after, in the tournament could make. He made an unbelievable underneath lay-in off of a back cut, in one of the games, and then he drills a three, and you know the three point line was this far behind the regular line, the international line, he was well behind that. I told him after the game, I said there were no forwards in this whole weekend that could do that, and he competed, he battled, he showed a lot of inexperience and he showed a lot of experience and for the most part I was pretty happy with Erik. He gave up a bunch of points, he and Matt did in the last game early, but I thought Erik showed at least hopefully himself that he can play with anybody, because the kids that are at Virginia Tech, the two inside kids, are as big and long and athletic as any kids in America. You know, that's a team that last year beat Duke on their home floor and has four starters back and a fifth guy that led in minutes the year before after being hurt. Erik's been great."
"I thought Erik from the start of practice, from the time we recruited him, would come in and play. I saw him play in Las Vegas before his senior year, he was a kid that I knew was good enough to come and play right now, and that was my plan when we as a staff sat down with him and his dad and his mom. I just knew the situation we were going to be in and he was oing to have a real shot at playing right now."
What do you want the guys to take away from the weekend?
"If we don't understand that we need to get better, than we have no shot, because we have to. But the thing that we have hit on, was that you can play with anybody or you can lose to anybody, and a team that's able to beat Virginia Tech on Saturday ought to come back and be able to beat Radford the next day. And after the game I just sat them down and talked to them about this, and this is something I know from complete experience not as a coach, but as a player. It happened to me numerous times as a player 20 years ago and its something that I really understand, like people talk about the game with Michael Jordan, when I played, well the next night we lost, or two nights later we lost to Virginia and I was horrible, and I totally get it from a players standpoint, and that's what we talked about The mental (side) is so important in this game, like the first play against Virginia Tech Mawel Soler steals the tip from them, just runs it down and just set a tone, Matt Lefeld gets a three point play off a real strong finish inside, and you just knew we were playing. First play of the Western Carolina game we were in a stance, we were playing, but we didn't play. First play of the Radford game, they had learned a little bit from the Western Carolina game but it wasn't real."
What did you hope to see from your team this week?
"I think that we have to get much better at practicing against each other really hard. We had gotten it to be where our first team was dominating our white team, we call it, and that can't be, and I think our kids on the white team now really understand that after seeing a live game. The best teams have real, real practices, that are really hard, not hard from a coaches making them run standpoint, but hard from a, the toughest guy I play against all week is this guy."
What is Lionel Sullivan's Status?
"The NCAA ruled that (Lionel) was ineligible, and we've appealed that to where he is getting his full grant-in-aid, and he was able to practice while we were appealing it, and just before we left last week, they denied his appeal but gave him scholarship money, so we are going back and further appealing and asking he be allowed to practice. In the long run, it's going to end up really well for Lionel, its going be a redshirt year. In the short run we could have really used him the other day, I mean all weekend we could have really used him, but..."
How about Martin Samarco and his play?
"Martin was good, he started out worrying about his jump shot and that hurt him and us against Western Carolina and then he worried about just playing, and I think that by the end of this, Martin will have a better understanding, if he's going to take 18 shots he'll make 12 of them, because they will be better shots, and I think that right now we're a team that's figuring out how to get a shot, but he was good, he got us to a real good start against Virginia Tech and it was a really good improvement because he did not against Western Carolina and I thought he paid attention to what our coaches were telling him about getting himself going with drives, and fouls and penetrating pitch, but he's just a kid who wants to please and he really wants to do right and do well and he works at it."
