LIVE STREAMING | LIVE STATS FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Nova Southeastern University men's basketball team continues their eventful early portion of the year with the season's second game in three days, and their 2015-16 Sunshine State Conference opener, Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. against border rival Lynn.
The Sharks (1-0) are just coming off of a hard-fought 84-80 victory over St. Thomas, behind 28 points from
Chris Page (Sr., Plainfield, Ind.) and 15 from
Harrison Goodrick (Jr., Sydney, Australia). Lynn (1-0) were winners in their season icebreaker as well, 84-52 over Ave Maria, led by 27 points by David Johnson and a double-double for Vleux Kande, 17 points and 16 revounds.
NSUSharks.com had a chance to converse with head coach
Gary Tuell ahead of the 7:30 Wednesday matchup:
Q: You stuck to the strategy of getting ample playing time for the entirety of your roster, but ultimately came up with a win in the opener, the best of both worlds. All of that considered, despite some bumpy moments, how pleased are you with the ultimate result? GT: "It's early in the year, obviously, and our objective for the first few weeks is to learn, improve and correct mistakes or figure out, as coaches, what we need to do to help our guys get better. No one is more competitive or wants to win more than the coaches and players on this team, but we have seven newcomers and four freshmen we're counting on to play significant minutes. We can't go from step one to step 10 and ignore two through nine. Every game is a learning experience, every game is an opportunity to teach, and every night your opponent is going to expose your weaknesses and show you where you need to improve. Our job at this time of the season, regardless of whether we win or lose, is to take those learning and teaching experiences and help our players understand why things worked and didn't work, what we can do to get better, and spend time in practice correcting the mistakes. That's hard to do this week because we play Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, which doesn't leave a lot of time to fix the mistakes that young players will make in their first games. So we've sort of lumped these three games (St. Thomas, Lynn and Saint Leo) into one bag. We'll document mistakes and figure out ways to fix some of the things, and when we get through the opening week, we will have three or four days next week to grind in practice and see if we can get better. Winning the opener against a very good team from St. Thomas was nice for our guys. We got some good performances from
Chris Page and
Harrison Goodrick, and
Nick Pendergast (Sr., Bridgewater, Conn.) and
Jordan Stookey (So., Warsaw, Ind.), and
Austin Marciniak (Fr., Uniontown, Ohio) and
Casey Carroll (R-Jr., Youngstown, Ohio), and
BJ Edwards (So., Fort Myers, Fla.) and
Mike Chalas (Sr., Pembroke Pines, Fla.), and a lot of the guys. I'm sure it helped them feel good about all the hard work they've put into the preseason, but we can't get too high or too low based on results of games at this time of the year."
Q: The team seems capable of being very exciting, and during times in the first game, it led to points in bunches and a loud and boisterous home crowd. Talk about the stretches when the team flowed and had success on both ends. GT: "We have the potential to be a fun team to watch. I haven't been pleased with our 3-point shooting through the first three intrasquad games or against St. Thomas, and it concerns me that our guys are not working hard enough on that part of their game. We have some potentially good shooters on this team, and a lot of them, but so far we haven't shot the ball as well as we hoped. If we can get that fixed and start knocking down more threes, then we can be much better offensively. We also have the ability to run, probably a little better than people might suspect. As the year goes, on I think we'll be pretty good at pushing the tempo and creating some early scoring chances. If we can press successfully we can create some turnovers that give us a chance to score some easy baskets, but for us to be able to press we need to develop our bench and play a lot of people. Right now we've got a sixth grade press. It takes a long time and a serious commitment to get a press to the point where it's an effective, college press. Our ability to develop that kind of press is predicated on the younger guys coming along, developing and reaching a point where they can help us win games. Again, it's a process and we're committed to the process, regardless of the results. I do like the way we can attack off the dribble and I do think we can become a good shooting team, and most importantly I like the way our guys share the ball. When you can do those three things then you have opportunities to get into a flow or a groove and score points in bunches. As we improve our press, and that's going to take a lot of time, and as we improve and tweak what we do defensively, we can become a fun team to watch."
Q: Speaking of the loud home crowd, there was a good turnout from Shark Nation in game one, and obviously this can be something your team feeds off of. How important can this support be for the team? GT: "Crowd support is an interesting dynamic, possibly as much in basketball than most other sports. Players feed off the crowd's energy and it's crucial to the effort given by your players. Guys love it when there are people in the seats, making noise and giving encouragement. It's contagious. Our guys have always played well when we've played big road games against Division I teams or top Division II teams where the crowd was large and into the game. We need to keep creating that kind of atmosphere here. Believe me, it's worth three or four extra wins every year, maybe more. We try to recruit guys who are self-motivated and have a strong work ethic and will give 100 percent. Pep bands and cheerleaders and loud crowds make a difference in our game, but we have to create our motivation from within the 15 players and coaches on our team. We're fortunate to have a 5,000-seat arena that is beautiful and far superior to many arenas in DI or DII. Just walking out on the floor and seeing the arena motivates our guys and gives them a sense of pride in our university, in our program, in our team. The arena alone sends a message to our players and to our opponents, and that message is that we are special, that our arena is special, our program is special, and it makes the guys feel special to play here. You can't imagine how important that is when you play in DII, but it sets us apart from other programs and universities. We also had wonderful family support in our opener.
Troy Spears from Indiana,
Dwayne Gibson, Jr. from Indiana,
BJ Edwards from Fort Myers,
Chris Page from Indiana,
Nick Pendergast from Connecticut, they all had family members here to watch the opener and those families were loud and fun. It says a lot about our program and our guys when parents are willing to travel from far away to be a part of our family."
Q: Since there's not much time in between games, can you focus on anything specifically within yourselves to prepare for Lynn? GT: "As I said earlier, we're not concerned with who we're playing right now, we are only concerned about ourselves. We have so much work to do and so many things that need improvement. If this were February and we were a finished product, then we could focus on what we want to do to try and limit or contain Lynn, tweak what we're doing and strategize for what they do. But if we focus on Lynn and what they do, we're ignoring our own issues and losing an opportunity to learn and improve the things we need to improve. Lynn is one of the nation's best teams. They aren't just a DII team by any stretch of the imagination. They are athletic, long, talented, deep and would be an outstanding DI team capable of winning or competing at a very high level in a lot of DI leagues. We don't have their experience or their athleticism or their overall talent, so this is a great opportunity for our young players to play against one of the nation's best DII teams and find out what it takes to compete at the highest level of NCAA Division II basketball. Lynn will hurt your feelings if you don't block out and rebound. Lynn will hurt your feelings if you don't compete with great energy and effort. Lynn will hurt your feelings if you don't play smart and play tough and play together. St. Thomas was a good test for us in the opener, but Lynn is a whole different animal. We better come with hard hats and wear our Big Boy pants Wednesday night if we want to compete with Lynn because they are as good as it gets. Lynn runs, jumps, rebounds and defends at a level a lot of our guys have never experienced. It will be a great learning experience for our young players. The things we can learn from this game and the opportunities to take those things and work on them in future practices are invaluable. That's the great thing about playing a team like Lynn in your second game of the season. Regardless of the result, we will have a chance to improve much more quickly over the next few weeks than if we were playing Cupcake City College."
Q: Though wins and losses can't be the most important thing this early in the season, wouldn't a win in the conference opener, against a perennially tough Lynn team, certainly be another added bonus? GT: "I love my team and I'm sure Coach Jeff Price loves his Lynn team. I don't think winning or losing Wednesday night, in the second game of the season, is going to change the way either one of us feels about his team, or his team's potential to be very good down the road. We're going to bust our butts and play hard and I'm sure Lynn will, too. And come Thursday both teams will go back to work in practice and try to correct and fix the things that need to be corrected and fixed. Nothing significant was ever won in this sport on November 18, but having said that, I would rather be 1-0 in the Sunshine State Conference than 0-1. Our young guys are going to find out Wednesday night and again on Saturday (at Saint Leo) what it's like to play in this league. Eventually they're going to win a lot of games in this league. Are they ready to do that now? That's a question they will get to answer Wednesday night."
