FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Nova Southeastern University men's basketball team (9-12, 5-7 SSC) will take on the No. 6 Barry Buccaneers (19-2, 10-1 SSC) in the NSU Arena Saturday at 4 p.m. on 640 Sports. NSUSharks.com spoke to Gary Tuell prior to the matchup.
 
Q: The loss to Lynn Wednesday was rough. After watching the game film, what were the biggest takeaways?
 
A: The film confirmed what I thought during and after the game. Lynn is taller than us, stronger than us, faster than us, quicker than us, more athletic than us and the two times we've played them they played with more resolve than us. They were better than us. A lot better. The first time we played them we were even on the glass with 32 rebounds each. Wednesday they beat us 39-19. Just about everybody has kicked our butts on the glass since mid-January. That wasn't happening early in the season but it happens on a consistent basis lately. We can say we're too small to compete on the glass, but that's an excuse, not an acceptable answer. We weren't too small to tie Lynn on the glass the first time we played. We weren't too small to rebound evenly with Eckerd the first time or Rollins and Florida Southern in our first meetings with those teams.
 
So what's changed? Effort. Hard work. A sense of urgency. Nothing shows how much you care, how badly you want to win, as effort plays. And effort plays are measured on the glass and the defensive end. We have way too many people not giving us consistent effort, and worse, we don't have guys on the bench pushing for their jobs in practice or taking advantage of opportunities when they get into games by out-working and out-hustling the starters. Too often we're a lazy team, and I saw that on the Lynn game film.
 
Q: If the Sharks see Lynn in the tournament, what can NSU do to change the tide?
 
A: I can give you a surface answer or I can get philosophical and try to give you good stuff. You want good stuff? We think we can play much better than we have in our two losses to Lynn, and that's not taking anything away from them because they've been terrific against us. After Wednesday's loss we definitely feel we have a better understanding of what we need to do to give ourselves a chance against them. But if I give our guys the game plan, if we go over it in practice, reinforce it before the game with the major points on a wipe board, it's worthless unless our guys believe in it, commit to it, and most important of all, commit to one another. A sheet of music is just a worthless piece of paper if the players in a symphony orchestra don't want to play the tune. What makes a sheet of music come alive is the players taking up their instruments, blending their skills and talents, and playing in unison. They can make that sheet of music a beautiful song, not by reading the sheet of music and nodding their approval. They make it sing when they commit together to play their hearts out to make that sheet of music something beautiful and special. I don't know if our guys understand that, and if they do, I'm not convinced they want to make the kind of effort it takes to make beautiful music together. It's hard. It takes a special commitment. Lynn's players have made that commitment. Florida Southern's players have made it. Barry has obviously made it. Look at Duke. Duke is Duke because year-in and year-out their players make that commitment to one another, to team first, and to the program and its history. We're not there yet. We still have guys who haven't bought in. That's understandable with most freshmen. But it's totally unacceptable with upperclassmen.
 
We've had some pretty good rebounding nights against good teams. When we compete and battle and play with a physical presence, we hold our own. When we stand around and watch or let other teams push us without fighting back, we are disappointing. It's all about effort, and I don't care if you want to call it commitment, desire, courage or whatever, if you hate to lose and refuse to let somebody push you around you don't have to get beat regardless of the size difference. Size is the most overrated thing in our sport. Measure the heart. Measure the will. Measure the human spirit. That's where winners come from.
 
Leonard Hamilton was my boss at the University of Miami and he used to call it "want to." You can do anything out there if your "want to" is deep enough. You can't coach "want to." You try to identify it in recruits and then you hope and pray when they get in this environment – the beaches, the bikinis, the sunshine, the flip flops and shorts and vacation setting – you just hope they don't lose the "want to" they had before they came here. It's ridiculous that coaches have to constantly ask players … heck, BEG players … to perform one of the most fundamental and essential basics of basketball: block out, pursue the ball, compete for the ball, rebound the darn ball. That's just ridiculous. We have a lot of guys who look you in the eye and nod their heads when we talk about the necessity for blocking out or going to the glass. But then the lights come on and we stand around and watch while others do it. They say one thing, but their actions don't mirror their words. They're faking it. I was lucky enough to work with Denny Crum, the Hall of Fame coach at Louisville who won two national championships and went to the Final Four six times. Guys would tell Coach Crum they were going to do their jobs, and Denny almost always responded by saying, "Don't tell me. SHOW ME!" We're not big. We don't have a deep bench. Guys get tired battling against bigger, stronger, quicker, faster, higher-jumping athletes. I get that. So what? Those are convenient excuses. Your "want to" level is not where it should be. It shows up on the offensive end when guys aren't snapping passes, reading defenders, moving their man to get open or cutting hard to meet passes. It's hard work. It takes a special commitment.
 
I think more than anything else it takes a group of guys who are committed to each other, who love each other despite differences, and who don't want to let each other down. I don't think we have that yet. Negative thoughts are cancers to a team. They grow and expand under the surface, and very often we feed that cancer with the thing that causes it without realizing how we're damaging the body. Negative thinking damages the body, the team. Nothing kills a team's will and work ethic and capacity to stretch like bad thinking does. Every bad thing that happens is a result of wrong or bad thinking. It all starts with how you think and what you think because your thoughts really do control what you do and who you are. That goes for every guy on our team. I don't care if you're first or last in minutes played, negative thinking turns potential winners into pouting losers.
 
It's easy to be lazy. It's easy to be satisfied with mediocrity. But guys like Michael Jordan despised mediocre effort and mediocre performances. He pushed himself to greatness and he pushed those around him to greatness, too. I hate mediocrity. It's worse than out and out laziness. At least the lazy guy is easy to spot and rarely defends what he is. He's happy being lazy and he doesn't hide it or mask it with a lie. But the mediocre guy fakes it. He acts like he's engaged and committed. He tells you he is. He nods in agreement. And then he goes out and plays like the lazy man. He fools you into trusting him but in the end the result is the same as the lazy guy will give you. A losing effort. We win a lot of games when we don't have to fight too hard and push too much. But we rarely have won a game, if any, where we had to abandon our comfort zones and play with passion, toughness, courage and uncommon desire. If we ever find that gear, we can do some special things. If not, then these guys will have to account to themselves one day for the way they let one another down. It's not about winning or losing. It's about coming together as a group to give your best effort for the guys in the locker room. If you want to be a great soloist, play golf or tennis. If you want to be a great orchestra, blend in with the group and share the moment.
 
Q: Mike Chalas (Jr., Pembroke Pines, Fla.) started the second half. How has his progression been this season and what does he need to do to elevate his game further?
 
A: Mike is one of the nicest young men you could ever hope to meet, which is great 22 hours out of the day. But when he crosses the line and steps on the court, for those two hours a day he needs to develop an edge. He's a terrific young man and everybody loves him. We need "nice guy" Mike Chalas in the locker room, the film room, on the team bus. But on the court we need Mike to make better use of his God-given talents, become more assertive and play more aggressively. I think Mike wants to be a good teammate, defer to the seniors and not step on toes. He needs to look for scoring opportunities, join the battle on the boards and look for ways to impact the game with his speed and quickness. He's probably our most consistent 3-point shooter, at least in practice, and he has the ability to score off the dribble as well. He's so quick he could chase down a few rebounds a game just by improving his effort. The light bulb will come on for him one day. I hope it happens this season and he doesn't wait for next year. He can have an impact on our team down the stretch. He needs to turn himself loose.
 
Q: You've said Barry is a special team, what is it that has taken them from a strong team to a national title contender?
 
A: Start with Butch Estes, who has always been a terrific coach and has done a great job bringing in talented players and getting them to play together. Then look at the guys working with Butch. They have six guys in suits on that bench, and I don't know what they're being paid but they need to get raises when the season is over for the great job they've done coaching and preparing their team. Next, they've got six Division I transfers, and every one of those guys are good enough to start for a lot of DI teams. They have a wonderful backcourt. Deric Hill may be the best point guard in our league. Juan Ferrales and Anders Haas and Arie Williams are terrific 3-point shooters and Haas is both a creator and a shooter. They have four outstanding, productive post players in Jevoni Robinson, Tray Leonard, Savad Garner and Adrian Gonzalez. They score, rebound, defend, block shots and rotate in and out of the lineup seamlessly. And oh yeah… they have Yunio Barrueta, who at 6-6 and 220 or whatever he weighs is both a dynamite scorer, tremendous rebounder and probably the Player of the Year in the conference and quite possibly in all of DII basketball. He's a special talent and a difference maker. I don't think they have a weakness anywhere.
 
Q: Barry's gym is a tough place to play, but the Sharks were in the game for 40 minutes there earlier this season. Does NSU/Barry make for a fun style matchup?
 
A: I'm sure Barry would say "yes" because they were the team having all the fun in our first meeting. We scrapped and clawed and fought about as hard as we're capable of fighting, but even then we were never able to lead in that game. We hung around at seven, eight, nine, 10 down for most of the first half and though we cut it to four once in the second half with about nine minutes to play, Barry shifted to another gear and pulled away from us down the stretch the way good teams are supposed to do. It was a Sisyphus game for us… we were pushing that boulder uphill all afternoon, and every time we got near the top, the boulder rolled over us in the form of a Gonzalez jumper or Barrueta or Ferrales 3-pointer or a Robinson blocked shot. They have us out-numbered in suits, out-numbered in Division I transfers – we do have two, but one of them (Casey Carroll) is not playing this year while recovering from back surgery – out-numbered in the backcourt and the frontcourt. They're ranked, what, sixth in the nation? That's too low. They have to be one of the three or four best DII teams in America. There are 351 DI men's basketball teams playing in the NCAA and Barry is better than a whole bunch of them, maybe as many as half them.
 
Q: Brian Cahill (Sr., Arlington, Va.) is three points away from scoring 1,000 points in his career. For those who are not familiar with his history, how has his journey to this milestone been over the last six years?
 
A: Brian is an inspirational figure. I remember sitting in a doctor's office with Brian and the doctor telling him he will never play basketball again. We walked out of that office numb. We climbed into my car and both of us just sat there and said nothing. Just stared ahead. And cried. Tears running down both our cheeks. Here's a guy who had the kind of athleticism and talent and basketball IQ to realistically dream of playing basketball professionally one day. If Brian had never been injured I truly believe he would be overseas now making money playing the game he loves. But two back surgeries robbed him of that opportunity. Those surgeries may have taken away much of his athleticism, but they couldn't kill his spirit or his will. 
 
I'm guessing Brian has gone through something close to 10,000 hours of rehab over the past six years, all because he wouldn't believe the experts who told him he would never play again. He's gone through so much pain, endured so much hardship, all for the love of the game. The guy is truly an inspiration and a role model and an example of what the human spirit can accomplish when it refuses to give up. Not many young men would endure what Brian has gone through just to get on the court, but not many young men have Brian's drive and determination and passion for our game. As great and as successful as he's been on the court – and believe me, his story is truly remarkable – he's been even better off the court. He is nearly a 4.0 student, has his undergrad degree and will have his Masters in May. He has been a wonderful representative for his university and his athletics department and his team, has done everything asked of him with class and with grace, and whenever he's been asked to tell his story to groups he has won the admiration and respect of every person he has encountered.
 
When we host the department's sports banquet in April, we don't need to give Brian an athletic trophy or plaque. Instead we should give him a Purple Heart because he has shown character, courage and class every step of his improbable journey. We will miss him dearly when he moves on and we will never replace him.
 
Q: You're almost done with "Death, Famine and Pestilence," the term you gave this stretch of games against No. 1 Florida Southern, Lynn and now No. 6 Barry. Win or lose Saturday, how has your team been impacted by this elite level of competition?
 
A: Florida Southern is "Death" because they've been killing the hopes and dreams of other teams in this league for a long time. Lynn is "Famine" because their defense feasts on opposing offenses, takes away their bread and butter stuff, bullies you. Like the grade school bully who took your lunch money and your kid brother's lunch money for good measure and left you both hungry. Barry is "Pestilence" because they are like the most deadly and virulent disease that attacks you inside and outside and drains the life out of you. We're lucky to have three great teams like these in our league. I can't imagine a league anywhere in DII that has three teams as good as those three. We have some darn good basketball teams in this league but those three are just head and shoulders above the others. 
 
I honestly believe if Lynn, Barry and Southern were sent to different regions all three would have a great chance of advancing to the Elite Eight or perhaps even the Final Four. That's great for our league. Those teams are going to raise the level of the other teams in this league, and that's hard to imagine because the level of talent and coaching in this league is off the charts as it is. We're looking forward to finishing the Trilogy today. We had our feelings hurt by Southern and Lynn, and certainly Barry has the talent to do the same thing to us. But when I look back at the Southern and Lynn games I feel we did some really good things, competed well and held our own against great opponents for long stretches in both games. Hopefully we can get a great effort and compete against Barry. I was encouraged by a lot of things I saw in the first two games.
 
Hopefully I will see things in our game with Barry that give us hope, too. But most importantly I think Southern and Lynn exposed some fundamental weaknesses in our team that I shared in earlier answers. We need to look in the mirror, hold one another accountable, tighten our circle and find ourselves, find our way, if we hope to build on these games and grow up as a team. I love my guys. I wouldn't trade them for anyone else's players. But we have work to do on and off the court if we're going to be a factor in March. We need to change the way some guys have been thinking. We need to eradicate all the negatives and buy into each other. When you play great teams like these three you get an opportunity to test yourself against greatness. But you also have an even greater opportunity to see yourself for who you really are, come face to face with reality, and use the experience to grow into something greater than your present thinking allows you to believe you can or should be. An old African proverb says, "If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together." I want to go far. I need some guys who want to make the journey with me.