FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The Nova Southeastern University men's basketball team (9-13, 5-8 SSC) will take on the Rollins Tars (8-16, 1-11 SSC) in the NSU Arena Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. on 88.5 Radio X. NSUSharks.com spoke to Gary Tuell prior to the matchup.
 
Q: Your team took Barry to the brink in an overtime loss, what did the guys do to fight such an even battle on the boards, at the line and on the scoreboard?
 
A: When you play Barry, you have to roll the dice. They have so many weapons and are one of the few teams who aren't just good – they're great – both inside and outside. We built our defense around three things: 1) Transition defense. We couldn't stay in the game if they were running downhill all day, so tried to make sure we built our house on the defensive end before they could get back; 2) We made a decision to try to take certain things away from them that we felt we could control; and 3) We wanted to put ourselves in the best possible position to limit their second chance points. We also knew that we couldn't cover everybody and everything. They're just too good. We understood that playing Barry is like playing the lottery. You pick your numbers and you hope it's your lucky day. Our guards did a tremendous job on the defensive glass, our guys got back in transition and we were able to make it a half-court game most of the day. We also got lucky because we didn't catch them on their best day. That's like winning the lottery.
 
Unfortunately, we needed the game to end 45 seconds sooner than it did. No lead is safe in this league. Look at Saint Leo and Lynn from Saturday. Saint Leo goes into Lynn and builds a 35-9 lead in the first half. That's just incredible. Florida Tech built a 26-8 or 10 lead over Florida Southern Saturday. Yet Lynn and Southern found ways to come back, just as Barry found a way – with a lot of help from our side – to come from seven down in the final 45 seconds. That's what makes those teams the three best in the league. They refuse to beat themselves, they find ways to win even when it doesn't seem to be their day. We missed an open 3, missed the front end of a one and one, missed the back end of a one and one, turned it over three times and gave up two offensive rebounds. You can't do those things against a team as good as Barry and expect to win. You have to finish it. We did enough good things all day to win the game. We put our guys in a position to win and they made enough plays and did a tremendous job defensively all day. But you have to finish it. They came at us with a lot of double teams and traps in the final four minutes and our guys handled that stuff beautifully. We just didn't finish in the final minute. You can't have lapses against Barry. They are a confident, talented team. We're not the first team they've come from behind to beat and we probably won't be the last. But I thought we played a tremendous game and our guys deserve a lot of credit for the way they competed against the sixth-ranked team in the country.
 
Q: You've now passed the series of Death, Famine and Pestilence. How does your team look after the last few games?
 
A: It was an interesting stretch. There's an old superstition that bad things happen in threes. I'm a huge baseball fan and I know it is three strikes and you're out, so maybe there's some truth to that superstition. Whenever you play consecutive games against teams that are ranked first in the nation, sixth in the nation, and a third one that ought to be in the top 15 or 20, which Lynn certainly should be, you learn a lot about your team. We played really well for long stretches in all three games. Despite losing all three, I think our guys came away from those games with more confidence and a better understanding of what it will take to compete with them if we see them again in the Sunshine State Conference tournament. Three straight losses can fracture an immature, disinterested or disengaged team. I definitely don't think we went backward. I think we've learned some valuable lessons and grown closer as a team.
 
You don't know what's going to happen in the next game or the next three weeks. This is a wacky league with a lot of good teams and a few great teams. The potential for upsets are always there. We may win all the games left on our schedule or we may lose them all. Who knows? But I definitely believe we're in a better position today than we were before facing the three-headed monster. We have a better understanding of ourselves both individually and as a team and we have a deeper belief that we can be a very good team before this thing is over. We're looking forward to seeing how it all plays out. We've experienced some growth as players and coaches. We've tightened the circle. We want to keep playing, and that's important this time of the year.
 
Q: Your next two opponents are ranked eighth and ninth in the Sunshine State Conference. Is it difficult for a team to go from elite level competition to teams battling for a spot in the postseason?
 
A: Haha. If I were Bobby Knight I'd throw a chair at you or dump you into a garbage can for asking such a silly question. I understand your question. But from a coach's perspective your question is rooted in "wrong thinking." Coaches respect every team the same. We hold every team in high regard and we can build valid cases to support our belief. To the casual observer, in an orderly universe there must logically be a wide divide between a team that sits in first place tie for the league lead with an 11-1 league record (Florida Southern) and a team that sits in ninth place with a 1-11 league record (Rollins). But to the coach, the difference between Florida Southern and Rollins in a miniscule four points. Florida Southern beat Rollins 74-70 in Lakeland, perhaps the toughest place for a visiting team to play in our conference. And while I thought we played pretty well for most of the night in our game at Southern last week, the end result was 24 points. That makes Rollins about 20 points better than us right now. And they might be. Who knows? Rollins is coming off its first league win (a 70-59 defeat of Eckerd on Saturday).
 
I've said all year that Rollins just needs to win one game in the league to get themselves going. They've had so many two, three or four point losses it's almost crazy. They have been so close to being one of the best teams in the league, and now that they have that win over Eckerd people better watch out. This team has been oh-so-close all year. I think they're one of the most dangerous teams in the league right now. They still have a chance to make the post-season tournament if they win out. They are on a mission. They need to win to keep their tourney hopes alive. We need a win to guarantee ourselves a spot in the tourney. This is the biggest game of the year for us. You mentioned "eighth place" Florida Tech. I'm trying not to go "all Bobby Knight" on you here, but you're suggesting a potential letdown on our part when we go to Melbourne Saturday to face a team that already has beaten us on our floor and treated us the same way the Sioux Indians treated Custer at Little Bighorn. They beat us inside, outside and just obliterated us on the glass. They also are the same team that lost in overtime Saturday to the same aforementioned Florida Southern team.
 
Any suggestion that Rollins or Florida Tech aren't formidable and capable based on their league record is laughable if you're a coach. These are two of the biggest, most talented teams in our league. They both present huge matchup problems for us. We escaped with a victory at Rollins earlier this year on a night when they may have played their worst. And the best we could do was hang on for a two-point win. If the game had gone 15 more seconds, Rollins might have pulled that one out. You can never look at any team in this league and assume anything because, as I have said so often, the parity from top to bottom is unlike any Division II league in America. We do have three elite teams. But we have six other very, very good teams playing in an ELITE league. We are the smallest team in the league and certainly not deep. This week we face two giants and our margin for error is about an inch. We have to fight with all we have for that inch because if we don't, we lose.
 
Q: Brian Cahill (Sr., Arlington, Va.) passed 1,000 points in his career on Wednesday and a Justin Jeangerard (Sr., Weaverville, Calif.) has a couple of different milestones on the horizon. Are the players aware of how close they are to various milestones and records when they step on the court?
 
A: I really don't know. We never talk about those things. We just play and at the end of the season, you total up the numbers and tip your hat to a guy who did something historically significant. Our focus is on our team, not individual accolades. I hate it when guys are obsessed with stats. Our sports information office brings up-dated stats to our bench during timeouts and I throw them away. I don't need to see a stat sheet to know what's happening on the floor. And I don't need players looking at those things to see how many points or rebounds or assists they have.
 
I've been in locker rooms of great NBA teams and none of the players in those locker rooms look at a stat sheet after the game or could care less about that stuff. That's why they are a great team. I've also been in the locker room of losing NBA teams after games and it's amazing how many of those players are grabbing stat sheets after the game. That's the difference between great teams and losing teams. Individual stats count in golf and tennis. We're more interested in team results and team accomplishments. The only stat that matters in a team game is the final score.
 
Sometimes the guys who have the most to do with whether you won or lost never got off the bench in the game. The reserves who worked their rear ends off in practice to prepare the guys who played in the game are often times the most valuable players and the reason you won or lost. How do you measure that on a stat sheet? Who's giving those guys a game ball? In baseball a guy drives in the winning run from second base in the bottom of the ninth inning and does all the media interviews after. But who's interviewing the guy who batted in front of him, the guy who laid down the bunt to move the runner to second base and put him in scoring position or the guy who hit to the right side of the infield and gave himself up to move the runner up? I love stats when they produce information that benefits the team. But in our sport, individual stats are overrated.
 
Q: Rollins beat Eckerd for their first SSC win Saturday, but you have been complimentary of coach Tom Klusman's team throughout their struggles. What do you like about the Tars this year?
 
A: Rollins is no different this year from past years. They run much of the same stuff on offense and play three zones that are tougher to crack than a casino vault. They have great size and some outstanding shooters. They are third in the league in scoring defense, third in the league in field goal percentage, fourth in the league in field goal percentage defense, third in the league in 3-point field goal percentage. Those don't sound like the stats of a last-place team. They have some outstanding individuals in Alex Blessig, Jeff Merton, Sharif Almulla, Chris Uhle, Jeff Dirkin, Scott Schuette… guys who have been around for a while and who have a history of winning. They've been a hard luck team this year, but the very fact that they're in last place at this time of the season is a testament to the strength of this league. And don't bet on this team finishing the season in last place. There are still games to play.
 
Q: What's the biggest key to defeating Rollins again Wednesday?
 
A: Make shots – and a lot of them – against their zones, take care of the ball and limit our turnovers and defend the heck out of them inside and outside because they can shoot it and they have some size advantages that are a problem for us in the paint.
 
Q: NSU is in fifth place currently. The Sharks are 2.5 games behind Tampa in fourth, a game ahead of Saint Leo and Eckerd, and 1.5 games ahead of Florida Tech. Knowing how difficult it has been to beat the top three in the conference (Florida Southern, Barry and Lynn are a combined 32-5 in conference), do you think there is a target on NSU's back to steal the fifth spot in the standings?
 
A: Honestly, I don't even know if teams in this league have much respect for us or hold is in high regard. We're not much to look at, don't have much of a physical presence about us, can't overwhelm anyone with our size and we surely have to be the least athletic team in the league. Some teams probably think we're a novelty act because we shoot a lot of threes. I'm sure there's no target on our backs. Teams who play against us don't have a lot of fear in their eyes and when we do win most coaches seem genuinely dismayed, as in "How the heck did THAT team beat MY team." Which is a fair question when you look at our team on paper compared to most others. When we win, I get the feeling people think we're some kind of magic act that just pulled off an amazing trick using mirrors.
 
If you polled the league's coaches and asked which team they would most want to play in the first round of a postseason tournament I guarantee you we'd get a lot of votes. But we're in fifth place right now and we still think we have a shot to finish fourth if we can fool them for a few more games. I was messing around with some numbers the other day. If you throw the Big Three (Florida Southern, Barry and Lynn) out of the equation and rank the teams one through six based on won-loss records between those six teams, we're doing okay. In my opinion we have three low to mid DI teams in this league: Southern, Barry and Lynn. I think all three of those teams could compete well in several DI conferences. Then we have six very good DII teams. The divide between the top three and the other six is wide, as you pointed out with that 32-5 stat. But what's more impressive is that if you don't count losses to each other, the Big Three are 28-1 against the rest of the league. That means the rest of the league is 1-28 against those three teams.
 
Obviously there's a pretty large gap between the three leaders and the rest of us, which is why I label them DI and the rest of us DII. In my DII version of the league, throwing out games against the three leaders, Tampa is 6-2 (and the only team to have beaten one of the top three with their win over Lynn), we're 5-2, Saint Leo is 4-3, Eckerd is 4-5, Florida Tech is 3-5 and Rollins is 1-6. So I tell my guys we're out of the race for the overall league title, but we can still finish first in the Division II portion of our league. If we could find a way to win our three remaining league games we could finish 8-2 in my mythical DII league, which would be good enough for first place in my mind because we have two wins over Tampa. No doubt there are people out there who might consider my mythical DII thinking to be akin to blasphemy or heresy, but hey… you do what you can to motivate your guys and keep them playing for something, even if it's only important in our eyes. 
 
Nobody in the Southeastern Conference is going to finish ahead of Kentucky. That was a given the day they signed their freshman class. You think the coaches of the other SEC teams aren't telling their guys that the race that matters is for second place? Kentucky is an NBDL franchise, not an NCAA team. The team that finishes second in the SEC race is the DI league champion. Kentucky is a different animal. If they get to the Final Four and win the national championship it will be like, "Okay, the NBA sent us an NBDL team to play against the three best NCAA teams, so whoever finishes second to UK is the true national collegiate champion." You have to give guys hope. You have to give them a reason to keep fighting. I don't think it denigrates the rest of our league to say we're DII just because Southern, Barry and Lynn are such outstanding teams this year. Heck, their record against the rest of us bears that out. Give them credit. Give them praise. They've earned it.
 
To be the "best of the rest" is still a pretty good accomplishment because "the rest" are darn good teams and would make up a darn good DII league anywhere in America. So we've invented our own league and we're fighting to win that one. If you can't win the league you're in, make up a fantasy league and win that one! It's the American way! You gotta keep a sense of humor in this profession. And you gotta have some fun. I want my guys to have fun. And I want them to keep working hard to be the best they can be. Maybe we'll get lucky and win the lottery in Kissimmee. You never know. All I know for sure is that to win the lottery in Kissimmee we first have to get there. And that road goes through Rollins Wednesday night. They're trying to win the same lottery, trying to get to Kissimmee, too, and for them the road goes through us Wednesday night. It should be a heckuva game and a lot of fun for somebody.