Reggie Witherspoon
Reggie Witherspoon
ability embrace knew mature notion struggled
We knew Calvin had the ability. Where he struggled was his maturity. He had to embrace the notion that he had to mature more. I told him once he did, the sky's the limit.
believe believing cut hair knew matter warm
It's just a matter of him believing he's a contributor and not just there to warm up for the game. I knew once he got his hair cut that he thought he was going to be a contributor.
basket couple game great hit knew shots took
The thing that made his game great was that some of the shots he took we were out there on him. We knew that he was going to hit some shots. We said we just don't want him to get anything easy. I don't think he got anything easy, but he still got to the basket a couple of times. That's what made it difficult.
believe game gave harder kept played playing
We kept playing harder as the game went on, that's something you have to do. You have to believe you're going to come back. We weren't necessarily playing well but we played harder and that gave us a chance.
tough
We weren't tough enough under the basket. That was the difference.
best game goes great guys patch together
We were doing the best we can to patch it all together when the game started, when he had no fouls. When he goes out . . . it's difficult. It's great to get those (other) guys some experience, but it's not a stress-free experience.
early turned
We turned it over early and often in the first part of the game.
best certainly given gives player sure
On a given day you're not sure who their best player is, and they probably don't know. It certainly gives us a challenge.
class freshman game guys help last played rarely seniors three year
Last year's class was great, but they did have the help of those guys, those three guys who are here and seniors now. And what made it really challenging for these three is . . . we had to play a lot of freshman and a lot of new guys. And last year we rarely played a freshman in a game like this. We didn't have to go that deep.
caught easy tried work
We tried a lot of things. We tried zone, we tried man, we tried to really make him work to get it so if he caught it, they wouldn't be easy catches.
best effort game gave history near tough tremendous
We really gave it a tremendous effort on the backboard. It's a tough place to play, there's a lot of history in this building. We did our best to try to give them the game near the end.
anybody eight exhaustion guy influence less minutes played playing rebound rebounds standpoint
Parnell's fatigued. He's been out a long time. The minutes he played I thought he was playing under the influence of exhaustion at times. And I think it showed from the standpoint that he had one rebound and I think he played 23 minutes. We didn't play anybody that had less rebounds than him. We had one guy who played eight minutes and he had a rebound.
cloud good last minds ohio time
We don't have time to think about last season. They're good now. We can't cloud our guys' minds too much with last season. We have to play well because Ohio is good this season.
hope mac might open possible spots teams win
We have to hope that as many teams like that as possible win their tournament. That might be able to open some spots for more MAC teams.