March 16, 2008

Kurt Huelsman

"We were a little disappointed. I am not going to lie, because we were right there. We were one or two wins away from being right there along with all of the other good teams in the rest of the country. We can not let that affect how we play in the NIT and our performance in that."

"We can use that motivation [in the NIT]. We just have to do our thing and stick to what we are best at."

"It's going to be a two day prep like the regular season. Our coaches probably aren't going to sleep tonight and our GA's are going to be pulling all nighters to learn as much as they can in the next two days to help us out."

"It's very exciting [to play at home]. It is a big advantage for us with the crowd. They are going to be into it and excited for it."

Brian Gregory

"You go through the season and look at the body of work. There is no way when you are not selected that you can go over stuff and not seem that you are bitter or whatever the case might be. It is disappointing when you have a higher RPI or a better RPI and better strength of scheduling than 11 teams that were selected as at-large teams. All 11 of those teams, you still have more 100 top wins than those teams. It would have been a great accomplishment for this team. Looking at all the stuff they would have went through to be selected, but not being selected is not going to decrease my pride that I have in this team and what this team has accomplished this year. In the face of so much adversity the ability to get off the mat time and time again, with an injury here or an injury there or a tough loss, this team has shown unbelievable resiliency. It would have been a nice reward for that type of resiliency in terms of doing the things that were set forth and needed to be done. To look at it and feel bad or ashamed that you didn't make it, there is no way that Is going to happen with this team and how myself and our staff feels about our team. I think it is really important to keep that in mind and move forward."

"I do not know how they do the seeding. We were the highest RPI team that didn't make it [the NCAA] with the highest strength of schedule as well. You have to play the game, that is what this team has done all year along. Now you just have to get ready for a game on Wednesday."

"Obviously it is an emotional time when you play your last home game. We played very well in that game beating St. Joe's so now you have another opportunity to play at home against a team that is as well coached as anybody in the country. With the success that Gary Waters has had at Kent State, at Rutgers and now Cleveland State. It is an opportunity for our guys to play again and that is the most important thing to continue to play."

"We did a great job of collecting all of the games that were televised and so forth. We have a very intricate system. We have some tapes on them already so we will start the scouting process tonight."

"You look at the first game and just want to get them ready for the first game. We are playing a very good opponent that has had very good success this year as well. For our guys to have the opportunity to continue and play with 21 wins and try to get a 22nd win. We haven't need any external motivation during the year. Our success has come from the inside and that is what we need to continue to do"

"We have taken some time off. We had a great lift today and a lot of shots up today and some offensive stuff to get our legs back after these last couple of days. We will start to prep stuff tomorrow."

"Chris Wright is cleared to practice and he practiced today. We didn't have a full practice and he is going to practice and see how it goes. All of the restrictions have been lifted off him but it's not a situation where we are going to rush him back. He is going to have to be evaluated by the doctors every day after the workout that he goes through and we'll see what happens from there."