March 17, 2008

Coppin State Head Coach Ron Mitchell
Opening Statement
"I can say that we are very happy to be here. After going through the grueling schedule and the MEAC tournament and playing four games and surviving them by a total of 6 points, it is very, very, very nice to be playing right now. We're happy to be in Dayton. We were here before. It's a nice place to be, and it's also a nice place to get an opportunity to win."

On the idea of the Opening Round Game
"I've never really liked the play-in (Opening Round) game. I understand what the purpose is, to get another of the major schools in the tournament. I think it started when the conferences expanded to 31, and we had to eliminate somebody rather than give another conference, they weren't going to take the at-large bids away from the bigger schools. It takes some of the joy out of being in the final 64 because it is now the final 65. Being that I've been there before and understanding the atmosphere and understanding the thrill, knowing who I was going to play before the 6:00 program came on took a lot out of it. It's trial and error. We can learn from things, but I'm definitely one that is not in favor of the opening round game."

On the turnaround from 4-19
"We had to make some tough decisions. We were struggling with chemistry. I was struggling with my young people, trying to get somebody to listen to me. So, they're paying me to get this together. What I found out, we had two cliques. I did some investigating, and we did have two cliques within the team. It was the seniors, and then we had the underclassmen. So what I tried to do was to mix them, and it didn't work out well because the underclassmen were somewhat immature, and the seniors hadn't arrived yet. But, when I looked at the whole situation, the seniors liked each other, and liked each other a lot. So, I decided to start the seniors, and put on them how the season would go. If they wanted to make something out of their season, it was going to be on them. I told the underclassmen, our first year players, they are going to have to work hard and compete find a way to get along with the seniors if they were going to be on the floor at all this year. From that point on, chemistry was developed. They played hard because they wanted to be on the basketball court, and we had an opportunity to be successful and we took advantage of it."

On the beginning of his career
"I know life is about opportunity, and I just look back at when I first started. I came right out of high school, and I was one of those really know-it-all type individuals. I went to a factory to work and found out quickly that wasn't the place to be. So, I went to school. Somebody gave me the opportunity to go to school, and I worked my way through that. I knew that was going to have to do a lot. While I was in college, I worked full time, played basketball, and also was a husband. I developed a situation in my mind that to achieve organization, you have to find a way of doing things. If the opportunity is there for you, please take advantage of it. I worked hard because I didn't want life the way it was, the way I was living it previously. I caught a break, met a millionaire, who helped me get three sporting goods stores called `Mr. Fang's Athletic Attire,' and I tried to work those three sporting goods stores as well as coach basketball at the same time, which becomes an impossible task. I had to make the decision on what to do with my life, and I choose basketball, and I have never regretted the decision."

Did you ever give up on this season?
"When you are 4-19, you have a tendency of wondering if we're going to be able to turn this thing around. It's all about time. I've always said that time is our best educator, so since we still had time left, I still had some other things that I could try to try to turn it around. Besides that I had a wife at home who said you better not quit on them. It wasn't the fact that I was going to quit, it was the fact of what message I was going to be able to send them that would register with them. That became the task. We just maneuvered a lot of things together, and we came up with what I told you previously. We kept knocking on the door. We put the pressure on them. The key was to believe in what I'm telling them. The only person that has been to a tournament in the room was me, and if you feel that you wanted to get there, we were going to have to start somewhere along the line to develop some winning attitude, and we had to take each game one at a time, and not try to look at the total picture, but understanding that with each victory, something positive came out of that. We developed some patience, and it came in handy with us during the year, especially in the tournament where we were down 15 at half against Hampton who was the number two seed, and they listened when I said, you need to knock off 4 points on every media timeout. Just four points. Not trying to get the whole thing. That experience over the year of playing each game one at a time was very helpful in that setting to the point that at the end of the game, it was a time game. So, we were off a point. That was beneficial to us and, it helped us to get through."

What was the defining moment of this season?
"I really feel it was two. We had won a couple of games at home, and we were going on a road trip to Florida. I felt that it was going to be very important that if we were going to turn it around. We won the first game at Bethune-Cookman, and then we were at Florida A & M. It was one of those hard fought games were we wound up being behind with the last shot. We shot, and we missed, and then we had a tap in, and we won the game. They started believing in themselves at that point in time. We developed some momentum going at the end. Our last game of the year was at Morgan State University. We had played them earlier in the year. Lost by 28 points at home. This would be a defining moment on where we were as a team. We had won eight in a row. We went into Morgan, a capacity crowd of 4,500-5,000 people there. We fought them all the way to the end, and wound up losing a 4 point game. From there, we go directly into the tournament. The tip in which kept the momentum going and then the fact that we recognized that that was the best team in the league and we competed with them at their place."

On Coach Milan Brown as a player at Howard University
"He can shoot that thing. He was a tremendous shooter and a tough competitor. He understood the game. I haven't had a chance to view his team on film yet, but if they play anything like he played, I'm telling you we are really going to have a tough game tomorrow."

On former Temple Coach John Chaney's influence
"Not everybody has that opportunity to come up with a legend, a person of the caliber of John Chaney. We've always had the opportunity to see him prowling on the sideline, but he's a pure and true and good human being, and he's always willing to teach you or to give you a lesson about life. Working with him for nine years at his camp and to hear all the lectures that he had, I found myself with an ink pen and a pad and trying to copy down some of his quotes. I remember one of his statements he told me: `If you want to be a successful man, then find somebody successful, and try to emulate him. There's a good chance you can find a way to be successful.' He's been very supportive. When we won the championship, my phone vibrated, and that was John Chaney on the phone telling me congratulations and a job well done. He's been very important in my life. There's a lot of basketball you can learn from John Chaney, and I'm very blessed to have that opportunity."

On Tywain McKee finding himself as a player and a person
"Having Tywain in our program, understanding where he came from, living in the toughest parts of Philadelphia, looking for an opportunity to just get away from the problems that he was suffering through, not having a role model, to see him come into the program with the opportunity and grow as the years have gone by and to see where he is right now as a person, he has great qualities, good qualities of a human being, it is just so gratifying, to see him there, to see him at a point where he is trying to make his life the best he could be. He's working hard toward graduation. We're in a situation where we feel he could graduate next year; and hopefully, we can be able to get another year from him. But he has turned out to be a quality individual, a caring individual."

Antwan Harrison
On being in the game
"It means a lot to us, we started the season not too well. We want to come out and play hard and try to go back to Raleigh to win."

On his relationship with Mt. Saint Mary's players and coach
"I know most of them pretty well and definitely Coach Brown because he recruited me for a while."

On turning the season around
"We started with experience and started five seniors early on, but we struggled to find our style of play. Then we found out we just had to play defense. If you get enough stops you could win 2-0, but you have a chance to win every game."

On playing in Dayton
"At Coppin State we played a very tough road schedule, so to us it's just another game on the road."

On winning the conference tournament
"We're in a smaller conference, we don't really get at-large bids but we knew we could win our conference. We just focused all our energy on that MEAC Championship and we got it."

Tywain McKee
On what it means to be in the game itself
"It means a lot to be here, it's definitely a dream come true to be in the NCAA Tournament."

Brian Chesnut
On getting over the early-season record of 4-19
"I believe it starts in practice. It's a mental thing, It's a mindset.