March 10, 2002
SAN DIEGO - The San Diego State men's basketball team learned Sunday afternoon that it will play Illinois in the first round of the 2002 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship.
The Aztecs, who haven't competed in the NCAA tournament since 1985, enter the 65-team field as the No. 13 seed and face off against the No. 4 seeded Illini on Friday at United Center in Chicago.
The San Diego State basketball program watched the selection show from the Aztec Athletics Center auditorium, following the show head coach Steve Fisher visited with San Diego media.
Quoting Head Coach Steve Fisher
General remarks:
"When my family and I made the decision to come to San Diego State there were a whole host of reasons for doing so and the biggest one was (San Diego State athletics director) Rick Bay. We knew of one another from our days at Michigan. While we weren't at Michigan at the same time I knew what kind of man I would be working for. I had a job when I took this job. I knew that everything was in place to build a program that the university, city and state could be proud of. We had to do alot of selling. You can talk to the guys we recruited. This profession is full of negative recruiting. When we talked to these players no sooner would we finish than school A would call up and say why San Diego State, why would you want to go there they will never be any good. We had to get them to believe in a vision and not the pie in the sky. Brian Dutcher was my first hire as an assistant coach, we had been there and done that and that is what we sold. The best example of this is Tony Bland and Randy Holcomb. They believed in us and we believed in them and together we've been able to accomplish alot in a short period of time. Our ultimate goal is to build a program that will sustain and feed upon itself. We've taken a huge step towards that goal in the last six weeks and now we are where everybody wants to be that is in college basketball. We are excited to be a part of this. We've got alot of work to do before we play Illinois in Chicago and our goal is to be as prepared as we can. "
On SDSU's fan support:
"We need our fans. People will say you have to go play Illinois who has all its fans two hours away. I say so what. So did UNLV and we won there, so did New Mexico and we won in The Pit and so did Wyoming and we won there, too. I know we are going to play well. I know our fans are proud of what we've done and we want to build on that."
On going home to Illinois:
"I coached and taught for 11 years on the southside of Chicago and I grew up in southern Illinois and went to school in central Illinois. I'm going to have lots of friends that are going to want to come to the game. We're excited, obviously, playing a really, really good and red-hot Illinois team. They are on a good, strong roll. I probably know more about Illinois than I do about most of the teams just because of my roots to the Big Ten. I recruited one of those kids off that team, Damir Krupalija. That will be interesting."
On three Mountain West Conference teams getting in the tournament:
"I'm real pleased that Wyoming was the last name to pop up on the board. I think that's a great tribute to the true quality of our league and it shows that people who know basketball are willing to say that it is a good league. All three of our teams merited entry."
On what it takes to beat a Big Ten team:
"The old rule was beat them up, grind them. The sterotypes are that Big Ten has finesse and west coast teams are soft and those aren't true. Illinois has size and athleticism and I think as much as anything we have to be able to match that. We have some big athletes ourselves. It will be interesting once we peel the onion a little and see excatly what they do. They are a good team and Bill Self has done an outstanding job there. It will be a good game and it should be because this is the tournament."
On being a No. 13 seed:
"I thought we would be somewhere around 11 or 12, so we were close. I don't think it makes a great deal of difference. If you want to be good you have to beat people. You could make a case about somebody being a five and not a four and somebody like us being a 13 who feels like they could be an 11. The seeding itself is not significant."
On preparing for the NCAA tournament:
"We started to do that with the Mountain West tournament. That's the advantage to having a conference tournament because its a one-and-done atmosphere and you have limited prep time. When I was in the Big Ten they had no conference tournament. The key thing is making sure all the hype doesn't distract us. Illinois is more used to this. If you're not careful you can get into a situation where you think about everything but basketball. We told the team to enjoy the moment while you can."
On the team's improved play over the last month:
"It's not all black and white. We played awefully good basketball, we lost an overtime game to Wyoming in our place and lost to UNLV here in overtime as well. We won a great game at The Pit and then got beat up at Air Force two days later and then got beat here bad by Utah. From that point on we've played our best basketball, there's no question about that. We have been a better team of late, but we were a pretty good team before that. We just weren't a lucky team and maybe we've been a little more lucky of late. We have defended as well as anybody in our league and that's what helped us win those games in Las Vegas and we have to continue that now. We have five seniors that want to keep on playing and have become a little more selfless with how they play."
On San Diego State's turnaround:
"I didn't really set a time frame. I took the job in 1999 and with all my heart knew the resources were here. I knew that if we worked hard and had some luck that would could establish a real good program. But to say that in three years we were going to be in the NCAA tournament I would have said that would be phenomenal."