Jan. 3, 2008
SAN DIEGO -
Fisher News Conference Video | Players News Conference Video
SDSU Men's Basketball
Weekly News Conference Quotes
Aztec Athletics Center
Head Coach Steve Fisher
On junior guard Richie Williams' wrist injury:
"At the end of regulation in the Sam Houston State game, Richie drove and went down. It turned out to be worse than we thought; he has a broken wrist and will miss probably four weeks of the conference season. So we now will find out whether our depth is what we had talked about. But we will miss Richie. I think, being realistic, if we had him back by February 1, that's probably the time frame we're looking at right now. So we will enter our conference season without our starting point guard and we will see what happens with that."
On TCU and the Mountain West Conference:
"(TCU) lost by eight to Texas (Wednesday) at Texas. They had the ball down three with under two minutes to go. They played terrific and they're a very good basketball team. So we will have our hands full as will most teams in this league. It's a very good basketball league and if you play well, you'll have a chance (to win) whether you are home or away. If you don't play well, no matter where you're at, you probably won't win. That's the beauty of what we do, and I do think that's the reality of the league we play in."
On the team's depth at point guard:
"We started a freshman, D.J. Gay, at the point the first three games when Richie didn't play, and I thought he did a very good job. You can only play five at a time. Sometimes you're on that cutting edge between whether you get in, whether you stay, how many minutes you get, and Matt Thomas had been the odd man out. He played 19 minutes at Arizona and played well. He played one minute against Sam Houston State. He's had two games where he hasn't played at all, and he's started some as freshman. So I do believe Matt will come in and play well. I know he will be unafraid because he's been there and done that. Our depth will be tested, but I do think we have enough to perform."
On who will play point guard in Richie Williams' absence:
"As we speak, D.J. Gay will be our starting point guard. He started a number of games and performed admirably. Forget about the fact that he's a freshman. It's nice to have Matt Thomas in the wings. Matt will play. Now, will Matt play the minutes that D.J. did when D.J. and Richie were together? If that's the case, he's going to be playing over 20 minutes a game. Most of it (will be) instead of D.J., but you'll probably see some minutes when the two of them are even on the floor together."
Junior forward Lorrenzo Wade
On the team's mindset heading into conference play:
"Coach (Fisher) has preached since the beginning that we're playing three seasons. You play your non-conference schedule for the first season. The second season is conference play, and that actually dictates whether you get to play in that third season. So we want to go into conference and play as hard as we can to put ourselves in the best possible position to play in March."
On TCU:
"They're a very good basketball team; they're very athletic. They're bringing back a lot of key players from last year. If you remember last year, both games that we played were very competitive, and I expect them to be the same this year."
On his opinion of the MWC after a year of experience:
"I actually expected us to win the Mountain West Conference last year, but unfortunately that didn't happen. I knew it was a very competitive conference, one of the better conferences in the country full of a lot of talented and athletic players, along with good coaches and talented teams. This year, there's a lot of new faces as far as coaches are concerned. There will be a lot of new offenses and a lot of different schemes. We just have to be ready, scout well and prepare."
Junior forward Kyle Spain
On TCU:
"They're very athletic and strong. They play hard every game. It's going to be a really difficult game for us. Every team in this conference is going to be tough whether they are ranked first or ranked last. Every team in this conference can play. You can get beat at any given time on any given day. So we're going to have to come well-prepared, scout this team and execute on Saturday."