March 15, 2009
SAN DIEGO - SDSU Men's Basketball Head Coach Steve Fisher
On being selected as a No.1 seed for the NIT tournament:
"I'm disappointed and that's an understatement. I would hope that anyone who has ever seen us bounce a ball, watched a game, or covered us would feel the same way. We are on the outside looking in. We feel that we should be playing in the NCAA tournament. We feel that we merited playing in the tournament, but we're not playing in the tournament, and that's the reality of it. At the end of the day, you have to deal with the real world and the real world is not always fair. Sometimes fairness is through different people's eyes. We're not the only team in the United States of America that feels jilted, or feels that they could have or should have been playing. We are one of the two or three most talked-about not playing, and that adds to the nick, the cut. That makes the wound a little deeper, if that is the reality. We'll never know for sure if it is or it isn't.
"The reality is that we're playing in the NIT. As I turn the page, the NIT is the best tournament going right now, and the most important tournament, because we're in it. That has to be everyone's attitude that is associated with this program. It's sometimes easier said than done. You'll find out if we were able to convince players that this is reality when we play Weber State on Tuesday. That's the mission and the job description. I do believe that we've got enough quality-character people that will play that way. We're getting ready to do battle with Weber State on Tuesday. As we speak, we're getting as much on them as I'm sure they're doing on us, so that we can be as prepared as we can for the game in Cox Arena on Tuesday.
"When I first saw the first bracket come up, when I saw the first region, I believe I saw Utah as one of the first teams that popped onto the screen. I got real excited in a good way when I saw that they were a five seed. I thought that would bode well for us, but it didn't. We have two teams in; BYU is an eight or a nine seed and Utah is a five seed. And that's it. Things happen; 10 days ago they were talking about four teams possibly getting in and we got two of them.
"I think that we had a resume that could have included us (in the NCAA tournament). If I'm sitting in the room as a committee member, I would say "Why didn't you beat Arizona State, or Arizona, or St. Mary's or BYU at home?" So we, to some degree, controlled our own fate. I'm not a whiner; the glass is always half-full. We are looking forward to playing in the NIT and winning in the NIT. That's where my head is right now."
On how the players are feeling right now:
"The players are just like the coaches. They were disappointed and angry; they were thinking that they should be playing on Thursday or Friday. In reality, they know that they are not. All of us are smart enough to know that if we'd been cutting down nets in Vegas, we'd have been playing. That's how we went in. We won the first game and people said, "You beat Vegas three times, you're going to get in." We didn't buy that. We beat BYU and they said the same thing, just more forcefully. And I didn't buy it then. If you don't seal the deal, this can happen. We had a very good season. We won 23 games. We needed to win a little bit more and get a little bit lucky."
On the Mountain West lacking national exposure and it affecting us being overlooked by the NCAA:
"I don't know, I really don't know. I've heard Pac-10 people screaming about the East Coast bias and how those people are in bed by the time our games tip-off. I felt that football had helped us, that football had helped reception and visibility of our league with what Utah did in football as well as TCU and BYU."